Im not on tiktok and never have been, but I downloaded RedNote just to see what is up, and I am witnessing something truly amazing
The Chinese user community is giving the American tiktok refugees an overwhelmingly warm welcome, meanwhile the American users seem to have collectively agreed that not only will they not let the app be taken over with English and they will provide Mandarin subtitles for everything, they are LEARNING MANDARIN. Ive scrolled through so many videos of Americans offering greetings in Mandarin to try to acclimate to the new environment and be respectful, and speakers of both languages are posting lots of tutorials on language basics and internet slang in Mandarin
My God, there is an AMAZING outpouring of curiosity and delight among everyone to learn about each others cultures and daily lives. People are posting videos of landscapes, cities, towns, and natural areas in USA and China, posting recipes and traditional foods, vlogs of everyday life, and reaching out to find people with similar hobbies.
And it’s not just young people! There are loads of videos from middle-aged American guys who have come to post about fishing or motorcycles and are now happily chatting with Chinese users sharing the same interests using Google translate
One American guy who was like. in his 60’s had a comment on one of his videos that was like “Red Neck?” and he replied “Yes!” and I just about fucking lost it
Also the Chinese users love, and I mean LOVE, Luigi Mangione. He is apparently broadly adored in China. There is SO much fanart and SO many edits.
There are many threads initiating Chinese users to ask questions of American users about the USA, and vice versa, and everyone on both sides is clearing up a lot of misconceptions. Some of the questions I saw a lot from Chinese users were: “Is it true that American parents kick you out of the house as soon as you turn 18” (not often, but sometimes) “Do you all really wear shoes in bed” (NO!!! Apparently a lot of characters in American sitcoms are shown lying in bed with shoes on which I never noticed before!) and “are there really guns everywhere” (yes).
For the most part Chinese content creators seem just overwhelmed by the sudden influx of hundreds of followers that are super enthusiastic about what they’re doing. A lot of them have made posts about how initially they thought the uptick in follower count was some kind of error, or that there was some kind of joke or prank, but then they realized the interest and enthusiasm was genuine and now they’re welcoming all the newcomers.
I found several posts by Chinese users saying that this felt like a really profound historical moment, where these previously separated worlds are suddenly smashing together and suddenly there is freedom to learn about each other’s cultures and connect. One of them said something along the lines of “This is a 21st century Tower of Babel and even though I’m an atheist I hope God lets this tower stand.” OUGH MY HEART.
The app itself works a little bit like a video-based version of Pinterest. It’s not really my thing so I probably won’t be on there long term but it’s been amazing to see what’s happening.
I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.
It’s right-handed
I am right-handed
There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly
I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.
There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.
I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.
A homo erectus made it
Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.
Who were you
A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?
Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?
Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?
Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?
Who were you?
What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?
What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby’s head when a stranger holds them.
Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?
Or has it always been divine?
Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?
Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.
The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it’s done.
Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?
I’m not religious.
But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn’t partaking in the divine
I don’t know what is.
This is the axe
My knuckle rests exactly in the triangular plane just above the orange intrusion, and my thumb on the plane with the white patches.
How many hands held it just like that? How many generations was this passed down? Were you lost? or did you fall into disuse when technology improved?
Do you still desire to be held?
This was the axe that made me ugly cry in the museum. It was created half a million years ago by either Erectus or Heidelburgensis, and was passed down from person to person, long enough that somehow a neanderthal picked it up, and passed it down to their family.
It has now felt 3 generations of human species hands, it’s smooth but still sharp except where the very tip has been broken off, but it shows that this axe was loved and taken care of. And it is still being taken care of! It was used to teach archaic children to build, to carve meat, to break bones, and now it is being used to teach us about all those people who came before us and put their hands right where we put ours.
The fact that @gallusrostromegalus and I put our hands on the same place and felt the same rush of emotions only days apart is amazing, but its not new. People loved this axe, it belonged to their loved ones and it’s full of all those emotions. And if there’s anything to take away from humanity, new and old, it’s that we love a good rock.
Hello! You and I never met, but I feel like we’ve held hands now, the same way that we held hands with everyone else who’s held that axe, and I think that’s lovely 🙂
I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you’re feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.
Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.
He was really nice.
Yeah.
It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don’t feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?
You have to sit with the fact that you couldn’t, or probably couldn’t, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you’re feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow “I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]”, or his creations, becomes “I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty.”
You didn’t, loves, you didn’t.
We’re human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else’s life.
I didn’t work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn’t just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he’d see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.
Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy’s car. More than once.
When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. “You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!” “You’re so lucky nothing happened!”
No, that’s not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn’t a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.
Y’know that little warning bell that goes off, when you’re around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says “Something is off here, watch out”?
Yeah, that doesn’t ping if the preferred prey isn’t around.
That’s what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.
I had to learn that the alarm won’t go off when the hunter isn’t hunting. That it’s not the solid indicator I might’ve thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.
A lot of people point out that ‘people like that’ have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that’s true. Anyone who’s gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it’s not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn’t have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don’t know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.
I know this is getting off the topic, but it’s so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won’t recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you’re not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won’t go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn’t mean there’s never a false accusation, but face the fact that it’s usually real, and you don’t have enough information to say otherwise.
So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!
Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.
You don’t trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don’t actually think that’s a bad thing.
I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.
I don’t see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can’t know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They’ll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won’t know.
It’s not a failing. It’s just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can’t know, and how flawed our judgement always is.
Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.
I’ll make you a deal. Get a sick person who was denied medical care to write a letter to the CEO of their insurance disputing the denial by saying “My life matters. I have a family.”
See if the CEO then decides to pay for the medical care.
If they do, I’ll have sympathy for Brian Thompson.
But they’ve shown countless times that they don’t. Millions of people begged for their lives and were ignored so CEOs can increase their profits. If our lives mean nothing to them, then their lives mean nothing to me.
amhrancas 