Websites collect clueless, racist internet comments made about Japan, post-quake

Two websites launched this week, Karma Japan and Ignorant and Online, collect a wide assortment of terrible, insensitive, hateful things said by stupid people about Japan and her people after the earthquake. Mostly, this is thick-headed white people in America saying the disaster is "karma for Peal Harbor." Feeding the trolls? Perhaps, but it's still an interesting sociological snapshot. (via Sean Bonner)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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wigg1es

If only there was an easy way to link these people with submissions at peopleofwalmart.com.

Its almost a mathematical certainty that there are some connections.
mraverage

There is no Karma, no earning, no deserving. Shit just happens.

agonist: the Japanese answer to those rednecks: hi. honto.

mgfarrelly: You’re kidding, right?
gwailo_joe

My reply to a friend of mine who is a reporter in Tokyo:

“I so wish that I could help. . .but the USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) team is coming from LA: we don’t have that training in SF.

When I found out the real nature of the disaster I thought “ask for time off, steal medical supplies to fill the suitcase, bring firefighting gear etc. . .”

BUT: I would have no place to stay if I went, my Japanese is weak: how can I connect, what good could I do?. . .And I don’t yet know what the community really needs! (plus if I went. . .I’d want to be fed: taking food for 3 hungry people!!!)”

(and I hate to say this. . .but 90% of the missing are. . .have to be. . .gone by now. Praise and respect to the Rescuers that are diligently sweating and striving right now to save the desperate victims. . .I hope and pray that many of the beloved missing be found: but at this point. . .many of those gone. . .are not alive.)

-So that’s what I sent.-

And I hope I’m wrong, and I’ll stand by my misstatements, so to speak and if I must. . .but this looks horrible. . .and responding to my own little comment has got the tears -finally- flowing.

And I’m mad as @#$%^ to think about the hate on thees Interwaves: and right now I’d gladly sock a punk in the eye if he danced on the graves of my beloved. . .

But the bigger point is not the hate (f that): but the ready-ness. Yes, that’s right: readiness is all.

Handle your business. Take care of your peeps. -peep- Love thy neighbor and store at least 5 gal H2O per resident in yo domicile. . .some goddamn energy bars and a first aid kit. With alcohol: the disinfecting kind. And change the batteries in your sm.de.s and flashlights: either that or a stifled wakening in the black choking dark smoke that envelopes you as you perish in your own suddenly surprised self-regard. . .that would totally be weak, right?

(You could drown I suppose: depends on your elevation. . .)

Either way, you have got to imagine you and yours alone -with no outside assistance- for lets say, 72 hours on your own. . .sound like a lot?
Could be much more: wont seem like too much then.

At any rate, Respect to freethinkers and kindly folk. . .
Jack

My mom & dad survived World War II in Poland and they never said anything as hateful or psychotic as a fraction of these Twitdiots. Wonder if too much â€œCall of Dutyâ€ has brainwashed some folks? Fairly serious about that.

FWIW when I was a teen and had an Atari 400, I would play the original Castle Wolfenstein and my dad would just hate it. He hated all war games. He actually saw what happened to his country because of it and he was in the Polish army as well. And he hated war games.
Anonymous

The scariest part?

So many of these morons are in relationships.
Brainspore

Twitter has proven to be an excellent tool for outing assholes. Gilbert Gottfrey lost that lucrative Geico Spokesduck gig after tweeting a whole series of tasteless Japanese Tsunami jokes.
gwailo_joe

My girlfriend is Japanese. Born and raised in Nagasaki. My first visit there to visit her parents, out at night to have yakitori dinner; we walked into a large clearing. I looked up and saw half of a brick arch illuminated, and in the center of the clearing a large black monolith. . .’oh snap, ground zero’ I thought. . .and was perturbed. My gal kinda pulled me away and said to the effect “we Nagasaki people are over it, not like those Hiroshima people. . .” Well, I had no answer to that. . .anyway. . .later that summer we met in Hawaii to attend a wedding. I took her to Pearl Harbor. Checked out the aircraft museum and the Mighty Mo. . .sat through the movie with the crying old service men. We agreed that we were indeed now ‘even’.

