Chinas War on Female Delusion | Hacker News Reader

Chinas War on Female Delusion

mamathemagazine.com

66 pointstrojanalert16 comments

> I built one of China’s first multi-channel networks in 2014 with Thoughtful Media Group. We grew channels on China’s YouTube-equivalent platforms. I eventually struck gold with a video called “The Beauties of ChinaJoy 2014” (CJ2014: 最性感的视频), which went viral on a video platform called Youku in July of that year.

The irony of a company called "Thoughtful Media Group" making its mark on the world with...a 4 minute YouTube video of scantily-clad models at a gaming expo.

Reading the article, it seems that they didn't set out to do _only_ that, but it was one of the few things that worked.

Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. I don’t know where either road (America’s approach vs China’s) will lead. I do think suppressing desires in a society is likely to lead unhealthy outcomes, but perhaps there’s a balance.

Most countries are "suppressing the desires" for certain drugs and gambling, some even for sugary softdrinks. These don't necessarily lead to unhealthy outcomes. The easiest cases are where people simply do less of the bad thing without turning to crime, like with softdrinks. Engagement-bait minidramas seem to be such a case.

Name ONE western countries that is half as heavy handed as China in suppressing softdrinks or even gambling.

None, and I don't want Western countries to censor like China. There needs to be a considerable reluctance to censor media in order to avoid censorship of political (in the widest sense) speech.

But regulating trashy media with clearly negative effects has its advantages.

I am skeptical that suppressing the public display of unwanted (by the government) behavior has any positive effects on the prevalence of unwanted behavior, but I'm pretty sure it produces a better media environment, even if the censorship prevents or mangles some valuable works. While all media has the problem of hyper-optimizing for engagement and addictiveness with lots of copy-catting and sameness, forcing genre churn and giving some artificial incentive for creators to explore new ideas and different forms of expression has been successful IMO. Every crackdown seems to produce a new burst of attempts to find a new pattern, producing more varied stories. I'm don't know about the long-term sustainability of the model, but it seems to be working for now. Western/capitalist-country media, liberated from most censorship through internet distribution and increasing liberalization, has been stagnant and largely uninteresting for years, even as the number of media companies has increased rapidly.

The founding fathers realized that the government will externalize all their costs onto the population unless they are restricted.

The US of course famously disregards the first amendment every chance they can get . At first it seems logical stop people from airing their grievances/fantasies and less people will be inspired to commit crime. But this creates a kind of pollution of the mind and society that prevents change. A healthy society pays the social cost of crime. Whether that be faster response time, repairing infrastructure, diversifying assets what have you. It's no coincidence that younger generations increasingly accept political violence as normal as speech has been further restricted. The more invariants your system has the harder it is to change, it's in the name.

In China, there are first tier cities and second tier cities, and there is also the issue of migrant workers . The reason college students are so strongly opposed to the 'return to the countryside' movement is that they know once you go down, there is no way back up. And joining the Communist Party, and inheriting about half of the party's positions, is part of that reality. In that sense, it's not that women have a fantasy about marrying up, but rather that they are making a survival driven choice. Even within our East Asian cultural sphere, there has been a strong preference for sons due to the agricultural way of life. As a result, selective abortion has led to a significant shortage of women.

There is criticism that my country's K dramas encourage marrying up, but I don't think women's choices in the subtly stratified hierarchy of East Asian society are wrong. It's not a war; I see it as women simply surviving

> It prevents the mass whorification of women. Yet human nature and market forces will always ensure that whores exist.

I’d be more careful using the word “whore”, especially as a dude. To me it kinda feels like the “n-word” equivalent but for women. Purely hurtful and meant to denigrate. Even more so in this context. Like there is not even a similarly hateful term I know for a highly sexual or “slutty” male. Hypersexual behaviour is something the society seems to have a problem only when it’s women. Why contribute to this clearly exist sentiment? Let people live and have fun and even make money off of it if they are not hurting anybody

anybody can be a whore, conflating whoreness with femininity is probably a you issue not a societal issue. 'manwhore' is an extant, commonly used male specific term for 'promiscuous human', implying to me that there is a portion of society that don't ascribe negativity solely to female promiscuity. personally I'd be happy to use the term 'promiscuous human' if it didnt have 6x as many syllables as 'whore'. I also don't understand why it is hateful to label somebody's behaviour - am I meant to ignore that partner count and divorce rate are correlated, just so that a small subset of humans can go behave like animals instead of behaving normally? do you think that kids of broken families are happy their mothers and fathers slept around as youths and weren't taught commitment?

That part hurt a bit, but i think it highlights the point of the author: do you want something extremely distasteful(even in words) but real or you would rather go for forced harmony?

I would say that word is so offensive that it forced me to think whether I am a fascist for wanting it to be toned down, just like the CCP. Articles like this are a good check on personal beliefs. From that point of view the article is really well written.

Whoever wrote this, I find them incredibly unsympathetic.

Some people have the desire to gamble their lives away, to take on extreme amounts of debt and then die in despair.

Same goes for alcoholism.

Same goes for ponzi schemes.

We don't ban alcohol because bans of it drive organized crime.

On media consumption apps the west blocks children from seeing porn, adults from seeing snuff films, adults from seeing how to make a bomb.

I don't think I believe anyone who claims to stand on these things on principle unless they are also pro right to repair and pro open source. I won't believe you are advocating for freedom if you only ever argue for exploitative extraction of resources via preying on human frailty.

And personally I think we should ban skinners box algorithms from being the default on any app.

We explicitly make apps to be as lazy as possible to use by people and low IQ people or obsessive people with poor impulse control and to extract as much of their money and attention as possible, and behind closed door and in full view tech is very explicit about this.

Separately, some people are destructive idiot or do idiot things, they do actual damage to our society and make everyone have less resources, breaking windows, burning money, living in "maladaptive fantasy", etc.

These types of very simple arguments about human nature and freedom as a virtue coming from someone openly bragging about running exploits against human nature seems like a wolf bemoaning the sheep dog.

I feel like America does this but more so with intellect.

> An American Expat Describes the CCP’s Crackdown on Microdramas

American Expat == it's not neutral

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