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3 days agoThe etymology is a bit different from that. Otaku does mean “your house” (important distinction: it’s always the second person’s house, not your own), but it’s also used figuratively as a formal way to refer to your family or just you. There was a culture, at least in the 70s and 80s, for enthusiasts in non-mainstream fields of interests, whether that be TV manga anime, science-fiction, wargaming etc., to talk to each other in a weirdly formal way, so they kept calling each other “otaku”.
Even without the social issues (some of which aren’t really solvable), there are still the matters of the lack of control and predictability, qualities that make it very valuable to fakers, but pretty much worthless to serious artists.