It's funny because WeChat is something I've been using on a fairly like regular basis no matter you know where I move, both like the messaging and the bonus option. And I think the reason why I feel more comfortable with you know making posts on WeChat, well less so now because I have like work people on there, but in general is because in WeChat, for example, if someone likes or comments on your photo, like no one else can see that unless they're also that person's friend. That to me was like a layer of like privacy, that was great.
SPEAKER_06Welcome to the Geopaths Podcast, an audio experience to scratch your cultural curiosity itch with three different themed shows: virtual expats, bookish expats, and changing scripts. Today's episode is a virtual expats one where we discuss how moving to different countries affects what we do online as expats or geopaths. I went to a third culture kid event in Shanghai earlier this year and was blown away by one of the presenters, Ting. She shared her experiences living in China, Singapore, the US, and Hong Kong all before she graduated from college. How's that for a geographic trajectory? Ting had, as many geopaths do, a complex mix of conflicting emotions and experiences connected to this multiculture, multi-country identity. More on her story in just a moment. I have some things I need to tell you. First and foremost, the music that you're hearing in the background here, that's from Damon Castillo. I normally give him credit at the end of the podcast, but I wanted to move this forward and let you know that every time you hear that music in this podcast, it's him. His website is Damoncastillo.com. This particular song is from his Mess of Me album. It's called I Got to Be Right. You can hear the full song with the lyrics at the very end of the episode. Also, our Geopats podcast newsletter number three is out now. This is a weekly newsletter that comes out on Tuesdays in China, which is generally Mondays in North America. In this newsletter, it's growing and shaping, but generally speaking, I'm giving you some behind the scenes information on upcoming episodes, podcast recommendations that fit into our themes of expat life, language, and technology, and so much more. Go to steffuccio.com to check out the most recent newsletter and of course to sign up for future ones so you can get them in your email inbox. If listening to podcasts makes you think about making your own, I can help you. You can get a free month on Podbean, which is my podcast hosting site for Geopaths Podcast, by using this promo code podbean.com forward slash virtual expats. Don't forget the yes. And if you are an expat, I am doing a couple of beginning expat podcasters online workshops in September. They're more of a resource dump where I'm distilling lots of information that I've hunted down and used over the past two and a half years of my podcasting life. September 26th and 27th, go over to steffuccio.com and check out the exact time zones. If you don't want to record your voice but need a voice for either your or your company's project, I'm actually selling mine. You can go to voices.com forward slash actors forward slash steffuccio. What I'm not charging for are the promo spots and the announcements that are carefully placed in this episode. I offer these to content creators and to people that have announcements that are connected to the topics that we're covering. You'll hear a few in this very episode. Let's get back to Ting. Although Ting is in her 20s, her location trajectory is something like this China, US, China, US, Singapore, Hong Kong, US, China. Is your head swirling yet? Mine was, but hers wasn't. And that's the thing. This kind of frequent geographic change might unnerve some people and even disorient them. But for Ting, it seems like it only solidified who she was globally, not just in relation to one nation, one place, one culture. Ting studied economics and global studies at university, and it was the connections between her and her fellow TCKs that attracted her attention the most, which is why she's currently working on documenting the voices of those multiplace, multicultural individuals. I'll keep you updated, and uh when her projects come out, I'll let you know so you can partake in them as well. Let's have a listen to Ting, shall we? Thank you so much, Ting, for joining us today on Virtual Expats. I'm glad to be here. Yay! Can you tell our listeners a little about your virtual self?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, of course, though about me. So geographic self is a little bit complicated. I was uh born in Hainan, China, but I grew up in San Francisco and Beijing, and for university I went to university also in the US, but it was in the East Coast as opposed to where I grew up in the West Coast. And after that, I spent about a year in Beijing again, and uh since the end of last year I've moved to Shanghai, so there's quite a lot of different geographical changes in terms of that. In terms of my virtual self, I guess it's typical of any other person who has uh the social media presence on whether it be like US, it's more like Facebook, Instagram, and in China it's mostly just you know we chat. Other than that, I also have a passion project that I like to present online once it's fully completed, in which I interview a lot of uh third-cultured individuals, such as people you know who grew up in a variety of different backgrounds or cultures, creating this unique new culture, third culture that's not either one culture completely or the other. And I would like to document their experiences, their stories, especially those with experiences living in China, and share it to a wider community of people online.