Fast forward to the other day. Sendai was the first city I stayed in as a cultural exchange program in 1991. Two weeks in a girls school (smile) called Tokiwagi. . .my host parents were very cool, grandma making handcrafts in the house, shooting bottle rockets and playing Famicom with the kids. . .I have not had contact with them in twenty years. Lost all info during the passage of time. . .they were so nice and kind, and some/many have had to be devastated by these events. . .and I can do nothing but pray.

I will not be visiting sites dedicated to the ignorance of pitiable fools.
- Anonymous
  
  beautiful. thanks for saying it.
Mister44

Ugh – what is the point of those sites? Trolls and assholes are everywhere. If I am lucky I will encounter a handful via Facebook or forums. With those sites we just get two scoops of bleh. I am not sure what the point is? To shame the commentators? We have no shame anymore :o/ We can’t even reply to most of them.

To expose us to the evil? We are all painfully aware of it. I know people are murdered everyday, but I don’t need to see a gathering of crime photos to remind me that’s bad.

Honestly I just walk away bitter and am less for it. You can’t gather a bowl of shit with out ending up being part of it yourself.
- Anonymous
  
  I agree. I don’t understand what the goal of these sites are. If the idea was to simply gather hateful responses to this tragedy, names and other contextualizing information could have been left out. Since it’s included, I can only imagine the goal here is to encourage online attacks against these people, much in the same way pro-lifers publish private information about doctors. What’s the point, to encourage a thoughtful and productive dialectic between the people making these comments and those who object to them? I have a hard time believing that, it seems like a way of using hateful words to generate more hate. Without trying to make this specifically about The US, or Japan, a knee-jerk reaction to a knee-jerk reaction, where neither side is choosing their words carefully or in a productive manner, just seems pointless.
SethLevy

Was this really necessary?
“Mostly, this is thick-headed white people in America saying the disaster is “karma for Peal Harbor.” ”
There are enough black, Hispanic, and other people who don’t qualify into your racist nonsense statement that disqualify it.
There are stupid people of all races, not just the one you hate so much.
Oh, and if you were wondering, no, I am not white either, just thought it had to be said…
- Anonymous
  
  Absolutely right – no epidermal hue has a monopoly on stupidity.
  
  Really odd that these people attribute a natural and well understood phenomenon to some kind of spiritual vengeance for something that occurred 70 years ago.
- Talia
  
  You seem to be rather misinformed about Xeni’s identity and intentions.
  - SethLevy
    
    Really? While I do not personally know the author, I have been following this blog for some time now and there is clearly an anti-America, anti-white, and anti-capitalism slant in its reporting, not necessarily all in the same breath of course and I am not saying that anti-white=anti-America=anti-capitalism either. It is even to the detriment of the reader at times.
    - Shart Tsung
      
      It’s not anti to point out faults in something, anti means to be totally against, to hate. If Xeni was anti-white/anti-American she would probably move to another country and kill herself.
      
      She was wrong about the white part though, I would say about half of the tweets on the KarmaJapan site were posted by non-whites. Xeni is human, so what? She made a mistake, don’t take it too far. It was only 40 some odd years ago that there actually was a terrible and disgusting race bias held by the majority of whites in this country. Don’t be too offended because if anything America is the biggest major nation due for some karmic justice, and that’s just being honest. We have gotten away with so many atrocities, we built our country on them.
Jack

In general, do these folks know what World War II is? I am utterly astonished at how dumb a concept it is to bring up Pearl Harbor as a reason for â€œrevengeâ€Â in any concept in 2011.

I almost want to do research on how World War II is portrayed to kids in schools nowadays. This â€œPearl Harborâ€ meme is baffling.
- mraverage
  
  Jack; I guess both our dads saw similar things, half a world apart. Mine served as a medic in the Pacific, island to island. Crawling out to drag back and patch up kids a few years younger than him. I suppose sometimes he failed to patch them up. Me & my playmates took our pop guns out into the field to play army and watched war movies. Pops would never watch. I don’t think he ever saw a John Wayne bloodbath. At about 9 or so i asked him why. He said that he’d seen enough dead people in the war. This; from a good Union member that voted for McGovern and volunteered his time for my boy scout troop – who still said that they should line up all those Vietnam war protesters and shoot them.
JohnnyOC

Wow, are those horrible posts on that site..

but they have NOTHING on how hateful and vile the posts are from Chinese websites in this same karma vein because of the massacres and such during WWII. It makes our look like schoolyard taunts.

