From what I’ve seen, you can avoid the gore issues by desaturating the gory image or part of the video. The porn thing is true, women will use image stickers, mosaics or other obscuring methods to cover up even small amounts of cleavage, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t thirst trap content, it just looks a little different.
That just doesn’t have a big impact on the content I actually want to see, so I don’t really mind it.
Oh or the NPC streams? Those are weird, yo.
You can literally just make an account on Xiaohongshu and chat with normal people in China.
I routinely swap recipes, talk about video games, new tech, swap cleaning tips, chat about restaurant recommendations and fashion. There’s a big cultural difference, sure, but Chinese people are, on the whole, incredibly friendly and hospitable and they’re curious about breaking down the myths they’ve heard about America and happy to break down the myths we’ve heard about China. We think they have a social credit system and they think a dishwasher can afford a huge “villa”. Though now that it’s opened up a bit they talk about a poverty “kill line” where if you fall below a certain income you are pretty much doomed to die. Which is exaggerated, but has some basis in reality, like most of these myths.
The one thing I think is a huge barrier is that they can’t understand why we drink cold water, even in the winter. So many conversations I’ve had have been about drinking cold water and asking “don’t you get dampness???” Honey, I’ve either never had dampess or I’ve been damp my whole life so I don’t know.
Either way, they’re just, like, people. And thanks to the magic of the internet, you can just talk to those people.
The social credit system thing was largely just US propaganda. It was tested it one city and abandoned. China has a credit score system just like most major economies, but from what I understand, the US system has far more restrictions on citizen’s actions based on the credit system than China does. Theirs only impacts lending, ours can impact housing and employment (though I think this practice is on the out and banned in many states).
At the time of posting I was chatting with a woman from Guangdong about her recommendations for Samsung phones to buy my partner, so, I don’t think so.
This is one thing I noticed using Chinese social media. There are almost zero discussions of local politics. Foreign politics is fine though
Boy love drama. The restrictions on homosexual content is overblown, though not entirely fabricated. XHS has plenty of LGBTQ content, for example, domestic and foreign. Not as much as Western social media, to be fair, but also I don’t see people bullying LGBTQ people or creators on XHS.
There’s more restrictions on overt sexuality, straight or gay. Make no mistake, Chinese culture is more conservative in some ways than the West, but it’s not as restrictive as the news makes it out to be.
Seems like a natural next step. XHS works well as a social media app across countries and has opened up China to average US citizens and vice versa. I’ve had a lot of good genuine conversations with people, they’ve managed to cultivate a good culture on the app.
As YouTube continues to enshittify, maybe there’s an opportunity for another app with an already large user base to take its crown.
It’s AI slop.
Good idea, but not worth the risks
My reservation has come up for one of these. Do y’all recommend one? I currently use a PS4 controller for my pc and steam deck gaming (while docked to the tv)
Yeah but articles with insane delusions about bubble stock tech product de jure sells more ads
I do highly recommend it, though I might recommend checking out someone’s streams of it if you’re unsure. I had watched this dude on YouTube, Quill18, play it for a bit before deciding to get it. It seems like it’s a substantially longer game than I expected which is a nice surprise.
Death Stranding 2 has been a delight to play on the Deck, especially after the performance upgrade patches, though I miss the sounds the PlayStation controllers make when playing it on the PC.
Slay the Spire 2, especially the multi-player, has become a nigh daily ritual for me and my partner to play in bed a bit before sleeping and it runs just perfectly on the Steam Deck.
Ale Abbey is an old tycoon style game about running a monastery that makes all different sorts of beer, with a fairly robust and fascinatingly complex mixture of brewing and economic minigames. And while it’s obviously meant to be played on the desktop, it works very well on the Steam Deck.
Roommate has one and I didn’t like the feel as much as the DS4 and the DS4 is cheaper than the DS5. But I had been considering the DS4 over the 8-bitdo, and this is so minor, but I liked that the DS controllers had the speaker compatibility with Death Stranding 1 and 2 to add some little sound effects to the game. Tho those are the only two games I’ve seen it work with on the PC so it’s so so minor.
I keep rebuilding the same DS4 controller as it’s ideal as a PC controller, both wired and Bluetooth protocol. But it keeps breaking or wearing down on me and parts keep going up in price and the dang thing is getting beat up. I looked into the 8-bitdo controllers but I didn’t care for the only one they had with the DS layout, their retro one.
I’ll heavily consider the Steam Controller 2 if the price and quality is right.
Oh snap it’s got the Playstation joystick config… I kinda want this to replace my dying DS4 I’ve repaired a few times now. I wonder how easy it’ll be to reach over those pads and touch the sticks
I’d like to think they’d be more accommodating.
“Ahhh Mr. Albatross, we’ve seen your social media traffic and we’ve been expecting you! In anticipation of your arrival, we’ve prepared some lovely poop, if you would just step this way…”
I honestly feel safer with my data in a foreign authorities hands than domestic.
China can’t do dick to me nor should they want to. I’m just a lil guy! The US does nasty things to its citizens on the reg, I don’t wanna be caught up in that!
Eh, not in the way that the propagandists and subsequent memes describe it, but I get the impression it affects more of the basics of daily life than the Chinese system.