Society on Victor42

Nigeria The Chaotic Behemoth

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 11:56:00 +0000

It is hard not to be captivated by Nigeria.

I have been looking at a lot of global economic and demographic charts lately, and Nigeria’s data is just sexy: a massive market of 230 million people—one in every six Africans is Nigerian. A labor dividend with a median age of just 18. Once the largest economy on the continent. In my mind, this was supposed to be the African success story—a nation that moved past warlord chaos to leverage its oil wealth for an industrial takeoff, a rising Wakanda.

With expectations of finding the world’s next growth engine, I started digging into the underlying logic of the country. But as I peeled back the macro data, what lay before me wasn’t an organically growing modern state, but a high-entropy mess that defies standard economic theory.

To truly understand this place, you have to drop your preconceptions of what a “nation-state” is and accept a cold reality: Nigeria is not a natural community; it is a forced business contract.

1. 1914 A Family Merged to Balance the Books

The story doesn’t start on the African savanna, but at a desk in 1914 occupied by British colonial officer Lord Lugard. He faced a sticky accounting problem: the vast Northern Protectorate was bleeding money, while the Southern Protectorate was flush with cash from liquor imports and trade taxes.

To save the British taxpayer from covering the North’s deficit, Lugard made a bold stroke and merged the two. He didn’t create a fusion of civilizations; he simply balanced a ledger.

Nigeria was born as a geopolitical vessel for transfer payments. This determined its destiny for the next century: the Hausa-Fulani North provided the bodies and the votes (maintaining a feudal structure), while the Yoruba and Igbo South provided the money and tech (maintaining a commercial structure). The two sides have been locked in a tense duality ever since—mutually resentful, yet forced into symbiosis.

2. Oil The Accidental Bind

This symbiotic relationship flipped on its head in the 1960s, driven by the substance that would come to dominate the nation’s fate: oil.

Before oil, the Southern Igbos were the staunchest supporters of unity, eager to access the massive Northern market. The North, fearing domination by the more educated Southerners, was the side threatening to secede. But when oil gushed from the swamps of the Southeast, the script flipped instantly. The Igbos tried to break away and form the Republic of Biafra to keep the oil wealth, while the North—terrified of losing their subsidies—became the fiercest defenders of “One Nigeria.”

The resulting civil war ended in Southern defeat, but it cemented the country’s core operating principle: the oil pipeline is the glue preventing dissolution. A steel cable of shared interests anchors together a nation that geography and culture try to tear apart.

3. All Cash No Governance

This logic shaped Nigeria’s unique political economy—a pure patronage system.

Politics isn’t about public service; it’s about the distribution of oil rents. Every month, elites fly to the capital, Abuja, to slice up the oil revenue, which then trickles down to tribal bases. This mechanism shrewdly converts potential class conflict into ethnic rivalry. The poor don’t hate the corrupt big men of their own tribe; they fear that if their “Big Man” falls, the tribe’s lifeline gets cut.

Economically, a massive paradox confuses observers: in a country where oil is 90% of export earnings, why is there almost no sign of oil wealth on the streets?

The data reveals the truth: oil controls the nation’s vitals but makes up only 9% of GDP. Nigeria is a dual economy, like a disembodied beast. The government lives in the clouds on oil dollars, unaccountable to taxpayers, while the people live in the dust, hustling to survive. The state and the people inhabit parallel economic universes.

4. The Wolves of Commerce

In this vacuum of governance, Nigerians were forced to evolve. No electricity? Buy a generator. No police? Hire security. The harsh environment forces every individual to become a micro-government. This pressure cooker forged a ruthless commercial adaptability, especially among the Igbos.

With the petro-economy driving up exchange rates and inflation, imported food became cheaper than local produce. Farming became a slow death; business was the only jailbreak. The people fled production for circulation. The Igbos, much like the Wenzhou merchants of China, perfected a unique apprenticeship system. It is a grassroots VC model: seven years of unpaid labor in exchange for startup capital. It solved the lack of bank loans and liquefied the population into flowing commercial capital.

In Lagos’s Computer Village, you feel the visceral power of this vitality. It is the perfect counterpart to Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei. If Huaqiangbei is the heart of global hardware—creating and ordering (entropy reduction)—Computer Village is the stomach, digesting and resurrecting (entropy increase). In that maze of tin shacks, any e-waste can be given another three years of life. Chinese companies like Transsion won this market precisely because they understood these pain points: the lack of power, the noise, and the specific needs of darker skin tones.

5. Dominance Through Noise

This high-pressure environment accidentally forged a cultural superpower. In the deafening markets of Lagos, only the signal with the highest signal-to-noise ratio—the loudest, most confident, most aggressive—gets heard. Projected onto culture, this survival strategy became Afrobeats and Nollywood.

Other continents might not feel it yet, but within Africa, Nigeria is the undisputed cultural hegemon. Their movies tell the stories of ordinary African hustle, ruling screens from Kenya to South Africa; their music defines the rhythm of modern Africa. This wasn’t a state strategy; it was the sublimation of suffering.

Yet, beneath this commercial boom and cultural swagger, there is little national identity. Nigerians are like strangers trapped in a malfunctioning elevator. They may mistrust or even despise each other, but they bond over the shared misery of the elevator.

If anything truly binds them, it’s not a shared ideal, but shared trauma. Pidgin English has become the only adhesive for these strangers, recording their collective memory of survival inside the belly of this dysfunctional beast.

