this may sound petty but I just prefer to date an asian women i know fully supports Asians. I ghosted this girl after she told me her ex was white and even though I felt bad, Im not sure if telling her the truth would’ve been better.

am i being too petty? I just can’t feel like I can ever trust them. how do I know they don’t secretly want a wasian child or white privilege.

I don't think I've heard a satisfactory answer to this from any of the AznId-cluster communities tbh.

Journalists love to get Korea wrong. Some are paid to share explosive takes that feed into the subsconscoius orientalist views of the wider world; others just do it for the social media clout. And you only realize how wrong they are when you get off the internet and spend an afternoon in Sokcho, Daegu, or Chuncheon. For anyone that does this, something becomes immediately apparent. Korea isn’t actually that bad. (Or great). The people get along. The kids go to school. The young people date. And everyone drinks ice americano.

There is a weird sensation that comes from watching someone deliver a sociological autopsy of a nation in a 14-minute YouTube video essay. Perhaps it’s just the new era where the average internet user is operating under the delusion that a Netflix subscription is functionally equivalent to a PhD. However it arises, the narrative they’ve constructed is a sort of paint-by-numbers cyberpunk dystopia. The chaebol function as overlords, capitalism has been cranked up to some terminal level of suffering, and joy is lowkey against the law. Every Korean male is a toxic subterranean incel, while every Korean female is simultaneously a militant, radicalized femcel and a helpless, lookism-obsessed victim of the cosmetic surgery industrial complex. I mean, have these people been to Samgakji recently?

What’s perhaps most peculiar is the mainstreaming of a culturally permissible brand of xenophobia. If you were to apply this exact same level of sweeping, essentialist degradation to virtually any other nation in the Global South, the online collective would quite rightly descend upon you with the fury of a thousand righteous HR departments. But Korea is currently occupying this weird hyper-visible cultural sweet spot where it is simultaneously a global entertainment superpower and, at the same time, a distant canvas for Western anxieties. Thus it has become bizarrely fashionable to treat its entire population not as complicated human beings, but as symbols in some trend-driven game of clickbait farming.

To be honest I’m not sure I’m capable of unpeeling the collective geopolitical unconscious, but it seems to be more than just random internet noise. Something closer to a narrative pathology. Western legacy media generally frames South Korea as a hyper-compressed moral fable. Look at what happens if your pop music is too succesful or if you develop too quickly. “This is what you will become,” they warn in the pages of the Guardian and the Washington Times, “if you ever think about trying to restructure your country in a modern way.” The narrative is similar in effect if not form to the sepia-toned racist filter that is applied in video to all the footage of Mexico. They will often use a grey one when showing you Beijing or Pyongyang as well --- because of course, whatever else might be said about those places, the sun rarely shines there like it does in London. The roundness of Korea, like these other places, is flattened out, put on a screen, and shoved in your face where you make an immediate reaction: “Oh!” “Really?” “Well, that’s not very good, is it?” And if you trace the origins of this particular rhetoric, it seems to lead directly to a long-standing coping mechanism regarding East Asia. For the sake of a weekend column, I’ll generalize a bit, but it goes something like this.

When the East Asian economies began pulling off these rapid leaps from postwar devastation to global tech-dominance, it shook the West hard. None predicted it. Few wanted it. For a region that had long operated under the unexamined assumption that it possessed a monopoly on modern human flourishing, the tigers/dragons led to cognitive dissonance. The resulting intellectual workaround was as brilliant as it was defensive: “Sure, they can build the semiconductors and the hyper-efficient public transit, but look at the human cost.”

Thus, the "Western Society is Still Better" preservation project was born. To keep that conclusion comfortably intact, the very real and very standard structural hiccups of Korean modernization such as labor stresses, demographic challenges, and urban isolation must be aggressively upscaled, distorted, and marinated in an oddly Victorian tone that you almost never see applied to, say, the rust belt of Ohio or the banlieues of Paris.

Historically, this Western "dystopian" template was first aimed at Japan. Back in the late 80s and 90s, when the American imagination was absolutely terrified of Tokyo buying up Manhattan, Japan was the original blade-runner-esque, soul-crushing corporate hive-mind. But as Japan's economic engine cooled into comfortable stagnation, the narrative got shipped across the sea and reassembled over Seoul. It will go somewhere else soon but at the moment every other YouTube video and Instagram reel loves blowing up Korean society hard.

