(upbeat music)
It’s a company called Hollow
Live and they produce VTubers.
So VTubers, I mean if I watch
some, it’s people play video games
and they have, instead
of putting like my ugly mug
on the screen, they
put on a cute anime girl.
I actually had the idea, I don’t
think it was particularly original,
of using a cute anime
VTuber girl, instead of my face.
And then just, but not
altering my voice or anything.
So it’s like clearly 50 year
old man’s voice, cute anime girl.
Oh, the discrepancy between
my feelings of what I’m hearing
and what I’m seeing, the emotional
discord is too much for me.
Didn’t do it ’cause
didn’t have the software
to make the hollow thing
and the skills and the talent,
which is usually the problem I
run into is lacking skills and talent.
But Hollow Live the company
had record profits this year.
Then income of 2.3 billion
yen, which is a 162% increase,
which makes it very clear
that I should have done the idea.
I’ve had a lot of ideas
and I don’t do them.
And I think like, it’s
’cause it’s a dumb idea.
And then I realize the dumb ideas
are how people make money.
I mean, a lot of people
are making a lot of money
doing often things that I wouldn’t
do because I consider it stupid.
I’m not against VTubers.
I’m actually thinking more like other,
like prank videos and stuff.
VTubers are fine.
I never wanted to put my face on screen.
That actually is why I wanted to do
a, I was tempted to do a VTuber thing.
They had 1.65 billion yen in
profit, which is 154% increase.
1.65 billion reasons why I
should have done the thing
I was thinking in the first place.
I guess I’m not being
produced by Hollow Live.
They get advertising
and promotion and stuff
and they cross promote.
Still, maybe they would have
picked me up if I had done a good job.
They have 51.23 million subscribers.
That’s up 16.7%.
I have three more than the
last time I made a podcast.
304 million views per… No, no.
304 million yen per VTubers.
That’s, I guess, I’m an average.
It’s not like every VTubers
making the same amount of money.
They’re gonna have the most popular
ones and then the least popular ones.
That’s the end I would be in.
Still, 51.23 million subs in Japan,
28.12 million subs from
English-speaking countries.
They just grouped them up because
it’s gonna be like the UK and I mean,
it’s interesting to know
that a huge percentage
of their following or
actually English speakers
’cause most of the
Hollow Live, not all,
but most of the Hollow
Live VTubers are Japanese.
So they’re speaking in Japanese,
but some of them are actually
hired as English speakers.
9.3 million subs in Indonesia.
So basically, if I could get this podcast
to be popular in Indonesia
by being cuter, I could get 9.
3 million subs and then I
actually quit my day job.
So let’s just be clear that in Indonesia,
Japan will be shifting to a
VTuber format from now on.
Audio only listeners, you might like,
“Well, I won’t notice the difference
’cause I don’t see your
dumb face anyways.
” Well, I have a natural
ability to do a very cute voice.
It’s kind of like stitched
from Zililo or instead,
and you might think I’m
using a voice changer,
“I’m not, I can just
do this naturally.
” And I can do it for the entire podcast,
which I’m pretty sure you would hate
with every fiber of your
being, but the enjoyable part is I
can use this voice, and I can
say horrible, horrible things.
And because it doesn’t
strain my throat at
all, I can just keep
going so I can talk about
pushing their head down and
choking the life out of them
and watching the life
drain from their eyes.
The satisfaction I’ll get
isn’t the last moment of their
existence when they realize
they aren’t coming back.
So that’s something to look forward to.
So this is a first in Japan.
It’s a first arrest.
I’m actually one of the things I enjoy
the most about doing this podcast
and talking about the
news is being aware of firsts.
Firsts are really important.
This is the first arrest in Japan
for installing malicious
code into a shopping website.
So this is light skimming, so you
know when they take a machine
and they put it on a bang machine, so
you put in your ATM, you put in the card,
it’ll skim your card, and then when you
put in your pen, it keeps trying the pen.
So they can get all your information.
This is called web skimming.
They go into a legitimate shopping site.