We as a nation brought up on Christianity believe “karma” when it suits us even though it’s not in the Bible.

Other Asian countries like China though with Buddism and other Eastern religions, that’s their “bread and butter”.
- rAMPANTiDIOCY
  
  This isn’t what the Hindi conception of karma is, at all. So it’s not exactly their “bread and butter” as you say.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Karma is impersonal: what follows from your conduct has nothing necessarily further to do with you.
    
    Your conduct itself, though, is an altogether different thing: what you do, that has everything to do with you.
    
    Be mindful of what you do: all actions have consequences. All actions are subject to karmic consequences.
    
    Karma is more like unto a magnetic or gravitational field; karmic consequences are not a personal “judgment”. Or “punishment”. Or “reward”.
    
    What follows from your actions is beyond your control.
    
    So be mindful of what you are doing when you are doing it, for that precise moment is when you do have some real influence on the state of things, in other words, that will influence or shape karma.
    
    All else is karmic: that is to say, that it is beyond your control.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Actually, karma (which literally means action) is the result of samskara (potential). Samskara is the patterns in the unconscious mind that impel you to make choices and decisions that result in karma. Most samskara is imposed, such as beliefs that you’ve inherited from family, teachers, culture. Acquired samskara, where you create unconscious material based on your own deeds, is the lesser sort and largely created in response to karma resulting from imposed samskara.
      
      The ideas of samskara and karma aren’t meant to be tools for blame. They’re meant to be tools for self-reflection so that you can evaluate your beliefs and decide if you find them worthy.
- penguinchris
  
  Whether or not that’s true (a later comment suggests that no negative Chinese posts could be found, but that’s relying on Google Translate and a presumably shallow search), it actually kind of makes sense for the Chinese to have vile and negative thoughts about the Japanese.
  
  There’s great animosity between at least some significant portion of the populations of each country. Japan was definitely responsible for horrendous atrocities in China. Animosity has existed since at least the late 1800′s and never really went away.
  
  Chinese films made today – as in, the 2000′s and 2010′s – often vilify the Japanese to a ridiculous (outrageous, even) extent. See “Ip Man” from 2008 as a good example (also, it’s a great film).
  
  When it comes to Japan and the US, yes Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, yes they treated POWs in the Pacific poorly (atrociously, even). But, the US treated Japanese atrociously in the US (internment camps etc.), and killed massive numbers of Japanese including the hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. We were pretty much even at the end of the war, and since then have had a very positive, mutually beneficial relationship.
  
  So there is no excuse for Americans to say this type of ignorant garbage. And no, it can’t be excused if they are teenagers. I learned about more than just Pearl Harbor in high school (before high school, even), including internment camps and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These people are simply ignorant, idiotic and bigoted. Most ignorant bigots have the sense to keep their opinions to themselves – these people aren’t even that smart.
  
  I applaud publicly shaming people like this, but I couldn’t personally make it very far. I started reading a couple of them and had to stop. It’s sickening.
  
  There are people like this all over the world, I’m sure, but one can’t help but feel it’s particularly bad in the US.
Anonymous

I’m quite puzzled about people claiming Japanese deserved to perish for their whaling.

With #taiji hash-tags popping up here and there, I’m probably not wrong to say that most have formulated this opinion after seeing the film “The Cove”.

Now, I’m not here to pass a judgement on the film’s view. I’m just scared of the people’s media literacy, or lack of thereof.. I mean, writing off the nation as whole, after seeing just ONE documentary?

This is such a typical mental framework of racism seen around the world.

“THEY are illogical, unlike US”
“THEY are incomprehensible for US”
“THEY are inherently different from US”

Creating an almost subhuman abstract image of the subject, and put it in the simple good vs evil dichotomy. No wonder we are still in Middle Eastã€€ï½†ï½†ï½“.
genre slur

Ahhh, Merikans…
Ugly Canuck

No one nation or race or country or group holds an exclusive copyright on bigotry or prejudice.
Shart Tsung

The first site is interesting. It definitely shows the effect of Pearl Harbor on people in the U.S. over generations. Many are clearly still very aware of it and still angry about what happened. To those people, I would ask if this is the payback then what about Little Boy and Fat Man? Do they know how many of their innocent civilians we killed after they attacked our soldiers on one of our military bases? Japan killed soldiers during Pearl Harbor, we killed thousands of innocent people of all ages. We killed between 200,000 and 350,000 people for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Was that not enough? 68 civilians died at Pearl Harbor.

