A China Blog On Suzhou Expat Life

Whatever. It goes to show you how insecure people can be. If she really doesn’t care about the blog awards why even bother making that post.

It’s a simple, friendly competition. There should be no hard feelings and no name-calling. If anything the blog awards make it easy to find new and interesting blogs people might not be aware of. It doesn’t mean you’ll love them too, but at least you’re introduced to them.

Ryan, you should not make any reference to her blog. Instead, you should invite her to meet you at Babyface in Suzhou. China is too big to start stepping on your neighbor’s feet.

I think you should go shopping, it will make you feel better!! Mom

A stupid, vacuous, opinionated self-promoting blatherer.

Whoa Tim, that’s a pretty low blow! Ryan, you’re not going to let him get away with that are you?

Your blod DOES not suck, otherwise I would not even bother reading it. I agree with Tim.

Hmmmm….

Ryan and commenters (and even me) have flamed the blog of that girl here and now she is defending herself a bit.
Ryans response is a bit weak certainly not spicy enough.

How about exploiting the feud via a boxing match. I would do the promotion material for that fight for free (as long as it takes place around november). I can already picture the posters “Shallow shoppng-addicted cutie fights fat Marco Polo” or “Self absorbed blogger A kicks the butt of self absorbed Blogger B”.
Oh now I guess pissed them off both I kid, I kid!
Seriously, If you ask me you too should avoid each other in blog posts just to be sure to not let your blogs turn into a “flame war newsoutlet”.

LOL When I read the first line “I am just to sad to post” I initally thought it was about something serious - maybe his blog got censored severely or something similar.

i wasn’t talking about ryan…

I was going to let this slide into the ether, but I saw a comment on Shopgirl’s blog saying she was personally insulted, and I wanted to explain myself - as a rule, I don’t pick on little girls, honest. This was my response:

Hey Siyan, I wasn’t going to respond to this, but I saw your comment above and wanted to make something clear - attacking your blog and attacking you are two completely different things in my mind.

I would like to hope that you have a level of depth and desires that a blog about shopping and partying doesn’t capture. But, I don’t know you, and obviously can’t make any judgments about you as a person other than what you present here.

My comment saying you’re “everything modern women shouldn’t be” speaks to the fact that you write a stereotype and it’s not one most women would/should feel proud of. You portray yourself as someone who thinks of nothing but the latest deal, who’s wearing what, or what bar (blog?) has cute guys.

If I were to write a blog as an overly machismo male that did nothing but talk about hot chicks, action movies and cars all day, I would expect equal criticism.

At the end of the day, this is your blog, and what you write on it need not be influenced by myself nor anyone else. However, it is a blog, and open to public criticism by its very nature, so you may consider developing a thicker skin.

And on a final note, you’d not have near as much criticism in the English-language China blogsphere if you hadn’t gone around spamming everyone’s comments advertising your site. It’s why I have never had a good opinion of you/your blog.

BLAH!

Maybe we have ourselves a nominee for the Worst Blog Post Award?

Though I still don’t think it holds a candle to the embarrassing flames that this post started…

Jeez Rick,

Comparing a cheap stunt to generate traffic–one that really pissed me off–to a cheap stunt to generate votes just is, well, pretty accurate…But, I am not sure that embarrassing is the right word….Asinine is better….And just for the record, it hurts me that you, knowing it caused me discomfort, made it public once more….I allowed myself to be tricked into anger and brought into a meaningless feud and I am sorry about that as it undermined what I endeavor to do on the net…

I don’t read Shopgirl (she is blocked here)….But, I think she represents a growing population of shallow, self-centered, vindictive and vapid little empresses with overblown ideas about their self worth….SHE may not be like that…But, she has an audience…Power to her….I don’t know anything abut her personally except that she has stayed alive in the blogsphere because she what she strikes a chord with quite a few someones…

All of these comparisons are ridiculous….I We should be devoting at least as much as much time and energy to the unsolved murder of Darren Russell in Guangzhou or the alleged murder, aslo in Guangzhou, of an expat African that was reported this week….
We abide in the same social circle as Shopgirl’s readers if an online pissing contest ranks higher than the death of fellow expats….

Ryan’s CONTENT is in so many ways the antithesis of Shopgirl’s posts…Therein lies the problem with blog contests….

Ryan got my vote because of what he adds to human and technological equations….He has what Ms Yue wold call a large heart…But a vote for Ryan is not an assault on Shopgirl.

No, I don’t wish for a worst blog award…What good can come from intentionally hurting anyone? And I am not thrilled that my blog’s URL is in the same comment…

Egads! It finally spilled over here. I knew it would happen, and am a bit surprised it took so long. I “know” (in a net-sense) Lonnie, Mark and Fili, and all of them are stand-up guys in their own right. That whole post (rather, the comments and the cross-strait/cross-blog sparing it led to - as the post is great reading) should all be forgotten.

I added the Worst Blog Post category in the Hao Hao best post competition mostly just to see what people would come up with. It speaks volumes that there are currently no entries.

And Lonnie, you’re absolutely right - there is (and always are) more important things we could be focusing our collective energies on … I’ve not heard about this new murder, are you doing a post on it?

Oh, I wish I’d seen this blog war while it was happening! Unfortunately, Shopgirl’s Shanghai wasn’t on my blog radar until 10 minutes ago.

You had my vote of course, but I really think you could please your female readers by posting more pictures of handsome men.

@Meg: Better?

Honestly, this “blog war” was hardly a scuffle. I’ve just been too busy to post anything new. Who knew not having a job would be so tiring.

I know Siyan, which is to say that I have met her a few times.

Honestly, I don’t rate her blog very highly. It’s pretty much a “me me me” kind of thing, with a lot of blather about fairly mundane drivel. On the other hand, it’s harmless, doesn’t promote hatred, or racism, or revenge for imagined slights, or any of the other bullshit that so many Chinese bloggers (and ordinary citizens) seem to spend their lives grieving over.

It may be vacuous, but it’s also harmless, and for that reason Siyan gets my support. She writes about herself, and what she writes is true to reality. There’s a lot of people out there that could learn a thing or two from her.

$0.02