In Japanese, there’s a saying 類は友を呼ぶ (rui wa tomo wo yobu) literally, “like attracts like.” It’s often shortened to ruitomo. English has a similar expression: Birds of a feather flock together.
Last month, a self-proclaimed loner YouTuber with a massive following made headlines for having an affair with a married man. A month later, she resurfaced on YouTube, and it was picked up by Yahoo News.
According to the report, she said, “Everyone I meet is fooling around. Everyone’s cheating.” Reading that, I couldn’t help but think: yep, ruitomo really is a thing. In my own circle, I don’t know a single person engaged in such behavior. About ten years ago, I did know someone who was having an affair, but our values clashed, so I chose to distance myself.
It made me wonder: perhaps we humans live inside smaller bubbles than we realize.
Gamers may recall the controversy around the game Stellar Blade, where the female protagonist’s physique was slammed by certain journalists as “unrealistic.” One article even claimed: “Eve from Stellar Blade is just bland. A doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman.”
To me, it’s clear the writer has barely encountered Asian women.
I myself am baby-faced, slender, and tall (5’7”). Whenever I’m out, I notice women with figures similar to mine—or even taller. So from my perspective, I cannot understand why anyone would call Eve’s physique “unrealistic.”
The truth is, people unconsciously build their own ruitomo bubbles. Anything outside feels alien, sometimes even threatening. And when they project the norms of their tiny bubble onto the entire world, that’s when we hear statements like “Everyone’s cheating” or “a doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman.”
On social media, echo chambers are often criticized. But at the root, all human societies are simply clusters of echo chambers. We gather with those who share similar opinions or lifestyles, and that gives us comfort and solidarity. Yet when it goes too far, these echo chambers harden into bubbles that reject the outside world.
Which is why we must acknowledge that echo chambers are the default state of human society. The key is to ask ourselves, “Which bubble am I in right now?” and to cultivate the flexibility to occasionally look outside.
That said, adopting the worldview of “Everyone’s cheating” is one bubble no one needs to step into.
