was eye opening. Moving forward I picked up on how in general, sensitive terms, are substituted either by pinyin shorthand (eg: zf for 政府 "govn't", gmd for 国民党 “KMT". but actually, gmd itself is sensitive precisely because, if you input that into the pinyin keyboard

the first suggestion that pops up is 国民党) homophones, (eg: 郭嘉/郭佳 for 国家 "country") or emoji (eg: 开车 is internet slang for rated 18+ content, so 18+ content is often indicated by using a) They call this "neutralizing" communication.

Because I frequent these spaces, I follow these communication rules as a general rule of thumb now as well, but it's an active process that I notice myself consciously participating in every time I log on to WeChat & Weibo. But for all these other regular folks, it's automatic

almost like second nature, and I always can't help but wonder what kind of psychological impacts of implications this has. All this to say, Chinese rarely ever share views and opinions, especially ones deemed potentially controversial, in spaces beyond trusted private ones

because almost every online medium is still a performance to some extent. So while ofc Chinese political sentiments run the full spectrum, rarely will those on the outside ever see, esp. online, because of a mixture of state censorship + conditioned self censorship. /END.