Han Han: I had to break my Twitter obsession

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:30:00 +0000

I have been keeping a blog now for six or seven years, and even though I have been far from assiduous in updating it, I find that I’ve now written several hundred posts in all. But as time has gone on, a good half of Chinese bloggers have transferred their attention to social networking sites, while the other half have become converts to microblogs of one kind or another. For the past year or so, the links on the left of my screen have been left unattended — it’s not just a case of tea going cold when someone leaves, for the tea has completely dried up, leaving only the cup itself. Most of those former bloggers have probably already forgotten their own username and password. But I like it better this way. It’s as though a bunch of people suddenly came crowding in, doing the same thing as you, then left again just as suddenly. You don’t feel lonely when they’re gone — it just seems tidier.

“Why don’t you have a microblog?” people ask. Actually, I did do one for a few days, but I soon came to feel it didn’t suit me, so I closed down the account. It’s not that I found the 140-character limit too restrictive, for who would insist on always writing an essay 10 times that length? A regular essay requires quite a bit of thought, whereas with a microblog post, just three or four neatly put sentences are all that’s needed. On days when you can’t think of anything to say, you can make do just by forwarding other people’s posts.

Salon.com > Han Han

Han Han: I had to break my Twitter obsession