"The Reputation Economic Society: We are witnessing the turning point of the world" is a book published by Diamond Inc. in 2011, written by Toji Okada, the first CEO of the anime and game production company Gainax. After releasing classic animes such as "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise" and "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water," Okada has been giving lectures and writing and speaking engagements.
This book, written more than 10 years ago, is often spoken of online as a "prophecy." The book is based on his debut work, "Our Brainwashed Society," published by Asahi Shimbun Publishing in 1995. In other words, the content that people are surprised by was thought of nearly 30 years ago. What was the future prediction that was spoken of 30 years ago?
The unfamiliar term “reputation economic society” is a term coined by Okada. It means “a society in which ‘reputation’ and ‘influence’ are exchanged.” People who have influenced our values and behavior by providing good information are given “reputation.” This book talks about the coming of a society in which this exchange will exceed monetary value.
▶ "The Reputation Economic Society: Digital Edition Plus" by Okada Toshio/FREEex. Published by Rocket Inc.
1. Judging others based on ones values.
2. People who share values form groups.
3. Coordinating multiple values within an individual.
▶ Okada Toshio FREEex. Evaluation Economy Society: Digital Edition Plus. Rocket Inc. Kindle Edition
It is now commonplace for companies to pay young people and influencers who are eager to get “likes” on social media, and as of 2024, we have already entered an era of what could be called “high reputation and low currency.” However, few people could have predicted this situation in 2011, the dawn of social media.
Okada consistently states in this book that the younger generation will soon no longer value the value of money, and will “value their own senses and hobbies as the greatest value.” They have no interest in promotion or luxury, and their attitude toward work is dry. But how do we get young employees to work who are extremely passionate about their hobbies? Surely there must be a certain number of middle managers who are scratching their heads right now? Where on earth did this prediction come from?
When the geocentric theory was mainstream, astronomers conducted research based on the geocentric theory. However, when a planet was discovered whose movements could not be explained by the geocentric theory, various new and unusual theories were born in an attempt to solve the mystery. If a research that could be applied to solve the problem, such as the heliocentric theory, happened to appear among them, people's research gradually shifted to the heliocentric theory, and eventually the geocentric theory, which was the conventional theory, was forgotten and the heliocentric theory became the mainstream in society.
The paradigm theory proposed by philosopher and science historian Thomas Kuhn in 1962 caused a sensation around the world. Today, the term "paradigm shift" has come to mean a dramatic change in the values of society as a whole, going beyond its original meaning. In this book, the present is described as the third paradigm shift, following the "agricultural revolution" and the "industrial revolution." The change was caused by "information," that is, the Internet.
The happiness brought about by the mass production and mass consumption society created by the development of science and technology has gradually begun to show people its negative side. We have learned that industry is based on destroying the environment and exploiting the human rights of others. The mass media, which enlightened people about science, also know that they will make statements that deny science if they are paid.
In this way, "materialistic desires and money" have become something to be denied. Then the Internet became widespread. The Internet has allowed individuals to provide information in quantities that they cannot process, and individuals to become the ones who send out information. Seeing this situation, Okada predicted that "while people are moving around hecticly to achieve self-realization and self-expression, they do not consume things in the real world, and they try not to move around too much and consume resources," "It is not things that support wealth. It will become a more abstract field that does not make money," and "Humans will value people who provide them with "fun" and "interests" more than money, and will pay kickbacks according to that evaluation."
As has been talked about online, has a society or era really arrived where gaining evaluations exceeds monetary value? Let's take a look at some of the current online phenomena.
A while ago, in the "Baka-tatter uproar," where nuisance behavior that became a social problem was exposed on social media, people deliberately uploaded things that anyone could see were criminal acts to earn "likes" among themselves.
Everyone must have wondered, "Why would they go out of their way to upload information that would be unfavorable to them in a space that is seen by people all over the world?" and "Are they not thinking about future damages?" However, it seems understandable if you think that the motivation of "wanting to gain recognition from their friends" was given priority over everything else.
A prank uploaded to the internet to gain "likes" among friends. A third party desperately searching for the prank and trying to gain "likes" by causing a fire. I think that this uproar was caused by a combination of these movements. In recent years, videos in which amateurs imitate "dance videos" uploaded by influencers have become popular.
