Young people in China are becoming more rebellious, questioning their nation’s traditional expectations of career and family
So… there’ll be a lot of great Chinese punk music soon?
There was an explosion of Chinese punk/alt bands late 90s/ early 2000s but they gave way to hip hop/pop. Still a decent scene in Beijing. One of my favorite bands from that era is called Wood pushing melon (木推瓜).
https://youtu.be/j_dq-tQuNrA?si=3tEzKqRpgVUlm2ynThe lead singer left that band and started an incredible tribal folk group called Dawanggang next
https://youtu.be/toaZqu_4hMw?si=1XQP0yKpz3rsGTD0Yep. There’s a lot of Chinese punk, post-punk, goth, New Wave etc etc etc. sadly, outside of China you don’t hear much about it because of the old firewall and of course language barriers.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/j_dq-tQuNrA?si=3tEzKqRpgVUlm2yn
https://piped.video/toaZqu_4hMw?si=1XQP0yKpz3rsGTD0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yeah. China’s speed running to true communism at a pace I wasn’t expecting. There’s a legitimate chance for the elimination of scarcity of basic goods in China “soon”, which would lead to a flourishing of the arts.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?
Surely this is sarcasm.
That would be awesome
Lol! This piss-take xD
Got any good examples of this?
I do know that between 1950 and 2000 poverty and starvation dropped like a stone. I havent been watching closely enough to tell for the past couple decades. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but it can be hard to tell what’s slavery and what’s improvement of living standards through the media and on such short timescales
I know theyre installing a ton of solar/wind. Superbundance could happen there and that could be great. I got my fingers crossed.
How’s agriculture doing?
I think they’re very well positioned with electric cars and are going to take marketshare from everyone else in that industry.
I hope they quit killing the sea and bossing around their neighbors
Their effots in Africa are probably going to benefit them greatly. I hope they arent doing to Africa whatthre US did with South America in early/mid 20th century… with the saddling of unpayable debts, extracting resources and installing viscious dictators
I read recently OPECy folks are openly conspiring to flood Africas market with cheap and shitty fossil fuel power plants and cars to expand the oil market. It’d be rad someone flooded it with cheaper and better electric cars/heatpumps and renewable power. I wish the US/Europe would
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It’s interesting because people are people and it doesn’t matter where you are born.
If you look at it from a birds eye view you will see a younger, smart generation trying to fight it’s own governments.
It’s not USA vs China vs Russia vs Europe etc. it is the younger generation vs the old generation. Currently each generation is fighting it’s own government and slowly realising how poor they have done in the last decades.
Nobody wants war.
t’s not USA vs China vs Russia vs Europe etc. it is the younger generation vs the old generation
No, it’s owning class vs working class, anything else is a distraction in service of the owning class.
Workers of the world, unite! ✊
(edited in image. If you need image description - source)
Even marxists don’t simplify the classes as much as that diagram suggests. It’s missing peasants, artisans and the petty bourgeois. It’s also never been as simple as capitalist vs working class. Capitalists regularly fight amongst themselves as do the working class. This whole idea of class struggle being the only struggle is so oversimplified it’s kinda silly.
I don’t think it’s honest to frame it in generational language either btw. Though that is a component of it.
Imagine that - an infograph gives a concise summery of a larger idea… 🤯
Either way - it is really that simple and splitting the working class in to splinter groups is just another division, which again - only serves the owning class. Them fighting amongst themselves is irrelevant, they’ve been united enough to maintain this system for centuries because they have the same goal - stay in power, make as much money as possible. If that happens via collaboration one week, then they’ll collaborate that week, if it means they need to go to war the next week, then they will, and have been, doing exactly that.
In contrast, as long as the working class stays divided (along race, gender, ability, and even “work level” or whatever you’d call the division you’ve brought up) we will never be free.
I’m the furthest thing from a class reductionist, and I think intersectionality is vital, but all of the systemic barriers we face (racism, sexism, ableism, querrphobia, and so on) exist to serve capitalism and those who benefit from it. That doesn’t mean those systems don’t need addressing, but part of doing that is understanding why they exist, and how they serve to divide us.
