There's always a lot on my mind, being stuck in between all these languages and culture and all. I've had this habit I can just sit there and type mindlessly, and try to channel some of the commotion up there into reality. I have a knack for pure gab without obvious aim, and it's reflected in my writing. Truth is, most of the things are unreadable. And for myself it ends up being a pure release that serves as temporary house cleaning so I can get on with new daydreams.
I became a father last year. It always puzzled me, in between my son's wandering eyes and intense stares, what to pass on to him as knowledge and truth. I'm safe for now, since he commands no more than 5-10 words, drawing from a potpourri of Russian, English and Chinese. It forces me to gather my thoughts regularly when encountering his blank countenance, nothingness that begets infinite departures and possibilities.
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The contemporary internet, in its 2020s iteration, is not one of people. It deals more with personas, or as the Chinese netizen more precisely captured, 人设 - more akin to an "on-screen personality." At this stage of my life, I've been lucky by my own consideration that I didn't have to live wholly "outside" of myself, relying on projecting a facade to derive my personal dignity or for that matter, income.
To interpret this phenomenon is almost second nature for the American side of my sensibility. In a culture deems any historical thinking as heresy and exists in a perpetual present, it's easy to imagine that the world is a primordial soup of individual as atoms. They either spontaneously combust, or come into collision Brownian motion like, creating sparks and bursting into stardom, then fade away as quickly as they had begun. In between handful of swipe-ups per minute, few has the time to consider behind the persona that contributed to the viewers temporary dopamine release, came from a family and society, traversed through trials and tribulation, and did much much more before one day they flipped on the phone camera and started broadcasting.
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I always questioned what value I could contribute as another mere mortal tossing one more gauntlet into the internet arena. I've had some mild success on Twitter, where I was one of the earliest entrants in an emerging tech space. Because I was active in the real life, I gained followers who were wealthy venture capitalists, later on that provided enough social proof for my account to rise through the ranks. Sadly, there's no more positive thing that I could extract out of my good conscience to say about this space. I took my windfall and went anonymous. And as the Chinese saying goes: person gone, tea cold.
In a time not too dissimilar from where I sit now, in terms of season and paucity of daylight, I ventured onto Chinese social media Xiaohongshu. Without much thinking, I shared a post about my experience of getting a rather niche entrepreneur visa, and quickly the algorithm connected me with eager individuals, who are no doubt from rather elite situations in China, wanting to do the same. Little did I know that the algorithm already assigned me a persona, all I had to do was to go through the rote action of unlocking what's already in me. Thereafter every single resume/CV dump of my own growth and job experience, received countless positive reinforcement of likes and follower growth. Out of the pure lack of direction in my life at the moment besides collecting passive income without joy, I reallocated parts of my day to come up with a new brain dump. When spring came, my now-wife and I were gallivanting around Northern Europe, so a lot of car rides and ferry crossings were spent, coming up with drivel to feed into the growth of my XHS account.
It already became obvious to me that I was writing to feed into a persona, whereas any candid revelation of my own reflections (i.e. anything negative or too contemplative) received no approval from the algorithm. Not to say it doesn't permit controversy - in fact, it thrives on it. As my account growth petered out around 5000 followers, I noticed it started bringing a different cohort of readers, who were not the usual tier-1 Chinese city white-collar or elite international school females. The "real" Chinese and the "real" diaspora rushed in. Thereafter users with visibly better income and education came to scoff and wag fingers. Sentiment shifted from one of respect and curiosity, to hostility and judgment. Not that I couldn't handle the pressure, I realized this was getting further away from what I wanted to achieve.
I think under the constraint of 1000 Chinese characters, it's easy to confound reflection with mere ostentation. At least that's what all my posts seemed like, because my persona was one of easy sailing from immigrant hardship to elite school and jobs and early financial release, peppered with curious adventures of romance and serendipity along the way. Not having posted for almost a year, I would often find my intrusive thoughts during idle moments snicker at the internet clown that I had created.
It simply just didn't vibe correctly. Because of an episode early in my college years, I adopted a lowkey if not completely conceal type of orientation towards my earned privileges. I simply look down on people who would wear any sort of merchandise with a college mark on the front, besides doing it on campus (though tautological in purpose). The place where I shaped my education shaped my internal development, and I'd rather be seen for what I had refined within myself, versus any sort of exterior gilding or bedazzling, that's recognized by societal heuristics.
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As one gets older, once what was just a mere itch morphs into a burning desire to proselytize and pass something on. Seeing my son gradual rise from lying on soft mattress to straight up on two feet, was something I ever imagined to be so gratifying. Yet besides ushering a new soul to weather the possibilities of life well, it also behooves me to give sense and do justice to the vicissitude that I had personally endured.
So at nearing 34, one has not rightfully earned the right to write an autobiography. My only accomplishment so far was that I fulfilled people's impression of being a decent teenager other Chinese parents would be envious of. Afterwards when I was all on my own, I tried many things that are considered untraditional. I then ventured into a career that was grey in morality and considered extremely risky a decade ago. I bowed out very early, only 2-3 years into it and washed my hands clean out of what could be extremely valuable (lucrative) human connections someone born in my background could never have dreamt of.
These line items may pass a litmus test for a niche internet character, but rises nothing above to any sense of greatness. Thus any attempt at putting down this journey, to elevate it to greatness, requires a certain degree of delusion of grandeur, and deservedly should be scoffed at by anyone that comes to examine. If there'd been one constant in my life, it was that I had done most, if not all things, with a lot of heart. Before any of the other facades I had taken on took shape, I was at first an unbearably sensitive teeanger, though polar opposite from how I had grown in my toddler years. These were nuances that one must cut in writing social media posts, perhaps more fitting for a blog.
评论
pure drivel!
it is such