I think those tweets also show how many PETA-supporting nutjobs have accumulated over the years. At what point do these people just become labeled “anti-human”? We get it, you love animals and hate people. I think these people are truly sick and there are even a ton of them that post comments on this site. Frankly, if you think a human should suffer because of the suffering of an animal, then you should be expelled from human civilization so that you may live with the wild animals. You aren’t welcome among our race, we need all the help we can get to survive.
EeyoreX

IÂ´m just genuinely surprised that anyone old enough to remember or care about Pearl Harbor owns a computer or even knows how to get online.

Seriously, these ARE just trolls, and should be treated accordingly. If it were Sweden that got hit, we’d be finding posts from the exact same people about how this was karma for that time when that Ikea table was missing a screw.
Giving cranks any kind of attention only winds them up tighter.
Emily

Well, karmajapan seems to be gone (good riddance!), but I think people have the wrong idea on Ignorant and Online. It isn’t a hate site, and it’s not a troll site like someone above suggested it might be. Whoever is running it hates the stupid junk that is being written about the tragedy in Japan. In fact, the site is calling people out and, in some cases, showing how to contact these racist fools. Don’t read it if the insensitivity will get to you, or maybe you should, because it would allow you to tell these jerks what you think of them.
Dicrel Seijin

I was on an online community wandering around the forums when I heard about the quake and tsunami. The international forum had posts sympathizing with what happened. I then checked the general forum and spent about twenty minutes reporting troll threads.

I would have spent more time doing that but my cousins with their families arrived (they lived in inundation zones and were under mandatory evacuation). We spent the rest of the night and a good part of the morning watching the news, waiting for a possible tsunami to hit O’ahu and the rest of the islands.

I live within sight of Pearl Harbor, had relative serve during WWII, and don’t understand the animosity that I’ve seen of people thousands of miles away and it seems too young to have been personally affected by the events of WWII.
Sepecat2

I don’t feel like this “feeds the trolls” any, just exposes some people for what they are. The price of having a technology that allows us to communicate with anyone in the world is suffering d*ckheads.

They had time to form these stupid thoughts and took time to type them, so they’ve gotta own ‘em.
Anonymous

Everyone bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki needs to understand… that’s ancient history. The slate’s already been cleared for that.

You see, 9/11 was the US’s karma for that.

So Japan still needed something horrible to happen to pay for Pearl Harbor, otherwise they get off scott-free, karmically speaking. And nothing says Karma like a natural disaster 60 years later affecting mostly people who either weren’t yet born or were children when Pearl Harbor happened.

More seriously… WTF… this is the kind of thing where I almost have to believe most people saying things like that are joking (even though it’s not that funny, and I include my own version above in that judgement), because otherwise I’d have to believe, people that dense should have collapsed into a black hole long ago.
Anonymous

how sad this tragedy has to happen
ill lich

*sigh* The internet is full of this crap. Look at any news story on a site that allows comments (Yahoo news is a good example) and it’s loaded with hateful stuff.
Anonymous

The internet is like a hotdog- it’s ninety percent filler.
social_maladroit

Everybody sing!

â™« “And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
To expose myself as an idiot
Right here on my Twitter feed.

And I’m gladly posting
Bigotry, cuz I’ve got the right to say
Anything I want on the Internet –
God bless the USA.” â™«
Anonymous

I hope that there is at least one meat-space consequence (job, friends, family) as a result of KJ or IaO. Because, you know, KARMA and all that.
Farish

First of all, what happened in Japan over the past few days is tragic beyond words and anyone that believes otherwise is an utter idiot.