SPEAKER_06That is so cool. Now, is that gonna be an audio project, a video project, or a combination of the two?
SPEAKER_08Right now it's gonna be like basically an interview that I'm gonna transcribe so it's more of an award form. Yeah, but eventually we would like to develop into an audio project as well because we find that you know it's a lot more moving when you can actually hear the people tell their own stories. Definitely awesome.
SPEAKER_06Well, we have a lot to unpack in that let's go back in time first. Great. When was the first time you remember being online and the things you were doing online being a huge part of your daily life?
SPEAKER_08Ooh, that takes a bit of thinking. I think you know, because I was born in the 90s, I found myself Okay, now I officially feel old. I found myself online, like really just ever since I was maybe like I want to say six or seven. It just kind of happens that you know you're connected to the online world. What I was doing online, I'm not sure, but whatever a six or seven-year-old might do online surfing the web. Were you surfing the web at six or seven? Do you remember any of the things that you were doing? At six or seven? Actually, no. I think it was mostly because there was a lot of you know online games back then already. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_06So I might have been that, but it's it's a very yeah and let's map it geographically. Where were you at six or seven years old? So I was in San Francisco when I was six or seven. Okay. Yep. 1990s. Sorry, I'm like trying to think now. No, I was still in San Luis Obispo. I didn't actually go up to San Francisco till 2001. So you beat me there.
SPEAKER_08Oh no, actually, I came to I went to San Francisco when I was after 2002, I Oh okay. 2002. Yeah, yeah, 2001 or two. Oh we were in the same place.
SPEAKER_07We were, we were. Dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_06Although I was ricocheting back and forth between San Francisco and backpacking overseas, we'll say. For the first few years anyway. So oh wow. And then after that, what would you say was then the next What was the first memory you have of doing things online?
SPEAKER_08First memory I have of doing things online. And I think back then at least, I guess just with a computer might not have been online, but I think in China where English education was a big thing there, there would be a lot of you know computer programs that helped kids learn English on the computer.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay. Is that like the tutors, the one-to-one tutors that are really popular now, or is that programs?
SPEAKER_08Those are way earlier. Way those are just like programs that you know teach you the words. It's more of like a one-sided thing. Whereas now it's very connected, you know, you can directly talk to your tutors online. It was nothing like that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Was that after six or seven, or that was before?
SPEAKER_08That was before, because I guess those soft words you can also use, you know, without being completely like connected to the web.
SPEAKER_06See, this is what trips me out about I like I went through so many different stages of technology that when I meet people that were like the internet's just part of their early, like very, very early years. I'm like, so you never consciously learned how to type. You always knew kind of how to swipe and pinch and do all that stuff, right?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so that's why when you were, you know, asking me about my first memory of my presence online, I'm like, I just came.
SPEAKER_06Naturally, I don't remember what is the first time. I was born, I was on social media. There you go. Right, right, right, right. Wow, okay. When was the first time you remember like making stuff online?
SPEAKER_08I would say sometime around middle school, which is probably you know 11 or 12. It's when kids started to feel the need to have an online presence to kind of let people know who they were as a teenager, the things that they wanted to express. So I kind of just followed along with that trend.
SPEAKER_06Gotcha. And were you still in San Francisco at that point?
SPEAKER_08Or yes, I was, but I think even from the beginning, I was a bit more conscious than others about you know, completely exposing my identity online because I just didn't feel like it was a very multi-dimensional mechanism of expressing yourself.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah. What did you feel like was was missing?
SPEAKER_08I mean, I think even as a young age back then, I kind of innately realized that, you know, young kids, the person that they present themselves online is maybe what you think is the cooler parts about yourself. It's not I wouldn't say one-sided, but it's definitely not your whole self. And I kind of felt a bit uncomfortable about that, which was why even back then I was more predictive of my identity online, and I would say I joined the social media waves, although it was still quite an early age at you know, 11 or 12, still a bit later than the other kids.