Seriously, what end could splitting hairs over “peasants” or “artisans” possibly serve (And are those hundreds of years old terms even relevant in our world with our technology?)? Even the petit bourgeois is oppressed by the owning class, the system convincing them that a “middle class” exists is part of the fucking con, and the whole fucking point is to see how irrelevant these semantics are and fucking unite so that we can have a better society for everyone… 🤦♀️
Seriously, what end could splitting hairs over “peasants” or “artisans” possibly serve (And are those hundreds of years old terms even relevant in our world with our technology?)? Even the petit bourgeois is oppressed by the owning class, the system convincing them that a “middle class” exists is part of the fucking con, and the whole fucking point is to see how irrelevant these semantics are and fucking unite so that we can have a better society for everyone… 🤦♀️
You haven’t read marxist or anarchist theories very well if this is what you think.
Artisans are any one man business. They don’t have employers to exploit them that’s why they are an important class in marxist analysis.
Petty bourgeois aren’t middle class necessarily; it refers to small business owners. They are exploiters of the workers beneath them while being exploited by others. Small time land lords would be petit bourgeois for example. These people are in essence part of the “owner class” because they own a business or building.
Peasants are not considered to be a revolutionary class because they aren’t the proletariat. Not a problem in western societies but some countries still have peasants.
all of the systemic barriers we face (racism, sexism, ableism, querrphobia, and so on) exist to serve capitalism and those who benefit from it.
You don’t think racism affects business owners or landlords? Or sexism? Or anything else?
This is the kind of assertion given without evidence that made me leave marxists behind. I am sick to death of people claiming all these problems are because of capitalism. If anything capitalism has helped address some of these issues like sexism because women not working is bad for the system. In fact not fully utilizing people because of prejudice in general is bad for capitalism which is all about efficiency and exploitation.
Edit: also policy regarding peasants is one area where marxism and anarchism differ significantly from what little I understand of anarchism.
This whole idea of class struggle being the only struggle is so oversimplified it’s kinda silly.
There’s nothing wrong with a simplified model if it gets you the results you’re looking for. And for the vast majority of the working class thinking in simplistic terms such as capitalist vs. worker would improve their lives tremendously.
The more complex models might be useful for explaining how things change and evolve. But mainly complexity is introduced by capitalists (or capitalist simps) to sow discord among workers and keep us from organizing effectively.
Why are all the marxists coming out of the wood work? Y’all can’t run a society for shit. Why are you still here and existing?
China was one of your experiments that went wrong. Go and build a working model for a socialist or communist society and I might listen. Until then you have nothing to add. Anarchists had better luck than you guys and you killed them for it.
I mean, call me whatever you want. It’s irrelevant. Do you need my vote or not? If you don’t then ignore me. If you do then pay attention.
Which country do you live in? I live in the UK so unless you are here it’s mostly irrelevant what you vote for.
You asked the question bud. Not my fault you don’t like the answer.
So are you a marxist or something else?
I’m waiting for Gen Z to realize that they’ve grown up interconnected and have the ability to coordinate like no one ever could before and when they realize that I expect them to flip the monopoly board.
This is exactly why the billionaires are dismantling the current social media platforms. Organizing is the only threat they truly fear.
As phrased in a recent anti-union campaign by Amazon: Watch out, your co-workers might be “vulnerable to organizing”.
Can you expand on how billionaires are dismantling social media?
did you miss what happened to twitter?
No. I don’t see how it was “dismantled.” Can you explain?
Rate limiting and heavily pushed “premium” options have made Twitter near useless for large scale organizing.
600 posts a day makes it nearly useless for organizing?
Its capitalist owners rendered it useless for political organization.
This is just repeating the claim. Can you explain how so?
I would expect nothing of the sort. They’re already been misdirected into the blanket “boomers bad” mentality, that all the old people living in poverty are somehow to blame for all their ills.
The ruling class will continue to rule, because they know exactly how to manipulate the plebs.
