Japan petition urges “Barbenheimer” hashtag ban over A-bomb memes

19 comments

1. Definitely 100% not astroturfed by foreign white knights

2. And commenters are blaming it on America’s position in the war and justification of the bomb, yadda yadda yadda. As if the world isn’t aware of how horrible the atomic bombs were by now; it’s precisely the dark subject matter that makes the juxtaposition with Barbie funny.

3. Guarantee is whites complaining

4. Something references the a-bombs > Americans make memes out of it > Some Japanese get offended > 9-11 memes made in protest > Americans just laugh at the 9-11 memes and ask the Japanese folks who made them for more.

   This has been a very interesting series of events

5. Hope the petition leads to positive change.

6. You can tell by the power relationship between the U.S. and Japan.
   No matter how much noise the Japanese make, no one listens to them.

7. Imagine getting angry at a meme from the internet.

8. I’m pretty sure the internet culture is ready to move on anyway. Both movies have been out for 3 weeks, so the initial buzz around is starting to die out.

   This petition is kinda funny. Leave it to Japanese people to live up to the stereotype of being humorless machines that can’t apply any critical thinking.

9. It is interesting how many people in Japan will come out to decry anything that trivializes the atomic bombings, but also continue on with a willful ignorance about Japan’s war crimes. I agree that the bombings were wrong, but it seems like many people in Japan have double-standard mindset on anything relating to World War 2.

   *”I was really surprised the U.S., Hollywood no less, could produce a film like that and show it domestically. That it could make a film that would create debate about nuclear weapons is a great thing,”*

   This is not really surprising. Many films have been produced in the U.S. that take a critical look at out actions in the past. Are there any locally produced films in Japan that chronicle the Nanking massacre? That would be more surprising.

10. I think they should stop those memes because they’re stupid.

    Why on Earth would you pair Barbie with Oppenheimer anyway? It’s like pairing Legally Blonde with Schindler’s List.

11. Japanese netizens are so pissy about jokes. The day they acknowledge their Various war crimes, is the day I’ll have some sort of ‘sympathy’ or ‘pity’ for them. LMAO

12. A-bomb is a result. Japanese should seriously consider what reason caused it, instead of alleging that they were just innocent victims, IMO.

13. As a Japanese, I would say “cry me a river”. The atomic bombings have been completely politicized in Japan, and most of the population gets completely emotional over it.

    And yet it’s funny how the Empire of Japan has killed over 3.1 million Japanese, and how they’ve starved over 1.4 million of their own men to death, and sent them to suicide missions and ordered Okinawans to commit mass-suicide, and yet you don’t see them decrying over the rising sun flag or the glorification of kamikaze pilots, etc. And this doesn’t even count how they’ve killed over 20-30 million people in Asia…

14. It’s hard to be mad, but damn I really wanted to watch Oppenheimer in imax.

15. How does one petition an entire Internet’s worth of shitlords?

    Is there a King Shitlord, who governs and regulates the creation and deployment of shitposts? I don’t know.

16. I think the original intent of the Barbenheimer meme/craze was to merely comment on how funny it was to have such completely different films in subject matter, genre, tone be released on the same day during the summer season. I want to believe that no one was meaning to be disrespectful of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    I’m just sorry that these critics are calling for a ban of the hashtag rather than using it as a conversation starter about WW2. Most discussion I’ve seen online seems to just devolve into “what about-ism”.

17. Yeah, Japan, deal with your extreme right assholes who deny the holocaust, wartime prostitution abuses, and massacres in Asia first. K? Now sit down.

18. How many people anywhere actually care about this? Living in Japan I haven’t heard a single person bring it up.

19. J-rock band One Ok Rock (which is a very popular band in Japan) singer Taka expressed his anger:

    [https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b53804fc963425a3a8705a2df7beec005c4dc436](https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b53804fc963425a3a8705a2df7beec005c4dc436)

    >Taka expressed his anger in response to a number of collage images of two U.S. movies posted on social media: “Barbie,” a live-action version of the world of Barbie dolls, and “Oppenheimer,” which features the physicist who developed the atomic bomb.
    >
    >Along with the images in question, he wrote about his feelings with the poignant words, “Are they stupid or just ignorant of history? 、、、、 I just feel really bad as a Japanese person.”

    Oh the irony… somebody tell him what the Japanese really did during the war.