I am Japanese, but the Japanese Internet is full of sexism, discrimination against foreigners, bashing of celebrities, and other slanderous posts on Twitter, YouTube comment sections, and 5channel “5ちゃんねる”(an anonymous bulletin board in Japan).
Particularly bad are “5channel” and sites called “summary sites” “5chまとめサイト”that summarize some of the threads on 5channel. There, derogatory comments about women are made on a daily basis, and threads aimed at derogatory comments about women have become the mainstream, commonly known as “woman-bashing””女叩き“.
This is not hyperbole. I would like to think that only a few malicious people use such sites, but according to a survey, 40% of people who use the Internet use such sites on a daily basis.
Even in the comment sections of Twitter and YouTube, such posts are often caught even if you don’t want to see them. For example, there are many people who bash female victims of sexual abuse, and few people warn them to stop such posts. Compared to English-speaking forums, I feel that the level of public opinion on the Internet in Japan is quite bad. I think the cause is related to the ethnicity of the Japanese people and the loose regulations on the Internet.
I would like to avoid taking such slanderous posts, but I am tired of the Japanese Internet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/yfs10m/the_level_of_public_opinion_on_the_japanese/
7 comments
>the Japanese Internet is full of sexism, discrimination against foreigners, bashing of celebrities, and other slanderous posts on Twitter, YouTube comment sections, and 5channel
Don’t worry, the Western internet is pretty much the same. We’ve even got a 5channel equivalent called 4chan.
As for the woman bashing, that’s usually done by people we would call “incels”, short for “involuntary celibates”.
Anti-foreigner racism is welcome and encouraged on this sub, especially if it’s aimed at Chinese people or Korean people. So you won’t find a sympathetic ear here. There’s also a handful of Japanese incels who post obsessively on this sub and others insisting there are statistically no crimes against women committed in Japan (lookin’ at you umashikanekob, osarusan, and gemellotron). Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re only going to find more of the same racism, sexism, and Japanese fragility here that you will anywhere else.
It isn’t just Japan, it’s everywhere. Online communities, in general, are pretty toxic because it’s easy to behave badly in the safety and anonymity of cyberspace and there are a lot of unhinged people out there. I get homophobic or anti-gay comments thrown at me on an almost daily basis whenever I talk about issues that affect my life as a gay man. My husband, who is Japanese, has such a low opinion of online discussion communities that he avoids them. He confines his time in cyberspace just to sites that are related to his hobbies.
The problem is that you’re looking at the most toxic parts of the internet (Twitter threads, Youtube Comments, 5ch). That’s not unique to Japan or anywhere. You’ll find garbage in those places in any language, including Japanese and English. If you want to avoid that crap, you have to avoid reading those kind of sites. In other words, you can’t go to shit’s house and then be surprised when shit is home.
That’s the internet; not just the Japanese internet.
Good, you should be able to say whatever you want on the Internet
Well this must explain the low crime rate in Japan.