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The story
A thread on 5ch’s News Express+ board asking what “people who get walked all over” have in common took off. Posters shared stories of nurses and subordinates dumping work on them the moment they showed kindness, claims that being under 160cm makes you an easy target, and debates over the effects of hygiene and weight training. Things also took a dark turn with one ominous claim that “the common trait among murder victims is looking down on other people,” sending the thread in an unexpected direction.
Q. Are there traits shared by “people who are easy to walk all over”?
— Even doing the exact same things as everyone else, some people just end up getting talked down to or treated carelessly, right? It’s almost like people decide “I can say anything to this person.” Mr. Tamaru, you’ve run writing workshops for all kinds of people, from elementary schoolers to corporate trainees — from that experience, do you think there’s a common trait among people who somehow always get walked over?
Masatomo Tamaru (hereafter, Tamaru): I see.
Source: diamond.jp / Original article here
What people said
What's the actual problem
It stresses you out getting pushed around, that's what
Since that makes it dangerous to be seen as a doormat, I'm not telling anyone — I'll just keep living as one in silence.
Being treated lightly has nothing but downsides
It obviously hurts your promotion chances too
Be kind to them once and the nurses start dumping tons of work on you
Exactly right.
Be kind and they'll hand you every annoying task.
Make them think you're scary and they stop coming to you.
And if you're kind but later can't keep meeting their expectations, you get hit with complaints and gossip behind your back
Once people start walking over you in a leadership role at work, you're finished
Takayoshi Nishikawa: "Damn right." (T.M.Revolution frontman known for his muscular build)
You can lift all you want — if you're not clean and put-together, you'll still get walked over
Unfortunately, in white-collar jobs, muscle doesn't matter
Most murders come down to that
The guy doing it is a full-time employee in his mid-20s and I'm 47, so I didn't think I'd be someone people push around, but I always get yelled at and made to carry nothing but heavy stuff, with stuff like "hurry up, idiot!!" constantly
Isn't it more likely they're just going hard on me to recommend me for a permanent position?
Don't ever lose that positive thinking
That's right, nothing to worry about at all
Record it and report them to the harassment hotline
Maybe it's from all that piling up, but I feel like short people who turn out vicious are pretty common
That's why short people tend to snap a lot
That guy's short too, and since he gets walked over at work, he's yelling every day
It doubles as stress relief
Being thought of as "that troublesome person" is just about the right amount
Just put on some muscle
even on train platforms
somehow it's only the area around me that gets crowded
Do dogs and cats come up to you, or not?
Maybe you're secreting something?
That's my junior from my Kaisei days! 🤣🤣🤣 (Kaisei — one of Japan's most elite prep schools)
Even if it's just an act, showing a more aggressive side makes you harder to walk over
Kids who become bullies to avoid being bullied themselves are instinctively making that same rational calculation
It's also important not to think of people who try to walk over you as human
Nobody gets their feelings hurt from a stray dog barking at them (not that you see many strays these days)
Same idea — think "oh, some trash is making noise" and you can just tune it out
A boss who steps in and backs you up when a subordinate runs into trouble doesn't get promoted
A boss who says "that's on you" and abandons all supervisory responsibility when a subordinate runs into trouble does get promoted
That's just how the world works
This, exactly
Though honestly I used to think "well, some percentage of that was actually your fault"
The type who fires people also tends to get in good with the higher-ups and get promoted
"I can cut the fat" types are an easy sell to management
That's a Sakai Moving Service jumpsuit I've got on 🤣🤣🤣
My bad
That was 32 years ago 🤣🤣🤣
The path of fortune and misfortune, and confusion, though
That's the road I drove for work today 🤣🤣🤣
Background and Key Points
Diamond Online’s “compiled from 5ch” format packages an advice-column interview (with writing coach Masatomo Tamaru) alongside reader reactions from 5ch’s News Express+ board, one of the site’s largest general-discussion forums. The underlying workplace dynamic the thread keeps circling — a senior worker (here, doctors) extending courtesy to subordinates (nurses) only to be buried in extra tasks — reflects Japan’s steep senpai-kohai and hospital hierarchies, where niceness from someone with formal authority can read as an opening rather than a kindness. The “harassment hotline” suggestion in post 193 refers to the pawahara (power-harassment) consultation lines companies have been legally required to provide since amendments to Japan’s labor law took full effect for all employers in April 2022 — a concrete institutional backstop the poster assumed everyone would recognize.
The thread doesn’t actually converge on one explanation. It splits three ways: kindness-as-invitation (posts 3, 217), physical stature (posts 20, 27, 33, 181, with under-160cm/5’3″ flagged as a marker, notably short since average Japanese male height is around 171cm), and sheer attitude or muscle-building, which one poster (204) dismisses outright for white-collar work.
What’s easy to miss is how quickly the thread abandons its own question: after post 108’s genuinely dark advice about dehumanizing aggressors, the conversation dissolves into selfies, an old Sakai Moving Service uniform photo, and a non sequitur about the 10th-century rebel Taira no Masakado — a pattern typical of 5ch threads drifting from substance into in-jokes rather than resolving the original premise.
*This article is compiled and condensed from the 5ch (News Express+) thread「The Common Trait Among People Who Somehow Always Get Walked All Over, Worst Case #1」.
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