SPEAKER_06Oh wow, they were on social media before 11 years old. Mind blown. What does one have to say about life before 11 years old to be on social media? I have no idea.
SPEAKER_08I think it was just a time when like MySpace became popular. Yeah, yeah. People still remember that.
SPEAKER_06Oh, they do. My Space comes up a lot. It's one of the first things that people do. Were you following MySpace yourself?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I was on MySpace as well. Wow.
SPEAKER_06Do you remember any of the bands that you I mean it was mostly music, right?
SPEAKER_08Oh no, it was just people posting, you know. I think MySpace, the thing that's different that I still remember clearly, aside from like Facebook, it was that it kind of made it more easy to express yourself on MySpace, and that I remembered back then you can change your background to a different picture, not just like you know, your profile photo. And also, I remember there would be this thing where MySpace they had, you know, these top friends, and in your bio, instead of maybe you writing something about yourself, a lot of kids would just have you know three or four of their best friends write something about them, and that was like the cool thing to do.
SPEAKER_06Wow, okay. This is a lot different than I remember it being. That's so wild. Because I think I was in my twenties or something when my space became popular and I remember the music, and that's all I remember. I know there was other stuff on there. It's just I wasn't quite online yet, and I was using a dial-up modem and a lot of free AOL discs because I was like super broke college student, and so I was just, you know, my online time was limited, so I was like, let's go in and listen to some music and leave, kind of thing. Wow. Did you guys have a home computer at that point?
SPEAKER_08Uh yes, I think it became necessary to have a home computer then.
SPEAKER_06Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so between the learning stuff at six or seven or before six or seven years old, and the MySpace stuff at 11 years old, was there anything else you were doing online between those two time periods?
SPEAKER_08I think a lot of it we also use for simple, you know, entertainment purposes. You read different blogs online. That's kind of like how you learn about the world outside of your tiny little friend group. Other than that, everything else was quite vague, I would say.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Your maturity level about all of this online presence is already blowing me over big time. The fact that before 11 years old, you're thinking about reading stuff that's outside of your friend group. Like, whoa.
SPEAKER_08Not that I was reading about politics or anything. I was probably just following, you know, some girl's fashion blog.
SPEAKER_06But it was still something other than what was immediately in front of you. And that doesn't happen for a lot of people until they're like late teens or early 20s, or some people never. Yeah, I think the internet just makes that really easy for people. It does, yeah. And not to judge, entertainment's entertainment, and sometimes we just need to unwind. Exactly. Yeah. I've never personally got into cat videos, but there are a lot of silly things that I look at online that helps you distress after a long time. Yeah, yeah. Or a long week, or yeah, just a moment where I'm like, I can't think right now. I just want to laugh. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, oh gosh, yeah. There's there's so much of that stuff online. Alright, so do you remember any of the blogs that you were reading at that point? No, I think it was way too early. So after that, what do you remember doing online? So you were in San Francisco, and then when did you move to oh you moved to the East Coast during college, right?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, that was way before I was still in San Francisco, I guess, when this happened. Yeah, now that we talk about it, I think I remember another thing that was also quite big in terms of kids online communicating with one another. Trying to always remember this was before MySpace or after, or maybe at this simultaneously, but the messaging software on like your computer ink was like a really big thing. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like people would just, you know, go home and be on it constantly. And it was right now with so many busy things going on in my life, I can't imagine just sitting in front of my computer and having you know, constantly messages pop up and responding, like every time they pop up immediately, it just is going on for like hours until you have to sleep. But that was basically what a lot of kids did back then too, because it was a way to stay connected with their friends after school, as well as it was a great way to just you know get to know someone a lot better because you had all this time where you can just talk to one another on aid.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Now, in the chat rooms, were you in ones that were like small groups, or was it usually more of a one-on-one communication?
SPEAKER_08I think most usually a one-on-one communication, I remembered.
SPEAKER_06And those are still on computer. Let me think. We're still in the beginning of the two things in the early aughts, right? Mm-hmm. Trying to think of when mobile phones became ubiquitous. Jeez.
SPEAKER_08Well, they were always there, but I think back then texting was still like a thing. People didn't use it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
unknownTexting.