That said, it is astonishingly irresponsible of Ignorant and Online to post names and other personal information. (One even includes the name of the wall-poster’s girlfriend. What’s the possible benefit of dragging her through the mud?) Unlike the Karma Japan’s Twitter screenshots, the screenshots from IaO come from Facebook pages that aren’t generally visible to the public. Furthermore, the vast majority of these people seem to be teenagers; they are immature by definition and exploring the boundaries of acceptable conduct. They are most likely concerned with impressing their Facebook friends with their edginess and not thinking about the possibility that their words and names could be plastered all over the internet for employers or anyone else to see. At the very least Ignorant and Online should redact their names and refrain from posting hometowns, like Lamebook does.
Anonymous

I though one might get this kind of rhetoric from the Chinese netizens, so I ran a Google realtime search of the Chinese words for “Japan” and “earthquake” and sent that through Google Translate. All the entries I came across were heartfelt, supportive, and positive.

The responses seen from some Americans are shameful and indecent beyond words.
McP

When that Japanese nuclear power plant starts leaking an unhealthy amount of radioactivity into the air, and when that radioactive air blows across the Pacific into the U.S… where’s karma then?
kip w

There should be a Steinberg drawing/map of “history” as presently perceived, with the Tea Party a real presence, Iraq War and 9/11 looming large, then it flattens into a diagram of mostly blank spaces with “Vietnam” and “Korea” and “WW2″ (“Pearl Harbor” might be the capitol of WW2) and “WW1″ and “Civil War” and “Revolution” with a dim, fuzzy horizon somewhere that might be evolution or creation, and a big bang off in the darkness.
Anonymous

I think these websites are necessary and overall helpful to society. Ignorance needs to be called out.

No one can maintain living in a world with a great deal of disgust directed towards them, people retrain their thinking to avoid vilification or they get marginalized.

Fo these people these tweets and updates are tests of human acceptance. These are the tests for idiots to develop even more idiotic concepts.
Lets not let these teenagers and adults become just another uninformed moron like this guy:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/stupidquotes/a/glenn-beck-quotes.htm
calbeeb

Most of these statements are made by American highschoolers. Does this fad have anything to do with how WWII and Pearl Harbour are taught in their history class? Most likely the latest Japan-related thing that they learned just happened to be Pearl Habour because it came up in the curriculum last week.
Anonymous

These sites sicken me and the comments these morons make cause anger and bile to rise. I agree with other comments here – why give them credence at all…? Although it is a good way to name and shame… however I’m not sure their peers would feel the shame and anger I feel…
Antinous / Moderator

You know, there’s this whole phenomenon where citizens of crumbling empires focus their fury on everybody else, cf. Third Reich.
- Jack
  
  Shut up and eat your cake already.
Gag Halfrunt

Alec Sulkin, a writer/producer on Family Guy, has joined the “Pearl Harbor death toll” party.
jfaehnle

Internet trolling is one thing, but then there’s this.

My girlfriend works at a Honda dealership & got a phone call today from some jackass who said, “Hondas are Japanese. I guess that’s why God drives a Ford.” and then hung up. Now I can’t be sure, but I assume this had something to do with the earthquake & tsunami. I mean this guy’s comment is operating under all of the following contingencies (none of which I am necessarily denying): there is a God, that God has the limbs necessary to drive a vehicle, cars exist in Heaven, the technology in Heaven has not advanced enough to improve upon lame earth-cars, God has some sort of cool import powers that would allow him to transmogrify earth matter into ether, & that God would drive a crappy American car, which would also suggest that this guy who called my girlfriend thinks that God is American, which in turn makes me wonder if this guy thinks that America is as old as the God he believes in. The fact that dude subscribes to all of these beliefs indicates that he is less than intelligent. So having probably forgotten that Japan exists, he saw it on the news along with all of the unfortunate details, and the best he could come up with is, “Hey, I know something about thems peoples…” [a few minutes later] “They make cars. We make cars here ‘n ‘Merica too. [grabbing the phone.] I got me an idea!”

At least the “Pearl Harbor karma” d-bags have a historical frame of reference. This moron makes them look relatively intelligent. But only relatively.

And the super Japanese dealership my girlfriend works at is in CLEVELAND, F*CKING OHIO!
Boba Fett Diop

The only way there could be karma for Pearl Harbor is if an earthquake hit Michael Bay’s house.

Seriously. That movie was terrible.
rks1157

I am at a loss for words.
Anonymous

The worst part of this is the amount of soldiers, firemen, and medical workers spewing out such ignorant hatred. Also, the college students who are as illiterate as they are uneducated.
CastanhasDoPara

Ignorant racists making total asses of themselves on the internet is not news. Sadly, it’s not even unexpected. Making some sort of debate about it is not even remotely productive. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the world is full of dumb jerks. ‘Nuff said. Move along people. Direct your energy towards something useful. Also I realize the irony that is this comment and I am saddened that I have wasted my precious time to even write this.
Mister44

re: “…saying the disaster is “karma for Peal Harbor.” Feeding the trolls?”