So Amazon, in Japan,
Maricari, something like that,
you skim the information so it’ll
take off your credit card information
and anything you put in there.
This is a violation of the installment sales
act, which is a lie I’d never heard of.
Don’t actually even know what it, I could
have looked it up, but I didn’t bother.
Basically, they hacked into
a ticket sales site in 2022,
so like a ticket master,
that kind of thing.
They hacked into the site,
they put in their malicious
code and they were
pulling credit card numbers
off that site for an
entire year, basically.
Police found credit
card info on the dark web.
This is another interesting
thing that you learn
is that the police are
monitoring the dark web.
So they’re basically on the
dark web, looking for credit
card information, looking
for all this other stuff.
And there you go.
It’s pretty impressive.
I think that’s it, ’cause
I almost thought like,
maybe I got some malicious
things on my credit card.
I reported to the police
and then the police open investigation.
This is the police in Japan
being active about trying
to track down credit cards
and things on the dark web.
Well, I found that very interesting.
The most dangerous aspect of this is
that you are going to a legitimate site.
So you’re going to an Amazon,
you’re going to ticket master,
you’re going to some site
that you know is a real website,
you went to the website,
there’s no fishing involved.
Usually scams on the Internet is like,
hey, I’ll send you an email, come to this
website and then put in your information.
This is you saying, I’m gonna type in
the actual name of the website I know.
Go to that website, I go to that website
and then I put in my
information and it gets stolen.
So that’s a bit scary.
Websites are going to
have to figure this out.
The police then open an investigation
and a man has been arrested
and this is the first arrest
for web skimming in Japan.
I don’t know about other countries.
This is one of the hard parts is because
I focus exclusively on Japanese news.
I don’t get like, it’s the first in Japan.
Is it common elsewhere?
How many court cases has been?
I’d like to look into it
as just time limits me
to focusing on one thing
and that one thing is Japan.
But here’s another first for Japan.
So last week we had a citizens
arrest YouTuber get arrested.
So again, this was another
thing I’d learned about.
I didn’t know that citizens
arrest YouTubers were a thing.
We had the Johnny Somalis in the all foreign
people coming here and causing trouble.
That was pretty common.
I understood that as a concept.
Citizens arrest YouTubers
are people who go and try to
find people doing bad things
and then do a citizens arrest.
A lawyer has come out and talked about
it and said the accusation is defamation.
So if you make an accusation, so
you accuse me of committing a crime,
that is defamation if I haven’t
actually committed that crime.
If there’s no crime, if there’s no proof.
Showing my face on camera
and I haven’t committed a crime
is also against the launch of
panic, but against privacy laws.
The lawyer clarified when a
citizen’s arrest is appropriate.
So this was part of the inner thing.
I found interesting.
‘Cause when can you
actually do a citizen’s arrest?
We have all this idea.
Like you just walk up
to someone and you go,
citizens arrest and that’s
supposed to mean something.
Well, of course it doesn’t really.
In Japan, so again, this
is the rules for Japan.
You’re in a different country.
The rules will be
different in your country.
If you actually ever
want to do a citizen’s
arrest, this is something
you should look into.
‘Cause if you cross a line,
you are now committing a crime.
And that’s something
important to think about.
The lawyer has clarified when
a citizen’s arrest is appropriate.
So the crime has to be in progress.
So this guy who was making accusations.
So last week, the citizens
arrest YouTuber said,
this girl in the street,
she’s scalping tickets.
She’s reselling tickets.
She wasn’t reselling tickets.
So the crime wasn’t in progress.
So he actually wouldn’t have been able
to make a citizen’s arrest there already.
You must immediately hand
the person over to the police.
So this citizen’s arrest guy, he’s like,
ah, I’m gonna video it
and put it on my YouTube
and get a sensationalized
video out of it.
He’s actually breaking the law by
not immediately going to the police.
So take the person,
take them to the police.
You could still be liable
for assault if it goes too far.
So let’s say they try to run away and you
grab them and they fall down and get hurt.
You could be liable
for assault in that case.
If they do not resist and you
like push them, that is also assault.
