https://medium.com/@therealsexycybo...-jason-koebler-and-vice-magazine-3f4a32fda9b5
Vice is, in many circles (and in my opinion), seen as a pretty disgusting media outlet that peddles in poverty tourism. I don't think I've read or watched a single piece by them that couldn't have resulted in someone getting gulag'd or killed.
Naomi Wu is known as SexyCyborg(NSFW), a woman from Shenzhen known for her interesting takes on tech, cyberpunk, and probably more famously for her own personal style. She has received ire from different people and from all over the political spectrum. She has also spent time posting on both English and Chinese forums regarding gender and race issues in the mainland.
Vice ultimately took an opportunity to highlight Ms. Wu's work and instead used that opportunity to source racist and sexist 4chan and Reddit garbage conspiracies and put her in an incredibly compromising, and dangerous, position.
She's taking a queue from Sarah Jeong and hoping that an appeal to common decency at large will help.
Except that Sarah Jeong ended up siding with Vice and attempted to harass Ms. Wu further.
Ms. Wu rejects Sarah Jeong's nativism.
This article hits a nerve with me because:
a> I've been a fan of Naomi Wu's tech and social positions and how she pushes boundaries in a very conservative China
b> Vice is garbage
c> I'm a white dude who has been assaulted in areas of China because I'm married to a Chinese woman. My FiL is a Party member and it has caused (minor) issues with him. This Tweet is ignorance on a ridiculous level.
Vice is, in many circles (and in my opinion), seen as a pretty disgusting media outlet that peddles in poverty tourism. I don't think I've read or watched a single piece by them that couldn't have resulted in someone getting gulag'd or killed.
Naomi Wu is known as SexyCyborg(NSFW), a woman from Shenzhen known for her interesting takes on tech, cyberpunk, and probably more famously for her own personal style. She has received ire from different people and from all over the political spectrum. She has also spent time posting on both English and Chinese forums regarding gender and race issues in the mainland.
Vice ultimately took an opportunity to highlight Ms. Wu's work and instead used that opportunity to source racist and sexist 4chan and Reddit garbage conspiracies and put her in an incredibly compromising, and dangerous, position.
When the Vice reporter came in January 2018, I showed them around Shenzhen for three days. During this visit, I brought the reporter to my home, long enough for the reporter to get an in-depth idea of my circumstances. In my home, I worked on an automated bartender project I had built for a friends bar- to address with the best possible evidence the ongoing Internet smear campaign against me that only a White man could do work like mine. All this was apparently not juicy enough for Vice. Frankly, it's very rare I get accused of not being click-baity enough just being myself.
The Vice reporter returned home to NYC and in the following week began to ask the questions about my personal life it had been agreed were off limits. I was given the "opportunity" to address anonymous 4chan/Reddit speculation about my personal life from the ongoing harassment campaign against me- or look guilty in silence. This is not professional, this is not journalism:
I was then put in touch with the editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. He dismissed it- arrogantly sure he understood the threat model of a Chinese women with a massive social media following who had been outspoken on local gender issues, while at the same time making it absolutely clear he did not understand at all or frankly even care enough to Google what is a routine occurrence in China in these circumstances.
No one will tell you I am a typical Chinese girl. I have a difficult background. I have had to fight for everything my whole life. When I became a tech enthusiast, due to my strange appearance I had to fight to be allowed to speak at events, and then fight for other Chinese women to be allowed to speak as well. In the West powerful men declared there was no way a Chinese girl could do what I do. I beat them and proved them wrong also. Still, if needed I will show up with my soldering iron and my kit anywhere if anyone doubts me. I am no coward to be easily bullied. My mother taught me that one day a man will beat you, and you should keep getting up until his hand is broken to teach him the lesson that it will never be easy. I live by that.
She's taking a queue from Sarah Jeong and hoping that an appeal to common decency at large will help.
Sarah Jeong wrote an article on the use of "unmasking" to address abuse on the Internet when you are absolutely without recourse, in this case this was not the hurtful language and threats I get a thousand times a day, this was the potential for very real and personal harm. My attacker would not stop, would not listen to reason, did not care what harm might come to me. I don't care if someone gives himself a pretty title he does not deserve and tries to hide behind it. If you earn a living hurting people weaker than you, you are no journalist and do not get to claim the protections of that honorable profession.
Despite Vice's firmly established track record of deception and truly disgusting behavior, particularly towards women in vulnerable positions- people actually bought it. That breaking an agreement with me, that putting me in danger- this was nothing because some sleazy grown man in Brooklyn who was willing to endanger a young woman for a few extra clicks had a publicly available address shown for five seconds on a shoe- he was the real victim. Or at least the kind of victim Americans actually care about.
Except that Sarah Jeong ended up siding with Vice and attempted to harass Ms. Wu further.
Sarah did not come to listen, mediate, or learn- she was sent by Jason Koebler to destroy me and protect a business model that has endangered voiceless sources in the developing World countless times.
There is a bias all Asians fight of a monolithic Asian identity. That East Asia is all basically the same- Chinese, Japanese, Korean- "whatever". Sarah is well aware of this bias and used it to persuade people who were on the fence whether to support me in my desperate bid for Vice to honor their agreement. In the multi-page rant she directed at me, she said the following:
Ms. Wu rejects Sarah Jeong's nativism.
Then Sarah drops a veritable atom bomb of an Appeal to Authority, she is Korean (having lived a full week as an adult in Korea). South Korea is pretty much the same as Mainland China, therefore I was never in any danger. She invokes the monolithic Asian culture myth precisely because she knows her largely White audience believes this anyway.
This article hits a nerve with me because:
a> I've been a fan of Naomi Wu's tech and social positions and how she pushes boundaries in a very conservative China
b> Vice is garbage
c> I'm a white dude who has been assaulted in areas of China because I'm married to a Chinese woman. My FiL is a Party member and it has caused (minor) issues with him. This Tweet is ignorance on a ridiculous level.
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