March 10, 2024

Doomscrolling Chinese Twitter

24 minutes

Chinese Doomscroll, which faithfully records happenings from the wild west that is Weibo (China’s Twitter/X equivalent), won the ChinaTalk award for best China-focussed Substack on 2023. Today we have on the brain behind the newsletter: Molly, who’s been doomscrolling for us since early 2023. We discuss:

Why Weibo keeps Molly up at night;

Chinese elementary school kids’ academic prowess;

How social issues gain attention on the trending list;

Terrible bots;

And what makes microblogging uniquely compelling.

Outtro music is 演员 by Joker Xue 薛之谦: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuL5xaKZHM

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