Yes. That is super hard from a human perspective and I agree that it would be nice if the comments were less awful.

We're not asking you (or anyone) to react in an emotionless manner—quite the opposite. The trick is to express the emotions in a somewhat different way - more sharing, less discharging, if that makes sense.

As for the article - I only skimmed it in the most superficial way but I think "what it's like to be in prison in Japan (from a Westerner's point of view)" was more or less certain to be interesting to this community, which is insatiable for things it hasn't heard about before.

Btw - you absolutely don't have to answer this, but are you Japanese? That's what the phrase "bashing your country as a whole" seemed to imply to me, and for some reason I was surprised. I guess it's because I talk a lot with HN's Japanese users (mostly by email) and your mode of expression is somewhat different. Normally I don't pry like this, so feel free not to respond!

It is my adopted country. I am a naturalized citizen and consider it my real home. It is perhaps, because of my background as a Westerner who settled in Japan, that I have been exposed to a lot of criticism of Japan by Westerners and noticed a pattern I find distasteful. There are absolutely real issues to criticise, of course; Japan is no utopia. But I have unfortunately noticed a very strong trend to misrepresent the truth in order to garner engagement, often portraying things in a very sensationalized and dishonest manner. Honestly, I've noticed the same trend about China and Korea -- perhaps the perceived exoticness of the Far East, from a Western perspective, lends itself to believing outlandish claims more easily, making such claims especially effective at achieving traction.

For example, there's a very persistent claim about Chinese culture being so morally corrupt that Chinese people are known to intentionally kill pedestrians after hitting them with a car in order to avoid lawsuits[1]. In reality this was distorted from a sensationalized report of a single video of a car running over a pedestrian again, and then extrapolated as a fundamental truth about a culture of 1.4 billion people, cementing the perceived inferiority of Chinese culture to Western culture in the minds of readers. I could name literally dozens of cases of stories like these about CJK culture/governance that went viral in mainstream Western media.

I feel very strongly that this story fits into that genre. I do apologise for how strongly I reacted, but it's this kind of slander that really pushes my buttons and makes it hard for me to moderate my tone in the heat of the moment.

[1] "In China, drivers would rather kill you than injure you" -- Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/in-china-drivers-would-rathe...