"True poverty is not being able to afford some small principles" -- When Sarah Jeong Hammered the Powerless
This is one of the more remarkable pieces I have read in a long time. Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu describes how Sarah Jeong and Vice magazine refused to acknowledge that maybe a woman in China is in a different situation than a woman in Brooklyn and outed her for a few clicks. An excerpt:
These are not games you play in China, it doesn’t matter if the sum total of their experience living a warm sheltered life in America makes them think it will probably be ok. Things are not the same here. That is not how agreements with sources works, Vice wasn’t in a position to understand the exact nature of the risk I face or what limits have to operate within- and didn’t care to find out. It doesn’t matter if the story “reads positive” or “seems fine” to an American reader- they are not who I have to be concerned with....
It’s not that a White American can’t understand China- that is nonsense, there are countless American journalists and scholars here that are experts in this field that Jason Koebler or Vice could have contacted to verify what I was telling them, I begged them to. They simply didn’t care....
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.
You can get your full daily RDA of irony by reading it all.
