I guess there was some video that went viral on multiple platforms showing how supposedly bad things are in Japan these days. Graffiti, poverty, piled-up trash, etc. Chris Broad, a Japan-based...
I guess there was some video that went viral on multiple platforms showing how supposedly bad things are in Japan these days. Graffiti, poverty, piled-up trash, etc. Chris Broad, a Japan-based British content creator who runs the channel "Abroad in Japan" and has lived in Japan for over a decade, decided to review and respond to that video. Basically saying that a lot of it drummed up and over-generalized. Which kinda created some good ol' Youtube beef.
But the reason I'm sharing is less about that and more about his takes on the social media environment. How the algorithms, particularly on short-form content, reward people for what he calls "slop sensationalist content." That's easy to make and gain money and notoriety, while at the same time spreading ragebait and misinformation. And how that can fuel racism and other -isms. I think we all know that already, but just thought it was interesting to hear from the perspective of a content creator themselves. One who produces more "traditional," longer-form content.
Also apologies if ~tech isn't the right place for this. Struggled a bit to figure out the best place for it.
Thank you for sharing and providing the additional context. I'd originally glossed over this video when it came up via the Youtube home page, for the very reason the title / thumb nail made me...
Thank you for sharing and providing the additional context. I'd originally glossed over this video when it came up via the Youtube home page, for the very reason the title / thumb nail made me think it was the type of video it was actually responding to.
I guess that also ties in to part of the problem of it's easier to spread misinformation than corrections, having no prior context of the video that was being replied to, it's easy to make an incorrect assumption on the type of video that it was.
I think that dynamic actually made it one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen in a while. You can really hear the difference in his voice a couple of times towards the end as he slips out of...
I think that dynamic actually made it one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen in a while. You can really hear the difference in his voice a couple of times towards the end as he slips out of “professional with a script” tone and into “I am genuinely upset” - I haven’t often heard creators just straight up say they hate their thumbnails and titles rather than putting a bit of even handed corporate spin around it, for example, and certainly not heard them say it with enough emotion that I fully believe they mean it.
He's pretty open about this stuff. It's not a one-off comment, it's just "the price of doing business" with the algorithm. Honestly, his videos are refreshing, I say as a 6-year viewer of his content.
He's pretty open about this stuff. It's not a one-off comment, it's just "the price of doing business" with the algorithm. Honestly, his videos are refreshing, I say as a 6-year viewer of his content.
So... what actually is happening in Japan? Maybe it hasn't turned into a ghetto, but clearly things aren't all hunky-dory either. Change of power, new power wants to blame foreigners for issues in...
So... what actually is happening in Japan? Maybe it hasn't turned into a ghetto, but clearly things aren't all hunky-dory either.
Change of power, new power wants to blame foreigners for issues in Japan, ignoring the economic realities of the youth they love to chastise... Where have I heard this story before?
I guess the point is you can't prove there are growing problems from the original video. We can't know its not cherry picking. You ask a fair question but I think you'd either need to actually be...
I guess the point is you can't prove there are growing problems from the original video. We can't know its not cherry picking. You ask a fair question but I think you'd either need to actually be there for long periods of time or look more at data. Data quality and collection can vary so I think people actually overestimate it compared to anecdotal experience, but watching someone's video doesn't even constitute anecdotal experience.
What is actually happening is just lots of us getting up to go to work or school. You can see older businesses closing and homes being closed up after their occupants pass way since we live in an...
What is actually happening is just lots of us getting up to go to work or school. You can see older businesses closing and homes being closed up after their occupants pass way since we live in an increasingly aging society. New homes and businesses are constantly being built too, but it still shows. The cost of goods and services have been rising, most notably the price of rice which is a *pretty solid indicator of feeling okay or not about your finances. Still, you can see lots of discretionary spending on goods and millions of people are constantly traveling domestically to enjoy themselves in their free time. These days there has been an influx of foreigners mainly from Nepal according to gov’t data. It makes sense since the value of the yen has been weakening compared to a bunch of other currencies, so the people for whom it is worth it to move here for work have changed accordingly. That’s about it from where I stand.
That's cool. But I'm wondering from a more macro economic standpoint. Despite the slow collapse of the US government, most peoples day to day here also hasn't been impacted. Harder to find jobs...