And it has support. Because while the West needs East Asia to be structurally defective to validate its own Enlightenment-era exceptionalism, Southeast Asian online spaces are also using it because it is an incredibly effective stick with which to beat a regional heavyweight. It allows for a kind of reputational leveling: "You may have the global cultural exports and the towering GDP that we don’t have yet, but beneath the K-pop, you are broken in a way that we aren’t. We didn’t sell out yet. And therefore you are no better than us." This too feels like a defense mechanism masquerading as critique. A way to process the suffocating shadow cast by Korea's cultural gravity by insisting that the shadow is cast by a monster.

Yet while the internet busies itself constructing this bizarre version of Korea, the actual country carries on being relentlessly, almost boringly, normal. The trains arrive when they are supposed to. And they are clean. Free from troubling people or worrying stains. Grandmothers power past you on mountain trails with lungs seemingly forged from titanium and powered by vegetables and vitamins. Children still walk to school and go off to hagwons in those weird yellow buses. Office workers grumble about their bosses. Couples argue over dinner. Tens of millions of people get on with the complicated business of living lives that refuse to fit into somebody else's narrative, irrespective of the virality it achieves.

Korea is neither a dystopian warning nor a futuristic theme park. It is simply a modern country adapting, sometimes elegantly, sometimes awkwardly, often with mistakes, but doing so at extraordinary speed. It isn't hiding from anyone either. It's there in the subway, the apartments, the mountains, and the convenience store. But you'll never find it if you keep searching for it inside an algorithm. There’re only monsters there.

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Lucy Quaggin looks at how Gen Z Chinese-Americans are navigating identity amid shifting US-China tensions.

As a high school student on New York City’s Upper East Side, Chinese-American Hannah Liu would take the subway downtown on Sundays to volunteer and visit Chinatown.

Those weekly trips became a space to embrace her Chinese identity, before culturally “code-switching” on her way back home.

Now 23 and still living in the city, Liu says she does not feel the need to code-switch as much. As a Generation Z Chinese-American, she describes feeling more comfortable openly embracing her heritage than she did growing up in the United States.

That personal shift represents a broader question for this generation: how their identities fit into the equation, as US-China relations become increasingly central to global politics.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, some young Asian-Americans are asking what the future of this relationship looks like and how this key geopolitical rivalry will influence their own lives.

When it comes to US-China relations, Generation Z, roughly born between 1997 and 2012, has seen Beijing emerge as Washington’s primary adversary and one of the world’s leading powers. While this group describes bilateral ties as fragile, they also express a cautious sense of optimism.

American views on China are softening, with positive sentiment nearly doubling since 2023, according to a 2026 surv.ey by the Pew Resear.ch Centre. Most Americans still regard China as a competitor to the US rather than a partner, but fewer call it an adversary than in 2025, the sur.vey found.

Young people are significantly more likely to have positive views of China than older adults, with 34 per cent of those under 50 surveyed holding a favourable opinion of China, compared with just 19 per cent of those over 50.

Chinese-American Evan Wang, a 19-year-old former national youth poet laureate, is optimistic about the future of Washington’s relationship with Beijing, China’s growing soft power and what that means for his identity.

Raised in the Philadelphia area, Wang’s parents immigrated from Fuzhou, making him a first-generation American.

Growing up in the US, Wang, ... said he was more alienated than appreciated. But in today’s world, his experience has almost been the inverse.

“You can say I’m Chinese, and you can be really proud of it,” Wang said.

... Viral trends such as “you met me at a very Chinese time in your life” or “China-maxxing”, where social media users embrace Chinese habits and culture, are intriguing Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are more influenced by social media, Wang said.

Views on China vary distinctly from generation to generation, and this is not just an American phenomenon, said Laura Silver, associate director at Pew.

...

The era people came of age in mattered, Silver noted, with younger generations associating China with events like the Beijing Olympics or as an economic success story, while older generations might associate the country with historical events such as the Cultural Revolution.

For Liu, who was born in Beijing and moved to New York City when she was seven, the complexities of the US-China relationship are still prevalent.

She and college classmate Spencer Tsao, 24, both graduated from New York University and now work in finance at different companies in New York City.

Tsao is a Taiwanese-American, born in Long Island, New York, to parents who had immigrated from Taipei.

...

In Liu’s personal life, things are more opaque, as she also feels the way people view China has changed a lot since she was in school.

...

While Liu is very aware of factors affecting the relationship, such as export restrictions through her job, on the cultural side, she said it felt more positive.