Of course it’s the super rich, but who is voting for policies that support the super rich? It’s not young people.
Well the young don’t vote at all most of the time.
But when was the last time you saw a party with policies that didn’t support the super rich? Since Reagan, no matter if the president wears a red or blue tie, the rich have gotten richer.
The only choice is how much poorer the poor get, with a side order of “other” hate. When the Zoomers are 50, don’t worry. There’ll be a whole new bunch of “others” to hate on, to distract them from the fact that they can just barely pay the rent. The boomers thought they’d be different too. Peace and love and hippies and Woodstock. Gen Z will be no different.
Oh you’re just doing some “both sides” doomerism. Got it.
Aw, reading comprehension too much for you?
Peace and love and hippies and Woodstock. Gen Z will be no different.
This but with the emphasis on the people who got fucking killed or put in prison or aged out of the ability for revolutionary action, while the rest of them kind of, left those guys to rot in jail, and went on to just exist passively in the system, and purport the same hippie mentalities, and then get sorted, just the same as last time. Power corrupts and is magnetic to the easily corruptible.
You know, I do wonder if, as the contradiction builds, and the farce kind of becomes more obvious, with like, the starbucks pride month rainbow logo while they also crush their unions, I wonder if everyone will make progress along that, as the marxists kind of tend to predict, with the whole “capital contains the seeds of it’s own destruction” spiel. I dunno. I think probably people don’t give a shit about contradiction though and are free to just keep living with a totally normalized cognitive dissonance.
Haha okay dude, you’re clearly out of touch with the youth these days. Gen Z says “okay boomer” and that’s pretty much it en masse. Gen Z is however not putting up with corporate bullshit as much.
I am of Gen Z. The opposite is true, I would think. Or, rather, the truth is more complicated in both directions. It’s not true to say we’ve “grown up interconnected”, by the 2010’s, most of the mainstream culture was basically gone. You had maybe the marvel movies, but, you know, social media, the internet, kind of revealed a self-evident truth. That there wasn’t a grand a unifying “american culture”. At the very least, such a thing had been waning for a long time, but the counter-cultural movements of the 90’s could still be considered a unifying culture of gen X, and elder millennials. Lots of people watched MTV. The closest thing zoomers have is stuff like mr beast, or kai cenat, which we might all be tangentially aware of, but we’ve all become atomized, there’s a limited number of zoomers who watch that and that’s not “the culture”. There is less genuine engagement with a “the culture”, and more awareness of a variety of subcultures, of a broadness.
You know, along those lines, there’s also a lack of ability to coordinate. We can “coordinate”, yes, you can use social media to DM and communicate with other people, but you’re doing so at great risk. Basically every social media site now, of the major ones, is a fed honeypot, and you can be banned at any time for any truly revolutionary action or coordination. Your coordination is also easily trackable and visible and thus easily co-opted, corporatized, destroyed. I would’ve thought that tech literacy would’ve gone up with Gen-Z, you know, kind of along the same lines as a fish swims in water, but, you know, owing to that same metaphor, what the fuck is water, david foster wallace style. I don’t know shit about that guy other than that single joke. The kids have no tech literacy, because everything has been crafted to be easily accessible, and simplified, by the companies that now control the internet.
I think the only shot really is if the tech oligopoly is broken up, and not just in terms of regulation, like what the FTC does, but it has to be bred out. The environment and technology must change in such a way as to no longer allow those sorts of fiefdoms. Tech adoption must happen that eliminates that. Which it kind of can’t, because the technology is still subject to all the material conditions and market forces, but then we’re kind of encountering a chicken and egg problem. Fediverse is pretty good as a solution but we’ve seen limited buy-in, partially as a result of the conceit of the thing, and I think, you know, if we don’t learn any lessons from the classic internet (we won’t), we could just see some fediverse instance, a singular instance, get uber-popular, and then just kind of separate from all the others after they’ve grown to encompass the whole thing. Migrate away, bam, new monopoly, just as happened in days past.
