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These kinds of "look how weird Japan is!" articles are an unintentional personal attack on an entire country. And the articles always come up more frequently in

These kinds of "look how weird Japan is!" articles are an unintentional personal attack on an entire country. And the articles always come up more frequently in the software engineering / computer science social scene. > Though it started slow, his website has roughly 45 ossan rentals a day now, or 10,000 encounters per year Really? That's it? There are no statistics on the rate of occurrence of this per population, yet this researcher has taken it upon them to tell the whole world that middle-aged men are for rent in Japan. Someone should research why Americans have an infatuation with a few cultural aspects of Japanese culture. And it's always things like "young people don't want to date!" or "you can buy hentai at vending machines". Anecdotally, some Americans fetishize these aspects of Japanese culture, and I think that skews everyone's perceptions of the country. I think some fraction of Americans want so bad for Japan to be as weird as the anime they watch. Everyone I've met from Japan seems completely normal in relation to these articles.

wvenable 8y ago
Don't worry the rest of the world has a similar infatuation with American culture, with the same biases, and the same "everyone I've met from America has been normal" phenomenon.
- wufufufu 8y ago
  Please, let me continue to fantasize about morbidly obese gun-toting Americans
throw2016 8y ago
There is undeniably a fetishization of other cultures in the media which creates the 'other' especially for those who are only casually interested and whose exposure is via the media - ie most people unless you are a researcher or professional paid to take an interest. But this taking a small isolated thing and presenting it as some kind of general thing is typical of most media. They do these human interest or trend related stories and try to present the singular instance as something bigger than it is. Most fashion media 'manufacture' and push trends in the same manner usually funded by product or service providers. For instance guys using manbags or guys grooming beyond basics, this usually applies to a small minority but its presented as something larger, and sometimes it even becomes one.

wvenable 8y ago

Don't worry the rest of the world has a similar infatuation with American culture, with the same biases, and the same "everyone I've met from America has been normal" phenomenon.

wufufufu 8y ago
Please, let me continue to fantasize about morbidly obese gun-toting Americans

throw2016 8y ago

There is undeniably a fetishization of other cultures in the media which creates the 'other' especially for those who are only casually interested and whose exposure is via the media - ie most people unless you are a researcher or professional paid to take an interest. But this taking a small isolated thing and presenting it as some kind of general thing is typical of most media. They do these human interest or trend related stories and try to present the singular instance as something bigger than it is. Most fashion media 'manufacture' and push trends in the same manner usually funded by product or service providers. For instance guys using manbags or guys grooming beyond basics, this usually applies to a small minority but its presented as something larger, and sometimes it even becomes one.