Blogging about Blogs

Some time at the end of last year, I went to a website called Global Voices online, and there I saw firsthand how under the mask of polite speech and the smother of netiquette can lurk the most venomous hatred and prejudice, as well as pride.

It was over the matter of Japan/China/Korea (AGAIN), and it was, once again about the War (AGAIN). This time, the flashpoint was a certain blog about a manga of which the main topic was the kenkanryu (hate korea wave) comic that got slammed like crazy. My first though was "They've been at it for more than 61 years now. MAN, bunch of arrogant jokers."

For some inexplicable reason, the topic hoisted up a lot of emotions about the whole affair, even reaching back towards the 1930s and 1940s. Then I wondered "Why on earth are they digressing all the way back down those 60 odd years? It's totally off topic."

I was to be surprised at how deep and confounding the "digression" was. Looking back, perhaps the digression was the main point after all. It could only have been the bad blood between 3 countries that could have caused such an online furore.

But what drew me in was the anger against Japan, and sometimes, back. I felt it was extremely repulsive that while the nettiquette of most of the people was legal, but the emotions brought out were seriously, terrible. they used a lot of vivid analogy: One rather angry blogger even asked me if I would forgive the man who raped my wife. I told him yes, and I'm sure he thought I was crazy.

(He is currently avoiding me on GBO, and I don't want to go after him anyway)

So I joined the line, on Japan's end of it. It was, ironic, I must say, that those defending Japan should come from places like Singapore and China, and the United States. We had to fight a lot of outright challengers, one of which I shall call J.

J was also the one who asked me if I would forgive the man who raped my wife. He was the most emotional of my opponents, and he loved to give, if not outright spam, historicity about Japan's atrocities, and asking how we could possibly forgive them for it. It was rather ugly. Most of the comments was "your information is biased" this, and "the information there has broken links and its outdated" that, and that was perplexing. I read some of the documents, and to the best of my knowledge, they were accurate enough. It got to a point when I was almost tempted to flame all my opponents, asking "How many of you have a Sony product in your house? how many of you read manga? How many of you use Japanese stuff? If you would take that from them, and not this history, SCREW YOU! It's not as if China never invaded anyone, it's not as if Korea never invaded anyone!" Of course, I wouldn't say that, and I didn't (It would have gotten me a slap on the wrist, or somewhere worse.). It would have been too emotional, anyway.

Essentially we crossed swords, I with the foil, he with a claymore. Add in a lot of other people wielding their own online debating material, and we have a rather major melee.

The foil, while weak in terms of the hurt it deals to the opponent, finds many holes in his defences, while on the other hand, the claymore, while heavy and deadly both as an impact and as a slicing weapon, is hard to handle, and easier to dodge and counter.

But it wasn't as easy as I made it sound with that analogy. It was still difficult to deal with someone who had been clouded by prejudice so much. I can't really blame him, from his point of view, the Japanese really must look bad, unlike us in Singapore, many of us no longer even think about such things. Perhaps that has a lot to do with our countries' philosophies and our pride, and our way of treating and perceiving history

The ending was inconclusive, as the forum thread got closed. Anyone with a brain would have seen that coming, and all the same, emotions shouldn't have been let to run amok as they did on that thread.