How is Asia Perceived on the Internet?

When searching about what other people think about Asia, the first things I get are bunch of topics relating to how others view Asia as referring to Asian people — interestingly enough, a lot of the inquiry questions are usually comparing people from the west (Europeans, Americans) to how they perceive Asian people in general rather than about Asia as a whole. When given the common questions that popped up such as “What do Europeans think of Asia?”, someone wrote as a comment on Reddit: “ I think that Asia is too big and diverse (culturally, geographically, economically or however you want to cut it) to give any meaningful answer to this question in the form of a reddit comment.”

A lot of credible comments with the most information someone had about Asia is about comparing and contrasting Asian people with foreign people based on personal experience, most notably traveling to Asia or even living in Asia themselves. One person on reddit that had lived in India for a little more than year gives an example of this, where they made an elaborate comment about the main differences between England and India by listing a number of bullet points that highlight the differences in safety, life expenses, religion, and skin color. It seems after reading more comments on what people thought of Asia (only now its about Asian people), several pointed out Asians can’t drive properly, or drive recklessly compared to people in the west.

Something interesting I’ve noticed about the comments section is how the comments of people explaining how they perceive Asia due to their personal experiences are generally more thought-provoking. The reason why this is the case because they provide much more elaborate explanations of why they view Asia the way it is with their credibility of either visiting or living there. A common trend is relating about their society, lifestyle, and people using the format of either “the pros and cons” or comparing and contrasting to the person’s own homeland (usually these people come from the west) to state why these comparisons stick out to them and reflect how they view Asia.

Discussing about what people think of Asia also lead a trend of provoking racial issues. On the Huffington Post, Alexis Kleinman makes an interesting post about how google reveals what people really think about Europe and Asia, which ultimately reflects to the stereotypes the people are known for in a specific region. The image Alexis provides tells us a little more of what people have searched on google regarding these Asian countries below:

An interesting trend with this image is that people tend to search up these Asian countries regarding about their size and wealth by majority.

In regards to people searching up the internet about Asia with these kinds of key words, I believe one the main reasons why this could be the case is a lot people search up about Asia because they are ignorant about some Asian countries, which is why they search these kinds of questions in the internet rather than asking someone else about these possibly sensitive topics. In either case, when someone tries to perceives Asia on the internet it seems it will usually fall into these two main categories: Comparing and contrasting Asian society with a foreigner’s society (usually European/American society) based on someone’s personal experience, or racial-related issues regarding stereotypes about Asia (more notably about Asian people).

Yahoo Answers isn’t reliable as a source, but they do have lots of commentary about how others perceive Asia. Someone wrote “Why do people think Asia = China?” as a topic for debate, and a trend I see in the comments to this question are usually because China is large geographically, a lot of Asian countries are influenced by the Chinese, or the people that think this way about Asia or either ignorant or intentionally racist.

With a more thought provoking comment regarding this topic, a person on Quora wrote, “ The Americans that do have knowledge that Asia is a vast landmass do tend to differentiate between East Asian, South East Asian, and South Asian more regularly than you may expect. Separate from these subgroups are often the considerations of Japanese (you can thank Japan Inc. and the anime boom for that) and Filipino (you can thank colonialism for that).” Interestingly enough, this commentator states their credibility from personal experience being surrounded by various groups of Asian families growing up in America. They also gave an account why people in United States think of China when referring to Asia: “East Asia tends to be the dominant “Asian” consideration for many people in the United States and it’s in large part because Japan has been so prominent and now China is so prominent for United States trade relations.”

It seems those that have more awareness about Asia and can recognize a variety of Asian people are usually people that have grown in diverse environments or are either Asian themselves. Those that have gotten personal experiences being around more diverse groups of Asians seem to be able to explain more insightful comments about the topic of Asia than those who have zero to no experience (either from traveling or from their own environment). Unfortunately for the internet, people are capable of making the topic of Asia become potentially controversial with stereotypes about Asian people, which can ultimately shape the topics about Asia from being “About Asia” to suddenly “About Asian Stereotypes.”

So what I got out of this inquiry is how others view Asia could be very complex as a whole, but generally how people view Asia on the internet narrows down to Asia being associated most often with China, the differences of Asian society compared to western society derived from personal experience, and stereotypes about Asian people. No one can really explain Asia that thoroughly in just a comment, but in regards to what Asia’s associations are and what topics of debate people choose to associate about Asia, all of this information will reveal bits and pieces of how the people on the internet perceives Asia in general.