An Internet-certified expert speaks

China’s online portals aren’t permitted to do much news-gathering themselves, so they fill their news pages with reposts of articles from the mainstream media. They add their own touches, of course, such as sensational headlines and photographs that are only tangentially related to the contents of the article they illustrate.

Here’s a short anecdote from this week’s Oriental Outlook magazine that relates one writer’s experience with the the online hype machine:

The stock market’s dropped tragically, and in their despair, investors are all whispers. My friends who bought high into stocks that fell are a case in point: every day they discuss how low the market will fall—will it stop at 3,000, or 2,200?

I’m not sure whether the words of authoritative individuals and experts are to be trusted. But, coming to the subject of experts, I remember my one experience being one.

At the time, I wrote around 2,000 words on Japan and had the piece published in a certain newspaper. Although I didn’t know much about Japan, I still wrote up an analysis of Sino-Japanese relations, out of my depth but propelled by feeling.

Who knew that after it was published, it got picked up by the major portals and put up in an eye-catching location. Those masterful web editors wrote their own headlines for my article; in some I was able to catch a vague glimpse of my writing, while others I couldn’t recognize at all. One portal’s headline had me astonished: “Expert on Japan: Sino-Japanese….” For research purposes I clicked through to read the piece, which turned out to be my article. Evidently I had become an expert.

I felt all pins and needles. The several hundred comments from netizens were even animated. Naturally there were people who supported my opinion, but the people who opposed me were hurling streams of abuse my way.

One netizen berated me, “This ____ is a bullshit expert. The tragedy of China is that there are too many bullshit experts like this.”

I respectfully quoted this comment and said that I was the author of the piece, but defended myself by saying that I was no expert. Then I expressed my apologies.

Later, I made a solemn inquiry of the editor of that web site, requesting that he not call me an expert. The web editor, who knew the ways of the world, first said that they had the right to choose headlines, but then he consoled me saying that the article was written to the level of an expert. Ashamed, I had nothing to say.