(no subject)

"In a fitting illustration last week of the Chinese leadership’s unrelenting efforts to manipulate collective memory, an online essay with a shocking revelation about the wholesale disappearance of Chinese internet content spanning the 2000s was deleted by content monitors. But the post, quickly archived and shared, reverberated in platforms beyond PRC-managed cyberspace. Written by He Jiayan (何加盐), an internet influencer active since 2018, the essay concluded, based on a wide range of searches of various entertainment and cultural figures from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, that nearly 100 percent of content from major internet portals and private websites from the first decade of China’s internet has now been obliterated."

 

- Goldfish Memories

reading this short article made me think about the various Chinese personal sites on blog.sina.com and artists I used to fondly follow back in high school (mid-late 00's or so). there weren't as many as JP side of fandom but there were some truly beautiful BL artists like heise that were a significant influence on past krad; one of my daily deviations on dA was only after i had taken a few months to figure out how they painted. feimo was another artist whose artbook was flat out easily the most gorgeous that i owned for a very long time.

i have some faith that with danmei being so hot and exported internationally that some of that specific subversive history and art will be salvaged/saved better, ironically enough. but damn if it still isn't sad to hear.