Of course it’s trolls. Most Americans have no clue what Pearl Harbor even is. (hint – not a sushi restaurant.)
Anonymous

@CastanhasDoPara just my two cents, but I believe exposing this ignorance takes a negligible amount of energy, and is a very useful and important thing to do if we ever are going to move along.
Anonymous

Am I the only person tired of seeing this ‘mother nature is upset’ garbage? Be it in regards to whaling or just general world pollution? I mean, claiming ‘mother nature’ is causing natural disasters out of revenge for the planet is just the hippy equivalent of ‘God smote them for being wicked/gay/not Christian’. And equally fucking retarded.
Anonymous

I find it so funny when trolls bring up Pearl Harbor. From what I learned, wasnt pearl harbor full of navy ships/personnel when it was attacked, while hiroshima and nagasaki were full of civilians? or am I mistaken? its like some americans are totally okay when it comes to fighting people in their homelands but God forbid it be their own counrty they’re surprized. these are innocent people,come on! my heart goes out to them in this time of need.
Shart Tsung

Show your support for Japan, kill a whale!
Anonymous

The first one on Karma Japan was about whales. Over 900 people died in Japan and I’ll say this: I would personally kill every whale in the world to bring back one of those people.
- Ipo
  
  Ooh, magical thinking.
  I would personally kill every whale in the world to bring back one of those people.
  I could relate to your emotion if you were talking about a specific loved one that means more to you than anything else in the world.
  But to replace all species of whales with one member of a species that has doubled in quantity during my lifetime, to be over 7 billion strong, seems like an incredibly bad deal.
  Your comment is a good example of the kind of thinking that insures this planet will continue going to shit.
  
  I’m not going to follow the links and increase their traffic.
  But the site-name ignorant and online seems like a spoof, like it’s a troll site, like a fake site so someone, somewhere can make the argument that people are happy it happened.
  But thanks for telling me about them, or my esteem for mankind wouldn’t be realistically lowered again today.
  Does anyone else ever get the sick suspicion that nearly a full third of terra’s human population is having seriously underdeveloped frontal lobes?
- Anonymous
  
  What an odd sort of humanity you have.
  
  A life is a life bud.
- emmdeeaych
  
  Wow. WOW. I am fully 180 degrees from your position. Not that I disagree, but because your reaction is even more reactionary than what you are reacting to. Bravo. You’re scaring off your comrades.
  - Anonymous
    
    I suspect he’s just parroting a famous idiot he heard: “Teller and I would personally kill every chimp in the world with our bare hands to save one street junkie with AIDS” -Penn
    
    That’s right, the intellectual giant, oops magician/pathetic conspiracy theorist. Obviously someone we should all look up to. derp.
Anonymous

I’m having trouble with the statement “…it’s still an interesting sociological snapshot”

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that raising awareness of these kinds of hateful, ignorant, and self-important comments raises them to the level of valid opinions. I’d rather keep these things in the uncharted backwaters of the internet than let them raise to the top of Google results because BoingBoing linked to them.
- Anonymous
  
  This kind of hate happens all the time. However, socialogically speaking, hate speech tends to increase during times of stress. As illogical as it may be, people tend to blame others for their misfortune and consequently feel better when bad things happen to others.
  
  When folks are relatively happy with their own lives, they become more sympathetic to others.
  
  As far as the “hate speech” websites are concerned, while incredibly distasteful to most, they are a form of free speech. Remember that in some parts of the world you’d be imprisoned for saying certain things. The good thing about the internet is it can be turned off.
- Anonymous
  
  “I’m having trouble with the statement ‘…it’s still an interesting sociological snapshot’
  I could be wrong, but it seems to me that raising awareness of these kinds of hateful, ignorant, and self-important comments raises them to the level of valid opinions.”
  