SPEAKER_06I love talking to Europeans and Asians about texting. Really, why so? Oh my gosh. Because there's such a different flavors of it. I mean, even just the terminology at all, like what it for some reason I had this time period where I like dating British guys. Uh-uh. I love the fact that they were just the terminology was off. It was like text, you know, text message versus SMS. For some reason made a big difference. Yeah. And instead of flirting with someone in person a lot of times, not always, they would flirt after they met you via text message.
SPEAKER_05Ah, right.
SPEAKER_06And so there's the there were these little differences that were like, okay, that's weird. Boom, but that's still flirting. Okay, I'm I'm fine. We're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I would I don't see what I no, because when I moved to Vietnam, I had such a crappy phone. Not because of Vietnam, because I was a broke English student, English teacher. And it was text message, it was pre-mobile, pre-smartphone. But I don't no, I don't remember any big differences there. But I feel like development with technology happened really, really fast in a lot of Asia.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I think well, I wasn't I wasn't in Asia at the time, but I think as with anywhere, like you know, you kind of still remember when flip phones was like the big deal, and all of a sudden they're gone. What was your first phone? My first, I think it was probably one of those really simple Nokia's. And then I kind of upgraded to one of those flip phones. Then it was like those slider phones that were really popular.
SPEAKER_06I never had a slider. Were the sliders blackberries?
SPEAKER_08No, blackberries, they were more like mini tablets, but sliders is like where your keyboard is like hidden under your phone if you slide it back. Oh so those were especially made for texting because it kind of feels like a mini little keyboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I would have loved that. I think I think I was overseas with the Nokia brick, the one that you just could throw against everything out of every brain. Those were fantastic. They supposedly brought them back last year. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now smartphones are so popular here that I haven't even looked because I'm just like it's almost like the I don't even know what to call it. It's a phone that you flip open like this, and then it looks like a tablet. But it's a little smaller. Oh I forget the terminology of it. It looks pretty cool though, but it's not as clunky as a tablet. It's very, very new. Oh, okay. And I want to say Hua Hui has one out right now, but I cannot remember what they're calling that kind of phone.
SPEAKER_08Oh.
SPEAKER_06Because it's just like screen and screen, and you just flip it up and down, or you can just use it when it's closed, like just the top. Oh, okay. It's really cool looking. I guarantee you I will not get the first five versions of it just because it'll be that expensive, but it looks really cool. I know that she's moving too fast. Seriously. Okay. Oh, sorry, so we're in the chat rooms. And then we're really gonna scratch your brain on all this stuff.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I'm like trying to think. Chat rooms. It was just more of a mechanism to kind of engage with friends and see what they're up to. Although I do remember there was this really popular website back then, it was kind of like so it's basically like F My Life, and then on it would just be little blurbs of people talking about the things that's like you know, really funny that went on, and in the end it would always be like, you know, F My Life because this thing happened. And I don't know why it was so popular then, but it was like a big thing among teenagers because I guess when you get home and you just read about the different things that are that went wrong with other people's lives, you somehow feel a little bit better about yours, I think was the psychology behind it.
SPEAKER_06I believe that I would have read that I probably would have read that early or through most of my 20s too.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, like you know, it would be like the bad things that happened, but then it would also be like really funny and they would be really short, like one blurb would only be three or four sentences. Or like some it could even be like one or two. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was just those things that you can kind of lose track of time when you're flipping through. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, I was for some reason I'm thinking of my Perez Hilton moment when I like following his his blog for a while and I'm like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Suddenly an hour later, I'm like all caught up, and I'm like, why do I need to know this stuff? Oh my gosh. Okay, so where did you move to again?
SPEAKER_08East Coast was for college. Yeah. So before that I was in Beijing, but college was in North Carolina.
SPEAKER_06Okay, wait, so San Francisco and Beijing. Yeah. So you were in San Francisco until what age?
SPEAKER_08Till I was around 14.