6. Outsourcing Tax to Gangs

As state capacity rots further, the power vacuum is being filled by something else.

On the streets of Lagos, uniformed thugs from transport unions—Agberos—openly tax drivers. This isn’t just crime; it’s outsourced governance. The government tacitly allows gangs to maintain minimal order and collect protection fees in exchange for a cut. As economist Mancur Olson described with “Stationary Bandits,” the gangs have become the de facto rulers. Data suggests these gangs in Lagos collect more revenue than the official tax receipts of many other states.

This is a profound governance crisis. In the short term, gang rule creates a facade of order. But in the long term, without the rule of law, heavy industry cannot survive, and the educated class will continue to flee.

The Nigerian behemoth faces two closing walls: the global energy transition and a population explosion that is breaching the physical limits of extraction. When the day comes that the steel cable snaps, the real test begins.

Sikkim A Nation That Quietly Vanished

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 23:15:00 +0000

Let’s Talk Travel Plans

With a young child, we haven’t traveled far in years. Now that she’s older, international travel is on the table, though likely not until next year.

Our annual leave is limited, and a kid can’t handle a ten-plus hour flight, so our options are pretty narrow:

East: Japan and South Korea are culturally similar to us, not ideal for an “exotic” experience, though Tokyo Disneyland is a big draw.
South: A few relatively safe Southeast Asian countries and plenty of resort islands. Very suitable, worth considering.
West: The “-stan” countries. Exotic, for sure, but unfamiliar territory, and my wife isn’t interested.
North: Our neighbors, Mongolia and Russia. Not too keen on Mongolia, and Russia’s main attractions are in its European part, which is too far.

While lamenting the slim pickings, I realized I’d overlooked one direction: the other side of the Himalayas, the Indian subcontinent.

India is rarely on the radar for Chinese travelers, but the region is more than just India. I distinctly remember seeing three countries on the southern Himalayan slopes on maps as a kid: Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. I even nicknamed them the “Himalayan Trio.”

Wait a minute… what happened to Sikkim?

Sikkim’s History: Swept Away by External Forces

A quick look at any map app—Baidu or Google—shows Sikkim clearly labeled as a state of India. The sovereign nation that once served as a buffer between China and India has silently vanished.

Some digging unearthed a buried chapter of history.

On April 14, 1975, the Kingdom of Sikkim held a referendum on whether to abolish the monarchy. A staggering 97.5% voted to depose the king and merge with India. A month later, India’s Parliament amended its constitution, and Sikkim officially became India’s 22nd state. Just like that, a kingdom that had existed for over 300 years was erased from the map after a seemingly “democratic” vote.

The process appeared impeccable: the Sikkimese people “voluntarily” renounced sovereignty, and India “honored their wishes.” But under international law, can a “merger” between two nations be considered legitimate under such circumstances?

This hits on a fundamental conflict in international law: the right to “self-determination” versus the “prohibition of the threat or use of force.” A people has the right to freely choose its destiny. But what if that choice is made at the barrel of a foreign army’s gun? Such “consent” is invalid. Sikkim’s referendum took place while the Indian army controlled the capital and had the king under house arrest. It was less an expression of popular will and more a political strong-arming.

After their country’s fall, Sikkim’s last king, Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his American queen, Hope Cooke, went into exile in the U.S. They didn’t go quietly. They spent their lives campaigning for restoration, lobbying the U.S. Congress, and giving interviews to expose the truth of India’s annexation. But against the backdrop of the Cold War, their tragic efforts earned sympathy but no tangible support. The king died of cancer in 1982, and with him, the dream of a sovereign Sikkim was extinguished.

To grasp this tragedy, you have to look further back. Sikkim, once known as Drenjong, was a tributary state of China’s Qing Dynasty with deep cultural ties to Tibet. In the 19th century, as British colonialism swept South Asia, Sikkim’s protectorate status shifted to the British Empire. To exploit the region, the British forcibly leased Darjeeling and imported vast numbers of Nepali laborers, sowing the seeds for Sikkim’s eventual demise.

Darjeeling

In 1947, an independent India inherited the British Empire’s sphere of influence and ambitions. By 1950, a treaty made Sikkim an Indian “protectorate,” giving India control over its defense, foreign affairs, and economy.

For the next two decades, India cultivated political parties of Nepali immigrants, exacerbating tensions with the native Tibetan Buddhist ruling class. As the Cold War peaked in the 1970s, India saw its opening.

The U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam and had no bandwidth for other conflicts. The Soviet Union, seeking to counter China, had formed a quasi-alliance with India, giving it a free hand in the region. And China was in the throes of the late Cultural Revolution; it issued the strongest condemnations but lacked the capacity for any meaningful military intervention.

Another critical factor: Sikkim was not a member of the UN. Since coming under British influence, it had never truly had foreign policy autonomy, and neither of its powerful patrons had any interest in giving it a seat at the table.

With the tacit approval of global powers and no one to intervene, India moved its troops into Sikkim in 1973, took over the government, disbanded the king’s guard, and orchestrated the 1975 “referendum.” A sovereign nation disappeared from the map, largely ignored by the international community. China only formally recognized Indian sovereignty over Sikkim in 2003 as part of normalizing relations, updating its official maps in 2005.

The Prime Movers: Geography and Demographics

Beyond the geopolitics, Sikkim’s fate was sealed by two cold, unforgiving factors: demographics and geography.

