>The genre seems to have crossed over from Asian culture, with many novels being translations of Chinese/Korean ones.
You can basically trace a lot of the web novel versions back to anime/manga/light novels. (Maybe the reason is that in Asia these are also web novel, eg Shousetsuka ni Narou.)
However, this kind of a genre is and was popular in the west independently of that. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in 1912. It hits onto most of the same ideas these more modern stories do.
Yes, but it's not just young people.
>The genre seems to have crossed over from Asian culture, with many novels being translations of Chinese/Korean ones.
You can basically trace a lot of the web novel versions back to anime/manga/light novels. (Maybe the reason is that in Asia these are also web novel, eg Shousetsuka ni Narou.)
However, this kind of a genre is and was popular in the west independently of that. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in 1912. It hits onto most of the same ideas these more modern stories do.