Why Japanese Clubhouse Users Tend To Make Discriminative Remarks

Recently, in Japan, the application ‘Clubhouse’ becomes popular. I myself started using it.

Although I heard there is high risk of discrimination, the opportunity of talking with other people easily was attractive. 

So, I used it for a while, talking with several people, and then…

…I understood the three reasons why so much discrimination can happen among Clubhouse users. They are:

• ①It is really difficult to point out discriminative remarks in Clubhouse

When I was talking with others using the application, one of them suddenly said: ‘Poor people tend to be criminals.’   

What? I couldn’t believe my ears, and… the conversation just went on without anyone blaming the discriminative remark.

Actually, at that time, I didn’t ‘raise my hand’ so that couldn’t say anything.

What is worse, recording of conversations in Clubhouse is prohibited– so, it is really difficult to accuse someone about their remarks after conversation.

• ②We can only hear other people’s voices

When we talk with someone, we get much nonverbal information from their facial expression or atmosphere.

Like, ‘He seems grumpy, I suppose he doesn’t like this theme…’ or ‘She seems so happy so that let’s talk about it more!’.

Even radical racists/sexists sometimes refrain from discriminative remarks based on such nonverbal information.

Clubhouse doesn’t offer us such nonverbal information as it is completely verbal communication tool.

I suppose that’s why many Clubhouse users say discriminative things unconsciously.

 … so, these two reasons can be said for all people around the world, but final reason is for Japanese users. The reason is,

• ③The characteristics of Chinese characters we Japanese use

Chinese characters, which we Japanese use daily, are ideograph (Alphabet is phonogram).

So, it is said that Japanese (and Chinese) are better at writing than speaking. For example, Chinese phone users send much more text messages than USA phone users per day.

So… I believe writing style social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) is more suitable for Japanese than Clubhouse.

If you are writing, you can rethink about what you wrote before you post it. But if you are speaking, you can’t do that.

As English clubhouse users who should be better than Japanese to use it constantly making discriminative remarks, you can easily guess what will happen in Japan. And it is actually happening right now.

So, recently I rarely use the application. If you know nice Clubhouse moderators who can correctly point out when discrimination happens, please let me know…