A nation’s foundation is its people—its “hardware.” The national narrative is the “operating system” (OS) running on it. A cheap way to weaken a nation is to attack its OS, making citizens question their identity and hindering the state’s ability to mobilize resources. Great powers do this constantly.

But if a nation’s population is below a critical mass, its hardware is inherently vulnerable. An external power doesn’t need to corrupt the OS; it can simply replace the hardware by engineering a population shift.

This was Sikkim’s tragedy. In 1975, its population was under 500,000. For context, a large residential complex in a Chinese city can house 10,000 people. Fifty such complexes—a mere sub-district in Guangzhou—was the entirety of Sikkim. It stood no chance against India’s demographic might. The influx of Nepali immigrants, which began under the British, fundamentally altered Sikkim’s ethnic and religious makeup. The rule of the monarchy, rooted in the native ethnic group and Tibetan Buddhism, was already on shaky ground. Once the immigrants became the majority, India only had to fan the flames and, under the guise of “democracy,” have this new “hardware”—now over 90% replaced—vote to delete the original “OS.”

Geography, meanwhile, creates the notion of a “sphere of influence,” motivating regional powers to expand. The tendency for a regional power to view smaller neighbors within its geographical sphere as its own backyard is a timeless geopolitical rule. They don’t have to be annexed, but they must be allies or, at a minimum, buffer zones.

The Indian subcontinent, enclosed by the sea on three sides and the world’s highest mountains to the north, is a self-contained theater. This is India’s home turf. It’s the same logic as the 19th-century U.S. Monroe Doctrine, which used the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as barriers to declare the Americas its domain. The underlying principle of the war in Ukraine is no different: a great power will not tolerate a hostile “OS” being installed in its core sphere of influence.

The situation in South Tibet (which India calls Arunachal Pradesh) is another product of this dynamic. This territory is not a case of annexation but a dispute between two major powers. Yet the underlying forces shaping the reality on the ground are identical.

Picture the region as a giant, south-sloping roof. India, situated below the eaves, can easily advance up the natural river valleys. China, on the other side of the Himalayan ridge, must first brave high-altitude, low-oxygen conditions, cross the crest, and then descend what are essentially sheer cliffs on the northern slope. This geographical asymmetry allows India to easily project its population and administration onto the southern slope, establishing de facto control. Although China decisively won the 1962 war and briefly controlled the area to assert its claim, maintaining long-term control was prohibitively costly. Withdrawing troops and shifting to a diplomatic standoff was, therefore, a pragmatic, if not ideal, outcome.

Ultimately, under the immense pressures of demography and geography, the tiny nation of Sikkim was simply erased. Its independence had been nominal long before the annexation. What I saw on the map as a child was merely its ghost. History can be that cold.

Wary Neighbors: Bhutan and Nepal

Sikkim’s fate was a chilling lesson for its neighbors, Bhutan and Nepal. The fear of being next keeps them perpetually wary of India’s ambitions.

It’s not that India lacks ambition, but that the cost and risk of repeating that playbook have become too high. To survive, Bhutan and Nepal have worked hard to secure their “hardware” and bolster their “software.”

First, the demographic “hardware.”

In 1975, Bhutan’s population was several times Sikkim’s, but still in the same order of magnitude. Nepal’s, however, was in the tens of millions. A demographic takeover was plausible in Bhutan, but having learned from Sikkim, it took active measures to protect its population. Nepal, on the other hand, is a veritable “ethnic mosaic” with over 140 recognized groups, none comprising more than 17% of the population. This hyper-diversity makes it difficult to subvert the state by backing any single group. Still, deep economic and religious ties bind Nepal to India.

Over 80% of Nepal’s population is Hindu

More crucial is the “software” of national identity.

Nepal’s pride in never having been fully colonized provides a historical foundation for its independence. Ironically, India’s relentless political meddling has become the most effective glue uniting its diverse ethnic groups.

Bhutan, with a similar profile to Sikkim, is more vulnerable. But it has astutely cultivated a unique national narrative around “Gross National Happiness” while fiercely guarding its demographic integrity. Since the 1950s, the government has pursued policies to assimilate or expel Nepali immigrants to protect its majority culture. This proactive “hardware maintenance” preserved its ethnic and cultural independence, preventing it from being hollowed out from within. Nevertheless, trapped by geography and economic dependence, it cannot escape India’s pervasive influence. India is a formidable presence they cannot simply wish away.

Bhutan’s culture is very similar to Tibet’s

Watching these two small nations deploy every strategy available, one can only imagine the immense effort a large country must expend to maintain its own national narrative.

Ironically, India struggles to tell its own national story, which weakens its ability to undermine others’. The official narrative, “Unity in Diversity,” feels abstract. For most Indians, identities like “Hindu,” “Muslim,” “Tamil,” or “Punjabi” are far more tangible in daily life than the modern concept of “Indian.” India can’t export a story more compelling than “the glory of the Gurkhas” or “the happiness of the Dragon Kingdom” because its own “OS” is a patchwork system built for compatibility, not conversion.

Today’s global environment has also changed. Globalization interconnects all nations, and social media can amplify any conflict instantly, making victory in the court of public opinion as important as victory on the battlefield. Sikkim’s annexation was a regional affair; a similar act today would be a global scandal. While geography and demographics in South Asia favor India, the efforts of Nepal and Bhutan allow them to maintain political independence and avoid internal collapse. For everything else, they are deeply intertwined with India. The forces that preserve their fragile independence likely stem more from international oversight, external powers, and India’s own strategic calculations.

