What is happening:
Due to massive grassroots backlash to the looming TikTok ban in the US, millions of users are currently creating accounts on Xiaohongshu aka “Little Red Book”. It is currently the top trending app in the Apple App Store.
Why it is special:
This is truly an unprecedented development. Never have regular American and Chinese netizens had the ability to mingle so freely. Even more unprecedented is the fact that most of this early conversation will be regarding backlash to the US itself. This presents us with an opportunity to appeal to a large swath of (mostly young) Americans at the same time.
What the goal is:
We have recently had several chats on this site about how to actually turn posting/effortposting into something positive. Several ideas have been floated regarding Agitprop and how to encourage the creation of engaging content, and many people agreed on the idea of Agitprop contests. That is what we will be trying to do here for the first time ever.
The contest/rules are quite loose here and definitely open to change, so feel free to give your input:
‼️In an effort to help shepard the rapidly growing disgruntled and pliable new English speaking audience on Xiaohongshu, the leftist post or comment for English speakers on Xiaohongshu that garners the most interactions before January 19th at 5PM GMT will be featured on c/agitprop.‼️
Simply submit by linking the post or comment in the replies of this post. Please try to include some kind of watermark that identifies it as a Hexbear user. Ideally if you can link back here we can foster a few new users as well. Good luck my fellow posters
As of now there are no submissions, so if you’d like to participate just comment a link to your post! Of course, feel free to reuse your own Hexbear posts, and if you want to use somebody else’s post reach out and ask permission first.
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It would be really funny if the TikTok ban because of sinophobia ends up causing being pro-China to become a mainstream opinion among young Americans, making neo-Red Scare propaganda more ineffective.
The patriot act did this, which is hilarious. Younger millennials and gen z never grew up expecting their data to have any privacy, so the “China is stealing your data” thing doesn’t really work on them. They also generally are saying “well what is China going to do with it anyway? I don’t care”
I remember it constantly being beaten in my head as a kid, and at school, them telling me “Anything you say on the Internet can be tracked to you. Potential future employers might see photos of you in a party before a job offer, and then revoke your offer, you might get fired for one small complaint about your employer, colleges might rescind your acceptance for it, and your friends and family will disown you!” Given that they put that whole panopticon on us, and how one small post can ruin our career, our education, and our relationships (even if it WAS a bit exaggerated), “Some foreign government in some country full of people you never have met and likely never will meet might have your data and do… something(?) with it” doesn’t really hold a whole lot of weight.
that is so funny. when I was growing up in the 90s, nobody was thinking about the internet like that. but we had the same story told to us.
sometimes it was some kind of “book” kept by the school. your “permanent record”. other times, it was just the memory of the teacher. I remember a teacher telling us that a former student of hers was trying to get some really prestigious job, and as part of a background check the potential employer came to ask her how was he like as an 11 year old. it was of course many years later so all she could remember was that he hit another kid once. so, sadly, he didn’t get the job.
I had thought that with the internet, you maybe couldn’t get such a stupid story by kids. like I always thought it probably wasn’t true but it was hard to be sure because I had no source of adult information that didn’t have a vested interest in keeping me in line. but I guess the internet didn’t help things.
it was of course many years later so all she could remember was that he hit another kid once. so, sadly, he didn’t get the job.
What a fucking snitch.
Idk would you really consider a teacher a snitch? to my mind (as a child) she is an authority figure who is structurally in opposition to one’s interests. not so much a snitch a class enemy. "snitch " is a term applied to an equal.
They also generally are saying “well what is China going to do with it anyway? I don’t care”
Legitimately what is China going to do with it? Beyond just selling it like every other tech company.
I highly doubt the PRC cares enough to keep track of random US citizens, but the US government definitely does. My data is safer in Chinese hands than American.
The only Americans who have any need to worry about Chinese espianoge are red-blooded imperialists, and they tell on themselves every time they act like this is some widespread public concern.
Also if China wanted, they could just buy it from meta or whoever. And really, does the PRC have any control over TikTok’s US data? Last I heard they had to give it all over to oracle or someone, but idk I can’t pay attention to all this shit
I’m sure they think their data is blackmail material, like Xi is going to call them up and tell them they have to be a spy for the PRC or they’ll tell their wife about their search history
I particularly love the “social credit score” bit.