So physical interaction in
a citizen’s arrest in Japan
is problematic because they basically have
to fight you and you have to fight back.
Being a foreigner who lives in Japan,
I actually have an extra
set of rules I have to live by.
I essentially cannot fight back.
If a Japanese citizen attacks me, I
cannot defend myself, I can only run away.
If I fight back, I am
actually breaking the law.
I will probably get my visa revoked.
Realistically speaking, if someone was
attacking me and I just pushed them away,
like didn’t actually fight them or hurt
them, I probably would be okay with that.
I like the police wouldn’t
give me a hard time for that.
But if I fought back and
actually hurt another person
in a Japanese citizen, I actually probably
would get in trouble for that as well.
They would get in trouble, but I would
also get in trouble for defending myself.
So that’s, again, it’s the
kind of thing you need to know
is when is it acceptable
to defend yourself?
Because the most extreme cases
are Florida’s standard ground laws.
And if I am standing still and someone
walks towards me, I’m allowed to shoot them.
That’s a pretty extreme rule,
but you have to know that.
So if you turn around and walk away,
is that okay, is it still threatening?
These are all things you need to know.
We’ve seen the court cases that doesn’t
always work out the way it’s supposed to.
Posting the video online
afterwards is also defamation.
Because the person has not gone to court,
because they haven’t
been convicted of a crime,
because they’re not technically guilty
until they have been convicted of a crime.
They are in that case, in
a sense until proven guilty,
which means if you put
the video on the Internet
before it’s proven guilty,
you are slandering them.
You are committing a crime.
The mayor of Togo, Togo
is a small city in Japan.
During his meetings, he said to his staff,
I’ll kill you guys or die,
which, as the leader of a group,
I think that’s not really the
appropriate way to speak to people.
So maybe that’s just
a clear one right there.
During meetings, he
said, I’ll kill you guys or die.
And then he came back later
after a whole bunch of people
complained, he said, I was
making the comments as a joke.
I was in a temp to light in the mood.
Now, here’s an interesting thing.
An attempt to lighten the mood.
Now, I understand jokes.
I actually work with other people.
We make jokes, we make fun of each other.
It has to be pretty light.
If I went into the office
tomorrow and I went to my team
and I went, hey, you
guys, I want you all to die.
That would not lighten the mood.
Even if it wasn’t joke, it
would not lighten the mood.
It would be a pretty heavy joke.
So there’s two possibilities.
One, the mayor of Togo
doesn’t know what a joke is.
Or number two, which
is the more likely one.
He was angry and he
didn’t actually mean it.
He actually meant to say
like a die, not maybe literally,
but he was like really angry and
saying, you guys should go die.
And he wasn’t making
a joke, which I think is
the more likely one of
him being really honest.
He also hugged a female staff member
who was wearing sort of a mascot costume.
And that is a form of sexual harassment
because he did not accept the hug.
His response to that accusation
was it could have been a guy.
So since I didn’t know if it
was a guy or a girl in the suit,
it couldn’t have been sexual harassment
because men cannot be sexually harassed.
This is the very classic
heteronormative thing.
If I hug a girl, that could
be sexual harassment
because I’m sexually
attracted to her.
If I hug a man, it can’t be
because I’m not attracted to him.
It’s actually interesting.
This is again, a mindset.
What you think as the
harasser doesn’t matter.
It’s actually the harassee,
how they feel is what matters.
So if you walk up to me and
just hug me and I don’t like it,
that is sexual harassment.
The mayor got in
trouble, had to get up on
TV, had to do a very
classic Japanese thing.
He had to apologize.
He didn’t really take any responsibility.
Normally in these cases,
you would step down.
He is saying he’s not going to step down.
He’s going to continue.
He’s apologizes for the words.
He apologizes for the thing he said.
He’s going to do a better job.
I don’t believe it.
I think two weeks from now, he’s
going to be back telling his staff to die.
And then he’s actually
going to get in trouble again.
And then probably get fired.
