Hi, I am Xiangning Li, because of the hard Chinese name pronunciation, call me Tina if you like. I am a transfer student from China, major in Information Science in CALS at my junior year. I just arrived America about 10 days ago, and found Cornell really a beatuiful, clean and big place. Sometimes when people speak fast(I mean English), I can't quite catch it. And sometimes, when the professor says something funny and students laugh, I feel a little embarrassed cause I am not quite sure what he is talking about. Living in a foreign country, the beginning may be like this..........Personally I like music pretty much , all kinds, and play a little piano and drum set.
Causes i am not familiar with the popular America websites, so i may talk about something that shows on the Chinese websites. From last year there emerged a popular "Lotus Sister". Named Lotus, she is not famous for some flowers. This woman makes up herself very exaggerately and strangely and then puts her own photos, videos and even some short dramas onto the websites. Through the high clicks ratio, this "Lotus Sister " quickly became famous and earned much money. The following links can lead you to some of the pictureshttp://v35.blog.sina.com.cn/album/4b67409605000hgh
http://v35.blog.sina.com.cn/album/4b67409605000hmp or you can just copy 芙蓉姐姐 and search it in your Google.
It is said the moment Lotus Sister' blog published on Sina, the click ratio overran 100,000. And she soon became a famous all around China, and keeps the champion of web clicking for a long time. Nearly all the people say "Oh, my god, why would someone behave like this?""Odd"" awkward" "Abnormal"and all kinds of bad words are used to describe this crazy woman. But meanwhile, we keep seeing the photos, we keep watching the videos, and everytime we know there are new pictures and videos of "Lotus Sister", we wait no time to browse the webpage to find them. Then we say"Oh , my god, why would someone behave like this?" "Odd" "Awkward" "Abnormal"again. The click ratio keeps rising. More and more media are trying every methods to interview Lotus Sister. They let her make her "typical " post and dance her "typical" dance to win the audience rating.
Most people ask "What self-respect means to her?" At the same time, there emerges a new comment. Some people say she just does what she wants to behave and she does what we else are not dare to do. These people praise her for her braveness and trueness in this untruthful world. This may be ture, but I am afraid I can not easily agree with it.......
Soon after "Lotus Sister", a "Big Mouth " true name as Zude Song suddenly had his moment. He is famous not only for his ugly face but for he criticizes the dark sides of the society openly to the media. But I think this is more like a hype than a innovation seed.
There may be some psycology questions in it. Like, why we look down upon this behavior, but are eager even wait to see? Or like, is it ture that we conspue this action just because we are not dare to act like that? Or , is it ture that in our deepest heart , we want to do what they do, to express ourselves in a more free way? I am a little confused......
If you understand me and not tired yet...I may want to say something other things.
Sometime before, I knew I would go to USA with another person. Before we met in person, we send short messages(Is it called TXT message here?). You know, in China , sending short messages is really very very cheap. We send messages for a long time, and felt just like very good friends(at least I think so). Then we met. What I found was we actually had nothing to talk...and from then on, we haven't contacted each other for a long time. The feeling is just like, we may add friends in the facebook , sometimes you may chat with a so-called friend on Facebook , but when you meet on the street, you may even not be able to recongnize each other. I think about this kind of questions many times......Sometimes, we act as what we want to be on the internet, especially to strangers, for others can't see us. But when the opacity is broken, and the face is clear, every kind if pretendence is over. We may either become friends without mask or we are not friends any more. Things like this happen, although not often.
Internet is an intersting place to explore, when psycology is brought in, it becomes even more interesting ,more complex and more mysterious.
Tired of programming, browsing, a little thinking of what people think may be halpful.....^~^
3 comments:
I commented before without knowing the guidelines... let me try again.
The phenomenon of the Lotus Sister may very well be a cultural thing. She probably wouldn't be that much of a big deal if this happened in America. Women who post their pictures online? Quite a handful of them here...
It's interesting to explore how Internet develops and shapes differently due to cultural influences. How different languages are shortened differently on the keyboard. Basically how different countries treat the Internet explosion differently.
So perhaps it would have helped if you can compare the two different environments and identify the factors uniquely in China that lead to the Lotus Sister.
I get the feeling the Internet is coming a bit too fast too hard on the Chinese. The legal system is trying to catch up with new copyright and privacy laws, and a lot of young people still think of Internet as this big, wonderful, free place completely devoid of restraints and danger. Anonymity definitely has a lot of do with it. And since the Chinese are a more inhibited people than the Americans, the Chinese loses more of their inhibition on the web.
May be you are right, it is some cultural thing...but i m not quite sure what people will react if this thing happens in America...may be different,but may be the same...
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