5 ms·

Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is vis

Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks. It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only, but in reality the vast majority of apps being written are using boring technologies to implement CRUD around a relational database.

rchaud 6y ago
But who's 'the media' here? Occasionally you'll see a piece in a major publication about Japanese consumer trends or strange products that become big hits. More recently I've seen articles about the hikikomori (sp?) "lost generation" people that graduated just as the bubble burst 30 years ago. But the rest of the coverage is 'normal'; political, business and sports news. The only place I ever see "weird Japan" content regularly is Reddit and western vloggers living in Japan posting the most sensationalist stuff possible.
- dialamac 6y ago
  Case in point was already mentioned. The New Yorker is the outlet that ran with the bullshit rent a family story.
  - joe11 6y ago
    So lying Jewish scum, I'm not surprised.
  - glandium 6y ago
    It's not only the New Yorker. It was on many Youtube channels, many news articles, etc. It even made the news in Japan.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. They do not offer a prostitute; those batteries are not included Secondly, I do not gain the impression from that that all do it, merely that they note that the very existence thereof is exceptional. In particular, of the used underwear vending machines, when the story broke many would not believe it and thought it was a hoax, but it actually exists. No one thinks that every U.S.A.-man bought an assault rifle at a gas station or got one as a gift for opening up a bank account, but that the practice even exists, that the number of occurrence isn't zero — that is something remarkable in and of itself. > The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks. What I must ask is why the term “western” invariably always drops whenever Japan is discussed. Experience taught me that more often than not “the west” in that context simply means “The U.S.A.”. There is no “west” relevant to what you claim. All that matters is “Japan” vs. “everything else” or at least anyone not particularly experienced with Japan which applies as easily to, say, India, Russia, Uganda, or Indonesia. > It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only, but in reality the vast majority of apps being written are using boring technologies to implement CRUD around a relational database. I find that every time an article about a, shall we call it “exciting language” is posted most of the comments, though impressed with the theoretical innovations thereof, doubt it's real world applicability.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  > Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. My observation from travel is that love hotels are a sign of multigenerational housing. Young adults need somewhere to go without their parents watching.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bserge 6y ago
closeparen 6y ago
It would be extraordinary if young couples were having sex within earshot of their parents, or not at all. “Love hotels” seem like a pretty mundane adaptation to dating while living with family.
dalbasal 6y ago
We need a new name for this kind of fallacy/bias. It's not new, but more potent and prevalent than ever. Only saucy stories get told, so we think it's all sauce.
- Dracophoenix 6y ago
  Marinara bias?
  - cartoonfoxes 6y ago
    I like this. All red sauces are not marinara.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    works for me
smorephism 6y ago
> you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only Pff. Everyone knows Haskell, Idris and Elixir are acceptable, too.
- alexanderdmitri 6y ago
  once you've started on Idris you've crossed the line over from kinky to deviancy source: there are several people in my weekly support group for exactly this reason, it gets out of control
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    I would trust any type system that doesn't require me to prove that my sorting algorithm maintains the length of the vector it sorts.
f430 6y ago
I also think Kpop's influence is also exaggerated but I won't argue against it's popularity amongst the young female/some male crowd. It's like when a Kpop/Kdrama fan approaches me expecting me to know all of the pop culture when in my experience most Koreans simply consider BTS to be like Justin Bieber. Imagine if people from Japan starts asking you if you watch Justin Bieber sing and then getting offended when you speak the truth. This is exactly what people in Korea and Japan are going through but you will almost never see them express it but its getting extreme in some situations like below: https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/gxa6qr/this_girl_makes_tiktok_videos_of_her_forcibly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/gxa6qr/this_girl_mak... Here you can see her physically harassing Korean men by hugging them or trying to kiss them. It's getting to the point where Western women are fetishizing Korean men similar to how Asian women are often fetishized by foreigners (not through popular culture but mainly through pornography).
burnthrow 6y ago
Reading HN comments yesterday I learned that if I can't quickly devise an algorithm to lay out stars evenly on a flag, I'm worse than programmers in training.
pratik661 6y ago
I mentioned this phenomenon in a comment on an HN article about caste in India: “ Something I've also noticed in Western media is that when covering issues about other cultures (ie India, Middle East, etc), the bar for evidence is pitifully low, especially if the story matches existing confirmation bias.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952892
joerter12 6y ago
Thanks, I was just about to comment on how the social trends coming out of Japan are quite disturbing. I hope it’s as exaggerated as you say.
- hungryforcodes 6y ago
  Disturbing how exactly?
dang 6y ago
This subthread was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779139.