So, Can You Actually Travel There?

Of course, politics is beyond the influence of ordinary people like us. Let’s get back to the practical question: are the former “Himalayan Trio” viable travel destinations?

The answer: your experience will vary dramatically depending on the color of your passport.

Nepal: Completely open. It’s visa-free for Indian citizens, offers free visa-on-arrival for Chinese citizens, and provides visas on arrival for most other nationalities. Blessed by geography, its tourism economy, centered on Mount Everest, welcomes all travelers.

Bhutan: Exclusive and controlled. Indian citizens receive special, near visa-free access. However, Bhutan has no formal diplomatic ties with China and enforces a strict “High-Value, Low-Volume” tourism policy for everyone else. This requires booking through an approved agency, paying a daily $100 “Sustainable Development Fee,” and being accompanied by a guide at all times. No independent travel.

Sikkim State: Sensitive and restricted. For Indian citizens, most areas are open. But all foreigners need a special permit. For Chinese citizens, due to historical and political sensitivities, obtaining a travel permit for Sikkim is virtually impossible. For us, it’s effectively an off-limits zone.

So, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, the only truly open and accessible destination is Nepal.

But then again, it doesn’t strike me as the best place for a trip with a young child. Buddhist monasteries and snow-capped peaks probably can’t compete with sandy beaches and theme parks. It looks like my search for a family vacation spot will have to continue.

Why Clean Energy Matters

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:24:00 +0000

I’ve always believed that the widespread adoption of clean energy will be a historical event with an impact comparable to the Industrial Revolution. My core reasoning is this: it creates the conditions for humanity’s total energy usage to increase by one or more orders of magnitude.

Humans initially obtained energy through food and then mobilized energy through their bodies to transform the environment and create civilization. Gathering, storing, and releasing energy were all done by their own bodies.
Soon after, humans learned to domesticate livestock. By using animal power, the mechanical energy that humans could mobilize increased significantly, and the links of gathering, storing, and releasing began to gradually separate from their own bodies.
Coupled with the use of natural forces, humans could accomplish more things that were previously impossible. There are many types of natural forces, but humans have learned to stably control few of them during this period. Wind power is one of them.
After that, until the Industrial Revolution, the pattern of human energy use did not change significantly. The Industrial Revolution was a turning point. Humans learned to release and stably control the energy accumulated by billions of years of life activities. The source of this energy is the sun. But the side effects of fossil fuels are clear to us now. Overuse can cause a backlash against civilization. Therefore, the current energy use pattern is itself a bottleneck, limiting the total amount of energy that humans can actually use to a certain level.
Nuclear energy is another important advance, but I classify it as a broad category of clean energy, so I’ll talk about it together. Clean energy reduces or even avoids the backlash against civilization. After transitioning to a clean energy society, humans can get rid of the fossil fuel bottleneck and further expand the scale of energy gathering, storage, and release.

Because of clean energy, the supply of energy can be raised by several orders of magnitude. As for the demand for energy, there is no need to worry at all. Human desires are endless. Sufficient supply becomes possible, and demand will naturally come. Many extremely high-energy-consuming things will move from the small circle of professional fields to the public, and there will be ways of using energy that are unimaginable today.

Therefore, the significance of clean energy is not only to save the earth and save lives, but also not only to replace the existing fossil energy by an equal amount. After the replacement occurs, the blowout of clean energy has just begun, and the great leap forward of human civilization will also begin.

The "Self" in "Self-Media" is Deceptive

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:45:00 +0000

I’m no online celebrity, but I’ve been around the internet long enough to offer my perspective on social media and “self-media” (we-media).

This isn’t a how-to guide for becoming a successful content creator. It’s about the reality of online content creation. Before you dive in, you need to grasp the fundamentals.

The Essence of Online Communities

Know Your Battlefield

Whether it’s TikTok, Douyin, Zhihu, or Bilibili, they all share a common core: they’re content distribution platforms, or communities. They connect creators with consumers. Creators get exposure, potential income, and fulfillment; consumers get information, entertainment, or simply a way to pass the time.

It’s a marketplace, driven by supply and demand. If creators aren’t producing what consumers want, nobody benefits. Creators lose motivation, and consumers move on.

Every community is a content marketplace, connecting creators and consumers for profit. Their aim is to efficiently match supply with demand. Creators reach a large, relevant audience; consumers consistently find content they enjoy. This leads to revenue for creators, and the platform takes a cut – like a mall charging rent. The internet industry is essentially real estate, but stores open for free, and rent comes later.

Creators accept this because platforms offer efficient distribution. Without them, profits might be lower, even after the platform’s cut. It’s a win-win.

All Communities Compete

Don’t Be Limited by Content Format

Communities want to retain both creators and consumers. Consumers have limited time; time spent on one platform is time not spent on another. It’s a scarce resource. Creators have limited energy. While they can post on multiple platforms, each has its own rules. Unless you’re already famous, you need to focus on a specific community to build a following.

Creators and consumers are finite resources, and since all communities connect them, they’re all in competition.

This means Zhihu and Douyin are rivals. It seems strange – one is for Q&A, the other for short videos. But the format doesn’t matter; it’s easy to adapt.

Common formats include text, images, audio, video, and live streams. Each community has a primary format or two. But for creators, content is king. They adapt to any format, seeking the most efficient match between supply and demand.

