Saturday, March 7, 2009

China, Bloggers, Hide-and-Seek, Insanity

Is anyone else following this thing in China about the guy who died playing hide-and-seek? I caught it awhile ago on one of those 'Oddly Enough' blurb things on Reuters, but I keep re-encountering it and each time it gets stranger.

Basically this guy was arrested in China for illegal logging. That's kinda random and funny, right?

Well then, while in jail he dies from a mysterious head wound. Weird, right?

Well then the Chinese blogs pick up on the story. Strange, I didn't know blogging was a big deal in China, right? Apparently it is huge.

So once the bloggers pick up on it, the Chinese government is all, 'Oh shit, I guess we look kinda brutal and authoritarian.' So they release a statement that the guy died because he ran into a wall playing hide-and-seek. WTF, right? This dude must have gotten really excited playing hide-and-seek.

Well then the Chinese bloggers are all like, 'That's so bullshit!'

And so now, the government is getting so much media pressure that they decide to set up a commission to investigate the whole thing. That's cool, right? Yay bloggers-for-justice!

To make everybody happy, the commission is headed by a famous Chinese blogger. Everything comes full circle now, right? All is cool.

But wait! Some other Chinese bloggers find out that the blogger in charge of the commission is actually on the Chinese government's payroll. He gets a stipend to write pro-government blogs! WTF, right?

Now it is this big deal because it has come out that the Chinese government actually employs an army of writers to write pro-government blogs, like 30,000 (says NEWSWEEK). That is some pretty scary propaganda-machine stuff right there, right?

Here is the NEWSWEEK article.

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