So China built a panopticon to try to improve civility? Anerica built a panopticon to precision-price debt and insurance. Which is the better use of the resources and social compromises?
The amount of projection with the social credit score is amazing. In reality, the social credit systems were a unified public background checks for people and businesses. There was no score because that’s not useful. Neither is the score Americans see. Its just an abstraction so they can tell you how you’re doing without exposing the insane amount of data they have on you and how they analyze it.
😤
Right if given the choice between the Chinese or the US govt having my data, I will take China, thanks. The US gov will probably use it to imprison me for thought crimes. The Chinese gov will just use it to market more treats to me on AliExpress.
And I like Chinese treats, what can I say?
well what is China going to do with it anyway? I don’t care
Truly though. Like, let’s set aside the fact that I personally trust the Chinese government waaaaay more than the US government. We’ll assume I’m an average American. I still trust China with my data more than the US for the simple fact that I don’t live in China. What can they do about it?
If the US doesn’t like what I’m posting they have the ability to send armed thugs to my door. China does not have that ability.
i thought some of them might be a little pissed thinking all these westerners are coming in colonizing their app, but every chinese comment i’ve seen has genuinely been so kind and welcoming lol
can you imagine how americans would react if chinese people suddenly started flooding most of their twitter or insta feed with chinese?
asking for help with their English homework lol this is actually so charming. Biden basically said go check out what’s on the other side of the firewall
mr Jinping, tear down this… you know… the thingI’m out of breath
Right I’m on my lunch break and I am fucking dying. That comment made my night.
Oh you don’t have to imagine, just look what happens in any video game if someone has Chinese in their name. I change my steam name a lot and when I had it as the kanji for an anime character I got a ton of lazy racism over voice chat from people just assuming I’m Chinese
There’s reasonable fear about TikTok culture changing the vibe and further consequences (USA banning xiaohongshu), but overall it seems very amicable
this was a very funny take on that but also why we need to encourage more interaction between Chinese and American Netizens
I remember my friend getting non-stop hate messages in video games only due to having Chinese words in the name and sometimes being banned wrongfully.
@[email protected] lol your username is more relevant than ever. I still remember asking you about it.
Comrade Little Red Book please participate in this
Great things are happening in Rednote
Ambulance is not free in mainland China, but (relatively speaking) cheap enough subject to regional differences. Average is probably 120-150 yuan for a 3km ride. Private hospitals can cost even higher because they only care about profits. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has had free ambulance service since the 1980s.
Police and firefighters are free though.
Obviously an ambulance shouldn’t really cost anything but fuck I’ll take $15 instead of $1500
It won’t bankrupt you like in America but spending 100 bucks is still a hole in the pocket unless you’re rich.
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120 yuan for a fast casual meal? What kind of fast casual meal are we talking about?
An average casual lunch is like 15-20 yuan, maybe a bit more expensive in some cities. Average Uber (Didi) fee is like 15-20 yuan for a few km. 150 yuan could probably get you a 5-course dinner in a restaurant already (per person).
Just because it converts to $16 doesn’t mean it’s $16 of purchasing power. It’s way, way more in China.
Hell, $50-$100 of USD equivalent purchasing power is still crazy cheap. That’s like one long Uber ride on a shitty night.
Yeah it’s not bad at all, but I’d probably want it to be a little cheaper because I imagine there’s gotta be a pretty big number of people for whom a $100USD emergency might ruin their month.
Something similar in Croatia. We kept it from good old never forgotten Yugoslavia.
Hell yeah
It’s like ¥120 for an ambulance in Wuhan, it’s a bloody outrage it is
The Yuan has the same symbol as the Yen?
Technically yen is 円 and yuan is 元 but they’re just different simplifications of the original traditional han character 圓
Yuan and Yen both use ¥ internationally and, fittingly, are both derived from the same original character
A good idea might be to focus on language learning as agitprop? Lots of people are going to use the app for a bit, get frustrated by not knowing how to read everything and leave.
Basic reading instruction to follow memes could help with that, as well as posting translated versions of popular memes.
I would love this because my anglo brain pan is limited to a single language
Don’t be too hard on yourself! Learning a language is very difficult. When I mentioned to my Chinese friends that I was trying to learn, they all universally told me to not get discouraged because it’s very different to what I’m used to. They experienced the same thing in reverse, basically.
so like you want to do “if it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking german now!” but backwards and for chinese?
very interested to see what happens here
No I mean providing support to people to learn
Can folks recommend some good creators or something. How do I find the good stuff.
