@amphetamine @ambyrb I mean yeah, obviously that doesn't apply to everyone. But on average, I'm pretty confident they'd score pretty high on that metric.

@Angle @ambyrb so would every global north nation, especially through the lens of pop media

anyway, i don't mean to discourse about it with you, it's just that nihonjinron is poisonous racist nationalism that has a history of toxic reinforcement from within and without Japan, so i'm sensitive to it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron

on a happier note, Japan has such good anarchism and queer history, if you just dig a little :)

@amphetamine @Angle I was surprised by this too a week ago when an article talking about queer feminists mentioned a japanese anarchist

@amphetamine @Angle sorry, not necessarily queer

@amphetamine
@Angle @ambyrb

I'm intrigued. Can you give me a starting point?

@hypolite Well, I don't think we would in America. Though whether thats a good thing or a bad thing is a whole different question. XD

@hypolite Mmm, but has Japan ever even had so much as their sports players kneeling during their anthem , or anything comparable? As for the words being taboo, I would count that as evidence against conformity, not for it. Those ideologies, correctly or incorrectly, have become heavily associated with conformity in American politics, which is one of the big reasons why they're so frowned upon. The free speech zones are bad, but again, does Japan even have their protests get so far that they would NEED to resort to that? The lack of gun laws, again, is a manifestation of our non-conformity. :/

@hypolite Eh, if you say so. I mean, sure, we have our own things to be conformist over. And a lot of it is up for interpretation - I'm sure you could say our distrust of government is, itself, conformist. But I don't think we're conformist (In aggregate) in the same way as Japan (In aggregate). :/

@hypolite The anime I've watched contrasted with the western shows I've watched. Like, compare Boku No Hero Academia with, say, the X-Men. The first is vastly more conformist and establishmentarian than the second. And this is a recurring theme! Even the Justice League, the most establishmentarian American superhero setting I can think of, has the heroes as an independent organization with little to no government involvement or oversight.

@hypolite It doesn't show them being massively entwined with the rest of society, either - theres no message that in order to get into the Justice League, you need to do well in school, attend the best universities, score top in your class, or otherwise stick to the Accepted Pathways in Mainstream Society. You can just be some random person, get superpowers, and go fight villians. And anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, even if they're with the police or the government, is clearly a bad guy! Now of course, that has it's own problems, but conformism is not one of them. :/

@hypolite Hmm, fair enough. I guess part of our collective culture is to count individualism as being opposed to conformism, even when it really isn't. :/