Benjamin Howard #899

This is gonna take forever, but after seeing what I knew I'd see, I'm gonna start at the end and move backward. This may take a few days. 😭 1/🧵

🇪🇸 Here is Spain, where thousands of centuries-old olive trees are being uprooted and replaced with solar panels. Trees, bees, and insects — all gone. You know… to save the planet… 🤡

🇯🇵 Japanese users are worried that X is damaging Japan's reputation by auto-translating "low-class" Japanese posts and pushing them onto your timeline, because X's algorithm rewards ragebait. According to them, the feature mostly amplifies mockery of tourists, contempt for foreign cultures, and complaints framed in ways that were never meant to leave the island. All of it now surfacing in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and beyond, translated and pushed to users worldwide. For decades, Japan's image abroad as a polite, harmonious society was protected by most foreigners not being able to read Japanese. The ugly corners of Japanese social media stayed local. The polished tourism ads went global. That's gone now. According to former TV presenter and YouTuber Kanon Aoki, X's auto-translation feature is pushing the rawest, most hostile Japanese posts straight into foreign timelines. Aoki's frustration is direct. A minority of what she calls "low-class" Japanese users are now the loudest Japanese voices abroad, simply because the algorithm translates whatever gets engagement. The quiet majority stays invisible. The trolls go viral worldwide. The result: foreigners' perception of Japan is shifting in real time, and there is no stopping it.

Their instincts aren’t the same as ours

We've had hundreds of Ukrainian immigrants settle in our small town in the last year, and dealing with them reminded me that I'm not actually racist and that I hate everyone equally. Some 20 year old in a rusted out honda civic blasting some god awful electronic music knocked on my door and in broken English tried to get me to donate to his personal tuition fund. I'm looking into this guy's eyes and I see the lights are on but nobody's home, and I'm feeling like Hitler did after he ventured too far East of the Rhine and after witnessing the squalor, asked his generals if he was even still in Europe. I don't honestly care if you're white. I am down right sick and tired of hearing foreign languages spoken in my grocery store by people who don't understand how the concept of personal space works or sharing a highway with people not used to driving in a first world country. If you don't speak my language, understand and respect the cultural nuance of my nation let alone the region you've been drop shipped to, then you are going back with the rest of them.