this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Yeah I've given it a try and honestly I probably won't use it long term because well... It's all in Chinese and as cool as it would be to learn a new language (any language really) I don't have the time or energy to do that.
In my short experience there's a lot of lesbians on there, and "skin" gets shown quite a bit. I saw someone pole dancing in a jinx cosplay.
There's some cool things the app does I wish we had an English alternative, it's like tiktok combined with Pinterest? So there's better category sorting and you can save stuff in collections.
I also really have enjoyed the comments from Chinese people. It's really fun hearing their stories. I honestly sometimes forget, with how much we talk about China bad in America, that they're just people too? They're curious about our pets, they want to see what food we eat. Someone had hundreds of Chinese people try grilled cheese Sandwhiches.
Its a cultural exchange in the digital age that I've never seen before and honestly... I hope it sticks for that alone.
If you're looking to learn a new language that's actually useful to learn and also pretty easy, I would recommend Indonesian. It's a bastardized version of Malaysian but with more thought put into it.
Edit: As others have pointed out, it's not actually a useful language to learn unless you're in Indonesia, so I retract that.
As someone who was forced to learn it in primary school, it’s never once been useful.
At best it’s a baik-baik saja language to learn.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not sure if I'll ever truly learn another language, but I'll be sure to remember this just in case I'm in a situation where I'd like to!
Unless you're in Indonesia how is learning that language useful at all?
The world is rapidly (compared to history) moving towards ONE language. We don't know which one it'll be but all the signs are there. One thing we know for certain though is that only today's top 5 are contenders and Indonesian isn't one of them.
Another thing we know is that languages that use ideographic writing systems are on the way out. The spoken language may survive but the written language just can't compete with languages that use phonographic alphabets and spelling. It's just too inefficient to remember all the symbols and write them out and it's nearly impossible to write a program or script with them (and maintain such code).
It looks like latin characters are going to win out for sure. Probably with emoji being accepted as acceptable grammar/cues/hints at some point.
You have an interesting attitude toward learning.
One thing is learning because it's fun and another is calling it a useful language...
Depending on how you view it you could install a translation extension/plugin.
I was thinking about checking out weibo now that I know the Chinese people have really been enjoying the interaction so I just installed a translation extension in Firefox and it seems to work really well. I haven't been able to get an account so I haven't tried to communicate yet, but I'd probably just use Google translate and write in English and then add the translation.
Tbh I just dunno what translation software to use?
Id like something that worked as a screen overlay/reader kinda thing?
Copy and pasting is an inconvenience.
I actually just lurk rn so it's not too big of a deal but yeah.