Background: I’m Chinese by origin but grew up in the west. He’s English. He’s kind of a 
but in a lefty way and has been with me to China multiple times, we’ve been together for years. He has had misconceptions before but is always learning. He does go on Reddit still, mostly to talk about land value tax which is his big political obsession right now.
Anyway last night we were at dinner and talking about an idea for a project that’s like quora but with only expert/academic researchers as responders. Part of it would need a reputation rating for the researchers. We were then talking about the use cases/audience for the project and I said “this might be better suited to Asia” (because of how highly education is valued and the pressure on kids to study/achieve grades). And he immediately responded “because they’re used to social credit scores?” Like. Without missing a beat. Maybe I’m overthinking it but it really pissed me off that his first association when I mentioned Asia was… this.
We talked about it and he explained that the concept was already in his mind when he was thinking about the reputation system so it wasn’t just a reaction to Asia specifically. But he insisted that he knew social credit scores were a real thing. I think he did listen when I said these types of jokes were what made Reddit such a hostile environment to be in, though.
I’m not sure what I’m asking but I just wanted to get it off my chest. Does anyone maybe have resources on internet Sinophobia / explanation of where the social credit stuff came from I can share with him?
Thanks crew. Sorry that was so long x
one of my very good friends made a ‘social credit score’ comment the other night off-hand (they were referring to a relative of theirs who apparently lives in China and ‘has’ one - but it sounded like bs to me lol) but I knew the argument wasn’t worth pursuing so instead of I just went “huh?” & kept asking him to elaborate until he realized he was just spouting some insane propagandized State Department BS straight from either his’ relative’s dumbass mouth and/or from some bs alternative source. Works every time and he actually felt dumb about it afterwards.
Literally:
“yeah my cousin lives in Beijing and actually has a social credit score…”
huh??
“you know - the social credit score thing that China has?”
huh?? like the credit score we have for renting/purchasing property and loans?
“no no - its different than that, its a lot more fucked up you’ve surely heard of this you fucking communist”
huh? how?
“basically its how China prevents people from doing…”
huh?? that doesn’t sound real to me lol - how has it affected your American cousin who is living in Beijing with a Chinese wife??
“he has a social credit score now”
so like an American credit score??
“NO NO NO HERE HOLD ON LET ME GOOGLE IT FOR YOU”
^ imagine this for like an hour and a half and you’ll have my experience in NYC a few days ago.
This is a good idea. He said to me “I don’t know what Redditors think it is, and I’m sure it’s massively overblown, but I know that what I’m talking about exists in some way”. So he probably has just vaguely heard something or read something a while ago and didn’t apply much thought.
5 words “how do you know that?”
Them:
Surely you’ve heard of 9-11, you fucking communist.
Me:
Oh crap this is like some kind of Socratic Method isn’t it. I need to try this, though sometimes I think folks can enjoy the whiff of their own farts too much and become emboldened.
Did you find it worked especially well with certain people or certain personalities?
my personal experience with that method is that it works for a huge swath of people, but you gotta have nearly saintlike patience
Patience, it’s a virtue right? Something to work on…
They absolutely can - so if it is someone who literally doesn’t think about what they’re saying at ALL, then in my experience the method only really is useful if you want to entertain yourself with a few hours of insane conversation. However, if the person is going to consider what’s coming out of their mouth even a little bit then usually it can work. I wouldn’t recommend it for a like your local sidewalk preacher because they’re probably too entrenched, but that dipshit cousin/coworker you barely know and talk to once a year? It’ll probably work on them.
Like Thordros said - it works best with things like racist jokes or just ignorant statements that you can force them to sit there and deconstruct. You do have to either have patience or a great poker-face - I’ve found that sometimes, especially when doing it to friends/relatives, that smiling and whatnot will clue someone in & make them shut down the conversation.
Noted, appreciate the advice, hope to put it to practice.
It’s works even better with racist jokes. Make them deconstruct how fucked up what they just said is.
Huh? Fried chicken and orange ‘drank’? What’s a ‘drank’? I don’t get it.
“You know, how black people are, like…”
I don’t get joke. Can you explain it to me?
Yeah, thanks for the advice.
As an aside, what you wrote (mostly the “huh”) made me think of this and I can’t stop laughing.