  (1) The word “interesting” to a sociologist often equates to “disturbing”
  (2) Actually, examining and addressing these sort of horrific comments is similar to the way you approach a roach infestation: shining the light on them actually helps you see where the little buggers are as they move to get away, and you figure out how to eliminate them from there…keeping them in the dark just means you may not see them, but they’re still back there multiplying. (Please note: I am in NO WAY making the analogy about eliminating people, but rather about eliminating the hateful prejudices)
Anonymous

Ugh. Aweful
I also noticed ‘Godzilla’ was trending on Friday.
Some people just plain suck.
- Jack
  
  To be 100% fair, if you know anything about the Godzilla story (legend?) itâ€™s actually rooted in the Japanese experience after World War II. Godzilla demonstrates the horrors of nuclear experimentation, but also grows to be a defender of Japanese culture.
  
  If someone can do some eloquent analogy between Godzilla and this disaster, it would be valid. The reality is most folks will use Godzilla as a proxy for closeted racism.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Godzilla?
    
    A giant monster emerges from the SEA, after an EARTHQUAKE, and FLATTENS cities?
    
    is “Godzilla” another name for “tsumnami”?
    - Jack
      
      The following analysis comes from here.
      
      And Honda’s “Godzilla” is extraordinarily solemn, full of earnest discussions about how to respond to the apocalyptic threat one thoughtful scientist, played by the perennially wise-seeming Takashi Shimura, argues that the monster should not be killed but studied for clues to surviving the effects of radiation and long, mournful pans across the rubble of post-Godzilla Tokyo. (Some of these shots are eerily reminiscent of scenes from Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 thriller “Stray Dog,” on which Honda had worked as an assistant.) In “Godzilla,” the comic-book premise is never allowed to overwhelm the director’s clear intention to measure the aftershocks of the nuclear obliteration, nine years earlier, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Anonymous

When aftershocks of an earthquake are not just aftershocks of an earthquake.
Psychology perspective of earthquake: http://www.psychology-advice.net/tag/earthquake
Mark Temporis

Funny thing about Pearl Harbor; us Hawaii people? We’re over it. I went to school with loads of white people, Japanese, Filipinos, whatever…never came up. My Hawaiian grandmother actually lived through the bombing, and she didn’t have anything against Japanese people (well, other than them being somewhat culturally insular, which has changed over the years).
- Anonymous
  
  That’s because it was a relatively insignificant event during WWII.
  
  In fact I don’t even remember being taught about it in school in the UK; it would be the equivalent of referencing 1 of hundreds of bombings in London alone.
  
  Any disaster is a disaster; but if there were a Karma god hell-bent on WWII revenge, he’d be going after the main show, not the US/Japan sidenote.
simplify

From redditor Lobo64: http://i.imgur.com/AHitW.jpg
- AirPillo
  
  That image doesn’t hold much sway on people who think a single white person is worth 100,000 Asian people.
  - AirPillo
    
    By comparison:
    http://imgur.com/89fFU
    
    “look how many precious Whites are in danger! WE NEED SOLUTIONS!”
mgfarrelly

It’s wonderful to read these posts and see how rife they are with misspellings, improper word choices, and generally sub-literate wording. Bigotry and stupidity continue to stroll along hand in hand.

I mean really, these people’s historical education regarding Japan begins and ends with Pearl Harbor. It’s the only factoid that stuck in the sagging extraneous grey matter they’re carrying around at the top of their bodies. They lack even the ahistorical “craftsmanship” of bigots from bygone eras.

Our educational system just is not producing quality bottom-feeders these days. I, for one, blame teacher’s unions.
- Anonymous
  
  “I mean really, these people’s historical education regarding Japan begins and ends with Pearl Harbor.”
  
  Actually my high school history education ended with Pearl Harbor. To be honest it actually ended with four weeks of German death camps which was preceded by Pearl Harbor. This was in the early 90s. I’ve had no formal education on American history newer than world war two. I’m glad I’ve been able to piece most of it together by being observant over the years.
taj

I’d actually rather not know about stuff like this, thanks.
Anonymous

some of these people don’t understand there is a difference between natural disasters and war.