In any case, the environment must change, tech literacy, media literacy, all the literacies must rise, and then I think we would be primed to flip the chess board. I would say that Gen Alpha might be the ones primed for it, but I think, you know. They’re all like, the true Ipad kids, that are condemned to watch youtube kids content, which is the most reprehensible shit imaginable, with the worst of millenial parenting that I’ve seen. Maybe number blocks and alpha-blocks and bluey will save everyone, but I kind of doubt it somehow, the millenials seem a little bit too fucked up to break the cycle and I kind of don’t really want to see what happens when a bunch of Gen Z parents who watch mr beast and can breathe in the polluted water start having kids. You know, I think the reaction is going to be much the same generation to generation, in terms of people who uncritically propagate the same shit, people who are nihilistic and angry at everything and take it out on their kids, and people who do their best to give the best to their kids and end up sheltering their kids in the process. I dunno. I kind of hope I’m wrong.
Also climate change is happening at a really good clip so that’s maybe a bigger priority, cause unless that gets stopped, then this is all a moot point.
I think we just keep normalizing it and you wittpe down the population to those to unaware to notice it’s shit but simply continue cause it’s the animal drive and those who are psychopathic self driving who don’t care if it gets worse cause they expect to get their own at any cost. And the world will spin on and get worse and worse without end until it does.
No war but the class war
Boomers want a war.
I actually think that the biggest damage the parents of the Boomers committed was glorifying their war stories. Don’t get me wrong, I probably would have too so I’m not saying this out of judgement. But I think the Boomers grew up feeling like the only way to prove themselves was to fight as hard as their parents did. And when there weren’t any Nazis to be found, they found fights with anybody they could.
… including their own children.
Idk, if I was young and rich I probably wouldn’t give a shit about changing anything. I’d maybe even invest in anything that promised to keep things the same
That’s EXACTLY what they do - invest I’m anything that promised to keep things the same, this is our salary.
Don’t trust anyone over 30.
Im over 35 and I know better than to trust myself!
glares at reflection in mirror
… you do realize lemmy users skew older, and it’s not just kids saying “eat the rich”, right?
I understand that quote, but these days it’s a dumb one. Gone are the days of “settling down” into a bubble once you hit 30.
Right, but I was replying to someone making it a generational thing.
I agree the quote is stupid. Also the guy was joking/exaggerating when he said it, never meant it the way it was used (even in movies, like Planet of the Apes) and also thought it was stupid. Which is partly why I picked it.
Amazing arc, like watching the last 120 years in the US compressed down to a couple decades. From rural to industrial powerhouse to the kids going “fuck this shit”.
What’s next?
It’s like watching a speedrun: Capitalism any%.
Next? Some of them have to be thinking “wait, this is a communist country, isn’t it?”
I don’t think anyone think of China as a communist/socialist country for a very long time. Maybe except older generations and tankies.
Ironically, I have met more tankies in six month on lemmy than my 18 years growing up in China. It is truly a wild culture shock that I didn’t expect. LOL.
A “tankie” isn’t a communist anymore than an American Republican wants individual freedom.
Anyone that supports China is going to say it’s communist, and anyone from the right shitting on China is going to say they’re communist.
But both groups are pretty much the same and no one should listen to either
My pet conspiracy theory is that a bunch of tankies are actually CIA trolls, in an effort to tie criticism of the US together with completely bonkers causes. The end goal being that if you think the US is not the best thing ever, you must be a tankie, and you support authoritarian regimes like Iran and China.
Some of the tankie(bots) I have argued with on here are so contrarian that it seems that way to me, as well. They don’t try to argue in good faith, and they never concede no matter how much they are proven wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of them are bots or bad actors either from the CIA, China, or Russia.
The CCP doesn’t even claim that China is communist though. Idk where you’re getting that from.
The CCP doesn’t even claim that China is communist though
Can I get a source for the communist party of China saying they’re not communists?
The CCP are communists though. There is no denying that. That doesn’t mean they think China is a communist country. Communism to them doesn’t just mean the communists are in power. Communism to them is more of an ideal they aim to work towards.