That's cool. But I'm wondering from a more macro economic standpoint. Despite the slow collapse of the US government, most peoples day to day here also hasn't been impacted. Harder to find jobs but many people not laid off (except in a sectors) are also very hard to fire.
Of course, that might change quickly based on the shutdown.
The main point I took away from the video was this observation (paraphrasing from memory): This is definitely true. The interesting thing is this isn't really displacing other information about...
The main point I took away from the video was this observation (paraphrasing from memory):
People are increasingly informed about the world from 30-60 videos they see online
This is definitely true. The interesting thing is this isn't really displacing other information about the world. You aren't watching youtube shorts instead of traveling to Japan. It's just additional. And of course, extremely varied in quality. It can be true, or true and pushing an agenda, or false, etc.
In this way I think we are very tempted to think we know more about the world than we do. The world feels smaller and we feel more informed, but really we just carry around more preconceived notions, biases, etc.
Thank you for sharing this. The creator is very good at showing the contrast of reality vs 'ragebait' (first time I've heard that term but it makes sense) and giving a good under-the-hood look at...
Thank you for sharing this. The creator is very good at showing the contrast of reality vs 'ragebait' (first time I've heard that term but it makes sense) and giving a good under-the-hood look at some of the reasons it is so prolific.
We really need more healthy algorithms... no, we really need meaningful and effective regulation oriented towards the public good in the tech sector.
This type of propaganda is rampant in Japanese social media as well. I don't live in Japan but speak Japanese fluently and watch Japanese content out of interest. Almost every time I talk to a...
This type of propaganda is rampant in Japanese social media as well. I don't live in Japan but speak Japanese fluently and watch Japanese content out of interest. Almost every time I talk to a Japanese person about anything to do with the state of the country, it almost always invariably leads to how immigration and tourism (usually Chinese/Korean) is destroying Japan in some capacity (I almost always expect to hear something about Chinese tourists kicking deers in Nara or something).
Japanalysis, another Japan-centric youtube creator, did a good video recently about one specific political personality that's spreading this kind of misinformation within the Japanese public that I highly recommend you watch, since most English speakers never have contact with that side of the internet due to the language barrier.
All this to say this type of content affects both people watching from outside and people watching from the inside. It warps reality.
In the end, social media has created the breeding ground for this type of rampant misinformation and is eroding what little is left of real reporting. People are much more engaged with a YouTube short or a Facebook headline than they are with a detailed analysis of a situation. It's sad.
I think the root of the problem goes to the fact that there are fewer and fewer agreed-upon authorities for truthful information. In the mid-twentieth century, it didn't matter what your political...
In the end, social media has created the breeding ground for this type of rampant misinformation and is eroding what little is left of real reporting. People are much more engaged with a YouTube short or a Facebook headline than they are with a detailed analysis of a situation. It's sad.
I think the root of the problem goes to the fact that there are fewer and fewer agreed-upon authorities for truthful information. In the mid-twentieth century, it didn't matter what your political persuasions were, I gather that every American would trust that the gist of the information they saw on the evening news was more or less accurate. But now, if you don't like what people are saying, you can find in authoritative-sounding source that will tell you the world works exactly like you think it does. Even if that means powerful "Others" are controlling everything and oppressing people just like you.
I think dwindling attention spans are ultimately not the root cause of that problem. But they are representative of it – everything is geared towards engagement. Which drives sensationalism, which in turn is often built on outrage.
I agree with you, I just think it's the other way around. If social media is where almost everyone gets their news for the last decade, and social media works mainly based on engagement (ie it...
I agree with you, I just think it's the other way around.
If social media is where almost everyone gets their news for the last decade, and social media works mainly based on engagement (ie it promotes content that keeps users on their apps over content that doesn't), then it's no wonder that sources that play up the engagement system end up on top in the authority scale, regardless of their veracity.
That's what leads to no agreed-upon authorities on all sorts of subjects. Whoever gains the engagement economy system has the bigger say, and in this day and age that's whoever is most popular on social media no matter what they do or who they are.
I legitimately think social media, in its current state, is the root cause of the sheer disconnect people have with reality nowadays. Whether that be directly because people are constantly online or indirectly because even traditional news sources are now incentivized to play the social media engagement game.
I think Fox News was the harbinger of the "choose your reality" phenomenon. Social media makes it worse, I'm sure. But the seeds were being planted in the '90s. To go back even further, I think...