A company executive was
arrested for dumping 50 kilograms
of P in bottles, which I don’t–
OK, yeah, this is what I don’t get.
So he had 37 plastic bottles.
And I was trying to work out
how many plastic bottles do
you need to make
50 kilos? So it’s 37.
So are they 500 millimeter
bottles or 750 milliliters?
One liter bottles?
I didn’t take the time to find out, because
we don’t know if they were all full.
So he said he used to dump
them in a park in the bushes
in a park for several years.
So for several years, he
was peeing into bottles,
carrying to a park, and then
throwing them in the bushes.
Years.
So someone else had to be
picking these up and throwing away.
Otherwise, there’d be this giant
mountain of P bottles in the park.
He recently decided that that was too
much trouble going all the way to the park.
So he started dumping them
around his own apartment.
This is, of course, the
poor criminals methodology.
If you’re going to commit a
crime, don’t be lazy about him.
Like, is there a crime?
Yes, littering, just the plastic bottles.
But I’m sure human excrement being included
in that he is also some other crime.
The thing is, he was in his
apartment, peeing in a bottle,
then carrying the bottle
outside and dumping the bottle,
carrying the bottle to the
park and dumping it in a bush.
That to me seems like more work
than getting up and going to the toilet.
So this was his statement.
I found it troublesome to go to the
bathroom at night, so I used bottles.
When I flushed the bottles
down, another pee down my toilet,
it gave off a bad smell, so
then I threw them away outside.
So what he’s saying is,
instead of getting up and walking
to the toilet to pee,
he would get up at
night, pee into a bottle,
put it on the ground.
Then, take the bottle to
the toilet and pour it in.
And he’s like, oh, that
smells bad, probably from the
bottle because of the
remaining pee in the bottle.
I don’t like that.
So instead of actually
dumping it in the toilet,
I’m going to take it
outside and throw it away.
He seems to escape the step
where he could have actually
still gotten up and gone
to the toilet and just
peed in the toilet, and
then slashes the toilet.
There would be no smell.
Like he seems to say that
the reason he was doing this
was because of the smell,
but if he wasn’t peeing
in the bottles in the
first, it’s just the logic.
The logic in his mind,
this makes perfect sense.
In my mind, I cannot
conceive of how this is easier
than just getting up
and going to the toilet.
Like, is he just not
even getting out of bed?
Is he rolling off to the side
and then peeing sort of half
and there will bottle and then
close it up and go to bed again?
I just don’t see how this system is easier.
Like, I get getting up at
night, going to the toilet sucks.
As you get older, maybe
you have to do it more often.
That also sucks.
Pying in a bottle, disposing of the
bottle just seems like more work to me.
That’s it.
If someone could explain
to me, I’d love to hear it.
This guy, he’s given his explanation.
His explanation does make any sense to me.
I think it would be easier to
just get up and go to the toilet.
So Takafumi Hoteiye.
He’s the founder of LiveDoor.
It was a big website in Japan for a while.
Then he lost it because
of securities fraud.
He decided to take a stand.
So this is obviously a very
famous business manager.
Pan, famous business men get listened
to because they’re very important.
They made a lot of money.
If you have a lot of money,
you’re very important.
That’s an important thing.
He decided to take a stand about
Japan using mosaics and porn.
And it’s like, at this point,
is that worth taking a stand?
Oh, Dave’s going to bed.
He’s going to take a pause
and let Dave go to bed.
There you go, buddy. Good stuff.
Mainly, I understand his logic.
So the last guy I didn’t get the logic.
Hoteiye, at least in this case,
I understand what he’s saying.
He’s saying, because the
Internet is basically open
to the world, it lets you
visit non-Japanese sites.
So if I’m in Japan, it’s very tight.
If I go to a non-Japanese
pornographic website
and look at the uncensored
pornography, that’s a crime.
I’m not supposed to do that.
But since I have the ability to
do that, as does everyone else.
And we’re not really being
monitored that closely.
Basically, anyone can go see
uncensored porn even if you live in Japan.