Tsao agreed. American streamer iShowSpeed’s visit to China represented a huge cultural moment for young people, Tsao said, but he believes that despite noted progress, Asian culture is still being reduced to a monolith.

On social media, “China-maxxing” often consists of Western Gen Z users sipping on some hot water, buying “made in China” goods, trying traditional Chinese medicine or wearing house slippers.

“Chinese culture, specifically, is being viewed in a very monolithic way, when of course it’s this gigantic diaspora of all different people, different cultures, different backgrounds. But it’s still kind of being viewed in a one-dimensional way,” Tsao said.

... [A lot of political blah blah blah]

...

...

...

In the past, the US was not willing to acknowledge that China was emerging as a great global power, but now it was harder to ignore, ...

...

...

Phoebe McChesney, a 23-year-old who works and lives in Illinois, said America at 250 was not something young people – specifically on the left – really wanted to celebrate right now. “...

Adopted from China as a baby and now working in state politics, McChesney said ... American foreign policy and how it was changing were at the top of people’s minds, ...

“The US relationship with China is kind of symptomatic in general of the United States’ relationship with the world at the moment,” she added.

...

...

...

As America nears 250 ... Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) adults showed a shifting sentiment of how this group views America, with most believing the US used to be a great place for immigrants but no longer is.

...

...

...

...

...

... given the competition between the United States and China at the moment,” McChesney said. “I feel like essentially we have a long, long way to go before there’s real harmony between both countries.”

“I feel like people have gotten comfortable with the idea that relations are never going to be perfect,” Liu added.

---

If article is paywalled, Google the title, Google will provide a free link

I dont want to go into too much detail, but I've dated a lot of non-asian men in the past, and now that i've reached a certain age, I regret it, especially when I think about how I treated this one asian friend who was one of the best guys to enter my life, looking back now I shouldve listened to him and dated him instead, but I know if i told him my secrets he'd end up getting hurt. I know fore sure I cant message him now without things ending up a toxic mess. The only men who seem interested in me now are those twice my age. And especially asian men are put off when I mention my dating history.

Someone even jokingly called me a bananarang in my face, and i didnt even know what it was until I looked it up. I know it's my fault for dating out and excluding asian men when i was younger, but I also consumed alot of western media and had alot of non asian friends. I was also raised by a single mother who remarried and had a son, so i never felt like i belonged even in my own family. My dad left when I was 4, and I remember how my mother cried alone because of it, i know generelizing is bad but this did put me off from dating asian men.

Are there any asian women my age with a similar story? how do you handle this pressure and treatment from society. Do you ever feel guilt towards your background?

Three White men calling themselves “skinheads” and shouting racial slurs allegedly carried out two unprovoked, racially motivated attacks that seriously injured three victims, including two Camp Pendleton Marine Corps officers, last year near the Oceanside Pier, according to an FBI search warrant unsealed Thursday in San Diego federal court.

The alleged attacks, which occurred the evening of June 7, 2025, appear to have never been publicly reported before. In a sworn affidavit, an FBI agent asserted the three alleged attackers are being investigated on hate-crime charges, as well as charges of violating the victims’ civil rights and conspiring to obstruct an investigation.

According to the warrant, the three suspects assaulted a 21-year-old Oceanside man who is Asian-American near a beach bathroom, allegedly slamming his head into a concrete wall multiple times. The victim was later hospitalized and diagnosed with a concussion, among other injuries.

A short time later at the Oceanside Pier Amphitheater, the same three men allegedly shouted racial slurs while attacking two Marines — one was Black, the other White — who were off duty and enjoying a night out. Both Marines later sought medical treatment at a hospital on Camp Pendleton, where doctors allegedly diagnosed one with a concussion and multiple facial fractures.

The three attackers have each been interviewed by the FBI at least once and are aware of the investigation, according to the search-warrant affidavit. The FBI agent who sought the warrant asserted that in addition to the alleged racial slurs, further investigation revealed that at least two of the men are members of a White supremacist street gang in Riverside County, while the third has the word “skinhead” tattooed on his arm.

The Union-Tribune is not naming the men since

they had not been charged as of Thursday.

...

The search warrant unsealed Thursday seeks location data and other information from cellphone companies about four phones that investigators believe belong to the three suspected attackers. The FBI sought the warrant Tuesday and a San Diego federal magistrate judge approved it that same day.

