What we owe our audience

A few posts back I mentioned the argument between Chris Broad and Oriental Pearl. I said I was not taking sides. That is still true today. I watched the latest response and I am left with one simple wish for both of them.

Talk to each other like neighbours. Not like combatants on a stage.

If you missed it, here is the short version. Chris called out a video from Oriental Pearl for being sensational — saying that pointing to a few messy corners of Tokyo does not equal national decline. She replied that she is showing the “real” Japan and questioned his tone and motives. From there it spread across platforms and reaction videos piled up. None of this made Japan better. None of it made the conversation richer.

Here is what I see beneath the noise. The algorithm rewards outrage. The audience rewards authenticity. Public fights feel authentic for a moment and then leave a bitter after-taste. In Japan there is a word that matters here: meiwaku (迷惑) — “causing trouble or burden to others”. It is not about being silent. It is about choosing the path that reduces collateral damage to the bystanders, to smaller creators, to people who just came here to learn about life in this country.

There is another pair of words that help explain why a private coffee is often better than a public post: honne (本音) and tatemae (建前) — private truth and public face. When you handle conflict in private first you give your honne a chance to be heard without turning the internet into the judge. If that fails, you can still speak publicly with clarity and care.

So here is my tiny-blogger request. Hang the laundry indoors first. Send a message. Jump on a call. Meet. You might still disagree in the end, but you will probably come out with a better understanding and maybe even a better video. Your audiences deserve that. Japan deserves that too.

If you two ever do meet and talk it through, make that the story. Show what respectful disagreement looks like. Show how creators can care about clicks and still care about people.

Hold two ideas at once: Japan is beautiful and complicated. Honest critique is good. Doom and feud are lazy. We can ask for better from the people we watch and we can practice it in our own lives too.

What kind of creator behaviour makes you trust them more? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.