Japan vs Sichuan, Haiti and Indonesia...
 

First off, I don't want to diminsh the severeity of what's happening in Japan, but I noticed a couple things and wanted to comment.

There have been 3 other big quake disasters in recent years. 60,000 dead in Sichuan China, 220,000 dead in the Indonesian Tsunami and 300,000 dead in the Haiti quake. Truly staggering death tolls.

So I went back and revisited the RS threads about these events.

- First thing I noticed? The level of interest by RS members was far less. In fact, the Japanese Quake thread has over three times as many posts/views as all the Indonesia, Haiti and Sichuan threads combined.
- Second thing is that there is zero tolerance for stupid comments (like those assholes bringing up Pearl Harbor) in the Japanese Quake thread, but many similarly tastless jokes were posted in the other threads with far less backlash from RS members.


So I'm wondering why this is? I don't think people would like to admit it though.

People don't really relate to places like Indonesia I guess. Japan, anime, cars, hentai, cameras, electronics, PS3, etc, you name it, engrain the country into many of RS's members. They probably also have a desire to go there one day. It's a culture that fascinates them.

Prior to Haiti, most RS member hadn't even heard of the country. Now, they've heard of the country, but probably still couldn't point to it on a world map.


Also, the Japan quake has a sensational piece to it.. the Nuclear power plant problems.

So that's probably why.

Sadly, people don't care about numbers... its about relevance. The reality is that probably 5 kids somewhere in the world starved to death as you read this. But, out of sight, out of mind.

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean the support wasn't there. I have family members who donated generously to Sichuan, and I myself donated a couple hundred of dollars out of my own pockets to the Haiti relief fund.
Different demographics, different times, perhaps.

That, or RSers just really love their Domo plush dolls and JAV.

And if you actually look at that thread, you'll see a LARGE proportion of the posts are about that very topic... in part because it's something that (theoretically) COULD potentially affect us here, in part because it's such a rare subject to talk about, and in part because there's a lot of fear and misinformation being propagated.

It's also an ongoing topic - once the quake is done, it's pretty much done, aftershocks notwithstanding, so discussion tends to taper down after a little while, but this is a new development every day, sometimes every hour, so there's always something fresh.

"One death is a tragedy... 10,000 is a statistic."

Or words to that effect.

^Pretty much.

Death in developing area is not newsworthy. In fact, most people on RS don't even know where Sichuen is.

For Sichuen quake, people blame the house builders, corrupted officials, fake foods etc.
For Haiti, no one here cares about black people, I am not joking. Some people I know in China didn't even know there was a quake in Haiti.
For Indonesia, it was actually pretty scary, but the footage didn't really show the actual damage to the human kind and to each individual country

The Japanese are facing earthquake, tsunami, nulcear threat, volcano eruption, snowing...ALL AT ONCE. and people there are still being so fucking strong.
at least no looting, helping each other, free food, no panic etc

also there's live news stream over the intarwebs about how events unfold...So that keeps people posted and hooked enough to keep talking about it.

No such thing from Haiti and Shichuan. If you have no Asian TV channel subscription you won't get any even remotely real time update to the events.

the massive use of fb and yt and twtr also makes a big difference of possible angles of coverage of the ongoing events.

Interesting......................... what are you trying to get at?

Social media is more advanced now and widely used now than before. Twitter and facebook has been documenting Japan's tragedy and relaying to us and the News in almost real time.

Especially in Vancouver, what has happened in Japan is relevant, as we have a huge Japanese community and culture here is effected by culture there.

If this board was based out of Toronto, I would expect you would see the reverse and the Haiti earthquake would have a great deal more focus than the Japanese one.

Japan - first world country
Sichuan, Haiti, Indonesia - third world city/country

generally events like these that happen to a first world country will get way more attention, wait till one of a big NA west coast city gets hit for example, its gonna be THE world news

I don't know if OP is trolling, but I'll assume not. But if you really think about it for more than a second, his question never really needed asking. What cultural influence does Japan have on us? Now compare that to Haiti or Indonesia. There's your answer.

Yup. Many other factors.
News travels faster out of Tokyo than Haiti or Sichuan.
All the HD videos flooded into social media websites.
The rare possible of devistation of power plants.
Less technology in Haiti to spread the information.
Lets not forget China's media cencorship.

Skinnypupp .. yup.. cultural influence.... not only on us. Worldwide influence.

I don't think it's just RS but like everyone said more coverage on this event

Just did quick google search
"Japan+Earthquake" = About 5,030,000,000 results (in past week)
"Haiti+Earthquake" = About 22,000,000 results (anytime)
"Indonesia+Tsunami" = About 19,000,000 results (anytime)
"Sichuan+Earthquake" = About 1,770,000 results (anytime)

arent there two or three rs members currently in japan? I believe this also had a impact to us as well. We are getting our own live reports from them right here on RS.
Posted via RS Mobile

Simple answer?

I like Japan.

Care to elaborate what your assumptions are?

Relevance

Japan = JAV, stock market, cars, toys, food, electronics, clothes, etc, etc, etc, etc. (I bet a lot of people on RS have actually visited Japan before)
Haiti = ?
Sichuan = ?
Indonesia = tourist attractions, beaches

I am not trying to downplay the other 3 places. Natural disasters like earthquakes lead to tragedies. But when it affects you and me, we tend to talk about it.

I think people on RS have more interest in Japan because of their cars.

Not to mention a lot more of us have family members in Japan rather than Indonesia, Haiti, and Sichuan. There are more interests in this topic (it's probably) because our friends and/or family members are either living close to the city space or visiting. (assuming Tokyo is where a lot of friends are visiting)

That's just my guess...my interest is because my family is situated in Tokyo :S

It doesn't matter if its relevant or not. It just effects more of the RS community then the other quakes have. Also like to note that Japan - 1st world country Haiti/Indonesia/Sichuan - 3rd world countries. As much as we don't want to admit it, we don't care as much because we have no stake in those parts of the world. To me I think a donation is just another way of making yourself feel better, just like other consumer goods that are at in the "want" category. Look at what Japan supplies us vs those 3 places. We've already seen an impact. Lots of big companies of halted production even some online items have suffered push backs or shut downs.

I think the main reasons are news accessibility.
People actually have a connection to Japan as many have been there, or indeed have friends there who are updating their FB status or Twitter regularly.

As well, the reality is that Japan is a highly advanced country -- anytime something happens to a developed place it is sensationalized e.g. 9/11, where 3,000 people died.

In comparison, 8 million people have died in the Congo/Zaire civil wars since the 1980s, which obviously far outweighs all the above disasters combined.

Dangonay there arent as many people/mods to fend for the other tragedies so it makes it open game to crack jokes at their human loss.

Speak for yourself man. I was interested in the the quake every step of the way. And there was loads of CNN coverage so there was no question of exposure. Its just that the world has moved on to the next event which is equally as newsworthy.

Its closed-minded to say that nobody here cares about Haiti or black people. Its just that Japan is what we're paying attention to now

It's already been mentioned what I was getting at. To put it simply:

The value of a human life of someone from Japan, the US or other G7 country is more valuable than a human life from a 3rd world country.

Wrong.

The value of human life is the same in ALL parts of the world. The PERCEIVED value of a 3rd world country citizen from a 1st world country point of view is less.