The songs used in dance videos have become global hits without being seen as record sales, and it is no longer uncommon to see Japanese songs that even Japanese people do not know at the top of the Billboard charts. What's interesting is that the people imitating it don't seem to be making any money from uploading it.
This would have been unthinkable in the early days of the internet, and would likely have been laughed off as having no originality, but this video is being used as an icon to recognize the people who influenced them, and to bring together like-minded people. The video is also elaborately edited, and the cost of getting "likes" is probably no longer something that can be measured in monetary value.
It has been several years since the term "oshikatsu" was coined to refer to the activity of supporting something or someone you like. In the main genres of anime and idols alone, the market is worth about 450 billion yen a year. It is easy to understand that money flows from concerts and merchandise purchases, but recently, "super chat" for streamers has become more common. This is what is known as "tipping." Some streamers earn over 10 million yen a month just from super chat.
Have you ever seen a stream where super chats are flying around? Even if you give a large amount of tipping, you don't get anything in return; you just get a "word of thanks" from the streamer and a comment of appreciation from fellow fans like "Nice one!".
To a generation that is based on a paradigm before the information revolution, this seems like a very unproductive act. However, those who are engaged in oshikatsu probably operate according to the value standard of "money < evaluation." High-paying streamers have their names at the top of the chat section. It is a voice of love for one's favorite idol, shouted within the community.
The movement known as "sacred site pilgrimage," which involves visiting the setting of a work in which one's favorite idol played an active role, cannot be ignored. In Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, where a certain anime work is set, there is a boom in people abandoning the city and relocating to the town where the characters in the work lived. Fans who relocate to the sacred site are highly regarded within the fan community, and before they knew it, the number of people relocating to Numazu City had surpassed that of Shizuoka City, the prefectural capital, to become the second largest in Shizuoka Prefecture. Abandoning economic benefits and deciding your life based on your love for your favorite idol has now become a commonplace movement.
Kizuna AI, Japan's first virtual talent, said that a virtual YouTuber (Vtuber) can remain as a character even if the person inside changes. However, it seems that this idea has collapsed.
The word "reincarnation" is sometimes whispered in the Vtuber community. When a streamer can no longer play a character for some reason, they start working with the graphics of another character and a new name. In fact, when the person inside changes, fans of the old character often become fans of the new character.
In "Reputation Economy Society," evaluations are said to be given to things and events that have an impact on one's feelings, such as "fun" or "like." If that is the case, the enjoyment that a Vtuber gives is much greater from the words and songs played during the stream than from the character's appearance.
Okada wrote that in the future, young people will not necessarily be positive about all of the things they are evaluated on, but will instead take what they like from a variety of evaluations to build their own originality, creating a patchwork-like self-formation. If Okada's prediction that self-formation will come from the patchwork of evaluations is correct, then surely VTuber agencies need to treat their talents with more care, not just character illustrations.
In this book, Okada states that in the future, it is possible for organizations to be created in which employees pay money to those who provide interesting value, and in fact, this book was produced by FREEex, an organization that developed from Okada's support group. Since the first edition, the rights to this book, including the copyright, have been owned by this organization.
Members of FREEex can participate in projects by paying Okada, the representative. Once members become members, they are permitted to use Okada's evaluations and copyrighted works to conduct business, and employees who work can receive rewards through unique tokens that are issued with the money paid to Okada as collateral.
This form of work is said to have become the prototype for the online salons run by entertainers Akihiro Nishino and Atsuhiko Nakata, but readers of this book should be familiar with it in a more familiar form. It is a DAO (decentralized organization) in blockchain. If you ask whether organizations like DAOs have taken root in the world today, you have to say that they have not yet.
However, anyone interested in Web 3.0 would hope that DAOs would become more widespread in the future. FREEex was founded in 2010. Online salons no longer have the momentum they once had. However, the fact that a DAO-like organization was established at least 14 years ago and still exists today is a source of hope for the coming Web 3.0 era.
Have you heard of the "witch hunts" that actually happened in Europe? Women who were accused of being witches were tortured and executed, and nearly 40,000 to 60,000 people were killed.