rchaud 6y ago

But who's 'the media' here? Occasionally you'll see a piece in a major publication about Japanese consumer trends or strange products that become big hits. More recently I've seen articles about the hikikomori (sp?) "lost generation" people that graduated just as the bubble burst 30 years ago. But the rest of the coverage is 'normal'; political, business and sports news. The only place I ever see "weird Japan" content regularly is Reddit and western vloggers living in Japan posting the most sensationalist stuff possible.

dialamac 6y ago
Case in point was already mentioned. The New Yorker is the outlet that ran with the bullshit rent a family story.
- joe11 6y ago
  So lying Jewish scum, I'm not surprised.
- glandium 6y ago
  It's not only the New Yorker. It was on many Youtube channels, many news articles, etc. It even made the news in Japan.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

> Yeah if you just read all these articles about Japan, you'd think that all young men beat off to hentai all day at their parent's home, and that everyone is visiting "love hotels", or buys used panties from vending machines. Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. They do not offer a prostitute; those batteries are not included Secondly, I do not gain the impression from that that all do it, merely that they note that the very existence thereof is exceptional. In particular, of the used underwear vending machines, when the story broke many would not believe it and thought it was a hoax, but it actually exists. No one thinks that every U.S.A.-man bought an assault rifle at a gas station or got one as a gift for opening up a bank account, but that the practice even exists, that the number of occurrence isn't zero — that is something remarkable in and of itself. > The media loves to spin up an image of Japan to naive westerners by exaggerating its quirks. What I must ask is why the term “western” invariably always drops whenever Japan is discussed. Experience taught me that more often than not “the west” in that context simply means “The U.S.A.”. There is no “west” relevant to what you claim. All that matters is “Japan” vs. “everything else” or at least anyone not particularly experienced with Japan which applies as easily to, say, India, Russia, Uganda, or Indonesia. > It reminds me of HN. If you read HN too much, you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only, but in reality the vast majority of apps being written are using boring technologies to implement CRUD around a relational database. I find that every time an article about a, shall we call it “exciting language” is posted most of the comments, though impressed with the theoretical innovations thereof, doubt it's real world applicability.

stickfigure 6y ago
> Firstly, love hotels are a sign of not being lonely. My observation from travel is that love hotels are a sign of multigenerational housing. Young adults need somewhere to go without their parents watching.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bserge 6y ago

closeparen 6y ago

It would be extraordinary if young couples were having sex within earshot of their parents, or not at all. “Love hotels” seem like a pretty mundane adaptation to dating while living with family.

dalbasal 6y ago

We need a new name for this kind of fallacy/bias. It's not new, but more potent and prevalent than ever. Only saucy stories get told, so we think it's all sauce.

Dracophoenix 6y ago
Marinara bias?
- cartoonfoxes 6y ago
  I like this. All red sauces are not marinara.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  works for me

smorephism 6y ago

> you might think that you can only write applications in Rust and Go using K8s, no JavaScript but Typescript only Pff. Everyone knows Haskell, Idris and Elixir are acceptable, too.

alexanderdmitri 6y ago
once you've started on Idris you've crossed the line over from kinky to deviancy source: there are several people in my weekly support group for exactly this reason, it gets out of control
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I would trust any type system that doesn't require me to prove that my sorting algorithm maintains the length of the vector it sorts.

f430 6y ago

I also think Kpop's influence is also exaggerated but I won't argue against it's popularity amongst the young female/some male crowd. It's like when a Kpop/Kdrama fan approaches me expecting me to know all of the pop culture when in my experience most Koreans simply consider BTS to be like Justin Bieber. Imagine if people from Japan starts asking you if you watch Justin Bieber sing and then getting offended when you speak the truth. This is exactly what people in Korea and Japan are going through but you will almost never see them express it but its getting extreme in some situations like below: https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/gxa6qr/this_girl_makes_tiktok_videos_of_her_forcibly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/gxa6qr/this_girl_mak... Here you can see her physically harassing Korean men by hugging them or trying to kiss them. It's getting to the point where Western women are fetishizing Korean men similar to how Asian women are often fetishized by foreigners (not through popular culture but mainly through pornography).

burnthrow 6y ago

Reading HN comments yesterday I learned that if I can't quickly devise an algorithm to lay out stars evenly on a flag, I'm worse than programmers in training.

pratik661 6y ago

I mentioned this phenomenon in a comment on an HN article about caste in India: “ Something I've also noticed in Western media is that when covering issues about other cultures (ie India, Middle East, etc), the bar for evidence is pitifully low, especially if the story matches existing confirmation bias.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952892

joerter12 6y ago

Thanks, I was just about to comment on how the social trends coming out of Japan are quite disturbing. I hope it’s as exaggerated as you say.

hungryforcodes 6y ago
Disturbing how exactly?

dang 6y ago

This subthread was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779139.