I think Fox News was the harbinger of the "choose your reality" phenomenon. Social media makes it worse, I'm sure. But the seeds were being planted in the '90s.
To go back even further, I think the antiintellectual trends that were part of the Evangelical attack on science generally and evolution in particular are part of that, too. When you have multiple generations being fed a narrative that there is a vast conspiracy of people lying about what the truth is, it undermines faith in science and institutions. I think it primed people to be ready to accept the Fox News narrative that other news organizations are just lying to you and you can only trust them. (Which ironically made it easy for some die hard Fox News fans to abandon them when they started undermining the MAGA narrative about January 6th, leading the Fox News fans to pivot to even more disreputable "news" sources like OANN or NewsMax.)
My general impression from the few English-language articles I see is that, like lots of countries have before, Japan is struggling a bit with overtourism now, due to exchange rates? But...
My general impression from the few English-language articles I see is that, like lots of countries have before, Japan is struggling a bit with overtourism now, due to exchange rates? But apparently this is exaggerated?
In simplified terms, yes. Obviously overtourism is an issue with the steadily decreasing value of the yen. I myself took advantage of this this past spring to go there for considerably cheaper...
In simplified terms, yes.
Obviously overtourism is an issue with the steadily decreasing value of the yen. I myself took advantage of this this past spring to go there for considerably cheaper than my last trip a couple years back.
But the notion that an increasing number of tourists only go to Japan to ruin it is also overly exaggerated due to social media cherry picking and misinformation.
Every country with lots of tourism will always have a small minority of said tourists that misbehaves, and the absolute number of those goes up the more tourists you have, but the percentages generally don't without any other factors being at play. Of course, it's unfortunate that anyone misbehaves, but it is something you can manage, not an excuse to go balls to the wall anti immigration like Japan is doing right now (which is a particularly bad move in Japan's case because their population is shrinking very rapidly and nobody wants to have children under the Japanese work system).
My experience with Japanese Twitter in particular is that Chinese people are vilified to such an insane degree you'd think it's 19th century USA with black people. I'm talking full on caricature drawings, sometimes doctored or heavily manipulated photos, along with the most bombastic headlines, as if Chinese citizens are there to invade Japan and replace Japanese people. This type of rhetoric is what's causing far right parties like Sanseito to rise more and more in the polls, to the point where they've gained influence with the ruling liberal democratic party and their new PM is taking much stronger far-right stances.
I made a joke with a friend that Westerners haven't experienced racism in the modern world until they've asked a Japanese person about Chinese people. Obviously this is overly exaggerated and purely anecdotal, but there seems to be an ever-growing hateful, xenophobic vitriol that you can find in Japanese online spaces, it's just isolated by the language barrier so most people outside of Japan don't come across it.
It just goes to show that literally no country is immune from the social media propaganda machine.
And frightening, because how do you fix short attention spans and the desire for simple answers to complex problems? Especially when it's extremely financially rewarding to feed them at scale.
And frightening, because how do you fix short attention spans and the desire for simple answers to complex problems? Especially when it's extremely financially rewarding to feed them at scale.
One of the few youtube creators who still feels genuine. We used his videos to get a feel for the country while planning an extended trip to Japan which was my favorite travel experience ever. I...
One of the few youtube creators who still feels genuine. We used his videos to get a feel for the country while planning an extended trip to Japan which was my favorite travel experience ever. I watched this video earlier and trust his opinion 100%, great take on alarmist social media content in general as well.
I guess there was some video that went viral on multiple platforms showing how supposedly bad things are in Japan these days. Graffiti, poverty, piled-up trash, etc. Chris Broad, a Japan-based British content creator who runs the channel "Abroad in Japan" and has lived in Japan for over a decade, decided to review and respond to that video. Basically saying that a lot of it drummed up and over-generalized. Which kinda created some good ol' Youtube beef.
But the reason I'm sharing is less about that and more about his takes on the social media environment. How the algorithms, particularly on short-form content, reward people for what he calls "slop sensationalist content." That's easy to make and gain money and notoriety, while at the same time spreading ragebait and misinformation. And how that can fuel racism and other -isms. I think we all know that already, but just thought it was interesting to hear from the perspective of a content creator themselves. One who produces more "traditional," longer-form content.
