When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.
Given how much the CCP controls China, you’re always a bit suspicious that any cool content from there is actually state-sponsored (TikTok seems to have a lot of channels like that). That was the first impression I got from the first video I saw of sexycyborg and I’m sure that a lot people dismissed her for similar reasons. But if you learn about her story, it all seems legit and she’s a very inspiring hacker.
So she’s actually been around for a long time. The only reason I know was because she was a minor figure in a major internet drama…
Basically in 2014 there was something called GamerGate. It started off as anger over journalists being complete dickwads, and ended in being the blueprint neonazis used to radicalize people.
While the tech journalists were “the good guys” they embodied the “you’re not wrong, just an asshole” thing 10000x. They would behave like high school bullies and then be super vindictive to anyone who was perceived as crossing them.
During this time, Wu went to a tech conference with a LED miniskirt that she made. She posted it on the Internet and got a lot of comments. The vast majority of them were good. However, one person said something along the lines of “you look great. These tech conferences can be sexist, I hope you didn’t get body shamed”. She responded with something like “most people were chill. The only real dicks were the progressive ‘conformity non/conformity’ types”.
This caused a massive shitstorm. Bad actors were able to use the very real argument that the same people calling them sexist were judging Wu so hard that it was visible in pictures". The journalists then attacked her and accused Wu of working with them. Wu apologized. She said she was Chinese and didn’t mean to get involved in US culture war discussions. However, she also refused to take a side because she didn’t want to get involved in US culture war discussions.
As a result, she got put on a shit list by the media for a long time. That line about VICE NEWS considering outing her? A media organization linked to GamerGate called Gawker pioneered that tactic. They largely used it on us conservatives. Peter Thiel was the biggest example, most people outed were more or less nobodies. I’m guessing VICE had initial thoughts of outing her in the same way, and only later realizing that outing a woman for being a lesbian dating a minority in China is a very different ballgame than outing Timothy Geithner’s brother for being on Grindr.
If the CCP wants you gone, they can have you gone, just like that. The only thing that keeps them from putting people like Naomi away permanently is international pressure. I’m worried for her, because I don’t think that will hold for much longer.
If we’re following a pattern, she’ll likely turn back up in a few weeks or months, say how awesome the CCP is, then disappear from public life. She would probably have some sort of travel ban and even if she gets out, the CCP would go after her or her girlfriend’s families at the very least. I don’t think they would merc her because the seem to value being able to tote their targets out to maintain the masquerade.
A brave woman doing her very best in very difficult circumstances
What a shame. I’m subscribed to her youtube channel and enjoyed her content. Unfortunately, this will probably be used as more ammunition in the political war that will continue the feedback loop and things will only get worse.
