Slashdot Mirror
2ch: Japanese Web Forum As Social Vent
News for nerds writes "This NY times article (reg blah blah) sheds the light on Japan's largest Internet bulletin board - 2ch. About 5.4 million people come to this "Channel 2" each month, many of them several times a day (just like you nerds making beowulf cluster of alphabets all the day!). Founded in 1999, "ni-channeru," as it is called there, has become part of Japan's everyday culture as no other Web site has. While you can also find useful info such as dinner recipes there, it's almost like Battle Royale came into life as a web site, filled with verbal and physical violence backed by pseudo anonymity."
As 2ch-er....
It seems generally true that as a website becomes popular, a certain group of dickheads (usually males in the 12-16 age group) turn up with the goal of ruining it for everyone.
Slashdot deals with this in a unique way by allowing the users to do the police work. This is (imo) vastly superior to having overzealous super-moderators cruising around laying down the law.
2ch sounds like it's an order of magnitude larger than slashdot. Can any japanese users of 2ch shed light on how they deal with the "fuckwit factor"?
Here's an article to accompany this story. Plus no need to register with NYT. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001923719_japannet09.html
I've lived in Japan since 1999, in the technology community (such as it is...), and I have never heard of this site until now, never even heard it referenced on TV or in print.
And I have seen Slashdot referenced on newshows and in print.
For those of us that are on a continent that ends with "America" or lives in Europe, this idea may not seem new or even novel. For us, dealing with Trolls and Frames are just annoying necessary evils for communicating in a broad, public forum. We deal with it ( Ignore, Moderate, Meta-moderate, etc ), and keep moving forward.
/. with more experience in Japan than I can pick up where I leave off. ), this bulletin board is a very big deal.
Now, to say that Japan, and its society, resembles nothing like Western cultures is a massive understatement. In that culture, being able to speak your mind, in a raw form, can be dangerous to your reputation which affects your career, finances, and relationships, and the last thing a Japanese person wants is to be alienated from the Group. The issues of Tatemae and Honne cover this social restraint of tactful to the group and honest in private, among other aspects of Japanese life.
Basically, this public, anonymous forum gives Japanese people the ability ( It is still a novelty to most of them, I would imagine ) to act "normal": Polite, Helpful, Insight, Confrontational, Insulting, Argumentative, etc. These free-flowing interactions are just not acceptable in a Japanese public setting. In the end, if you know the context of the culture ( I have a little insight into it, but I am sure other
Unfortunately for all the American slashdotters, it has never been released in the US (not even on VHS or DVD), and probably will never be. There have been many debates on why exactly this is. I know only one thing, if I were the distributor, I would want to keep it out of the US. The profits will not be worth the moral outrage it will cause.
Bottom line is that it is a great movie, and if you have the chance, you should watch it.
siener's youtube channel
The big deal about this board is that Japanese people very rarely vent angrily in public life. In fact, IMHO they generally don't say a heck of a lot at all.
Anyway, considering I work in pretty much an all Japanese office, *occasionally* there will be personal misunderstandings. Back home we'd probably have an argument to clear the air to find out where people stand, so something can be done about it. Over here, for the sake of personal feelings, you can't tell incompetant workers outright that they are doing a shitty job, or somesuch.
Over here, personal disagreements just get sat on and when people have disputes, rather than talk about it to fix it, they just never end up talking to that person again. Or if they do talk, it's under the cover of being insincerely "nice". This is just so the peace is not disturbed.
I guess this is what happens when you adhere to the "If you haven't got anything nice to say, say nothing" approach. You never get to the bottom of anything, and you never find out what other people are really thinking.
It means that Japan is a very safe society (nobody really verbally or physically attacks anyone here).... but all these negative emotions get pent up.
Anyway, one day I noticed that some Japanese co-workers were ignoring me for some reason (which was completely out of character). I tried to ask what the matter was, but they said nothing.
Later on I googlesearched my name and found a messageboard post with my name mentioned. It turned out that one of those workers was venting about something I said at work, under a nickname on some private message-board.
Needless to say, this pissed me off... but that's the Japanese for you. They'll never tell you anything to your face, even each other, but 2ch can tell you everything.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Erm, I'll try again
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/forumdisplay.ph p?f=101122457.
Incidently, because of the "2ch effect" it is considered bad manners to post links there without disabling them first (usually by chopping off the first "h").
But I see 2ch and I don't think "channel 2" I think of a dot.
2ch is the ascii code for a '.'
Slashdot should now be known as 2f2ch