Troll

In 1998, I was a student in California. At that time, free email accounts were highly accessible. Most people started having email accounts. People started to buy things online through Amazon.

In 1999, I returned to Japan. Most people didn’t have email accounts. Most people didn’t even know about Amazon. It took a few years for these same changes to occur in Japan. If something happened in the United States, the same thing would happen in Japan a few years later.

I met an American in Japan, and we become friends on Facebook. In 2016, those living in the United States had their presidential elections. This friend posted a short comment about the elections on Facebook. Immediately, an anonymous person posted objections to him. These objections were long passages. I was surprised by this anonymous person’s typing speed. I understood later that this was because of the “copy and paste” function.

I soon learned from a Japanese news program that this was a “political troll.” These elections were changing the United States. I thought that the same thing would happen in Japan in a few years.

In 2024, during a special election, a party obstructed a rival candidate’s speech on the streets. Tsubasa no To used a microphone and screamed negative comments in the middle of this candidate’s speech. We can call them “trolls,” but this was not online. It was not too primitive an incident either.

I would assume that Japan is a highly developed society with large advances in technology. Whenever something happens in the United States, the same thing would happen in Japan a few years later—but not necessarily in the same form.

Picture by Tuneyuki Kanata

Proofreading by ProofreadingServices.com