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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

There are some theories posited by this youtuber [1] that suggest this has little to do with covid. I am curious what others here familiar with living in China think about this.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZHiE96tWY4 [video]

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laowhy86 has made a living for many years fearmongering the west about China. It's his entire channel. Same with SerpentZA and ADV China. I've watched a lot of their content and really can't take any of it at face value anymore.

Can you give us a quick summary for people who don't have 15 minutes to watch a video?

I didn’t watch. But from what a coworker tells me, China has an unemployment problem and in order to control unrest caused by it they are forcing everyone to stay inside.

I'm...a good deal more anti-China than the average person, but from what I've seen of that channel it doesn't seem very credible. Most of their takes seem correct on the broader level (e.g. yes, China in the next few decades is on very shaky ground for a host of complicated reasons, and decision making is slowly getting less sane), but the specifics seem maximally sensational/fearmongering. The only thing I like of him is some of the discussion of Chinese internet counterculture, which is genuinely fascinating stuff (e.g. the levels of irony, euphemism, and meta-references people use to talk about banned topics and get around censorship is unreal).

It was weird how laowhy86 and Serpentza (a vlogger he collaborates with) transitioned, seemingly on a dime, from trashy "Are you a white guy who wants to date in China?" videos to "Evil CCP is coming for your kittens" videos.

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