Also apologies if ~tech isn't the right place for this. Struggled a bit to figure out the best place for it.
Thank you for sharing and providing the additional context. I'd originally glossed over this video when it came up via the Youtube home page, for the very reason the title / thumb nail made me think it was the type of video it was actually responding to.
I guess that also ties in to part of the problem of it's easier to spread misinformation than corrections, having no prior context of the video that was being replied to, it's easy to make an incorrect assumption on the type of video that it was.
I think that dynamic actually made it one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen in a while. You can really hear the difference in his voice a couple of times towards the end as he slips out of “professional with a script” tone and into “I am genuinely upset” - I haven’t often heard creators just straight up say they hate their thumbnails and titles rather than putting a bit of even handed corporate spin around it, for example, and certainly not heard them say it with enough emotion that I fully believe they mean it.
He's pretty open about this stuff. It's not a one-off comment, it's just "the price of doing business" with the algorithm. Honestly, his videos are refreshing, I say as a 6-year viewer of his content.
So... what actually is happening in Japan? Maybe it hasn't turned into a ghetto, but clearly things aren't all hunky-dory either.
Change of power, new power wants to blame foreigners for issues in Japan, ignoring the economic realities of the youth they love to chastise... Where have I heard this story before?
I guess the point is you can't prove there are growing problems from the original video. We can't know its not cherry picking. You ask a fair question but I think you'd either need to actually be there for long periods of time or look more at data. Data quality and collection can vary so I think people actually overestimate it compared to anecdotal experience, but watching someone's video doesn't even constitute anecdotal experience.
What is actually happening is just lots of us getting up to go to work or school. You can see older businesses closing and homes being closed up after their occupants pass way since we live in an increasingly aging society. New homes and businesses are constantly being built too, but it still shows. The cost of goods and services have been rising, most notably the price of rice which is a *pretty solid indicator of feeling okay or not about your finances. Still, you can see lots of discretionary spending on goods and millions of people are constantly traveling domestically to enjoy themselves in their free time. These days there has been an influx of foreigners mainly from Nepal according to gov’t data. It makes sense since the value of the yen has been weakening compared to a bunch of other currencies, so the people for whom it is worth it to move here for work have changed accordingly. That’s about it from where I stand.
That's cool. But I'm wondering from a more macro economic standpoint. Despite the slow collapse of the US government, most peoples day to day here also hasn't been impacted. Harder to find jobs but many people not laid off (except in a sectors) are also very hard to fire.
Of course, that might change quickly based on the shutdown.
The main point I took away from the video was this observation (paraphrasing from memory):
This is definitely true. The interesting thing is this isn't really displacing other information about the world. You aren't watching youtube shorts instead of traveling to Japan. It's just additional. And of course, extremely varied in quality. It can be true, or true and pushing an agenda, or false, etc.
In this way I think we are very tempted to think we know more about the world than we do. The world feels smaller and we feel more informed, but really we just carry around more preconceived notions, biases, etc.
Thank you for sharing this. The creator is very good at showing the contrast of reality vs 'ragebait' (first time I've heard that term but it makes sense) and giving a good under-the-hood look at some of the reasons it is so prolific.
We really need more healthy algorithms... no, we really need meaningful and effective regulation oriented towards the public good in the tech sector.
"We used to program the algorithms, now they're programming us"
This type of propaganda is rampant in Japanese social media as well. I don't live in Japan but speak Japanese fluently and watch Japanese content out of interest. Almost every time I talk to a Japanese person about anything to do with the state of the country, it almost always invariably leads to how immigration and tourism (usually Chinese/Korean) is destroying Japan in some capacity (I almost always expect to hear something about Chinese tourists kicking deers in Nara or something).
Japanalysis, another Japan-centric youtube creator, did a good video recently about one specific political personality that's spreading this kind of misinformation within the Japanese public that I highly recommend you watch, since most English speakers never have contact with that side of the internet due to the language barrier.
All this to say this type of content affects both people watching from outside and people watching from the inside. It warps reality.
In the end, social media has created the breeding ground for this type of rampant misinformation and is eroding what little is left of real reporting. People are much more engaged with a YouTube short or a Facebook headline than they are with a detailed analysis of a situation. It's sad.
