Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Anti-Shyness DVD Trains Japanese Geeks to Lock Eyes

Only in Japan would you find a DVD designed to help nerds practice making eye contact with other humans.
"I think the Japanese are shy people compare to Americans," says Yosuke Ito, creator of Miterudake (literally, "just looking"). "I'm not 100 percent sure you can overcome shyness with this DVD but I hope it helps somehow."
His disc features 50 people standing in front of a blank white background. They're all women, which Ito swears is just a coincidence. They stare into the camera and occasionally say stuff like "I want to leave" or "That's enough."
There are elderly ladies, pretty girls, foreign women, children and even twins to gaze at. The idea is that once geeks build up confidence by making eye contact with the 2-D ladies on the DVD, they can then venture into the meatspace world.


Try to look this person in the eyes for a full minute.
Tip: when interacting with a fellow human being in the real world, it is considered rude to break eye contact in order to look at other physical attributes.