Slop.

I have no idea why this tweet appeared at the top of my feed today, but since it did I thought I'd share.

(CW! Ableism/R-slur in Tweet)

Angelica Oung is a Taiwanese neoliberal "China Watcher" online who churns out anti-China content and was apparently embarrassingly starstruck by the Halo mask YouTube guy. Only she (and others judging by the responses) are now saddened by the fact that Noah Smith has turned out just to be a racist idiot who publicly accuses them of having been turned by Chinese spies if they suggest a source that has anything to do with China, even on other subjects, and who'd get mad and bullying if they didn't support his completely made up conclusions.

Full tweet below:

SMH, Noah, I thought we were friends.

Let’s rewind: the year was 2020 and I was a little no-name business reporter from the Taipei Times tweeting out my articles and takes. Noah Smith reached out on DMs to chat. Followed me a retweeted a few times. I was star struck! Wow! Noah Smith noticed lil ol me! I just about doubled my follower count!

My friends in LA were so excited I was noticed by public intellectual Noah Smith. Wow, Angelica! You really made it! Do you think you’ll get to meet him? Oh sure, I replied. He’s very interested in Taiwan. When he comes to visit and I think he will, I’ll be his one-woman welcoming committee.

Noah did reach out frequently to ask questions on Taiwan, but increasingly it seemed to me that he was asking for confirmations for his pet theories and would be vaguely annoyed if I don’t affirm them. Importing massive quantities of Vietnamese mercenaries to defend Taiwan? I dunno Noah. Are Vietnamese mercenaries a thing? What about the language barrier?

There’s a Peter Zeihan-like quality about Noah. He seems really smart on things I knew nothing about and gradually became more ignorant as he approaches my area of expertise (Taiwan and energy). Still…I was astonished that he blocked me when I pushed back in public on the idea that all you need for a modern grid is solar and batteries.

That’s fine. At some point he unblocked me cuz we were invited to the same conference. And I was always careful not to get blocked again until he was asking for good sources on India/Pakistan last week and I said a lot of the sinosphere accounts have been good and early.

His responded with “I’m going to go back through your tweets to find out exactly when you got turned.” And then I got blocked…again.

I’m sure Noah wasn’t the only one who blocked me or I lost credibility with because I’ve compromised my integrity by passing on “Chinese propaganda.” I don’t know to what extent I’m cancelled, but I do notice a very different lineup of regular commenters under my post these days. And that makes me sad.

Because the people who used to follow me and boost me when I was enthusiastically participating in Taiwan’s vapid COVID-era aura farming online are the ones who needs to read me now the most, or they’ll keep getting China wrong. But they won’t.

Hey! Peter Zeihan and Gordon Chang are still at it so I’m sure being chronically wrong on China won’t hurt Noah’s career either!

In a way, they’re more pathetic than grifters because at least grifters have agency. These guys don’t even know that they’re wrong…I think. Their natural removedation just so happens to fill the spiritual need of an anxious and arrogant west as they look to China’s rise.