This is all just a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the US government’s crackdown on TikTok and the relative ease with which users can simply regenerate a similar experience on another Chinese platform. Together, Chinese users and American newbies spontaneously engage in a burlesque mocking national security policy.
For TikTok users, the decision to ban TikTok specifically from US phones may seem silly. In recent years, lawmakers have blamed the app for everything from disrespecting “American values” to promoting pro-Palestinian content to American youth. As if American social media companies like Meta had never sought to extract and exploit sensitive data. As if American platforms like X would never exploit their algorithms to reward certain political ideas.
But of course, it is the nature of social media to give a sense of intimacy to an impersonal technological product, while its hidden costs (and threats) remain distant and unimaginable. It’s hard to be sure what’s really going on in the background.
If the TikTok ban succeeds and Americans want to stay in Xiaohongshu, they could come to dominate its culture, diluting its appeal and ruining its ambiance. But right now, they’re visitors in a foreign country, struggling to read the Mandarin instructions and navigate the app’s unfamiliar paths.
-The platform, which is owned by a Shanghai-based company called Xingyin Information Technology, is lit up with a dizzying feeling of an exchange program. On Wednesday, I encountered a little boy in a fuzzy pink sweater explaining (and modeling) a rack of traditional Chinese clothing, and a brother in a sweatshirt warning us not to show our butts or say anything racist, and an adorable influencer who posted a video responding to “TikTok refugee comments,” most of which attempted to flirt with him. (He was asked how to say “dad” in Mandarin.) The cat meme tax is a nice touch, a signal that RedNote users are eager to communicate with Americans through our old common Internet language.
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