this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Memes

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A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.

An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.

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Cool Japan 🌸 (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 days ago by diffaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/memes@sopuli.xyz
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[–] topperharlie@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (3 children)

A couple of thoughts:

Yes, I've heard before, even from people living in Japan, that they are quite xenophobic.

Now, why is this not condemned from the west ? (I know Chinese people and they do remember WW2)

As everything several reasons:

Japan has a great propaganda machine to make their culture look cool AF: anime/manga, the mythology around temples, samurais, ninjas...

The good parts of their culture, specially in contrast to the west: the extreme politeness, how clean and organized they are, civility/safety, super good and maintained public services such transport...

The "pretend WW2 didn't happen". They were absolute monsters on WW2, way beyond the nazis, but the combination of doing a 180 towards the west and the atomic bombs made it so the west was comfortable with looking the other way while Japan conveniently forgets his war crimes (for anyone unaware search for Nanjing, be warned is a hard read, but is important not to forget)

The "pacifist xenophobia". When you go to japan their way of practicing xenophobia is quite passive, like, let's be clear, you are loud and disgusting for them, but they will never tell you that, and you are probably never going to be in danger. At least as a tourist this is 100% like this, they might even just feel introverted rather than xenophobic. From what I've heard from people living there, it gets more clear when you live, but didn't get any "I'm in danger" feeling from them, so I guess that low key discrimination is like that.

Now, not saying any of that makes it good, but I can understand why there is a different level of pushback than to the USA for example, where if you are brown and meet an angry cop or redneck (or both), you might end up dead.

I know for the fucking internet there is no such thing as grey, is either black or white, but I think the world is more nuanced than that.

BTW, for their work culture alone I would never live there, and while I like an anime or two, I'm not an otaku by any means. I did enjoy my vacation on Japan several years ago, but not more than the one on China or other Asian countries.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Due to their propaganda machine they have alot of soft power (and mainly cause of the "Cool Japan" thing like the post title references)

[–] JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

The discrimination is never direct when it's regulated. They just try to repress you the legal way. Of course Japan has better regulation than the third world countries (or countries that pretend they are first world but are equally shitty - US, ex Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, etc.).