Text seems cheapest to produce – anyone can write. But creating text on a visual platform like Xiaohongshu? Easy. User-friendly editing software has lowered the barrier. Pick a background, some music, a text template, and you’ve got a decent short video, maybe even animated. Many popular Douyin videos are text-based “pseudo-videos.” Another option: appear on camera and read the text. Converting text to audio is similar.

And those are just the basics. AI tools are even more powerful. AI can create images from text, animate still images, generate realistic voiceovers, lip-sync photos, and even write the text itself. Even live streams have tools for beautification and special effects.

Creators with a clear vision aren’t constrained by format. To grow quickly, they prioritize a platform’s efficiency in matching supply and demand.

Two Types of Matching Mechanisms

Distinguish the Type and Nature of the Battlefield

Speaking of efficiency, let’s talk about Toutiao. It revolutionized supply and demand matching.

Before Toutiao, communities relied on search and following. Consumers searched for what they wanted or followed creators in specific fields. This was the search engine era. “Recommended” features existed, but were secondary. Search and following were central. I call this the “manual mechanism.”

Toutiao, Bytedance’s first major success, prioritized recommendation algorithms. Their engine powers all their products. For consumers, recommendations are more convenient than search – no typing needed. The platform learns your preferences. Browse casually, and the recommendations become increasingly accurate. You don’t even need to follow anyone. I call this the “automatic mechanism.”

The manual mechanism requires action from consumers – they tell the platform their interests. The automatic mechanism requires nothing extra. Recommendations are inherently more efficient.

My own content creation isn’t stellar. I have around 5,000 Weibo followers, with posts getting tens of thousands of views but few likes. On Xiaohongshu, I have almost no followers, yet some posts get thousands of views and dozens of likes. Views show distribution; likes show accuracy.

That’s the automatic mechanism at work. Bytedance is the only Chinese internet giant to truly conquer overseas markets with its software, leaving competitors behind.

Seeing Toutiao and Douyin’s success, other platforms are adopting the automatic mechanism. It’s now about the balance between search and recommendation.

Platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu are recommendation-heavy. But users also search within them, replacing Baidu.
Zhihu’s core is Q&A, with significant traffic from Baidu and Google. But the homepage also recommends content based on your preferences.
Specialized communities like Xiachufang (recipes) have users searching for specific dishes and browsing for ideas. It could easily be a 50/50 split.

What Creators Are After

What Kind of Success Do You Want?

Recommendation engines are efficient, but they can lead to homogeneity. They often tag creators, consumers, and content. Matching tags connect consumers with creators. Creators with similar tags compete based on “weight.” A niche creator gains higher weight than a generalist, leading to large accounts with narrow focuses. This is a byproduct of specialization, but not the same.

Two types of creators thrive: experts with high-quality content and those who mass-produce popular content cheaply. One focuses on quality (gross margin); the other on quantity (turnover). Self-media is a business, and businesses pursue these two goals.

The first path is challenging. Experts often assume their audience shares their knowledge, making content inaccessible. They need to explain complex topics simply, a rare skill.

The second path is more common, but risky. How can humans compete with machines in output? How can original content beat copied content? Large accounts often have systems for collecting, copying, and rebranding content. They gather quality content, copy it formulaically, make minor changes, and add their branding. Anything that builds their persona and isn’t low-quality is used. The creator might not even understand or agree with their own posts. Self-media becomes a job, and the algorithm their boss.

Some creators aren’t after fame or money; they just want to share. Their profiles feel genuine, unlike the monotonous feel of most accounts.

Creators who prioritize authenticity can ignore all this. But authenticity and large followings are often at odds.

The Mindset Creators Should Have

Making Your Content Creation Journey Easier

Most platforms use likes to measure influence. But likes are a result; focus on the cause: comments.

Why?

Comments are the highest-effort interaction. Likes, saves, and shares are binary: like/dislike, useful/not useful, fits my persona/doesn’t. They’re distinct. Only comments are open-ended, capable of replacing the others (even sharing, by @-ing friends). If the other interactions aren’t enough, users comment.

Existing comments can also discourage new ones. Commenters want exposure. If a post has many high-interaction comments, new commenters are less motivated. Likes, saves, and shares don’t have this issue.

So, except for posts designed to provoke, comments are usually the fewest, representing the highest-value interaction.

To boost comments, reply actively, keeping the topic alive and the algorithm engaged. This also encourages potential commenters. But the online world is extreme. Behind screens, people unleash negativity. Unfriendly comments are a cost of growing a large account.

How to mitigate this? First, define your account’s purpose: career or hobby? Fame and fortune, or personal expression?

If it’s a career, treat it like a business. Consumers are data, like chickens on a farm: feeding, temperature, egg production. Interactions that boost comments and likes are valuable. A hater sparking an argument is more valuable than a supporter saying, “Well written.” You might even fuel the fire, then disappear, letting it continue.

If it’s a hobby, distinguish between human voices and noise. Abusive commenters are one-dimensional binary creatures. One-dimensional: they grasp only one variable. Binary: they see only black and white. They’re background noise. When the noise is low, focus on the human voices. When it’s loud, put on headphones and ignore everything, even the human voices. This is your space. For information, use your homepage feed, not your comments. And you don’t have to be both creator and consumer on every platform. Post here, consume there.

Conclusion

The world of self-media isn’t a free utopia.

The idea that experts producing great content automatically succeed is a rare, feel-good story. The reality is, driven by platform interests, the system doesn’t encourage authenticity. It encourages creating a persona, targeting popular topics, and churning out content.