SPEAKER_0614. And then you were in Beijing until what age? Until I was 18 or 19. Wow. Okay, so when you made the shift, from so you went from China to the US to China, to the US. To China.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, basically. Well, yeah, and if we're getting really specific, uh in college, I also spent about one year of it in Singapore and half a year in Hong Kong.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so we've got China. Oh, there's a lot to US China. I know, but I'm like, I don't want to mess this up again. Okay, so China, US, China, Singapore.
SPEAKER_08No, US than Singapore.
SPEAKER_06US Singapore.
SPEAKER_08Hong Kong.
SPEAKER_06I'm laughing because I really like it when people have more complicated geography than me.
SPEAKER_08Makes you feel a little bit more normal.
SPEAKER_06Well, no, no, no. It doesn't make me feel more normal, it makes me feel less abnormal. Ah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't I'm oh, you're weirder than me. Not that kind of thing. But just like if you said where are you from? And I giggle, you'd kind of know why that's a really hard question. Yeah. And that's a relief to me. Okay, so China, US, China, US, Singapore, Hong Kong. US. US. China. And you are not old enough to have all of this already. Okay. No, you are. I'm just kidding. Okay, so so far we've got China, US. So then when you came back to Beijing, was there any big shift in what you were doing online? And that was 14 years old. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_08I would say I used I kind of was online more, but I wasn't doing that many things online anymore. Basically, as a kid, you know, like, and this goes into like other issues too, of like, you know, how do you deal with living in the new environment and adjusting to the new school system? So I think I was using a lot of time to adjust to the new environment. And there was a lot more different things for me to pick up in school. So that was where I had to like really put a lot of my focus. So I didn't find myself online that much anymore. But when I was online, I think I was still just using aim a lot to talk with my friends to stay connected with these childhood friends that you know were still in back in the US. And that was really just became a mechanism for me to like remain connected and not feel so alone. Wow.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so you came back to China at the beginning of high school? It was around the end of middle school.
SPEAKER_08End of middle school. Well, the middle school in China is a bit different, it goes on all the way till the ninth grade, whereas in the US, high school begins at ninth grade.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay, okay, okay. For the listeners, that's the Chinese college entrance exam. And then go to university here?
SPEAKER_08Well, actually, when I came back, there was the problem of my Chinese not being very great anymore. And I think my parents really wanted me to be able to pick that up again. So when I did come back, instead of maybe going to an international school, they put me in a local school, which was a very hard transition for me because immediately, like the whole academic culture, everything was just completely different. And because my Chinese wasn't up to par, I kind of have to drop down by a grade. So in the US, I was already you know halfway done with ninth grade, but uh having come back here, I kind of had to like pick it up at like eighth grade. Yeah, so I was back in middle school, and that was where I had to really adjust to being back in this environment, it was a lot of reverse culture shock. And you know, a gol kao is like very stressful, but even in middle school, you have what you have called the Jong Kao, which is also a very stressful exam that you have to take in order to get placed into top-notch, you know, high school. Oh, okay. So I would say, although probably not as stressful, you still spent maybe like a semester doing nothing but practicing exams for it, which was I was not a big fan of.
SPEAKER_06Wow. I don't know about you, but the first time I was exposed to the term and the population, more importantly, of TCK's third culture kids, was about two years ago. Uh, it's when I was exploring a lot of cultural channels on YouTube and following a lot of folks who spoke spoke multiple languages on social media. Soon after this, I met Tanya Crossman, who has so many different hats that I'm going to let her explain what who she is and what she does.
SPEAKER_05Hi, I'm Tanya Crossman. I'm a cross-cultural consultant working with international schools and other international organizations, but I'm most well known as the author of Misunderstood: The Impact of Growing Up Overseas in the 21st Century. In Misunderstood, I explore how growing up between countries and cultures and languages impacts the way a young person sees and understands and experiences the world around them, and how this different experience can create tension or misunderstandings between them and friends and family who didn't share that same cross-cultural childhood experience. I wrote it partly for young people who grew up this way to see that it's not just me, I'm not the only one. Other people feel the same way I do, and I make sense in this context. But I also wrote it for parents who felt anxious and stressed and even guilty for bringing their kids overseas and worrying what this was going to do to their kids long term. So I interviewed and surveyed hundreds and hundreds of TCKs about their experiences, so I can say to parents, look, I don't know what your specific kids are going through, but here's what hundreds of other kids in similar situations have said about their experiences. The book is full of their stories, what's helped them and what hasn't, what support they need from the adults in their lives. I love talking about this stuff. I love talking to parents, to TCKs, to anyone in this cross-cultural world. So you'll find me all over social media. I'm on Twitter as TanyaTCK, I'm on Facebook and Instagram as MisunderstoodTCK, and my website is misunderstoodbook.com. Misunderstood is available as a paperback and e-book pretty much everywhere online.
