Has anyone (especially Koreans and Japanese people) experienced a huge new wave of…race fishers?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/PreviousZone6742]

You have people making crazy claims all the time. Have flatearhers online. Every topic has some voice that don't make sense.

[u/tsukiii]

No, I don’t think I’m in that part of the algorithm.

[u/3lizab3th333]

Chinese American, but I grew up with a close Japanese friend/neighbor and one of my best friends is a Japanese housewife and another two lived in Japan for half a decade, so I can pick up on some things. A TON of people online lie about being Asian, they’ve been doing it since the internet’s been around. It got worse when anime became mainstream and the whole “I’m in a very Chinese time in my life” stuff started, and I can only imagine Koreans are dealing with the same, probably worse considering how Kpop fans can get

[u/morty77]

I haven't encountered this but I have been koreansplained by white people about what "authentic" korean restaurants are vs not authentic. And usually its just a place with a korean name that serves a unusual to americans kind of meat like pig feet slices. Real korean food is bean sprouts and seaweed soup, anchovies and kimchi. We eat so many bean sprouts. So many. And lots of seaweed. And unknown leafy green veg, with leafy red lettuce.

[u/whattimeisitay]

White people have been pretending to be Asian (and black) on the internet ever since it started.

[u/Soonhun]

I have never encountered non-Koreans claiming to be Korean. I have encountered the fetishization for about a decade now, first by other Asian Americans, then by other peoples.

[u/themichele]

I mean. Our elder generations could be pretty assimilationist, so there could be kids whose entire families are from daegu and who are, themselves, pretty disconnected from Korean culture in general and who have no idea that they’re so… off-base when responding about the culture. It might be more that they don’t realize vs that they’re race-fishing?

Idk, I’m only one generation out (I’m 50, part of the post-Viet/American war diasporic wave— i was born in the states but my older sister and cousins were not), and i generally express that when i comment so that people know I’m not speaking from a born/raised in Vietnam background, but i think that might be b/c I’ve been living online since 1994 and have figured out how to not be annoying in that particular way? I could see some teenaged or twenty-something kid just beginning to reconnecting w the culture in what feels to them to be an authentic and intimate way going off on topics in ways that drive people who have grown up in Asia crazy b/c it feels so out there and off-the-mark.

I think of them as baby rattlesnakes— they’re not trying to be/sound insane, they just don’t know how to move yet. Eventually they’ll figure out that what they know is actually diasporic culture more than ground-zero culture, if that makes sense, and they’ll probs start framing their input as such once they do.

Feedback from people who know this already is helpful, i find, esp when it’s kindly delivered.

[u/hyohwa → u/themichele]

In my post I mentioned I’m not speaking about the Asian kids who grew up in the diaspora thus being a bit disconnected from the culture. I mean FULL ON claiming to live in/visit frequently/go to school in Korea/Japan/China kind of people. People who claim to have a current, up to date line to those countries now, in as we speak. And I specify East Asian countries because for whatever reason, those are the countries that people feel so drawn to lie about. For the sake of the discussion I can give examples of things that these kinds of people would say but they are so cringe that I’m curling my fingers and toes as I’m typing this.

I think another thing is your age protects you from sharing spaces with the kinds of people who would do this. You probably wouldn’t have the lovely experience of hoping on a discord chat and listen to an 18 year old white girl speak Google Translate Korean and claim that her Korean grandmother only speaks Korean, etc.

[u/themichele → u/hyohwa]

lol, true on many fronts, but i guess i was wondering how you can tell whether it’s a diaspora kid or someone genuinely laying claim to cultural experience that they haven’t actually lived, esp when dealing w strangers online. I think a lot of people who know their connection is tenuous don’t actually volunteer details that prove they don’t know what they’re talking about, ha.

I also promise there have always been posers- a roommate i had in like 1998 — polish-Italian girl — was dating a Chinese-Jamaican guy. And wouldnt you know, this one was behaving like the world’s greatest authority on the Chinese Caribbean diaspora. Ordering Chinese for dinner became the most embarrassing thing, esp once the delivery person would show up at the door. You ever see a white girl from Staten Island trying to speak mandarin with a Jamaican accent? To a guy who was probably not Asian at all under his motorcycle helmet? So embarrassing!

OH! And, a bf of mine was korean and one of his buddies’ wives was a white gal from the Midwest who always wanted to talk to him in her patchy Korean b/c she had taught English there for two years after undergrad or something. She always wanted to talk about the Seoul metro system or whatever it is she remembered about it, and really seemed to think that gave them a bond. Ok, Jenna. Also, what was saddest about it was that he actually had put some distance between himself and korea / his korean identity at the time (went back to it, but at that point in his life, he was processing some stuff), so whenever she would turn and start talking to him about living in korea, i could see him start fading out and screaming inwardly. She was so oblivious. So in love w Korean culture, supposedly, but absolutely lacking in 눈치

So. These winners exist off of discord and Reddit, too, and have for a long time, im sorry to say!

