Comment by superfrank | Hacker News Reader

Comment by superfrank | Hacker News Reader

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> It was probably so successful precisely because it was seeing the world through the eyes of a 50 year old Japanese biker with the face people expect in influencers.

I can't read Japanese and I used Google translate for the post text (so maybe there's more depth that's lost in translation), but the pictures look to be pretty "generic influencer". None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer. Additionally, the text on the tweet is pretty much "I like motorcycles" along with "her" age and height. Everything here seems to be pretty much the same "here's a pretty girl in front of something" post that instagram is full of.

Again, I'm only going off the pictures and Google translate, so if someone who understands the culture better wants to correct me, feel free, but until that happens, I'm going to believe there's nothing more to this than a bunch of people wanting to look at a pretty girl.

Edit: Ran the tweet in the article through DeepL at the suggestion of some replies. Here's the translation so you all can come to your own conclusions:

٩ Everyone!

Do you have a bike?

Spring will be here soon

Age: Showa era

Height:166

Lives in Ibaraki Kumamoto

I love to tinker with motorcycles

Comment: Life is once, play this world

I don't know anything about motorcycles. I wouldn't trust Google translate because one of my son's hobbies is looking up the original Japanese (and translation notes, etc) for anime and other works to figure out what in the heck went wrong with the translation because Japanese culture has all these honorifics that English lacks and that goes weird places, along with the gender neutral pronouns, among other things.

If you know nothing of the language, culture, motorcycles, motorcycle gear, etc, I am going to guess there are a lot of really important details that are utterly lost on you.

I agree with you about Google translate not being perfect. I actually wrote most of my comment up before running it through translate. Even without the text, none of those pictures seem especially deep, so even taking the text out of the equation, I still stand by my comment.

That being said, this is the Google translation of the tweet in the article:

Minasan ٩ (ˆoˆ) ۶ Do you have a motorcycle? Spring is coming soon Age: Showa ○○○ Height: 166 Living: Ibaraki I love: messing around with bikes

Like I said in my last comment, I know Google translate is far from perfect and I'm very open to being proven wrong, but I have a hard time believing that there's some deep insight in this post when that is what Google translate put put out. The translation seems pretty "influencer" to me.

I've been up all night and I feel awful and I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I'm just thinking of some novel I read where some nouveau riche fool paid someone for their riding boots because his were too new looking and he wanted to look like he had been riding a long time. He wanted worn-looking boots. He didn't want to look like it was his first time.

And the guy took his money with a straight face and sold him the boots even though the color of the boots signaled he was a trainer or something, which is something the nouveau riche guy had no way of knowing. But it would have been immediately laughable to most people who were in the know.

I am not going to go through the account and try to make up BS, but the bike may be custom built, the gear he's wearing may be amazingly good, the locations he is posting from may be something incredibly special in some way and not commenting on those details may be part of the appeal.

I'm a writer by trade and I get paid by the word and also have to meet other constraints and you can sometimes say very little with three paragraphs or you can say a metric fuck ton with a few well-chosen words.

I absolutely don't know enough about the topic. I just know that when things get popular, it is often due to some value-added detail that no one explicitly talks about. The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular.

A density of quality info and yadda is often some element of that and that is often not obvious to outsiders who cannot readily tell that this photo is some superficial tripe and that seemingly similar one is worlds apart in quality, data, informativeness, whatever.

Anyway: This is my insomnia talking. It is absolutely not intended to be ugly or pick a fight or yadda.

You have a great day/night/whatever.

> The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular.

A dogwhistle, basically? "Dog whistles use language which appears normal to the majority, but which communicate specific things to intended audiences."

Dogwhistles are most often associated with politics, but the idea goes beyond that (unless you classify all asymmetric/broadcasted communication as political, which is not without merit.)

Eh, more like subtext for things people aren't necessarily consciously aware of.

Which is why I believe the best you can do is stay aware of the present at a meta level, and track things as a function of time.

Of course all of this requires self-drive and personal determination / willingness.

The original comment I was replying to was claiming that the account might have been successful because it presented the wisdom of a 50 year old with the face of a 20 year old.

All the examples you gave are totally possible. There may be something about the bike or the locations being visited that are special, I really don't know. Even if that is the case, that's not really what OP was claiming and not really what I was responding to.

There are tons of little reasons this account could be popular, but based on the little research I did, I don't think it's because "she" is making posts full of wisdom, years beyond "her" age.

