>>12677856There have been many online-based stalking incidents in Japan, but I believe the one you are referring to, where both the original poster and his lawyer ended up as targets of the online mob, happened in the 2010's.
But you are right, that since the early internet in Japan, the idea of revealing who you are, standing out in any way to garner attention, is associated in the mind of the average person with being a target. There was already a culture in Japan of not wanting to stand out too much. The internet just allows 10,000x more people to observe you, possibly think you stand out too much, and need to be made into a target. Whether that is the target of a single stalker, a group working as a harassment mob, or just being "scammed". This last one was what surprised me.
I lived in Japan in 2009 and 2010. It is worth remembering that the "don't tell anyone your real name or age or location online" used to be a mantra in the West as well. By 2009, Facebook and YouTube had turned the cultural tide in the West and people were more relaxed about being their own real identity online, but Japan had not. I noticed that many popular Japanese YouTube talents were not people, but people's pets (cats, dogs, birds). Even on blogs people would blog about their daily life, with all sorts of details that might identify them, but they never had photos of themselves. All pictures were of places, things they bought, and maybe their pets. Again, this is the late 2000's.
I asked my older Japanese friend, who was my guide for parts of Japanese culture that confused me, and she said "Oh if you post your face online someone will scam you." I asked her "What scam? How are they going to scam you by seeing your face?" and the only explanation was "That is just what we are taught."
It's a half-baked explanation, but that's how a weird mix of urban-legends-plus-conventional-wisdom seems to go in all cultures? Anyway, her crappy not-an-explanation did line up with what I observed over many years about Japanese internet behavior.