So he’s saying, for the
sake of Japan’s economy,
because all these people
are visiting overseas sites
and not Japanese pornographic
sites, all the taxes those companies pay.
Because they’re doing
advertising and doing
some kind of revenue
to keep those sites going.
They are paying taxes.
Of course, we all know corporations.
This is stuff we’re not honest.
Hoteiye certainly knows that
because he committed securities fraud.
But they are paying a
certain amount of taxes.
He’s saying those taxes are going to
other countries, and not our country.
And we have superior porn.
If you go back to an old
episode of Seamig Bee,
where we talked about the
porn hub breakdown of the year,
what we were talking about
was the most popular categories.
Japanese was always in the top three.
So he’s like, people love Japanese porn.
We’re not getting the
taxes from Japanese porn.
This is damaging the Japanese economy.
His statement was the
national wealth is bleeding.
Tax money is being drained away.
I’m being serious.
It’s always a problem when
you have to say I’m being serious.
If I’m being serious, you
should know I’m being serious.
I shouldn’t have to tell you.
If I had to tell you what
I’m being or feeling in
any moment, I’m probably
not doing a very good job.
But I guess it’s because he’s talking
about something that’s kind of ludicrous.
It’s a silly, funny topic.
The porn in Japan is covered in mosaics.
We shouldn’t do that for tax
purposes and make more money.
But he is actually serious.
Japan could be making
more money off their
pornographic output if
they took away the mosaics.
I’m being serious.
I mean, we’re all watching videos without
the mosaic anyways with the mosaic removed.
So he’s saying like everyone is watching,
even Japanese pornography, but they’re
watching it on other websites, international
websites, where there is no mosaic.
So why don’t we just take away
the mosaic and get that money?
Which I kind of understand.
Like I mean, logically
speaking, he is making sense.
Japan’s putting itself– it
is producing pornography.
It is very popular.
They are not making the
money they could be making off it.
Why not make the money off it?
Because that money would
stimulate part of the economy in Japan.
Stimulate.
Whenever you get to
talk about pornography
and get to use the word stimulate in a
non-related way, it’s always very satisfying.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
First arrest in Japan.
I do enjoy first arrest.
It’s actually like–
this is to me, weirdly.
One of the things I
take great pleasure in is
knowing when a first
has happened in Japan.
Because I followed the news very closely.
This first arrest in Japan was from installing
malicious code into shopping websites.
So it’s a kind of skimming.
So you know like on machines,
you put a bank machine,
and then people will try
to put a skimmer on it.
So when you put your
card in, it reads the card,
and then it keeps track
of your pin or whatever.
This is the same theory.
It’s web skimming.
So what they did is found a legitimate
shopping site installed code on the site.
Stop yapping.
I think you’re missing the
whole point of a podcast.
if you really want me to stop yapping.
I mean, quite legitimately, I think
you’ve come to the wrong place.
This is literally a news podcast.
What is wrong with you?
A podcast is just yapping.
Yeah, but then your first
message was stop yapping.
So why would I stop?
I think you’re, I think I’m doing the right
thing and you’re doing the wrong thing.
I think you’re in the wrong place.
If I’m being really, really honest,
I think maybe you’re confused
as to what’s going on here.
What’s not stopping me from
sending stop yapping message?
What’s not stopping me?
What’s not stopping me from not
sending a stop yapping message?
Well, nothing’s stopping you.
I mean, honestly, nothing.
You can send that message.
It just seems pointless because then
you’re just interrupting the podcast.
I mean, is that what you want?
So.
Yeah, I’m from America, boy.
I have the rights to give my America
and I have the right to give my opinion.
I am also from North America.
I’m Kenna and I have the right
to block you, which I just did.
Oh my God.
Look at that.
Look at how successful that was.
You came in, you tried to be disruptive.
I blocked you.
I could have banned you.
Now you don’t, I don’t want to ban you.
I want you now and I have the knowledge
that you can still see this stream.
But you can’t send stupid messages anymore.
How does that feel?
So I’m going to go back
and I’m going to actually
start this story again
without the interruption.
So transition sound
and then we’re back to it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]