>>> I absolutely don't know enough about the topic. I just know that when things get popular, it is often due to some value-added detail that no one explicitly talks about. The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular

^^ this

Thank you. Wish I could pay you per word for this. Hmu@samir.ist

I think you are onto something. He's very comfortable with his hobby. Going through his twitter, there are many photos of him doing motorcycle maintenance with his own tools. He also has a broad variety, like an old dirtbike he rides on ice or quirky 90's sport bikes he's keeping alive and modding. I hate to gatekeep, but he's not just showing off the flashiest new things off the showroom floor like "influencers" gravitate towards.

Most of his posts are very casual, but his goal is still to ride the bike rather than fix it everyday so that is the bulk of what he shares. His tone is definitely targeting a less experienced audience. In some of the posts, there's light-hearted trivia about niche topics. He's appealing to a younger generation. Getting new people involved in what looks like an exclusive hobby is always exciting to see online.

I would love an honest account of being a paid by the word Writer these days?

If you don’t to divulge too much on the finance part, I get it.

I've actually written some about that here:

https://writepay.blogspot.com

That's just one of the things I do. I also blog and do resume work and my blogs get some support from Patreon and tips.

But I have learned a whole lot about writing well doing it on a paid-per-word basis. That's been a real growth experience for me as a writer developing my craft.

> If you know nothing of the language, culture, motorcycles, motorcycle gear, etc, I am going to guess there are a lot of really important details that are utterly lost on you.

I know bikes, I know Japanese, and I lived and road in Japan.

The translation is largely accurate (just minor structural stuff that doesn’t matter).

The only content that might matter, and it doesn’t really seem to, are the hashtags for the tweet that were not covered above (roughly “connect with bikers” and “quick biker self-intro”).

While I agree with your general characterization of Google translate when dealing with Japanese content, in this case it did a decent job, largely because the content was very simple and straightforward.

I can’t edit my reply, but I just realized another comment i made might be what you mean in terms of something “being lost” on someone who is using Google translate.

Specifically, even though “Showa ??” was translated accurately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone knows what it means (born before Jan 89, that is, the Showa era).

If so, good point!

> I wouldn't trust Google translate because one of my son's hobbies is looking up the original Japanese (and translation notes, etc) for anime and other works to figure out what in the heck went wrong with the translation

These are meaningless differences that only people who don't speak Japanese notice. Because once you do, you'd know that the text being in English instead of Japanese is already such a large difference that picking at individual words doesn't mean anything. (And honorifics definitely don't mean much. Even if you "leave them in" for "correctness", that actually means leaving in the ones the kids know and taking out the ones they don't.)

Actually one of the translators for a lot of popular works recently left Twitter because kids kept harassing him because he was "wrong" because the official work didn't match rumors they'd started based on their incorrect Japanese knowledge. Hope he's not doing that.

There's a lot of motorcycle geeking in that twitter account, e.g. https://twitter.com/azusagakuyuki/status/1365132939135127552

DeepL tends to be better than Google Translate for Japanese <-> English translation, btw.

Oh, good to know. I ran it through there and there are some differences, but it's not much deeper. I'm adding the translation to my original comment.

I have never heard of this. Link? How does it do for French-English?

DeepL is pretty great for most European languages. Here's a comment on difficult French text from a previous HN submission [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123833

deepl.com it's usually better than Google for everything it supports. Though Google has been catching up.

> None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer.

Fwiw, being born in the Showa era (ended Jan 89) would put her at 31 as a minimum.

Minor nitpick, but I just noticed the Showa ?? birth year in the tweet, and that would have raised red flags for me. Even for Japan, the doctored pic doesn’t really look 31, much less mid-30s or older.

Edit: Your translation is mostly correct (The second line is more like “Do you bike?”, but it sounds more natural in Japanese).

Note that this tweet also has a self-intro for motorcyclists hashtag.

Lying about one's birthdate is routine though. Both for young and old.

I think it would be fairly rare for a 20-something female “influencer” to say she was 31+ unless her age was part of her schtick. In this case, I wound have expected her to lie the other direction — she could pas for younger than 25, so “Heisei ??” seems like it would have been more likely.

The shift from 20s to 30s for females in Japan is generally not a welcome one — pressure to marry, have kids, “settle down”, etc. are very real. It is also perceived that women in their 30s are not as “cute” (something often sought after, especially by public entertainment figures).

Double edged sword. The shift from 20s to 30s also reduces attention from perverts and weirdos, just as it does from gentlemen suitors. And if someone joined a site back when they're a minor they often had to lie.

Or if someone is just privacy conscious about details that may be used to steal their identity, they may have just randomly chose January 1, 1970 or whatever was the top choice on the little menu.

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