You should never wish a natural disaster on anyone.
agonist

People who think this disaster is karma for Pearl Harbor should perhaps ponder the karma for Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
- Anonymous
  
  thanks. was just going to post same, and glad to see that you already had.
Anonymous

I am sickened by the ignorance of some people, in fact, I too am really at a loss for words. Best not to respond and egg anyone else on.
Anonymous

It is easy to judge based on these negative statements people may make. But how about looking at all the positive, well wishing, sad and solidarity posts made by Americans also.These sites make things worse then better. You need to see the full picture not just one side and especially the negative one side.
AsteriskCGY

It’s kinda silly how often Pearl Harbor gets referenced in this. Like you couldn’t be more original than that?
Anonymous

It’s probably not a good idea to pay too close attention to the ideas of adolescents. Always depressing.
vanyelgh

Sometimes I am just disgusted to claim some fellow Americans. These websites are one of those times. Hopefully others are smart enough to know that this is not the way the real majority of us feel.
EricT

Is it possible they really just don’t know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

On second thought, don’t answer that.
Anonymous

After taking a few swipes at spelling and ignorance, on page 2 of Karma Japan they take a shot at an Australian for spelling harbour with a U.

And I’d like to conclude tonight’s sermon by reminding y’all that two wrong don’t make it right.
- Anonymous
  
  Would that be the woman from Lethbridge, Alberta, which was in Canada last time I checked
- Ipo
  
  Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do.
- Anonymous
  
  Lethbridge is in Alberta, Canada. Alberta is sort of our version of Texas, rednecks and all…
- elix
  
  After taking a few swipes at spelling and ignorance, on page 2 of Karma Japan they take a shot at an Australian for spelling harbour with a U.
  
  Worse than that. This lady (the post referenced), according to her Twitter bio, lives in Lethbridge, Alberta. You know, Alberta, a province of Canada. ‘Harbour’ is Canadian spelling as well, guys.
  
  That being said, I’m ashamed to live in the province next door to that old bag.
elix

The next time an American friend of mine complains that the rest of the world is so hostile or unwelcoming to Americans, I’m pointing them at this.

Good Christ, people. You’re all clearly not eight years old.
- mindysan33
  
  My 8 year old knows better than this, actually.
  - elix
    
    Bless you and your kid. Please don’t let him or her grow up to be like these wastes of resources.
    
    Unrelated, I actually hope that michellesexyi (karmajapan.tumblr.com) is being literal in her tweet of (note: direct quote, I do not agree with a single word of this)
    
    HA y’all some dumbasses callin me sad acting like i’m hurt by the quake. im fuckin takin a shot for every confirmed dead jap #fuckjapan
    
    The death toll is high enough that lethal alcohol poisoning sounds like an appropriate way to go.
Anonymous

Wow….I don’t even understand how or why anyone could think that up with whales or WW2. *sigh* :(
Andrew McNicol

The karmajapan tumblr site appears to be down. I think this may have happened some time within the past three days and can’t seem to find any mention of it. I can only speculate as to why this happened.

Can anyone help me out here?

I did see it last week, but I was hoping to do some research on public shaming and felt this was an excellent example to return to.
Anonymous

Gosh, the people are so ignorant and hatefull. I really hate them even though I know nothing about them.
Ugly Canuck

Horrible awful people say horrible awful things.

By contrast, here’s a pretty song from Be-Bop Deluxe which mirrors my own feelings for the Japanese and their beautiful ancient and weird culture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPm0dcWoXH4

Feel sad for old Nippon today though.
jaytkay

The Japanese-American friendship of the past 65+ years is one of the best and most important in world history.

And it pretty much commenced instantly at the end of WWII, a horrific, murderous, tribal struggle between the two.

I’m generally a pessimist about human behavior, but in this case I think the haters are an insignificant minority.
hbl

Contrary to those who commented that they’d rather not give opinions like these the light of day, I’m glad they turned up on BoingBoing. I felt just about as angry as I’ve ever been with anything on the internets, and in the vein of sunlight being the best disinfectant, and microwaves being the best cure for gremlins, BoingBoing is the best first response intellectual smackdown of suffering, dribbling, candyass morons.

Not least these idiot’s names are going to rank pretty highly on google for any prospective employers in the future. Yeah, karma’s a bitch douchebags.
- hbl
  
  Obviously that needs to be a ‘to’ not an ‘of’ – don’t fume and type, kids.
Anonymous

At least they got the right country? I’ve heard that the Vietnam War got started bc of Pearl Harbor.
Anonymous

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Internet_Fuckwad_Theory Need anyone say more?