It’s an old topic, but recently ONO has also posted two articles in his blog “Mobius”.The Boring Chinese Blogosphereand theAcknowledgement after reading ‘Mr. Moebius and his readers’” that resonates a lot.
Some interesting posts always pique my interest in wanting to discuss them, and accidentally often make my replies mega-long, even approaching the length of the blogger’s post. For example, in the comments of the post “The Boring Chinese Blogosphere”, I briefly described some of my views on blogging:
My Blogas far as I’m concerned, is a space that avoids censorship. Compared to mainstream social platforms in China, blogs allow me to express my views more freely, especially on sensitive topics that are easily censored or blocked. In addition, independent blogs are more suitable for storing longer articles, and it has become a long-term platform for my personal creativity and accumulation of ideas. In the past, before SNS platforms became popular and censorship was lax, I posted for several years on several in-country third-party blogging platforms, all of which have now been reduced to nothingness.
In contrast, domestic SNS platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu are full of浮躁和entertainmentof content. While these platforms may seembrighten up、interestinglybut in reality they are mostlyLack of depth. The platform is full of censored quote wars, mindless name-calling, and even low-quality content that desperately tries to create a topic in order to attract eyeballs. Thoughtful and in-depth discussions are often marginalized or deleted due to opposition from certain extreme groups. This is why I often hear people refer to these platforms as “cesspools” or “public toilets”. As social media platforms in China increasingly censor information and label users, it’s harder for people to have free and rational discussions on them, and easier for them to get caught up in biases and polarized disagreements. Many people also have the habit of looking at each other’s IP affiliation to label each other with geographical stereotypes before arguing, and instead of discussing the matter on its own merits, they first label their stance from their place of residence.
I have tried to post some of my personal opinions on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, but most of the time instead of constructive feedback, I get endless name-calling. Because these platforms are门槛低, the content can be casually attacked by a variety of low-quality, poorly-recognized people whose rebuttals are often full of prejudice and malice. In the end, the discussion turns into a meaningless argument, and I often feel extremely tired from the information harassment, and eventually I can only delete the article to avoid unnecessary trouble.
For me, social platforms like Weibo and Xiaohongshu are at best time and energy consuming and do not lead to a real exchange of ideas. Therefore, I prefer to post articles to offshore SNSs, or even avoid posting any content on these inbound platforms altogether. While this practice limits immediate interaction, it at least avoids pointless fights and low-quality feedback.
It’s true that many people prefer “interesting” content, while others prefer “interesting” content.“Fun” is often closely associated with entertainment and superficiality.The content is often “boring” for most people. In-depth content often seems “boring” to most people. With today’s big data pushes, people are often stuck withinformation cocoonInstead, they are exposed only to their own preferred content, far from the original, broader reading experience. The contradiction between “fun” and “depth” often makes the creation of real ideas seem lonely and cold.
Blog as a platform is not only a place to express oneself, it also carries the accumulation of certain thoughts and ideas. Although it is less interactive, it at least gives creators more freedom and space to express voices that would not exist on a frenetic platform. Although this kind of creation is often lagging behind, and even considered “boring”, it is still a place where you can avoid the information cocoon and pursue the depth of thought.
From my point of view, I don’t run away from the “traffic vs. content” scrutiny. Most of the traffic to my blog comes from offshore search engines, and many of the articles do help different groups of people. I’m not afraid of traffic, it’s the malicious comments from unrelated people that I reject. I don’t want a topic to be swayed by low-quality, mindless arguments that become full of bad odors, that’s all. In my blog, I have control over the comment section and can delete comments that are pointless and even personal attacks (which I cleaned up a long time ago by attacking me). I don’t want to be disturbed by these disgusting comments every time I open my blog.
Some of the comments may be too “arbitrary” or “extreme”, but they are indeed my subjective feelings. For example, some sexual minority topics, cultural identity, awareness, personal stance, etc., if you are not careful, you will violate the platform’s own censorship, the light is to limit the flow, the heavy is to block the number. The funny thing is, some time ago in the national service in the light of the encounter and friends chat, when I spit out the gift package is too expensive, my friend rushed to say that do not mention the word “capital” in the game, otherwise it will be banned by the game, said that he himself is the other day inadvertently mentioned once, was banned for a day.
