spookieboogie
Local meetups, sports clubs, classes, hobby clubs (think board games, chess, ham radio, LARP), conventions, church if you're religiously inclined
And with the advent of the internet, there are forums, if not large social media groups, for all kinds of interests designed around connecting people. For example, I'm really into homebrewing consoles, so I'm in a few discord servers with others who share the same interests, and I like playing certain games online, so I keep contact with a few good people who I play with regularly
If all else fails, I find that most people get at least one acquaintance during their school years or still have family of some sort. Definitely ymmv if they were toxic in any way, but if not, you already have a foot in the door for maintaining a healthy connection to them
I apologize if this post sounds condescending or like I'm just preaching common sense, but sometimes it's easy to take these kinds of social groups for granted or overlook them in our hyperdigital age. There's so much toxic irony growing up as a millenial on the internet that made me think 'I'll never be like those losers' as a teen that evolved into 'Wow, they had it figured out all along' as an adult
My commute time has turned into workout and cooking time, (as expected I'm in the best shape of my life,) my only coworker is my spouse and best friend, I get to live closer to my family than ever before in a quiet, LCOL town, and the impact on my career and for the company has never been greater
You'll have to do a LOT better than my own closet to convince me that wasting my time commuting every day, from a place I don't want to live, to spend time in close proximity to people I might not care for would be a better proposition than the one I have now
The general west hears very little about Japanese government as a rule. So I don't have any reason to believe or disbelieve you. All we get are the culture's good bits, but maybe never see the underbelly. Maybe we'll hear something if there's a controversy, or about the new emperor since it was a novelty, but that's it. So that's very interesting to hear about Chinese-Japanese relations.
Funny enough, if you just skim this article, it seems to prop up Japan as a underdog model state. Reading into it a bit more has more detail, but I know at least several people who just read the bullet points of articles like this, and walk away with whatever they got. I wonder if this is a contribution to the push, but it might be that this is what is in the news right now, and this is what politicians in the west are talking about. (Or at least what the media is reporting)
I think the thing to watch for is next year's US elections. The two parties in the US are somewhat similar on a global scale, but the differences that do exist between them are really important for these relations, and has the potential to improve things, rather than continuing to polarize them. Either way, the US was divided almost in half by population last election, (the majority didn't even vote for the Republican offices, but that's not how the election system works,) so it seems at least say that there is a large number of people that do not hold the same opinions as their government.
> I think so because I have witnessed first hand about how insulting the Chinese is still acceptable [0] even in the PC culture (ppl still ask me if I eat dogs), how biased the mainstream media are, and how the democratic system here is full of flaws.
I have seen this as well, HATE it, and I've had to chew people out on it before. But it's something bigger than just one person trying to be mindful, I think.
There is the normal amount of it that is in jest, as with any other group of people, but for some reason, treating Asia like the butt of your jokes almost NEVER seems to be taken with any sort of seriousness at all. For example, a normal, sane westerner wouldn't go out saying 'Black people eat nothing but watermelon,' without complete irony, but for a much longer time, it was completely reasonable to make similar jokes, even more vulgar jokes towards people from Asia. Only recently have people started thinking 'Oh, maybe this is a bad idea, too.'
The media... Yeah. The media is dreadful. But it's a growing sentiment in the west that the media is useless and does extraordinarily more harm than good (being a shame since it's so ingrained in everything)
> Look, the HN crowd are still down-voting my post that complains about you mentioning Japan and I still can't think of why
Just for a western perspective, there may be a few reasons this is happening
* People in the west LOVE Japan. Obviously we'll look at the entire country with rose tinted goggles, and anything they've done to the west we've done back to them tenfold. So as a rule, Japan tends to get a MUCH bigger free pass on just about everything. Doubly so because their culture is so prevalent in the west. My initial thought, without actually reading into what you were saying was: "Japan is terrible. China is better." Obviously that's not what you said at all, but it's STILL my first gut reaction (the next thought was instinctively 'maybe some nuance was lost between languages?' Which is also a very unhelpful sentiment, but it remains my initial reactions)
* There's been a LOT of anti-Asia, especially Chinese, sentiment lately. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, if there's some sort of propaganda push or people are literally just echoing the political climate, but especially on Hacker News, it has been almost unusable due to how toxic it is lately. Again, I try to see beyond what I'm seeing/hearing, but even for me it's hard to not get swept up at times. So ANYTHING pro Chinese is bound to be at least met with skepticism at best.
* People unfortunately, and incorrectly treat the 'flag' button as a 'dislike/I don't like this' button. I think Reddit unfortunately normalized this as a trend.
> we believe that the West is hostile towards Asia and will do everything to prevent any country in that area from growing up and challenge them
I may not be as well researched into this as someone who's actually on the receiving end, and I am on the younger side, but from the perspective I know, Russia, China, and the US were always on equal footing and were constantly trying to do similar things like this to each other. I would be interested in hearing more about this from a different viewpoint, however.