Johnny Neihu's NewsWatch: Of mice, macking and rowdy losers

VALENTINE'S DAY HAS, mercifully, past. Not that I care much -- my gal Cathy Pacific's a traditional, stinky tofu-eating, oamisua-slurping Taiwanese dame who's too ... er ... advanced in years to much care about such Western trivialities.

That's not the case for millions of young Taiwanese whippersnappers, who take the imported "holiday" as an opportunity to pile all sorts of additional social pressures on themselves -- as if there weren't enough of the home-grown variety already.

And not all of them are happy about it, at least judging by a recent Associated Press (AP) story entitled "Single men at home in their digital world: Taiwanese chase computer games rather than skirts."

The article's a bit thin on context, to say the least. It doesn't mention, for example, that what the AP translates as "home boys" (zhainan, 宅男) is borrowed directly from the Japanese otaku. These are the long-discussed male shut-in hobby geeks whose spiritual homeland is Tokyo's Akihabara district.

Even in antisocial fads, it seems, Taiwan can't help but copy Japan. Can't we invent a twisted, "exotic" trend of our own to feed up to the laowai press? And I'm not talking toilet restaurants.

The otaku phenomenon's nothing new; every time a Western sociologist or Tokyo-based foreign correspondent runs out of ideas, these moonlighting losers get trotted out and are put under the spotlight anew.

In Taiwan, you know the trend has long peaked when megastar Jay Chou (周杰倫) releases a song about it (Sunshine Homeboy from last year's album On the Run -- a catchy little ditty).

Even Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential nominee Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) called himself a zhainan last fall after skipping the DPP's national congress and going into self-imposed seclusion. That means the AP missed a chance to crank up the alarmism a couple of notches: a zhainan could soon occupy the Presidential Office.

Then again, after eight years of Prez A-bian's (陳水扁) nonstop global gallivanting -- yammering away, wearing goofy foreign garb and putting fruit on his head -- maybe that's just what we need. A president who'll stay indoors quietly playing computer games, making the occasional policy announcement via text message if absolutely necessary.

But the AP article insists there's a "disturbing" new phenomenon in Taiwan. Last December, a few self-styled zhainan apparently trolled through a Taipei mall yelling at couples: "Lovers, go to Hell!"

It gets worse: "The more rabid home boys go public with their complaints on popular dating days, such as Valentine's Day and Christmas Eve."

Uh-oh.

"Parents find the trend worrisome."

Criminy.

In my cynical twilight years, I can't help but ask: How maladjusted can these young men be when they're able to articulate their angst in quotable soundbites to the international wires?

Note to AP: When a group has its own media strategy, it's probably not a real subculture.

But such is media during Lunar New Year, when a trend story can fill the news void on even the barest of pretexts.

Then, at the end of the AP story, the cry from the heart: "Hsu Wen-hsiung, a bespectacled 26-year-old office worker who took part in the anti-couple demonstration in December, complained that women never have the patience to get to know him or allow him to show his good nature and sense of humor in a relaxed atmosphere."