> Japan is an unhappy culture. The people are lonely and depressed, and the Internet is a release valve
This is probably the main reason why people come to textboards, imageboards, forums, instant messaging groups, and other online communication mediums.
The Japanese just have a higher percentage of lonely depressed people, but these kinds of people exist all over the world and they want a connection.
The average person who has a real social life doesn't feel the need to talk to strangers on the internet... unless he feels restricted by real life's social norms (i.e. he doesn't feel like he can be himself around other people, or he is a strange Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of person).
This is only slightly related but important to point out: the more "lonely and depressed" people use the internet as a release and immerse themselves in underground subcultures, the more they will feel different from the rest of the world and view themselves as outcasts or freaks.
https://www.wired.com/2008/05/mf-hiroyuki/
Source of the quote
Hiroyuki is a buffoon pundit, don't take ANYTHING he says seriously.
The internet isn’t an escape from loneliness and depression. Its the cause. What makes Western societies unique is that they have always taken the individual, the single person, as the basic unit of society. This individual is like an atom. It exists by itself and can make autonomous decisions. Whereas, in China, India etc. the self is always networked. A person is in part made up of the relations they have with others and they cannot exist as a full person without them e.g. the 5 relations of Confucius. Another feature of Western individualism is the distinction between an authentic self and an inauthentic public persona which is simply the image you present to others to seem professional, normal etc.
Computer tech is individualistic, everyone has a personal computer and the stuff on their hard drives and what they do online is private. Its not a shared activity, like sitting around the family hearth. The idea of the internet was that it would liberate people’s authentic self from their public persona, allowing them to be free. You don’t have to conform and can express your own individuality. You can see this clearly with imageboards and textboards e.g. the hostility to normalfags, transgenders who can separate their inner self from their body and act out in their ideal gender.
The side effect of this individualism is that it creates loneliness and stress. Its extremely unnatural to most human cultures. The internet atomizes people, creating loneliness. We then try to cure this loneliness by reaching out for social connection via the internet because its what we know best. The irony is that what we have is a big crowd where people are deprived of the tools to make meaningful connections. So we just wind up digging ourselves deeper and deeper. And since Western individualism has conquered every developed country, there’s no alternative.
We don’t use the internet because society is unhappy. The internet makes us unhappy and we can’t stop taking a sip of the crack pipe because we’ve moved so much of our social activities online that there isn’t much of a real world to socialize in anymore.
> Another feature of Western individualism is the distinction between an authentic self and an inauthentic public persona which is simply the image you present to others to seem professional, normal etc.
The opposite. In Western society there is a focus on "being yourself" (a result of individualism), meaning making your public persona match your inner persona. In Japan the distinction between inner and outer persona that you mentioned in your post is a widely recognized phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae
I'm not sure why you turned this thread into a discussion about Western individualism vs Asian collectivism because it doesn't have much to do with that. Even the most collective Asians would be glad to step out of their public-facing personas, which is exactly why 2ch and anonymous internet boards took off in Japan in the first place.
Your response sounds a bit like its coming from someone who idealizes Japan and is searching for a way to make them the good ones and Westerners the bad ones. . .
Other than that, I strongly agree with your point about how the internet destroys people. I would take it even further and say that it has the ability to turn people into degenerates: anonymity allows people to do what they would never do under their real identity, and the more they feed their base desires, the more corrupt they become.
> We don’t use the internet because society is unhappy
That's also true, but I know from experience that I use the internet when I'm lonely. I'm sure other users here will agree.
>Your response sounds a bit like its coming from someone who idealizes Japan and is searching for a way to make them the good ones and Westerners the bad ones. . .
You mean the backwards? It sounds like the usual 4chan Japan bashing.
But more than anything, the posts you're making are just shit regurgiatetd from elsewhere.
No personal thoughs, just altering other people's already altered scripts.
>The opposite. In Western society there is a focus on "being yourself"
You're right. But that demand to be yourself is based on making a distinction between a true inner self and a false public persona. Its usually accepted that we have to put up a public face for professional reasons, but we're also told to be our authentic selves too. Seeing things in terms of Western individualism vs Asian collectivism is misguided. Yes, there are differences between America and Japan but both are liberal democratic states with liberal legal systems where the individual is taken to be the basic unit of society. If you look at American and Japanese pop culture, you'll see a "be your self" attitude everywhere. So you're right that it has very little to do with it. I use the "Western individualism" because I think this type of individualism has a Western history, in the Protestant Reformation, before it globalized.
I brought up individualism because I think its the cultural context that shaped the design of computers and the internet. In the 90s and 2000s, it was really believed that the internet would be a tool of freedom. It would allow people to express their true self without the masks they wear in public and without the budrens of a physical body with biological limits. As this technology has taken over more aspects of life, everything from shopping to sex, we experience less physical connection and more lonliness. We can't just turn the machine off and go outside because virtually everything is online now. The internet created mass social isolation and we wind up trying to solve this by reaching out over the internet. There's a tendency out there that says society was bad and we use the internet as an escape. This is only half true. We designed the internet to serve an ideological end and its created social problems that drive more chronic internet addiction.
>anonymity allows people to do what they would never do under their real identity, and the more they feed their base desires, the more corrupt they become.
This. The internet seperates personalities from bodies, from a body that can feel pain. We end up being more insensitive and numb to other's suffering. Its also why the internet is filled with hate speech, slander, and witchhunts which are then justified by the extreme libertarian culture of the internet.
>>7
Good points.
> We designed the internet to serve an ideological end and its created social problems that drive more chronic internet addiction.
I started out wanting to talk about how losers with no friends come to the internet for company. I'm glad you brought up these other points that I didn't think of.