SPEAKER_06Since reading this book, I have recommended it at least once every few weeks, and I have actually sent the book to two or three different people who are parents of TCKs. And I do believe that actually Tanya and Ting are now connected as well. So yeah, if you or someone you know is interested in the TCK experience or just wants to know more about this interesting life that people like Ting lead and the advantages and disadvantages of that and the emotional side of it, then I highly, highly, highly recommend Tanya's book. Did you get that impression yet? Her collecting and projecting the voice of that population, which she is actually a part of as a TCA, a third culture adult, is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Speaking of TCKs and TCAs, let's get back to Tinker. It sounds like you didn't have time for a lot of online stuff except for keeping in contact with your friends back in the US. Yeah. Alright. So when did you decide to go back to the US for college?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so after I completed middle school and went through with uh drunk college. My parents decided to send me to an international school again because they could kind of see that, you know. Although I was getting more used to my new surroundings, I wasn't completely very happy. So they thought that it might be better if I went to international school and then went to a university in the US for my education because they thought it would just be the more environment that was more fit for me. So yeah, after going to international school, I went to the US in North Carolina.
SPEAKER_06Okay, well let's stay with the international school for a minute. Yeah. So did you have more free time when you switched from the local school to the international school?
SPEAKER_08Well, yeah, I had more free time, but in international it was a boarding school. So basically lights went out at a certain time every night. And there was like a bit like strictness around, you know, what you could do after that. And since it was boarding school, our schedules was also a bit jam-packed in that you did have a lot of like breaks in between, but classes or you know, self-study sessions, they can go to like eight or nine.
SPEAKER_06Wow. Did you have a mobile phone at this point?
SPEAKER_08Yes, I did. Okay. I I remember this transition quite clearly actually, even in middle school. Like I could see that a lot of my friends were getting smartphones. But I think at that time I couldn't completely really grasp what a smartphone was or what the difference was, so it never like really bothered me. But I would say that the one thing that really, you know, attracted me to like feel like this is a necessity to get a smartphone was when WeChat became really popular and everyone was using WeChat to communicate with one another. Yeah. And if you didn't have a smartphone, you didn't have WeChat, and that was just like wow, well, you know, when everyone in your class had these like groups on there, how do you be included? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I hadn't thought about that because my first time in China I was in Nanjing, and it was probably nine years ago at this point. And we did have a what is now called a dumb phone, which is so rude because it was functional, but yeah, it did the basic phone things. But yeah, when WeChat came up, you had to have a smartphone. Exactly. Wow, what a way to get the market going. Thanks to WeChat. Oh wow, I hadn't even thought about that. Wow, okay. So at that point you wanted a smartphone.
SPEAKER_08Exactly. And I try to tell my parents that because obviously, um, especially in China, even if you're you know at the age where most US students they kind of like work for their allowances. In China it's quite different, so I still had to like kind of ask my parents for permission to buy a lot of things, and they weren't a big fan of me getting a smartphone because they thought it's just like distracting. Like, why are you so caught up in this focus on school? That kind of thing, but I just think they didn't realize it because the WeChat craze I think caught up later for them. Yeah, so they didn't understand the importance of it. But eventually I ended up skipping enough money to get like a smartphone.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. To break the timeline for a second, when you travel and meet people that have not been exposed to WeChat, how do you describe it to them? Because I always get a little flustered because it's so many things.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it is. Right now, honestly, it just becomes so big that like it's hard to meet people that don't quite grasp what WeChat is anymore. But I guess hypothetically, if I did, I would just say that you know it's a messaging social media platform, but like there's also a lot of other functions that you can do on WeChat, you know, and it's also a huge mobile payment system that makes life a lot easier for many people. So it's just this super app that's all in one.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh, you lived in San Francisco. Okay. Yeah. Was Craigslist used a lot when you were there? The website Craigslist?
