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The story
A topic surfaced on 5ch after novelist Haruki Murakami was reported to have said, “I don’t do SNS because it’s a dumping ground for crappy writing.” In the thread, many voices agreed, saying things like “He’s dead right — it’s just people who can’t even fill a sheet of manuscript paper getting mad.” At the same time, others pointed out that the style of his landmark novel Hear the Wind Sing is itself built on short, colloquial sentences — practically “SNS-like” — and that it’s contradictory to call 5ch itself “bathroom graffiti” while only criticizing the writing on X (Twitter). Some even mocked a reply written with sloppy punctuation as “proof that the writing really is bad.”
What people said
https://imgur.com/0gYGK7b.jpg
https://imgur.com/v2cTGRy.jpg
http://bbs.eddibb.cc/test/read.cgi/liveedge/1791567811/
— which is itself a crappy sentence
but then why are you cheering for Yakult, who play such crappy baseball? (Murakami's a well-known Yakult Swallows fan)
what's with the "hating it without even trying" act, gross
only people with too much time and a strong need for validation should be doing this
it's no different from us not wanting to read Murakami's novels
Did something happen this year?
it's just people who can't even fill five sheets of manuscript paper getting mad
there's a crowd out there that can't even read a short sentence like this one accurately and just lashes out with knee-jerk reactions, so it's hardly strange that some people want to keep their distance from that
so why won't X admit it's a dumping ground for crappy writing too
does everyone there think they're writing high-minded prose?
the civility and quality of internet users dropped off a cliff
but the esteemed author whose own prose gets used as long-form reading comprehension material is absolutely right
so taking any of it seriously is a waste of time
aren't you embarrassed, lol
it'll blow you away! ("Tsunku" produced many Hello! Project idol groups; this thread is on 5ch's Hello! Project board)
why not try writing a rebuttal spanning hundreds of pages in refined prose like the great sensei, lol
if you actually pulled that off, you might even earn some respect, lol
these days they'd probably just churn that out endlessly with AI
feels like they'd come back after agonizing over every word, lol
guess that makes sense — they're people whose expression only really comes together when paired with artwork
also, about half of manga artists are basically puppets of their editors anyway
some of them are just the ones doing the drawing
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Murakami Haruki has long made clear his stance of keeping distance from SNS and contemporary, real-time information consumption, and this remark appears to be an extension of that stance. What split opinion in the thread was less the content of the remark itself than the question of “who has the standing to say it.” While there was considerable agreement with the view that SNS writing is of low quality, just as many replies questioned the credibility of criticizing others’ writing from that position — pointing out that his early landmark novel Hear the Wind Sing is itself written in a style built from short, colloquial sentences, and that 5ch itself openly calls itself an anonymous graffiti board. Note that the thread does not specify when or in which outlet this remark was made, and the original source cannot be confirmed from the material behind this article.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Murakami Haruki: “I don’t do SNS. It’s a dumping ground for crappy writing” → Twitter users have a total meltdown.”
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