When ONO mentioned “whether or not to close blog comments” and “whether or not there has been a situation of ‘bad money driving out good money’ in the Chinese blogosphere”, I replied:
For me, when browsing other people’s blogs, the diversity of comments under the blogger’s point of view is very interesting to see different voices. But if comments are turned off and all discussion is directed to TG, it may somewhat diminish the fun that comes with blogging. My own blog has adopted a system of moderation for all comments, which ensures as much as possible that a wide range of remarks are made, and also removes meaningless personal attacks, emotional accusations, and purely advertorial content, etc., in an effort to keep the discussion rationally focused on the subject matter itself.
In Chinese blogs, technical content and water diary content account for a very large proportion indeed. Technical content, although it can produce a large number of words in a short period of time, but the audience is very narrow. Water diary content, record personal daily life, but most of the depth is too low, the word count is small, and the personal feelings contained in the content are almost very little. There is indeed a focus on quantity rather than quality.
Another interesting thing I’ve observed is that whenever articles are written a little deeper, the comments produce two things: a huge drop in the number of comments, and an increase in the number of people who respond that they can’t read or comment without reading the content. And writing articles that are shallow boosts the number of comments a great deal. As you can see, there are not a few fickle people among the blogging population.
Just expressing my subjective feelings here.No need to be in the right place.. A lot of technical blogs, although the audience is very narrow, but the depth is very deep, the whole text is dry, these big brother’s technology is very worthy of recognition. And diary blogs, there are a lot of bloggers, not only recorded their daily life, from which you can also see their life in the delicate emotions, or on the daily life of thinking and reflection, encountered such a diary, I always can not help but want to comment a few words.
When I record my life, there are many trivial things that I am generally not willing to write out one by one in the blog, after all, for others it is “a big thing”, for me to write out all of them feel a little wordy. For small surprises or joys in life, I choose to share them in bits and pieces through SNS-type platforms, after all, that’s what these platforms are for. But there are times when I may save up a lot of trivial things and then string them together through a single blog post, which may have something in common, or maybe it’s something that happened to me centrally over a period of time. It’s not like some bloggers who write about their daily lives almost every day, or even have dates as blog titles (laughs).
In the first two years I have tried to write some deeper articles, especially biased academic a little bit, found that almost no one commented on it, probably not many people read it, and then deleted it, and published it on other platforms instead, which is why some of the articles will be 404 reasons. After counting the number of platforms that publish my long articles on a daily basis, there are already three or four of them. Then later on here to retain the article, mostly in a more colloquial way to express. Although the retained articles have been as much as possible to express in layman’s terms, and gradually there are some people to comment, but there is still no lack of people who don’t read the content but only look at the title to comment on it, so I’m quite depressed. Finally, after thinking about it for a long time, I realized that it was not caused by me.
For me, communication is essential to blogging. Just because I’ve written that “blogging is about pleasing yourself” or “blogging is for you” doesn’t mean that communication isn’t necessary. As I responded to two of them in “Acknowledgements after reading Mr. Morbius and his readers”:
People’s motivations are never black and white diode, it is not necessarily that blogging is purely for oneself, or entirely for gaining attention or catering to others, people’s motivations are often multi-layered and complex. Take my own blog for example, in “with respect to“On the page, I wrote that the blog was originally created for myself to organize my thoughts, record my daily life, and express my understanding and analysis of certain things. The purpose of making the content public is not to cater to a certain group of people or to pursue traffic, but rather to resonate with people who have similar ideas as me, or to engage in a clash of ideas with people who hold different views. This is not only a process of sharing, but also a process of sifting and filtering, so that I can make more like-minded friends and find those who can really make friends with me. If in the process of sharing, I become too pandering to others, caring too much about what others think, and performing as what others want me to be, then I am putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, I want to be seen, but I want people to see me ‘as I really am’, so some of my writing will be revealing and poignant, I’ll criticize when I want to, and reflect when I want to, and that’s what I’ve always emphasized. Whether it’s the sunny side or the dark side, I show it, and that’s who I am. That’s why the subtitle of my blog is “Here you can see a real me, and I’ll write everything about me here”. I’ve been blogging for more than a decade and I’ve had enough of pandering to other people’s blogs. Anyone can do this kind of thing, but there aren’t too many people who are sincere about what’s in their heart. That’s why I’ve started a new blog for the same reason.
Regardless of the motivation for blogging, it’s important to stay true to your beginnings. For me, I can’t change myself and disguise myself just because I’m blogging, for the sake of traffic, and to cater to other people’s likes and dislikes. I love this response from ONO:
You made a really great point – “basking in the sun”. A lot of people are tired of living because they have to hide so much and are increasingly afraid of being too real. But many times, the scared, ashamed, vulnerable side of us basks in the sun, and no one else can hurt it much anymore. –ONO