Bye Bye Hard Gay. Hello Saber

R.I.P hard gay

You exposed me to a side of Japanese culture I never needed to or wanted to know about, but now I can’t imagine WK without you :sob:

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I like saber more

Saber is love, Saber is 生

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This obviously reflects a staff obsession with Fate/Grand Order. :wink:

I kind of liked the way this has introduced me to interesting elements of japanese culture that I wouldn’t have otherwise looked into. Outrageous, offensive, controversial or not, these kind of items (Hard Gay, Genji and so on) have lead me down a wikipedia rabbit hole of learning which have helped me no end with my kanji (once you’ve seen the hard gay thrust it kind of sticks in your head…) and given me an insight into culture, and, in this particular case, what is considered culturally acceptable / appropriate in Japan, which is super interesting.

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You don’t せい

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I don’t know if it was about offensiveness really. Personally I have no real idea of who Hard Gay is,well I know it’s a comedian but I really haven’t been able to find any videos with him saying “せい” a bunch of times or anything like that so it just really feels hard to remember for me.

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I’m really disappointed by the removal of Hard Gay. To me it was THE most memorable mnemonic on this site because of its uniqueness and vividness. I hate wanikani’s apparent move towards political correctness, because the new mnemonics don’t evoke emotions in the same way. I will definitely keep using Hard Gay, just like I’m still using many of the mnemonics that were sadly removed in the last overhaul, but now I’ll need to come up with my own stories for future kanji, which is just discouraging when I know that this content used to exist until very recently.

After the overhaul update rolled out I gave up wanikani for weeks, because I was bummed out and confused by the changes but I have no choice but to accept that wanikani is changing for the worse (to me). Now whenever I see a mnemonic I like (like most of the “old mnemonics” that are still accessible) I copy and paste it into the reading/meaning memo section, because then at least it will remain safe from future changes :frowning:

I feel like wanikani should make a poll and let users vote on changes like this, so that the majority can decide to keep a particular mnemonic.

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!TOP SECRET INFORMATION!

Hide this treasure, treat it like fight club.

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Or the creators of the site could actually have goals and standards that they use to make the product and users can choose to not pay for it if they don’t want it.

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So where’s the button to bring my boy back

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I always remembered Hard Gay really well…

Hey, members of the resistance, remember that you can always download WaniKani Anki decks with the old entries and add them as meaning/reading notes. Hardo Gay lives forever in my personal notes. Sei!Sei!Sei!

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Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they are cleaning everything up with the intention of selling it to another company.

Big terms of service change coupled with it.

I hope I"m wrong, but I’ve seen this type of thing happen before…

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That’s because in your era I could be beat to death for walking around openly gay, so of course no one needed to walk on eggshells :upside_down_face: (Edit: and I still can in far too many places)

There’s a reason Hard Gay is a problem beyond hurting someone’s feelings.

Edit 2: yall are complaining about losing Hard Gay but you are still able to add it back in your notes (as a few users have already pointed out). No one’s saying you can’t use Hard Gay, it’s just no longer going to be the thing that everyone is taught.

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Nowadays you can never “jump the gun” when it’s related to political correctness. If you read the posts of people complaining about this kind of stuff, you’ll be surprised about all the silly things people get offended by.

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I dont mean to be a wet blanket, but this is an educational tool. It’s entertainment factor should be secondary, and a saber is a concrete, easily imagined object (what’s uninteresting about a curved sword with a handle vs. a pelvic thrust?). Maybe a light saber or sabertooth tiger would have been more memorable, so perhaps that’s something a user can contact WK directly about. Their email is hello@wanikani.com

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Hard Gay was pretty memorable, sucks that he got removed. I found his comedy mostly unfunny and kinda repetitive but he was an interesting character lmao

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The Office would like to have a word with you about that. (The gag is that they mispronounce “sabre”, which ironically makes you think about the pronunciation more)

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Hmmm the mnemonics for Become are a bit messed up now! Hard Gay will not die!