That’s not a source…
And it’s like saying American Republican voters want personal freedom.
It doesn’t matter what someone says if their actions are the opposite
it’s not that ironic if you look at lemmy’s origin.
What’s next?
A gigantic Lemmy instance?
They already have two.
Without draconian censorship you can’t really replicate the experience of Chinese social media. I mean, I’m sure I’d be able to say things like sprinkling pepper 撒胡椒面 or facilitating commerce while loosening my clothing 通商宽衣.
Just doesn’t feel the same.
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Yes blame the “youth” when the average age of our politicians is 65. Makes perfect sense.
Gullible people are partially to be blamed.
What you mean like the fucking Boomers who keep voting for these pieces of shit? Yeah I agree.
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China is already essentially an authoritarian dictatorship. There’s no big leap to fascism for them, they just need to fetishize the military and act more nationalistic than they already do. They’re already prejudicial, blaming minorities within for all sorts of problems, attempting to control speech and thought, etc.
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Civil war, if our current trajectory is any indication.
I mean, that was almost a national sport over there, before the CPC.
摆烂 bai3lan4
A slang term that means “stop striving”, I’d say it’s loosely akin to the phrase “quiet quitting” but a bit more general.
Fuck yeah China! (not the government)
Fuck the CCP. China is cool.
Also referenced in the article was the phrase 'tang ping’ (lying flat, 躺平)
Will they be planking soon?
This is not how I want to read an article.
I checked the comments before opening the article and wasn’t sure what to expect based on yours.
Holy hell, we really are catering to the lowest common denominator here. It’s not that I think we shouldn’t, we absolutely should, but our society really should be working harder to keep lowest from being so damn low.
And reader view doesn’t pick it up… gross
Well if you jump to the last picture there’s a link to open the full article, then you can… stare at the paywall…
As much as I agree, I’ve seen plenty of articles that are so damn long it makes me wonder if they actually expect people to read it. Who has time to read an entire 30 min article where half is about a specific person’s personal story that’s only meant to back up the main points. Just tell me the main point and back it with data (bonus points if you kink every source you reference, imo).
That’s why I think more detailed articles should be written like scientific journal articles. One to three paragraphs that convey the gist of the article and the remaining pages dedicated to analysis and explanation.
Not only would this be more work than a normal article, though, it’d reduce ad revenue because most people would read the abstract and leave.
Mmm, yes, show us your kink sources.
The Tiktok Manga Slideshow format has finally migrated to major news sites I see.
God I hate tech this decade.
God I hate tech this decade.
I feel this sentiment in my bones. I know it gets overused, but the word of the decade so far really does seem to be enshittification. The only thing that seems to be getting better is self-hosting, which is still a massive pain in the ass for a lot of things.
I mind this less than the stupid video articles.
It’s just buzzfeed articles returning from the grave. They’d split a few paragraphs over 20 pages somehow
Over half of Americans read at below a 6th grade reading level. So it makes sense that they want to bring back picture books.
They’re called graphic novels…
Kidding
Is this still true? Damn shame if so
Might be the worst experience I’ve had. We don’t want books. We got rid of books
Humorously, maybe the writer wants to let it rot
It’s like a picture book!
Not great but not terrible. At least there were no ads.
The problem with The Rat race is, even if you win, you’re still a rat.
This is a great quote, I also like to say (especially in places like airports or government buildings):
It’s not a rat race, it’s a rat queue.
One of the behavioralist psychologists, I think it was Pavlov, ran an experiment on dogs where he shocked them for both bad behavior good.
Eventually, the shocks had no effect.
Leaned hopelessness. Can’t escape the effect regardless of your efforts so eventually you stop trying
It was Martin Seligman who did dog shock experiments and developed the theory of learned helplessness in 1967. While Seligman demonstrated that learned helplessness did occur, we still don’t know why learned helplessness occurs (especially in humans).
