Why Do Japanese Engineers Get So Tense on Social Media?

Over the weekend, I was watching a few technical exchanges on X.

They were supposed to be about technology, but somehow, halfway through, they turned into character assessments.

“You do not even know that?” “That design is impossible.” “Choosing that already tells me your level.”

At first, it should have been a technical discussion. Before long, it was no longer about technology. It had become a public contest in judging people.

Maybe this is only a Japanese X thing, but in Japanese engineering circles, there has long been a phrase: “throwing a masakari.”

A masakari is a battle-axe. In this context, it means throwing a technical correction at someone’s comment or code: “That part is wrong,” or “That implementation is dangerous.” Originally, I think it was meant to describe a culture of well-intentioned review. But on social media, it sometimes feels like a real axe.

What makes it difficult is that the person throwing it often believes they are only making a technical point.

From the receiving side, it feels less like a review and more like a public execution.

I have been in the IT industry for a long time, and this scene never seems to disappear.

If anything, with the growth of social media, it feels as if it has become sharper and more extreme.

Engineers Live by Correctness

When you think about it, this may be natural.

Our work is about finding what is correct and what is incorrect.

Code either runs or it does not.

A design is either maintainable or it is not.

SQL either returns a result or throws an error.

This is not a world where vague answers are always acceptable.

So as an occupational habit, when we listen to someone speak, we reflexively start looking for mistakes.

It is less like conversation and more like static analysis.

If we find a typo, we emit a warning.

If we find a leap in logic, we treat it as a compile error.

And sometimes, we classify the person themselves as the bug.

That ability should originally be aimed at code. But on social media, for some reason, it often activates against humans.

Knowledge Becomes a Pass

Long ago, I saw an exchange like this on social media.

Someone was talking about technical books and asked:

“What is O’Reilly?”

I thought someone would kindly explain it.

Instead, the conversation moved toward:

“You are an engineer and you do not know O’Reilly?”

If someone does not know, just tell them.

It is not as if you are an O’Reilly shareholder.

For some reason, some people use knowledge not to share it, but to prove that they possess it.

Knowledge stops being a tool and becomes a medal.

Then people start competing over the number of medals they have.

It feels a little similar to people who go to a technical conference and seem more interested in exchanging business cards than learning anything.

Japanese People Like Hierarchies More Than They Admit

This is not limited to engineers.

Japanese people like hierarchy more than they often admit.

Academic background.

Company name.

Job title.

Income.

Certifications.

Follower count.

Anything can become a ranking.

But doing this too openly looks vulgar, so people usually hold back.

They live while wearing the face of “we are all equal here.”

Social media changes the conditions.

You cannot see the other person’s face.

The company does not matter.

The relationship can be cut off easily.

Then the suppressed desire for hierarchy is released.

It is as if something sealed away for years has come back to life.

And people begin swinging the safe club of technical knowledge.

They hit someone’s design.

They hit someone’s career.

They hit someone’s programming language.

Before you know it, a pointless religious war like “Java faction vs Python faction” begins.

The people involved probably no longer know what they are fighting by the middle of it.

People Become Aggressive When They Have No Room

There is also a simpler reason.

Everyone is tired.

Deadlines.

Incident response.

On-call duty.

Requirement changes.

Meetings that never end.

The vague anxiety that AI might take their work.

Engineering is a more stressful job than it may look from the outside.

When someone has room, they can see a beginner’s question and think:

“I see. That is the part they do not understand.”

When someone has no room, the reaction becomes:

“You do not even know that?”

The phenomenon is the same. The reaction changes.

So recently, when I see an aggressive post, I try to think:

“Maybe this person is in the middle of incident response.”

Or maybe they are just short on calcium.

They should drink some milk and go to sleep.

That includes me.

In the End, Engineers Like Solving Problems

When you look at social media, this industry can seem very harsh.

But interestingly, when a real problem happens, everyone becomes surprisingly reasonable.

Even people who were throwing axes at each other on social media suddenly start cooperating:

“Do you have logs?” “I found the reproduction conditions.” “Please try this patch.”

Even if people are usually fighting language wars, once an incident occurs, they unite in a strangely natural way.

This reminds me of a famous old story from 2channel.

2channel was once one of Japan’s largest anonymous message boards. For readers outside Japan, calling it a Japanese version of Reddit may be close enough.

When that huge site faced a crisis caused by server and response performance problems, many engineers voluntarily gathered to investigate causes and discuss improvements.

People who usually insulted each other anonymously suddenly started cooperating when the system itself was in danger.

It is a strange scene, but also very engineer-like.

In the end, I do not think we like attacking people for its own sake.

We simply cannot ignore a problem once we see it.

If there is a bug, we want to fix it.

If performance is bad, we want to improve it.

If a system goes down, we want to restore it.

Unfortunately, that tendency sometimes activates against people too.

So before throwing a masakari on social media, I try to ask myself just once:

Does that axe really need to be pointed at a person?

If possible, pointing it at the code may make everyone a little happier.