Chinese Blogging Hoax: Bloggers Play Prank to Validate Love from Readers
I posted last night that 3 of China's most popular blogs were shut down by authorities.
I woke up this morning to find out that this was a hoax staged by the very bloggers themselves. They reportedly wanted to give an early April fools joke.
This led to the following diatribe from Chinese blogger
[in translation]
Grandma! I just got the inside news. The shutdown of the Massage Milk and Milk Cow blogs were staged by Wang and Yuan themselves! They wanted to use the opportunity to test how big their influence is!
I despise these two people who played a cruel political joke on decent people! You fucking attach too much importance to yourselves! You have totally forgotten who you are! And there was that fucking "unavoidable reason that everybody knows about"! You are pieces of messy dog turd! Do you know that your stupid joke can cause certain decent and simple people to get hurt!
You are no better than those filthy politicians. You are fucking even more deceptive and filthy! I used to respect you for your writings, but now I spit on you! Perhaps you are still quite elated today and with a victorious smile, you read the memorial articles written by those people that were fooled. But I am telling you that it would be best that you never ever write on your blog again. If you have the courage, you should continue this prank all the way and fool tens of thousands of people. I hope that you have a nightmare tonight and for the rest of your life!
ok so he's angry. Hmm am I angry? From a psychological point of view I can understand 连岳的第八大洲.anger, because I think people loved blogs like Massage Milk because they felt they had a relationship with a blogger - one based on trust and reliability for information. Readers felt that his prank had violated this established trust.
Therefore, I think the angry reactions we will hear will be a great psychological example for future bloggers. This reveals the dynamics of a relationship between a blogger and their readers, in that it closely mirrors a human relationship. The equivalent of Massage Milk's act of shutting down his blog without any warning would be if a wife told her husband she was going to divorce him without any warning and makes herself unreachable for 1 day - and then all of sudden comes back and says - HA! April Fools!
In the therapy world, someone who constantly plays prank on her/his friends/lovers - would be explained that he/she is insecure with those relationships, therefore has to test them by playing pranks as a way to elicit a response to fulfill the desired attention he craves. The reaction of the person who has been pranked confirms to the prankster that she/he still cares about her/him. So in light of this, the bloggers who played this April Fools Hoax can be explained in that they are insecure and needed even more validation that people care about what their blogs? Damn - I think future therapists will have to learn more about blogs as a way of expressing unconscious feelings hidden by years of parental and societal suppression.
I think the many angry reactions should confirm to Massage Milk he is deeply cared about. However, once you screw someone over by cheating, lying to them or playing a prank that isn't funny, that trust is ruined and it may never be rewarded again. Let's see what happens -will blog readers trust Massage Milk again?
I am sure more reactions will follow, so I will update this post as I come across them.
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