I think the root of the problem goes to the fact that there are fewer and fewer agreed-upon authorities for truthful information. In the mid-twentieth century, it didn't matter what your political persuasions were, I gather that every American would trust that the gist of the information they saw on the evening news was more or less accurate. But now, if you don't like what people are saying, you can find in authoritative-sounding source that will tell you the world works exactly like you think it does. Even if that means powerful "Others" are controlling everything and oppressing people just like you.
I think dwindling attention spans are ultimately not the root cause of that problem. But they are representative of it – everything is geared towards engagement. Which drives sensationalism, which in turn is often built on outrage.
I agree with you, I just think it's the other way around.
If social media is where almost everyone gets their news for the last decade, and social media works mainly based on engagement (ie it promotes content that keeps users on their apps over content that doesn't), then it's no wonder that sources that play up the engagement system end up on top in the authority scale, regardless of their veracity.
That's what leads to no agreed-upon authorities on all sorts of subjects. Whoever gains the engagement economy system has the bigger say, and in this day and age that's whoever is most popular on social media no matter what they do or who they are.
I legitimately think social media, in its current state, is the root cause of the sheer disconnect people have with reality nowadays. Whether that be directly because people are constantly online or indirectly because even traditional news sources are now incentivized to play the social media engagement game.
I think Fox News was the harbinger of the "choose your reality" phenomenon. Social media makes it worse, I'm sure. But the seeds were being planted in the '90s.
To go back even further, I think the antiintellectual trends that were part of the Evangelical attack on science generally and evolution in particular are part of that, too. When you have multiple generations being fed a narrative that there is a vast conspiracy of people lying about what the truth is, it undermines faith in science and institutions. I think it primed people to be ready to accept the Fox News narrative that other news organizations are just lying to you and you can only trust them. (Which ironically made it easy for some die hard Fox News fans to abandon them when they started undermining the MAGA narrative about January 6th, leading the Fox News fans to pivot to even more disreputable "news" sources like OANN or NewsMax.)
Every year I am more and more impressed by the prescience of the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2.
My general impression from the few English-language articles I see is that, like lots of countries have before, Japan is struggling a bit with overtourism now, due to exchange rates? But apparently this is exaggerated?
In simplified terms, yes.
Obviously overtourism is an issue with the steadily decreasing value of the yen. I myself took advantage of this this past spring to go there for considerably cheaper than my last trip a couple years back.
But the notion that an increasing number of tourists only go to Japan to ruin it is also overly exaggerated due to social media cherry picking and misinformation.
Every country with lots of tourism will always have a small minority of said tourists that misbehaves, and the absolute number of those goes up the more tourists you have, but the percentages generally don't without any other factors being at play. Of course, it's unfortunate that anyone misbehaves, but it is something you can manage, not an excuse to go balls to the wall anti immigration like Japan is doing right now (which is a particularly bad move in Japan's case because their population is shrinking very rapidly and nobody wants to have children under the Japanese work system).
My experience with Japanese Twitter in particular is that Chinese people are vilified to such an insane degree you'd think it's 19th century USA with black people. I'm talking full on caricature drawings, sometimes doctored or heavily manipulated photos, along with the most bombastic headlines, as if Chinese citizens are there to invade Japan and replace Japanese people. This type of rhetoric is what's causing far right parties like Sanseito to rise more and more in the polls, to the point where they've gained influence with the ruling liberal democratic party and their new PM is taking much stronger far-right stances.
I made a joke with a friend that Westerners haven't experienced racism in the modern world until they've asked a Japanese person about Chinese people. Obviously this is overly exaggerated and purely anecdotal, but there seems to be an ever-growing hateful, xenophobic vitriol that you can find in Japanese online spaces, it's just isolated by the language barrier so most people outside of Japan don't come across it.
It just goes to show that literally no country is immune from the social media propaganda machine.
Yeah it was a brainfart and I fixed it after re-reading my comment. My bad.
And frightening, because how do you fix short attention spans and the desire for simple answers to complex problems? Especially when it's extremely financially rewarding to feed them at scale.
As an aside his book Abroad in Japan is a fun easy read with a nice slice of life flavour. I would recommend it!
One of the few youtube creators who still feels genuine. We used his videos to get a feel for the country while planning an extended trip to Japan which was my favorite travel experience ever. I watched this video earlier and trust his opinion 100%, great take on alarmist social media content in general as well.