> I aimed to elicit the response from Japanese people about their own culture This is overly optimistic in my opinion. When I wrote my original comment I didn'

> I aimed to elicit the response from Japanese people about their own culture This is overly optimistic in my opinion. When I wrote my original comment I didn't see any indication that any of the other commenters had any connection to or expertise regarding Japan, they were speculating based on their own cultures and their own knowledge. In my experience expert opinions are very likely to get buried in a forum like this unless they agree with the mainstream, non-expert view. > I think this is overcautious--and actually too dismissive of the views of non-japanese people I never said you should ignore or dismiss people's views completely, just that you should be cautious. There's a lot of speculation going on that you should avoid putting too much faith into. > so the opinions of other cultures and their experiences of Japan is vitally important I'll concede that I hadn't considered that point. But on the other hand, do you really trust people getting little information from a insular country to make well-informed opinions. It's part of the story, but stay skeptical of anything you hear. I brought things up because of my own frustrations with social networks, particularly Reddit (see my username). Lots of Redditors repeating stuff they saw on Reddit with little critical thinking was part of the reason I strayed away and moved here (also the more technical focus here) Any time Redditors discuss topics or cultures that I'm familiar with, I can tell a lot of people are talking out of their ass. > question has been flagged--for some reason? This is unfortunate. I do think there is some interesting discussion to be had. As long as you do your due diligence on any discussions here.