Mentally, you must be machine-like, abandoning normal etiquette and acting like a customer service line: “Press 1 if it’s useful, hang up if it’s not.”

If you’re still undeterred, congratulations. You’ll gain more than fame and fortune. Content creation is a learning experience, and that might be its greatest value.

The Bubble in the Real Economy

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 10:58:00 +0000

Bright Dairy’s Ubest milk boasts 180mg of immunoglobulin per liter. Whoever came up with that, Bright Dairy’s staff or some marketing firm, is a genius—a twisted one, maybe.

First time I saw this ad, I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be drunk or injected. Seriously, why not add some Hepatitis B immunoglobulin to infant formula? My daughter could skip a shot.

Who are they kidding? Does everything you swallow magically enter your bloodstream? They’re betting that people will buy into that. And it works, doesn’t it?

Bright Dairy is playing it smart. You can’t nail them for false advertising. They don’t claim any immune benefits, just that they added something harmless. Someone complains? They’ll just say, “You assumed it had immune benefits? That’s on you.”

I could do the same. I’ll sell Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor) in a fancy bottle. Pure grain, perfect alcohol content, great for cleaning screens. Buy it!

See? Nothing changed. I just created a bogus niche market with some clever wording. Throw money at marketing, make it stick. Competitors will jump in, hype it up even more. All that capital and labor, wasted.

Don’t think the real economy is actually “real.” This deceptive over-packaging is its bubble. Real estate and financial bubbles are huge, interconnected, and earth-shattering when they burst. The real economy’s bubbles seem small, isolated. But when consumption drops, these markets will collapse even faster, fueling volatility. Just look at those ridiculous ads in elevators. Are these bubbles really smaller than real estate or finance, considering the consumer market’s size?

When an avalanche happens, it’s not just the snow at the top; it’s the whole mountainside.

The Blessed Child

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:16:00 +0000

This is from a third-person dream: a young girl, a strange illness, a small mountain village.

The girl, about 10, was loved by everyone. The day she fell ill, she was picking mulberry leaves under the big mulberry tree. Villagers saw her collapse and yelled for her parents, but no one dared get close.

Her illness was bizarre. Blood seeped from her skin without warning, gushing out. A pool of blood formed beneath her, mixing with the dirt. She screamed, digging trenches in the ground, quickly filled with blood. Onlookers, terrified, backed away, unsure if it was a disease or an evil spirit.

Her father was miles away, planting rice. Her mother rushed to the village entrance. The girl was pale and unconscious. It seemed she had bled out completely. The mother pushed through the crowd, knelt in the blood, and cradled her daughter, wailing.

After a few minutes, someone shouted, “Quick! Take her to the hospital! There might still be hope!”

The mother jolted, but felt her daughter move. She thought she was hallucinating, then saw her daughter open her eyes. The girl, covered in blood, only saw her mother’s distorted face and the villagers. Color returned to her face; she looked like she’d just woken up. She asked softly what was wrong, with no memory of the pain.

The mother looked around, but everyone looked terrified. Some pointed, mouths agape. Some ran. Sparks flew off the mother’s body, with arcs of electricity at her joints. But she felt nothing, and her daughter was unharmed. The sparks disappeared, and the daughter, seeing the blood, burst into tears.

Life returned to normal, except for the two sets of blood-stained clothes. Miraculously, the girl’s grandmother, bedridden before, was walking within a month. Villagers called it a blessing after a great ordeal.

The girl would occasionally relapse, each time dying and reviving. People touching her afterward would have sparks fly off them and experience good luck within six months. One adopted an unclaimed cow, another found a long-lost son, and another dug up antiques, selling them for a good price.

The girl became a god-like figure. Villagers called her the “Blessed Child,” treating her with respect, but no longer joking with her. A wealthy businessman built a “Blessing Temple,” with three courtyards and an altar, to repay her blessings. She was carried to the altar whenever she fell ill. Everyone would kneel, waiting for her to wake and touch them, “receiving blessings.” Someone proposed a “Blessing Cult,” with the girl as leader. Her parents became guardians, announcing the ceremony and holding considerable influence. The cult became famous, attracting people from neighboring villages.

At one ceremony, the guardians stood on either side of the altar, followers kneeling. The temple was silent. More followers rushed in, joining the kneeling crowd. After a while, the guardians exchanged worried glances. A stir arose: an elderly woman struggled to stay upright.

Whispers broke out. Followers looked at the altar, then at the guardians. The father whispered, “Leader?” No response. The mother pushed the girl’s arm, and blood overflowed, flowing down the stone.

The girl didn’t wake, and there were no sparks. The followers were in an uproar. Someone shouted, “The leader can’t take the blessings anymore!” The crowd dispersed. The guardians, bewildered, shouted, “The leader hasn’t woken up yet!” but couldn’t stop them.

On the altar, the girl lay curled up, pale. Nail marks on the stone were covered by fresh and dried blood.

Besieged

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:55:36 +0000

Seen any elevator ads lately? One for “Kapal Api Coffee, recommended by the Indonesian President, it smells so good!” caught my eye. I’ll use this ad to illustrate how treacherous the world can be.

Since at least November 16, 2021, I’ve seen Kapal Api Coffee ads in the elevators of both my office and apartment buildings. The ad implies that Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) recommends this coffee, using his photos and video footage.

What’s your take? Do you believe the president is actually involved? Or do you just shrug it off? It’s rare for a head of state to endorse a brand, so I dug deeper.