The agent wrote that in addition to the racial slurs the victims and witnesses reported hearing, none of the alleged attackers knew or had any prior contact with the victims before assaulting them.

“Thus, I am not aware of any potential non-racial motive for the assaults,” the agent wrote. He added that the cellphone data sought by investigators would help confirm there had been no prior contact between the attackers and their victims, and would also provide potential evidence that the men conspired to obstruct the investigation.

According to the agent’s affidavit, the first victim was with his wife near a beach bathroom a little after sunset when two men approached from the shoreline yelling at them. The couple, who were waiting for a cousin who was using the bathroom, told investigators they didn’t initially realize what was happening until one of the men allegedly got close and yelled: “Didn’t you hear my friend talking to you? Don’t you know who we are? We’re skinheads.”

The two men then allegedly told the victim to empty his pockets, which the agent asserted in his affidavit was a ruse and not an actual robbery attempt. Moments later, both men allegedly began punching the victim in his head and face, then slamming his head into a concrete wall.

The victim “believed at that point that the subjects intended to kill him,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. The victim was able to escape momentarily and run onto the beach, “where the subjects continued to punch, kick, and stomp him,” according to the agent. The victim told investigators that at this point, “he became aware of a third white male attacker who was also striking him.”

A witness later told the FBI that he thought the trio was going to kill the victim, while his wife told investigators she could “hear the crack of the blows from 20 yards away,” according to the agent’s affidavit.

“For several weeks after the assault, (the victim) needed assistance performing basic daily functions, such as standing and moving around,” the FBI agent wrote. “His head trauma caused memory loss for several weeks, during which he was unable to remember the names of family members and common household objects.”

The agent wrote that one of the alleged attackers later admitted during a voluntary interview to being at the scene, but he claimed it was a fight between mutual combatants that occurred when the victim cursed at his friend.

As Oceanside police were responding to a 911 call from the first assault, the suspected attackers had allegedly moved north toward the pier amphitheater, where they encountered the two Marines, according to the affidavit. One of the Marines later told investigators that the men walked by shouting racial slurs, but they “did not respond to these taunts … (because) the Marines had been trained to avoid altercations while they were off base.”

Numerous witnesses also told investigators that they heard the alleged attackers shouting racial slurs at the two Marines, according to the affidavit.

The FBI agent wrote that he reviewed surveillance footage of the three alleged attackers walking toward the Marines and attacking them without provocation. During the ensuing fight, one of the Marines slammed one of the alleged attackers onto the ground, causing him to lose consciousness. The FBI agent wrote that two bystanders recorded portions of the encounter, and those videos showed the Marines “initially put their hands up and backed away before starting to defend themselves.”

Two of the alleged attackers claimed to police that they acted in self defense, while the third was still lying unconscious on the ground when police arrived, according to the FBI agent.

The agent wrote that subsequent investigation of the alleged attackers, including interviews with their friends and family members and reviews of their phone data and social media, revealed that all three held racist and White supremacist beliefs.

The agent alleged in the affidavit that two of the men claim membership in a White supremacist gang in Hemet, including one who allegedly posted a video of himself on social media doing a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”

Two of the men also used passwords, social media accounts and email addresses containing the numbers 1488 — a common White supremacist code, with 14 representing a 14-word racist phrase about securing the future for White children, and 88 denoting “Heil Hitler,” as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Free link to article https://archive.is/ID8gf

Found this video on my YouTube feed, and Grace Park tells a story about how someone gave her a card with a picture of a white baby’s foot at her baby shower. She gets an epiphany about her baby looking full Asian (since her husband is Asian) and not hapa.

I don’t want to bash her too much since I’m glad she’s an Asian American actress who decided to marry an Asian man. She also acknowledged her way of thinking was a “glitch”. However it is disappointing to know she hinted at hoping for a hapa looking child.

I wish the host asked for more clarification about what she said. Did she want a half white baby, or a baby without stereotypical Asian features? She doesn’t need to have a half white baby if she wanted a child without stereotypical Asian features. There are Asian men out there without stereotypical Asian features.

I've never been but def want to visit. Growing up Japan was the pinnacle of asian culture. But lately ive seen some creepy stuff regarding female citizens and tourists. Just now there was this bumping man thing? And gropers etc.

I've read that even China has become safer for women compared to japan, is that true? I know south korea is now on top regarding safety (excluding the hidden cam stuff).

But would it be safe for a woman to walk at 3 am in japan?