Pavlov was much earlier (1897) and formed the theory of classical conditioning where a primary stimulus (food) was paired with a neutral stimulus (a bell) under the right conditions until the neutral stimulus would evoke a similar automatic response as the primary stimulus (e.g. drooling).
What you are describing also sounds a little like operant conditioning, where a learned behaviour is reinforced or punished with the application or removal of a stimulus. Or in this case, where the link between a behaviour and a stimulus is eroded to the point where the learned link goes extinct, and the subject becomes desensitized to the repeated stimulus.
Damn I feel that
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Wait so you’re telling me abusing dogs results in a negative outcome?
Shit who would have thought!
They have an interesting strategy where they workout expenses for the year if they lived minimal. It might be 9k. So they work for a few months and save up that money then quit their job and “lay flat” for the rest of the year.
Honestly, that sounds amazing, and illustrates why, “can you explain this gap on your resume” is such a bull shit interview question.
What? This illustrates exactly why it’s an important question.
If you’re responsible for hiring are you going to hire someone who has gaps in their resume or someone that’s been consistently working?
The person with gaps on their resume is more likely to quit on you. You aren’t going to hire someone who looks like they will quit.
The actual solution is to figure out why work sucks so hard that people find loopholes like this to get around it. If i can work 4 months out of the year and take care of myself, why would you want to eork any more?
Agreed but employers don’t care. They are the ones with the power. Having you work 60 hours a week is a means of control. If you quit there is a line of people out there that’s willing to take the job. Employers know this and exploit it.
If you think you can change this power dynamic then go for it, but there are too many desperate people out there for that to happen.
one of the problems of modern work environments is that workplaces get saturated with people who actually should leave but don’t. It is a bullshit question even if (like many modern problems) it would make sense if we were still in an era where corporations valued long term employees and mutual loyalty was a thing that existed.
Loyalty or not employers aren’t going to bother hiring someone they know is going to walk out in a month or two. That’s why they ask the question. It isn’t rocket science.
“well I work for a short time and then just quit and do nothing.”
I can see why they might ask the question. I don’t expect people to put the business above themselves, but I certainly would be less likely to hire someone if I knew they were just going to quit after a few months because they have no ambition.
I don’t blame them… The older generations really screwed the pooch for the younger generation. Basically made China inhospitable for foreign investment so all these young people are left high and dry with fancy degrees and no jobs.
It’s kinda not really the older generations, though, it’s more capitalism. Where does that start and end?
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Eh, I think we have to agree to disagree on that point, friend. I’ve seen a lot of quotes closer to the turn of the last century warning about capitalism, it’s been going for quite a while. All through the industrial booms and a few wars were essentially fuelled by capitalist reasons. All that happened in India, British empire stuff, essentially capitalism. I could deep dive and find dates, but if you are interested, there’s just so much to read about it, I wouldn’t know where to start. You might find some fascinating (and troubling) stuff, once you start scratching the surface. I feel like I am only just scratching the surface. I’m looking for a good book to read on the subject so I have a more indepth understanding.
Wait, the problem in your mind with China is that it’s not as safe for multinational companies to exploit their populace?
China’s own megaconglomerates aren’t doing any better. They openly steal from their populace, and exploit their workers in inhumane ways. Just look at the mass embezzlement of peoples life savings in the housing market by ultra mega sized publicly traded corporations. China is basically a hyper capitalist corporatocracy, with extra authoritarianism sprinkled in with no upside.
Agreed that the problem is capitalism, but I don’t know about “no upside.” The poverty rate in China has continually decreased. While we in the west might argue that living under authoritarian rule might not be worth the tradeoff, that certainly is an upside.
Although this only works when you’re not living a minimal existence, paycheck-to-paycheck.
The next step will be to pay them less.
Damn, I’d be sore after laying flat for months.
GLOBAL GENERAL STRIKE, A BLOB CAN DREAM.
I really enjoyed this story format. It showed the strength of photographic journalism
EDIT: i present to you: the duality of humanity.
I was confused how I was supposed to read it. I just got a single image and a piece of text that says “tap story”, which doesn’t mean anything.