First, I checked Kapal Api Coffee’s origins. Business records show the domestic entity is Kapal Api Food (China) Co., Ltd., wholly owned by PT. Balini Inve Indonesia, an Indonesian firm.

Here’s the tricky part: I don’t speak Indonesian. How to trace this? Searching the full name in English gave me some third-party business info, but no official site. Luckily, Kapal Api Coffee does have an official website. Its international name is Kapal Api, and it’s indeed Indonesia’s top coffee producer. But what’s the link between Kapal Api and PT. Balini Inve Indonesia? Direct searches turned up nothing, so I broke down the company name.

“PT.” is Indonesian for “Limited Liability Company,” and “Inve” means investment. So, PT. Balini Inve Indonesia is “Indonesian Balini Investment Co., Ltd.,” with Balini being the company name. Searching for Kapal Api and Balini revealed the connection: Balini is a Kapal Api brand. Great, Kapal Api Food (China) Co., Ltd. is indeed part of the Indonesian coffee giant, Kapal Api.

Second question: Is that really the Indonesian President in the ad? Public information confirms it is indeed President Joko Widodo. However, the video shows a younger Jokowi, and the segment featuring him is blurry compared to other shots, suggesting older footage. This raised a red flag.

The core issue: What’s the relationship between Jokowi and Kapal Api Coffee? Searching the Chinese internet, I found no endorsement news. Instead, I found the ad’s source: Shanghai Shengsi Zhuozhi Marketing Planning Company. They came up with the “President’s Coffee” strategy.

This is a small micro-enterprise with a registered capital of 5 million, offering brand marketing services.

On Shengsi Zhuozhi’s website, they proudly showcase the Kapal Api Coffee case study, explaining the “President’s Coffee” strategy, confirming my online findings.

Shengsi Zhuozhi’s other clients are mostly local Chinese firms. The few foreign brand cases are all marketing within China. I concluded that this company lacks overseas marketing experience and focuses domestically. Thus, they likely don’t have the resources for an overseas endorsement, let alone one from the Indonesian President.

Could Kapal Api’s parent company have a deal with President Jokowi, bringing those materials to the Chinese market? I searched in English, and even Indonesian.

First, I searched for Kapal Api and “president.” No dice, whether articles or images.

It’s a language issue. “Kapal Api” is Indonesian, “president” is English, hence English results. Indonesia and its coffee aren’t hot topics in the English-speaking world.

Time to tackle the Indonesian-speaking world. The president’s name is Joko Widodo. Would searching these two names unlock it?

Yes, a flood of gibberish nearly made me spit blood. But, I don’t need to understand Indonesian, just find where the names appear together. And there it was, in a 2017 report.

Translation tools helped me grasp the context. President Jokowi took steps to boost Indonesia’s coffee industry. Kapal Api, a major beneficiary, awarded Jokowi the title of “National Coffee Activist.”

Endorsement? Ad? Nothing. I could dig further, but it’s unnecessary. Any reasonable person can see what’s happening.

Kapal Api’s Chinese marketing team is playing fast and loose. It’s like the Minister of Agriculture announcing a push for the peach industry, and then a peach seller claiming the Minister endorses their peaches, using the minister’s photos and videos.

The endorsement doesn’t affect my buying decision. The lie isn’t hugely damaging, but it’s insulting. Are they treating consumers like idiots? How many people would go to these lengths to verify an ad? It’s like using a nuke to swat a fly. The cost of the lie is minimal, a slight nudge from the truth, yet consumers need a nuke to detect it.

Much of the commercial world is malicious. They’ll hype anything, lie, and spread pseudoscience, all for profit. They swarm around you, filling your life with lies while picking your pocket. It’s disgusting.

I once saw a WeChat post making extreme political comments. The author? A grocery store. Does the owner fancy himself a modern-day Zhuge Liang?

I’ve got nothing against Kapal Api Coffee, so why bother? Because I’m a stickler for details. I’ll dive into academic papers to get to the bottom of things. I’ve exposed far worse false advertising. A coffee company lying about endorsements is just the tip of the iceberg. Think about all the ads that have excited or intrigued you. Hyaluronic acid thermoses, blood sugar-lowering rice cookers – how much false info has been crammed into your brain? How much money has been drained from your wallet?

What kind of world is this? Peaceful? Stable? I’d say: Besieged.

I reported Kapal Api Coffee to the Administration for Market Regulation. Easy to do on the 12315 mini-program. But that’s beside the point. I want to warn everyone, to protect my family and friends.

March 31, 2022 Update:

The Administration for Market Regulation responded. Due to the minor nature, timely stop, and lack of serious consequences, they decided not to impose a penalty. I’m not dissatisfied; it’s reasonable in this case.

See? Society tolerates these commercial lies. It’s not just unscrupulous businesses; society encourages it. Bragging and lying are more beneficial than harmful for companies.

Especially in the information age, businesses aren’t shouting face-to-face. People used to know lying would damage their reputation. Now, consumers face a brand, an ad, not a person. A company’s image is vague. It has no psychological burden, only gains and losses.

This is a fundamental problem. Is there a solution? Sadly, not yet.

The Mahjong Table at the Intersection

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 10:36:57 +0000

I got to work early today. Over breakfast, I watched the intersection below for nearly half an hour. From the 9th floor, it’s a completely different view than driving. You see the collective driver reactions, how tiny decisions ripple outwards. It’s a fascinating, chaotic system.