In Japan, witch hunts are often associated with the word "medieval," but it is not widely known that they actually reached their peak in the early modern period of the 1600s, when humans rejected superstitions and began to explore science. Research has now revealed that the witch hunt boom was due to one best-selling book.
The title of the book was "The Hammer of Witches." The author was a German Christian inquisitor named Heinrich Kramer. The Inquisition was a system to try people who held doctrines that did not conform to Christianity. Like witch hunts, it is a negative part of Europe's history that led to the deaths of many people. However, by the 17th century, the inhumane methods of the Inquisition were questioned and it was becoming more moderate.
However, Heinrich Kramer was unable to change his extreme methods, which included forcing confessions through torture, and he was eventually dismissed by the church as an inquisitor. "The Hammer of Witches" is thought to be a book written by Kramer, who was dissatisfied with this dismissal, to get his methods recognized, and it is now filled with unbearable misogynistic ideas.
In order to reinforce his ideas written in this book, Kramer forged the signatures of eight professors from the Theology Department of the University of Cologne and included them at the beginning of the book when it was published. Naturally, the University of Cologne denied this and corrected it, but the development of science and technology exceeded the correction.
With the invention of Gutenberg's movable type printing in the mid-15th century, books that had previously only been available to the very wealthy could now be mass-produced and purchased at low cost. The first publication to please the common people was the Bible. Because the Bible was in demand all over Europe, movable type printing presses spread all over the world, and printing costs steadily dropped. Then, the next thing in demand was content other than the Bible.
"Malleus Maleficarum" was published all over the world, riding on a major publishing boom. As mentioned above, because the content was extreme and violent, it was initially read as entertainment, but before long, some people began to take it seriously. Thus, in the early modern period, when science was just beginning to take root, the antiquated atrocity of witch hunts was carried out all over Europe.
As information spreads at an accelerated pace due to technological advances, it is inevitable that false information will be mixed in. "The Hammer of Witches" was unscientific and not worth reading, even considering the common sense of the time. However, witch hunts occurred and tens of thousands of women were killed. No matter how much we move into the age of science, people's hearts do not change so easily. There were many people who wanted to cling to pre-modern lifestyles and the existence of witches.
Now, with the advent of the Internet, information spreads on a scale incomparable to the 17th century. However, the speed at which human consciousness changes has not changed much since the 17th century. If that is the case, it is conceivable that witch-hunting ideas will spread more quickly and explosively. Have you noticed an increase in conspiracy-theorizing behavior when looking at social media recently?
The other day, an account named X, which has over 100,000 followers, made a statement that "the 9/11 terrorist attacks did not happen." There must have been billions of people around the world who saw the moment the second plane hit and the video of the building collapsing in real time, but the comment also received a considerable number of comments in support. This seems to show the frightening transitional period in which a rating economy and society are becoming more widespread. At least that account had received ratings on social media from nearly 100,000 people.
If this book is correct, there may not be many people who agree with it on a scale of 1 to 10, but there should be a certain percentage of people who agree with the conspiracy theory. It may be only 1%. However, an account that has 100,000 ratings means that there are 1,000 people who are influenced by conspiracy theories. As the Internet is spread all over the world, it actually has the power to make many more people think, "Since that person is saying it, it must be true."
When I think about it, conspiracy theories dominated the Internet during the Great East Japan Earthquake and the COVID-19 pandemic. X is equipped with a community note function to stop the acceleration of such conspiracy theories, but followers who believe that the statements of those who rate are absolute are caught up in the echo chamber phenomenon and have decided that the community note function itself is a conspiracy.
In the world of blockchain, it is not human emotion that examines the authenticity of statements, but rather smart contracts. Of course, there are still many shortcomings and it is a technology in the future. However, I think that in order to avoid repeating mistakes made by human emotions, the accuracy of judgments made by the system needs to be improved even more.
"Evaluation Economy Society" has now been expanded into "Evaluation Economy Society Digital Edition Plus" and can be read for free on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. When you feel that your own sensitivity has declined. When you feel that you cannot understand the trends happening in the world today, remember this book and pick it up.
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