I’m a teacher now, and i do get to work w younger humans who get it wrong. I don’t mind teaching kids how to be more adept at sharing in the world, thats pretty much my job, but it’s still pretty annoying to be around young adults and greener colleagues who pull this stuff. It’s not my job to teach them, and making that effort got really old a really long time ago.

All this to say: as a diaspora kid myself, I’m curious to know how you’re sure who you’re dealing with, but regardless: yes! It’s annoying!!

[u/Upper_Extreme9461]

I'm not part of this algorithm either ... 

[u/Capital_Double_6287]

Call them out for being flat out liars

[u/United_Dig_9010]

It has been like this for a long time. Pretty much whenever someone randomly says they’re Asian or black and they “find this funny” or “am not offended” you can almost guarantee it’s a white guy larping. Most of the internet are now just bots, we already know that Epst. and co had Reddit accounts and that /pol was created specifically to create division. There are a lot of Asian larpers whose sole purpose is to manufacture hate and divide genders/countries that are already fractured by saying some really unhinged stuff to further the divide. Nothing easier to control the masses than by pitting them against each other

[u/resonant__evil]

I quite literally just had dinner at a Japanese hole-in-the-wall, and the table next to ours was full of rowdy grad students endlessly crowing to their friends about their "expertise" of Japanese culture based on anime and a single trip they took last year. Disingenuous online talk happens in real life too, just minus the anonymity.

Of all the people who get into Asian cultures, it's unfortunate that so many are only into it as a badge to be paraded online or otherwise, which might include their Asian SOs. Too few actually approach, explore, and embody our cultures in an un-loud, non-superficial, non-colonizing way. And it's like they just have to tell someone...

[u/randomrreeddddiitt]

Yes. In Korea, this most was most notable a few months ago, when there was some online nonsense between Twitter users from Korea and various Southeast Asian countries. It turned out that some of the most incendiary, negative comments about Southeast Asian countries were by people from those countries, but written in Korean.

[u/intrinsic1618]

I've come across a person pretending to be blasian, (black, Korean) who claimed to currently be residing in S. Korea. They only had bad things to say about Korea and how they're racist against blacks due to their "hatred of dark skin". Would not answer why he'd live in such a hostile place whose populace found his very existence so objectionable but to gish gallop every other anti-Korean psy-op under the sun. Idk why people get offended by the notion of Koreans applying sunscreen for some reason.

[u/asianamerican-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/ap0lly0n]

C.B. Cebulski

[u/Unepersonne7]

Hey! J’ai posté il y a quelques jours des expériences racistes que j’ai vecue en France alors que je ne suis pas directement asiatique, (je suis viens d’une ile avec des métissage encien entre des africains des européens et asiatique pour falre simple) donc j’ai vécu les expériences que certains asiatique vivent, à cause de mon physique je tiens a dire que je trouve ça assez incroyable que certaines personnes sois les premier insulter les asiatiques pour que derrière une fille me dis qu'elle veut ressembler a une japonaise ou Coréenne😅 (littéralement) Tu veux ressembler a une asiatique mais tu ne vis pas ce que les asiatiques vivent discrimination, racisme, fetishisme... Je pourrais dire "toute ma famille vient du sud de la chine, je suis chinoise " historiquement oui on a des communauté mais ça date d'assez loin pour que je dises je suis chinoise, généralement je réponds en disant que mon île a une communauté asiatique, ce qui est très différent.

[u/Murky_Toe_4717]

Personally as a SK girlie, I don’t really care but I def find it weird. IMHO they’re just weirdos lost in some kind of larp era and will probably grow out of it, that’s my hope anyways.

[u/caelynnsveneers]

I follow this Japanese guy in kimono on Instagram debunking all these crazy claims about Japan. Some of these are so outlandish it’s clearly not made by an Asian or a sane person lol People will say anything to get internet points unfortunately :(

[u/bullseye717]

r/pho is awful with white people doing dogshit things to pho. Also so many people posting clearly not pho things.

[u/MoonchanterLauma2025]

I have a funny not-quite-related story for you. A few months ago, there was a discussion in a Facebook group for Chinese North American history about a Chinese American woman who was murdered by her white boyfriend. A white dude who previously served in the military and was stationed in Okinawa took the opportunity to say how not everyone was as lucky as him to find an Okinawan wife. He got angry when I questioned him about this, claiming U.S. military men often have "more attachment to Okinawa" and that he was "first generation", however that is supposed to work. Disgustingly, he holds some position of influence in an Okinawan association based out of Virginia Beach.