Japanese Eyeball Licking (Oculolinctus) Can Be a Dangerous Hoax
August 7, 2013 1:25 AM   Subscribe

Japan Times journalist Mark Schreiber, exposes the Japanese eyeball licking story as the hoax that it was for the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. Sadly, none of the news sites that reported the story pulled their posts and only one site added an addendum after the fact.
posted by gen (20 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Is it any wonder that the distrust in media has hit new highs?
posted by gen at 1:25 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


I cannot confirm or deny that I did something like this a couple of times when young and intoxicated, but I can tell any interested parties that it feels obscenely intimate and also surprisingly natural.

A++ would lick again if not for the health risks.
posted by forgetful snow at 1:47 AM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've played a few gigs at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan! The place is a trip, full of salty old school journalists who've spent decades in the trenches of Asia, covering this war, that economic bubble, this political scandal, that economic downturn... long term expats who've seen it all and want you to know it. It's a hoot.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:50 AM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


Well, I should *hope* they didn't pull their posts. Editing the past is the fastest route to a memory hole.

Not posting corrections is stupid, though.
posted by DU at 2:40 AM on August 7, 2013 [2 favorites]


When I first heard this "story" via Facebook and other channels, I just shook my head in disgust. It's stuff like this and just about every "crazy Japan" story that just makes me really pissed off at... well, the Western world in general, really.

There is much, much more to Japan than (fake) stories about kids licking each others' eyeballs. It's a shame it hardly ever gets reported.
posted by armage at 3:32 AM on August 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Thanks for making the phrase "eyeball licking" first thing I saw this morning. Now I have to quit my job and spend the rest of my life huddled in a corner, sobbing.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:35 AM on August 7, 2013 [10 favorites]


Wait, have I been doing eyeball vodka shots wrong all this time?
posted by Mezentian at 3:59 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


When I was a teenager, I had a book called The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. The entry for oculolinctus, with its weirdly spare little line drawing of the act, was the go-to page when trying to impress/repel/freak people out.
posted by Ennis Tennyone at 4:22 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


heh, about 2 weeks ago, my boyfriend told me about this new fad that the kids were doing that was so gross - eyeball licking! Naturally the first thing I did in response was to lick his eyeball. Now I'll have to tell him it was all a hoax.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:28 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Please debunk the bagel forehead "trend" horseshit next, please.

I dunno why, but when I see this shit, which is common in American media in all shapes sizes and colors, being applied to Japan, it pisses me off more than other examples. And it IS common. I remember when I was studying journalism, and we had a guest speaker from the NYT tell us about how people would "frontpage" a story by taking an otherwise banal and boring topic and pretending that it was/presenting it as a "trend," which for some reason, magically meant the editors would consider it for the front page, and not just some buried section of the Sunday edition.
posted by GoingToShopping at 4:33 AM on August 7, 2013 [3 favorites]


Some enterprising reporter should write a story about a "trend" involving newspapers printing the truth.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:52 AM on August 7, 2013 [8 favorites]


It's stuff like this and just about every "crazy Japan" story that just makes me really pissed off at...

True. There are some crazy things, but to just focus on things, that are usually quite the exception rather than the rule, gets tiring. I watch a lot of Japanese television online, to help with my terrible Japanese, and while i do come across the odd show at times (the one with the woman cosplaying as Asuka from Evangelion around Europe, and the idol show that was borderline soft core) the vast majority are travel shows where people go and eat different things all over Japan and elsewhere. It would be like if other countries used Aqua Teen Hunger Force as an example of our cartoons.
posted by usagizero at 4:53 AM on August 7, 2013 [4 favorites]


Why haven't they debunked this yet? It perpetuates the stereotype of Japanese people enjoying noodles.
posted by orme at 5:14 AM on August 7, 2013


Oculolinctus.

Oculolinctus.

Oculolinctus....

HOW CAN ANYONE SEE THAT STORY AND NOT THINK "MAYBE I SHOULD CHECK THE SOURC-" oh, I give up.
posted by zarq at 5:21 AM on August 7, 2013


A fake? Hah!

I have actually licked someone's eyeball a couple of times in real life (and yes, it was for sexual purposes) so I didn't think it was too far-fetched that this had become a "thing" in Japan.

Compared to "bagelheads", which do actually exist whether or not it's a "trend", this seems sort of tame, the sort of thing you'd come up with during experimentation.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:18 AM on August 7, 2013


I saw this float up somewhere a couple of weeks ago and immediately thought "booo, faaake" and I didn't even have to sniff out the source!

(But to be fair, usagizero, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a GREAT albeit Dadaist and off-putting example of American cartoons)
posted by Mooseli at 9:28 AM on August 7, 2013


How do we know the debunking isn't all just made up?! HUH?! WHERE DOES IT END?!!
posted by nerdler at 9:45 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


A ridiculous and over-the-top story about Japan being weird turned out to be FAKE? Perish the VERY THOUGHT
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:20 PM on August 7, 2013


They should have seen it coming, but I guess there was something in their eyes.
posted by 23 at 2:46 AM on August 8, 2013


well, I told him it was a hoax, he was not impressed. I suspect that I will be in for some revenge-lickery.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:24 AM on August 8, 2013


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