This is Silence Wang's original song from the first episode of Singer 2024. On first watch, my attention was all on his intense expressions while singing. After looping it a few times, I found the song quite pleasant, and I came to admire his originality. Chinese music needs more quality creators like him.
Cover Image
A scene of early morning at Minzu University campus, captured while jogging towards the sunrise.
Topic: Can You Really Find Love on Xiaohongshu?
A while ago, my roommate was watching the dating show "Semi-Mature Romance" every night after returning from the library. He also watched the recent TV drama "Spring's Lover." One night, I stood behind him and watched "Spring's Lover" with him for a bit. I was immediately struck—Li Xian suddenly pushed the female lead against the wall and gave her a passionate kiss. The scene was too romantic.
Then we chatted about topics related to finding love. Pursuing a computer science master's degree, with daily life being just three points [dorm + cafeteria + library/lab], the social circle is extremely narrow. Plus, the entire class is male, so the possibility of finding a girlfriend is nearly zero. Unless you find girls from other departments with more women, but few guys have the courage to be so bold and shameless.
Later, my roommate and I targeted the Xiaohongshu platform. This platform has many female users—maybe documenting daily life there could lead to finding love. So on the night my roommate finished his Software Qualification Exam, I immediately urged him to post notes about finishing the exam and tag the school's location. As of June 2, 2024, his note has received 6 likes. I estimate most are from schoolmates, since Xiaohongshu's recommendation algorithm pushes content to user groups based on tagged locations.
Another reason I urged him to post was to have him lead the way—once he posted, I'd have the courage to start documenting my life too. By the time his exam ended, my Xiaohongshu account was almost mature [new accounts on Xiaohongshu have hidden posts without any traffic boost. I originally wanted to share a video of a schoolmate singing "Red Rose" on Xiaohongshu, but found the video was ignored. After researching online, I learned about Xiaohongshu's restrictions on new accounts—Douyin and other domestic platforms have similar restrictions]. It was time to start documenting life and increase my chances of finding love.
I also know that if I find love in Guangxi, future development might encounter some incompatibilities—we'd both be tormented by topics like long-distance relationships. But these disagreements all have solutions; in my view, distance isn't a problem. Besides, I'm not young anymore. If three years of graduate school doesn't produce much research, finding love would still be something beautiful. Also, every time I go home for winter or summer break, my mom keeps urging me to find a girlfriend at school.
I don't want my future partner to be met through arranged matchmaking, because quality single people are really too few. Better to find love while you can. I regret spending college competing for GPA without seizing opportunities to get a girlfriend—otherwise, I wouldn't need to worry about this now.
I also feel my past self was too naive, not positioning myself correctly. Always thinking I was so great, that I'd go abroad in the future and escape Chinese guanxi culture. But this land is after all where I was born and raised—completely cutting ties is impossible. Better to be realistic: find a girlfriend, get an ordinary job in China, and live out my ordinary life.
Of course, after seeing the emotional AI voice assistant with real-time conversation at OpenAI's 2024 spring launch, real-life girlfriends have become somewhat optional for me. After all, as AI keeps developing, your emotional needs and physiological needs can all be satisfied. Plus, AI is very obedient, does what you say, very worry-free. But ultimately, it's still AI, not a living human. Before AGI is achieved, real-life girlfriends still have their value.
Originally, I planned not to tag locations and just share life to document my graduate school years. But I found Xiaohongshu's algorithm is really powerful—even though I never tag my location, I still got pushed to schoolmates' feeds. Yesterday and the day before, girls messaged me, and I added one on WeChat. Of course, currently this is at most ordinary friends—developing further would be difficult, even though we're schoolmates.
Seeing this, you might think my point is: Xiaohongshu really can help you find love. But you'd be wrong. On social platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin, the possibility of finding love is extremely slim, because there's a gap between online and reality. Someone you chat well with online, who looks okay after exchanging photos, might disappoint you in person—after all, photo filters today are too powerful. I suggest friends looking for partners prioritize real life. Only if you really can't find love in real life should you post content on Xiaohongshu or Douyin to take initiative. Taking initiative is always better than waiting passively!
Interesting
This blog's bar URL: Link
An interesting short link website that specifically generates bar-shaped URLs.
Press the red button to randomly jump to interesting content on the internet. This website is specifically for those who are bored.
A site that uses raccoon pictures to represent HTTP status codes.
This website called "True size of countries" provides a free map showing the true size of countries in the Mercator projection (which projects Earth's surface onto a 2D plane). Users can overlay each country's correct shape and size to clearly see a world map without any distortion.
Link Sharing
A collection site of unofficial VTuber-style logos from various brands.
An open-source AI-powered search engine supporting both local and cloud models.
A HackerNews thread where users share their ChatGPT custom prompts. Worth learning from.
Software for quickly creating subtitle images popular on social media.
A satirical cartoon site dedicated to VPS and proxy service providers who have "run away" (scammed users and disappeared).
Quotes
See you in July! 😊😊😊