I put in my interests and the first post was from someone named “free palestine” and then a bunch of Luigi edits
They have my attention
I tried it and mostly I just got a lot of videos of someone scritching their cat. Which is great I do want to see that but.
Which is great I do want to see that butt getting scritched.
Fixed.
Ooh I’ve got tons of those too
I’m also curious what you can find on Xiaohongshu, as someone that’s not really into traditional social media (unless you count Reddit or YouTube). Is there any educational or interesting topics discussed there?
You can manage your algorithm far more easily than TikTok or YouTube. You can actually add specific topics of interest to your content preferences and use sliders to tell the algorithm how heavily you want them weighted into your personalized theme.
All of this is located under “content preferences” though it isn’t yet available in English UI.
I follow a lot of art, fashion, DIY furniture, and vegan food posters. Might make a post if people are interested.
Would be cool!
Bumping this for the hexbear watermark for when I make shitpost memes on imgflip.
use this guy
The users on this app are really nice I posted a picture of my cat with no tags and I already got 2 comments
Hell yeah
Cats seem to be a cheat code
Americans do have to pay the cat tax.
The act to ban TikTok allows the President to designate any site as being a “threat” like TikTok, thus banning it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is next.
They’ll end up in Hexbear eventually, and hopefully that can mean they finally ban it in the US and all the American libs are gone.
I’ll just go to ml or the grad and continue to make inane comments here, Donald Trump can’t stop me from posting
just post with tor lol
lol, if that happens i will make the general megathread only in spanish
If it drives some traffic here then that’s great regardless
I’ve seen people note that videos they’ve tried to migrate from TikTok to Xiaohongshu have removed due to watermarks.
Do we know if a Hexbear watermark will get the content removed?
It’s also possible that those videos were removed for other reasons that the poster didn’t understand due to the moderation info being in Mandarin, or that they specifically don’t want watermarks from other social media but I thought it was worth mentioning.
That’s interesting. I’m unaware of this, but at the very least putting it in the description should work fine should we find that watermarks get removed.
why can’t you have watermarks?
Speculation: Rednote doesn’t want its users advertising for a competing social media app.
Actual reason: idk
This is actually so wholesome omg
“Little Red Book” is that a coincidence or no? 👀
No it isn’t
Eh, looking into it the Mao book was “红宝书” but the app is “小红书” (disclaimer I speak zero Mandarin)
Either way reactionary yank news WILL make the connection and it will be hilarious to watch
Comments by Chinese on the app are all saying that it is directly translated as Little Red Book. It’s just called RedNote in the western app stores to be more palatable I guess.
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The app is absolutely named after Mao’s little red book lol. But it’s not supposed to be disrespectful, more of an endearing reference I think
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It’s not really a shopping app. It’s like if Instagram had a section where you could shop. TikTok had one too
Link doesn’t work for me. But in Chinese culture allusions/references are used all the time, either openly or obliquely. The little red book isn’t seen as some sacred text among the general populace, but is something that was a cultural and social touchstone. Of course they wouldn’t invite trouble by saying it’s named after it, but such an obvious reference is very unlikely to be accidental. Revolutionary imagery and slogans are used all the time in commercial settings in China, often with a lightly humorous touch.
Already looking forward to the Congressional hearings
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It’s like if Mark Zuckerberg had called the Metaverse the Fountainhead. Actually, that is something he would do.
I was a little disappointed in the binary gender choice when creating an account. But at least it’s not owned by an American tech company.
You can skip it and select neither!
I missed that! I stand corrected, thank you.
Damn the rednote sms verification code isnt working for me
I cant believe xi would rather let in amerikkkan pigdogs then me 😔
Dengist revisionism has gone too far
It’s down for me too, I swapped phones recently and haven’t logged in since late November and now the SMS isn’t sending. I am literally in China. Smdh
It just worked for me a few minutes ago, maybe there’s intermittent server overloads happening.
Yes, servers have been overwhelmed with code requests for first time logins
If dabs would be okay with it, slowly uploading the entire collection would be cool. Or at least the best hits.
