alt Hacker NewsI understand that, but I would like to note from a human perspective that when seeing an article full of misleading and exaggerated claims bashing your country as a whole and comparing it disfavorably to the author's own, it's hard to react in a perfectly emotionless manner. All the more so when the thread is full of comments piling on even more, taking it all as fact and condemning it as a 'fascist dictatorship'. This is not exactly material fit for intellectual-curiosity-stimulating discussion to begin with, and it would really be nice if this kind of awful content wasn't on HN in the first place.
Yes. That is super hard from a human perspective and I agree that it would be nice if the comments were less awful.
We're not asking you (or anyone) to react in an emotionless manner—quite the opposite. The trick is to express the emotions in a somewhat different way - more sharing, less discharging, if that makes sense.
As for the article - I only skimmed it in the most superficial way but I think "what it's like to be in prison in Japan (from a Westerner's point of view)" was more or less certain to be interesting to this community, which is insatiable for things it hasn't heard about before.
Btw - you absolutely don't have to answer this, but are you Japanese? That's what the phrase "bashing your country as a whole" seemed to imply to me, and for some reason I was surprised. I guess it's because I talk a lot with HN's Japanese users (mostly by email) and your mode of expression is somewhat different. Normally I don't pry like this, so feel free not to respond!