Well it’s the same format as Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. stories
Twitch? The streaming platform?
Yes. Streamers can post stories now
On Twitch?
Why???
let it all rot
Warms my heart to see the youth choosing to walk the Rebel Path.
“I am the righteous hand of god, and I am the devil that you forgot.” - Poor Man’s Poison
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die 👯
Fuck the rat race all over.
Late stage capitalism is a blight of humanity, there’s gotta have to be some sort of revolutionary changes to society at the rate this is all headed. The world is not healthy right now.
I’m pretty sure we’re watching society slowly collapse.
Can a Chinese speaker clarify something? “Let it rot” in other sources is 摆烂 (Bải làn) which translates as “showed away” When I translate “let it rot” I get either 让它腐烂 (simplified) or 讓它腐爛.
What’s the difference? How does showed away become let it rot?
This is another case of a foreign word don’t have a good translation in English (and vise versa). Both 摆烂 and 让它腐烂 don’t have the same tone as “let it rot”.
To me, “let it rot” means watching something collapse with a sense of enjoyment. I cannot recall a Chinese word with this exact sentiment of the top of my head. But I can try to explain both Chinese words.
“让它腐烂” is the literal translation of “let it rot”, word for word. It don’t have the cultural and sentimental meaning behind it, merely stating the fact. More like “let the leave rot in the compost pile”.
“摆烂” is probably what the article is referring to. Its meaning is similar to civil disobedience, and 躺平 (“lay flat”, another word that was popular couple years ago).
“摆” means put, “烂” means something poorly made, broken, etc. “摆烂”, together as a word, means “displaying a broken (bad) attitude, no matter the outside influence”. However, “烂” also means rot, which is probably where the translation “let it rot” came from.
The original usage is much more playful, like your cat would lay on the floor no matter what toy or treat you give it, then it is 摆烂. But with the recent increase in pressure for many young people in China. 摆烂 and 躺平 (lay flat) become more of a act of civil disobedience and refusal to participate in the broken system/economy.
So 摆烂 is not a exact translation for “let it rot”, but they do share the meaning of “no action” and the sentiment of joy. And “let it rot” sounds much cooler and concise than my explanation.
Hey I just wanted to say thank you for the breakdown. The intricacies of translation are interesting.
Ditto. Respect for anyone who not only knows two languages well enough to explain one in the other, but is willing to share that knowledge.
Thank you for your kind message. China is my cultural root, and both its culture and language are of great importance to me.
I was very active on r/translator before I left reddit. It is my great joy to see that I still have opportunity here to convey Chinese cultures to kind strangers on lemmy.
Is there a Lemmy community for that?
I would love to have one, but I have yet to find an alternative.
Could you create one?
Thank you for the commentary. I figured there was some cultural and lingual baggage that was the difference.
The article title sounded like they were letting the system rot, but if they’re laying flat then the metaphor is that the people are laying and rotting? Or did I misunderstand
That is what I mean when I say there is no exact translation.
摆烂 doesn’t mean see the system collapse, merely displaying the lack of interest to participate. So the speaker is displaying the 烂 (bad attitude, rot), not the system. I believe 摆烂 is more akin to “civil disobedience” or “quit quitting”, than “let it rot” (if anything, it is closer to the literal meaning of “let me rot”).
I want to make it more clear in my original comment, but I was afraid it would be too verbose and distract the reader.
I also read that as “quiet quitting”. Would you try to translate that from English to Chinese could cause all kinds of linguistic issues.
Would “just throw the whole thing away” (as in throw it into the trash) be a more fitting translation for the sentiment than “let it rot” then?
Not exactly, 摆烂 is more mischievous noncompliance (like we typically think of a lazy cat), than confrontational sabotage.
But “throw it all away” certainly conveys the message well enough. It is quite common to have word in one language that dont have a exact match in another language. Even in European languages, let along between Chinese and English, which are widely different.
Interesting! Thank you for the insight, I’ve always loved the topic of direct translation vs contextual translation ever since I dove into it in a Contemporary Japanese Literature course in college
