Twitter. YouTube. TikTok. Instagram. And now Threads. It’s a crowded social media landscape and people want to stand out.
It has become one of the aphorisms of our times that people will do almost anything for clout.
And that includes crazy antics in Japan.
Known as p8stie or Mariè online, and claiming to be an independent journalist and dentist, a French woman has claimed she was attacked in the Tobita Shinchi red-light district of Osaka. In Tobita, you get a sense of the beyone Japanese pleasure quarters, with its street full of old establishments with entranceways,in which sit sex workers and an older female proprietor, calling out to passersby.
Mariè has uploaded a video of the incident. She is using her phone to openly film the establishments as she walks by. Eventually, an older woman who runs one of the places comes out and demands she stop filming.
Mariè calls this an attack and is behaving like she’s the victim.
In fact, as someone who has been visiting Japan for a while and should know, filming in public in Japan is generally frowned upon and regarded as an invasion of privacy. And filming sex workers anywhere is a big no-no for all kinds of reasons.
In fact, from what we see and hear in the video at least, the woman simply demands she stop filming with her phone and puts her hand to cover the phone. This does not seem to constitute an “assault” in any legal sense.
For reasons we don’t fully understand, Mariè/p8stie has over 67,000 followers on Twitter.
Mariè/p8stie has been visiting Japan recently and issuing her pronouncements about Japan and Japanese men on Twitter, often igniting furious debate and derision.
We have pooled a few of her winning observations:
In EVERY culture, the way the sex industry operates reflects the needs and desires of the people.
In Japan, the culture is VERY RESTRICTIVE. There is not much room for freedom, even in romantic relationships.
In fact, there seems to be a culture-wide Madonna whore complex.
Often, there is no in-between for women in Osaka
They are wives: perfect innocent polite madonnas speaking in baby voice
or
They are sex workers: the ones used for sex and romance.. also typically wearing/being depicted in purposefully childlike clothing
Marriages are based on social status and MONEY instead of love, attraction and romance
The wives are madonnas and the husbands are from good families and the situation is practical
Dead bedroom is prominent
Many women have told me that they feel like their husband is a brother
Because of this dynamic, many citizens PAY to receive and give sexual and romantic affection
Much of the “sex work” doesn’t even end with sex
At snack bars, which the girls are advertising here, men pay just to TALK with women
It’s more than sex – a space for men to feel free
Mariè/p8stie had also been complaining that she can’t get Japanese men interested in her. Her “usual tactics” include stopping to ask for a cigarette and making eye contact. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that most young people in Japan don’t smoke and it’s not regarded by many men as a attractive lifestyle for women.
She previously attracted notoriety and opprobrium online when she posted a (since-deleted) series of mocking posts about Western women she had arbitrarily identified as “sex tourists” in South Korea.
But she is doing similar things herself, recently sharing her hopes on getting a man (even if she has to pay):
Unfortunately, me and my Osaka fling broke up due to his misogyny & inability to play around & have fun.
I’ll be in Japan for a few more weeks and am unlikely to try again with a Japanese man.
Where should I go to find a nice male date that I can just pay to be nice 2 me?
