What is up with JapanToday’s comment section?

Until few years ago, might be before Covid started, the comment section was a bit tolerable. These days, it is toxic like anything out there in the internet. I feel like most of them are foreigners and some very nationalistic Japanese. I feel like reddit is toxic but JapanToday is on another level. Was it always like there over there?

30 comments
  1. If you are looking for encouragement, empathy or anything remotely pleasant or hopeful, you have definitely come to the wrong place. We don’t do those things here. I wish there was more of the aforementioned, but I don’t make the rules around here.

  2. The types of posters there are no different from JapanLife.

    The difference is JapanToday has political discussions, and thankfully we don’t.

  3. Welcome to the internet?…

    You are on Japanlife, you know the place where every second thread is “I walked into a conbini, stared down everyone there like a boss but this one guy wouldn’t even look at me, this country is so racist!’. Have you not come to the conclusion yet that all social media is a cesspool?

  4. I’ve never seen a news website where the comments section isn’t absolutely cancer.

  5. You see the same thing with the south China morning post. I feel that lots of people who don’t actually live in China post there. I get really strong uni student or pseudo intellectual energy from some of the comments

  6. Because the moderators there are intolerant to liberal discourse. They remove a lot of the sane commentary and so sane people have left the place, leaving only the mess you see. I won’t even click on links to that website anymore.

  7. I gave up a long time ago – the mods are/were illogical, random and heavy handed, it is the same 10 people commenting all the time (some with multiple accounts), and the system was (is?) badly outdated – you cannot “reply” to comments, you can’t edit a comment.

    As for the comments themselves, I cannot give an opinion as I haven’t seen it recently. However, the ownership did change… maybe 12-18 months ago. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

    Edit: Looked it up – ownership moved to Gakken Holdings last April. They are a known as a publisher (books, textbooks, education materials) and have other businesses under their group. No immediate red flags that suggest it would impact the comment section, but I don’t know so much about them.

  8. The root cause of all gaijin saltiness (especially those of the pale male variety) is an unholy trinity of frustrated career aspirations, frustrated notions of privilege and superiority, and – most acutely of all- sexual frustration arising from dead bedrooms. Whack all of that bad juju together in one pudgy Homer Simpson lookalike rapidly approaching middle age, and the comments section is like an oasis of self-expression in the desert of oppressive Japanese polite society 😛

  9. I don’t think it’s that bad. There’s generally a range of opinions.

    I don’t understand the mentality that says something like: “there are opinions posted there that I don’t agree with so it’s a toxic mess…”

    I used to post there but don’t any more.

    As a news website I find it pretty bland and somehow boring TBH.

    The kuchikomi section is interesting though.

  10. The only paper worse was the Japan Times. Both were so bad you couldn’t even line a bird cage with them, because they weren’t worth shitting on.

  11. July: Elderly couple scammed by Japanese teen, scammer sentenced to 3.5 years in prison

    Japan Today comments: OMG WTF JAPAN? He deserves 10 years, no, 20! Japan is a backwards shit hole!

    August: High schooler steals from retired couple, judge hands down 3.5 year punishment

    Japan Today comments: THIS SENTENCE IS OUTRAGEOUS, he’s just a KID! Another monstrous ruling by Japan’s backwards justice system!

  12. I feel like their entire news section is copied and pasted from other news outlets.

  13. Rage bait comments is what I call this phenomenon. As long as it’s not about a political subject that emotionally affects me I might read it for entertainment.

  14. I used to swim in the fark cesspool before it started poisoning me. Every article, Japan related or not, was somehow fixed with a Japan headline to get the trolls grumbling under their bridges. Just blatant racism and slurs. I think it’s just a way to get the low-hanging fruit types all riled up so they comment on whatever bullshit article they have, usually without reading it. Then you have to keep refreshing the site to see who agreed or disagreed with your comment, which feeds the ad revenue machine. I think it’s all an ad revenue scam. Reddit is equally as bad. Among the floods of low-key racist comments you’ll see one guy who’s like, hey this article is totally false, but he’s already drowned in downvotes.

  15. I would assume a lot of those are propaganda bots. It’s all just a bit too extreme to be believable.

  16. >most of them are foreigners and some very nationalistic Japanese

    I mean, that’s every Japan sub (including this one) on reddit and literally all of Twitter. It’s why I’ve come to treat the word “weeb” as race/ethnicity/nationality neutral – anyone who fetishizes Japan without actually understanding it is a weeb to me. You’re constantly inundated with people insisting that “Japan would never do [bad thing] unlike [other country,]” and half the time it’s a clueless Japanese who somehow doesn’t realize [bad thing] is literally just daily life here.

    The crazy thing is that “Japan would never do [bad thing] unlike [other country]” isn’t consistently a right wing or left wing thing. Some people use Japan as a bludgeon against minorities and immigrants in their own country – sometimes they try to use Japan as the noble enemy of the establishment in their country.

    It’s not even limited to threads about Japan. I’ve come to really, really hate the anti-car movement for constantly fetishizing Japan as some kind of carless utopia, which is hilariously stupid. So you’ll have a thread about buses in Idaho or some place, and inevitably someone comes in and says, “Well, when I was in Tokyo…”

    That’s just how the internet treats Japan. It’s not limited to one race, ethnicity, or nationality – it’s damn near universal.

  17. I used to read Japantoday until they started using rocketnews junk, the comment section was always garbage and even if I made a serious helpful comment or tried to start a good discussion that would be helpful my comment would be deleted. At times when the topic was about politics my comment was sometimes EDITED, not removed, EDITED to align with JT’s voice. Fuck that shit.

  18. I read it mainly because its free.

    Its noticeable that the articles that get the most comments, and which tend to have the most vile, are usually not Japan-specific ones. Anything about Trump or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and up until last year Covid) gets blown up. Pretty sure many commenters aren’t in Japan.

  19. >Until **few years ago**, might be before Covid started, the comment section was a bit tolerable. Was it always like [that] over there?

    Yes. Japan Today has been bad for decades.

    >I feel like most of them are foreigners

    Japan Today is for expats, by expats. It’s low-level *even for a* *~~newspaper~~* *whatever it is*. Trade journals and magazines provide much more in-depth coverage, but are out of reach for most expats. So it fills a light reading gap, but shouldn’t be taken too seriously, especially now that [Asahi](https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14958878), [Mainichi](https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230716/p2g/00m/0na/021000c), and [Yomiuri](https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/world/asia-pacific/20230623-118053/) have their own English versions.

    The editor once said that the comment section is almost entirely foreign IPs; it likely isn’t expats *or* Japanese reading and commenting. Just random internet weirdos.

    >and some very nationalistic Japanese

    If you want to see [Japanese people](https://news.yahoo.co.jp/pickup/6469649) commenting, you might [try Yahoo](https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b4349aa57c52d15d81bbe10a5ca7239392f9a471/comments).

  20. Don’t discount disinformation troll farms… very effective tactic in the current political climate.

  21. Half of the so-called Japanese there aren’t Japanese.

    the other half are those foreign right wing types who idolize Japan as some kind of conservative, homogeneous paradise, which they think is the reason for its low crime and a hierarchical society. Some one hasn’t broken the news to them that Japan is a highly centralized, “big state” country that’s more communal than individual oriented.

  22. If people are content, they live their lifes being happy. They won’t go online to complain.

    If people are unhappy, they complain. That’s why places like that ends up toxic.

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