During rush hour, the intersection twice became a “mahjong table”—traffic in each direction jammed against another. Four streams of cars formed a kind of windmill, like a mahjong game’s starting setup. I thought it was hopeless, only solvable by a traffic cop.

The jam was massive. One direction alone was three lanes wide, buses included. The line blocking that probably stretched to the next intersection.

Surprisingly, this “mahjong table” cleared in 20 minutes. How? First, southbound traffic backed up from the next light (imagine this cascading down the line – that’s why jams move on navigation apps). The light turned green, southbound cars kept coming, blocking the intersection and halting westbound traffic. Westbound traffic then blocked northbound. Crucially, the southbound flow wasn’t constant; it crept forward. That’s where things fell apart. If a single car lagged, impatient eastbound drivers, pressured by the queue behind (even without honking), would cut in, knowing it’d worsen the jam. Eastbound traffic, blocked by northbound, in turn blocked southbound. The “mahjong table” was set – a self-destructive loop.

Five minutes later, the lanes cleared, but the central knot remained. A bus driver stuck his head out, trying to direct, but no one budged. Even scooters were stuck.

How did it untangle? After 10 minutes of gridlock, drivers got restless. Initially, it was all about gaining an inch. But, at a certain point, a few drivers led the change, everyone’s behavior flipped. They realized they had to yield to avoid a lose-lose, or maybe the cost became too high. Cars started making right turns or U-turns, taking detours. The knot shrank from three lanes to two, then one, finally dissolving.

Drivers were noticeably friendlier during the untangling. No more aggressive cutting in; they let stragglers merge. People are more cooperative when they’re in better spirits.

Driving reveals human nature. It’s mostly instinct, little logic. Everyone has limited information, judging from just a few nearby cars. It’s like first-order chaos; people don’t predict the outcome, and even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. Without external input, most drivers switched from competition to cooperation in under 20 minutes. It’s quite a sight, really interesting.

The Digital Dark Age

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Sun, 22 Mar 2020 15:50:10 +0000

Historians piece together ancient civilizations using official records for the timeline and personal accounts for the details. Tax burdens, farming, culture—it’s all in everyday writings and letters. These firsthand accounts show us what life was really like.

The people writing this stuff probably didn’t think it was important, or even bother saving it. But it was on paper. Physical. It didn’t need some company or technology to survive. Empires came and went, but the paper stuck around. It could rot, sure, but even trivial bits had a shot at making it to us centuries later.

Today, everything’s centralized. Your messages, writings, photos—they’re on your phone, your computer, or some company’s server.

How long will your phone’s data last? Maybe your lifetime, if you are lucky. How much survives after switching devices? And a lifetime later, will those old devices even work?

Server data? You’re at the mercy of whoever runs it. Company goes bust, service shuts down? Your data’s probably gone. Businesses don’t have to keep it. The good ones might let you export it, but who actually does that? And stores it safely? Things change fast. This could all happen before you die. A lot of your digital life could just vanish.

Ironic, isn’t it? I made this point years ago, tried to find the post, and… poof. Gone. Had to rewrite it.

A century from now, official records—medical, ID, residency, education, taxes—might prove you existed. But your life story? Your passions? The ups and downs? Future historians might find a big, blank nothing.

Reconstructing our time could get tricky. The big, official stuff will be there, but firsthand accounts of daily life? Slim pickings.

Electronic media made information spread like wildfire, but also made it incredibly fragile. Here today, gone tomorrow.

The Tug-of-War at the Garage Gate

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 12:53:00 +0000

Our apartment complex has an underground garage, a bit of a trek from the north gate. It’s fully automated, no guard needed. Management doesn’t want to pay for a guard, so they banned residents from walking through – north gate only. But some folks despise detours and will do anything to sneak through. I’ve lived here two years, and it’s been a constant, ridiculous battle.

Initially, the gate had a single bar, with gaps on the sides. Easy peasy to squeeze through. The gate was always malfunctioning then, so a guard was posted, manually letting cars in. He ignored pedestrians.

The gate got fixed, the guard left. Management extended the bar, nearly flush with the walls. No problem – residents just ducked under. Still worked.

Later, they upgraded the gate: two bars with mesh between them. No more ducking, and you’d need serious hops to clear it. Crawling, of course, was still an option…

But residents just waited. Grandmas with groceries, ladies with strollers, all hanging out. When a car approached, they’d rush in while the gate was open.

Waiting is a drag, though. Who knows when a car will show up? Some residents got antsy and started squeezing past the wall. I noticed the paint near the gate arms was all rubbed off.

Slim folks could manage, but larger ones weren’t deterred. The gate’s ends got wrecked. The extensions were flimsy KT board, easily snapped. The mesh, seemingly metal, had bits near the wall torn off, dangling.

Management fixed it, it broke again. Repeat. A few times, the whole gate was removed for major repairs, leaving just the bare, rusty bar – pretty sad.

Today, I saw a new tactic! Management smeared this sticky, nasty, reddish-brown gunk – oil or glue, who knows – all over the walls by the gate. I burst out laughing! Talk about a deterrent! Squeeze through, ruin your clothes. But the entrance looks like a disaster zone, like someone’s trying to collect a debt.

I’m sure the detour-haters will figure something out. Maybe cardboard or plastic wrap stuck to the wall, using the gunk as adhesive while protecting their clothes. I can picture someone doing that, feeling all smug.

Who knows?