SPEAKER_08I heard about it a lot, but I think at that age I didn't really need to like sell anything on it.
SPEAKER_06That's incredibly true. You wouldn't have needed apartments to look for apartments when you were a kid. You wouldn't have needed to look for Yeah. Yeah, no. I moved there after university, so for me it was like every question I had, people said, Oh, you should check on Craigslist. I feel like WeChat is that answer in China. Yeah, only you wouldn't actually ever answer because the first time you get it on there, then you just know. Exactly. Too funny, too funny. Okay, so you left China then and you went to the East Coast.
SPEAKER_08Which is a huge cultural shift from it is. Yeah, I think I I wanted that because I do realize, you know, West Coast, it's a completely different culture, and I just I was ready to, you know, experience something new.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Did you see how if people were using online stuff differently there from the West Coast also, or was it just the real life stuff that was different?
SPEAKER_08I think too much time has passed between like when I was in the West Coast to make that comparison. Fair enough. So I wasn't sure. But for me personally, coming back to the US, I remember just first month of college, I just made a Facebook, and apparently that was also way later than everyone else. Because even the timing when I left San Francisco was interesting because that was when the shift from MySpace to Facebook was starting to happen. Very gradually, you know, people were it was still this very new thing, but people were like, Oh yeah, I found this, you know, other social media platform, I'm on it, like you should add me. But I think I'm just slow in these kind of things. Like even when I heard about it, then I was like, ugh, it just didn't really hit me as like a thing that would become this big nowadays.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh, I didn't expect it either. And you had to have a like a university.edu address or something at first, and then they just got rid of that. Yeah, you had to be invited in. Oh, yeah, I remember it versus a Facebook movie. Yeah, and so I went through all that and was like watching, watching, watching, and I'm like, I have a college address, not that college. Okay, wait, wait, wait, and then finally, yeah. So it was like a slow roll, it was really clever on their part. I don't know if that was intentional, yeah, but that anticipation definitely I think made people want to be on it exactly at first, yeah. So what year were we talking when you moved back to the US? It was 2013, I think. 2013. Oh, that's very recently. Yeah. Wow, okay. So what did you find yourself doing online then?
SPEAKER_08Facebook and oh well, I think as a freshman in college, what you're doing online is just a lot. It's just from you know, procrastinating, watching YouTube videos to just a lot of it is just your coursework. Being on the university course website, just trying to get all of your studies together and like trying not to freak out about the amount of work that's just like piled on top of you.
SPEAKER_06And the amount of courses you're supposed to take every single time.
SPEAKER_08Exactly. I mean, like, it's nuts. Yeah, you look at it and you're like, oh, it's not a lot, it's five, it's fine, but then you realize the work level that follows.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And midterms and finals happening about the same time for all five years. Exactly.
SPEAKER_08So it's like the system is made to be stressful.
SPEAKER_06It is, it truly, truly is, and it's yeah, there's no other experience quite like it after university. Exactly. No, that prepared you for the real one. Yeah, it definitely makes you a tougher person if you survive.
unknownExactly.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so after your freshman year, like any time during your university experience, do you remember any of your favorites?
SPEAKER_08My favorites? Well, you know, like we discussed the bar earlier, a lot of times it's like you need to find videos that kind of just allowed you to just really detox and like not think about anything. And they can be stupid, but they can be like really funny. Oh heck yeah, yeah. So I think a lot of it was just comedy channels that I would like watch, you know, some of the big YouTubers who were comedians. Also, I think it was Saturday Night Live. Those are just like the skits that I really enjoyed watching, as well as like different parodies. Like they did nothing for my brain cells, but you know, they were critical for my sanity.
SPEAKER_06Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so after or at the same time as Facebook, what other social media did you start taking part in?
SPEAKER_08I think, well, I don't consider myself a super big social media person, and I think Facebook was enough to get me to be functional and not be completely like uh cavemen. So I think it was just Facebook at the time. And I as I mentioned, I'm slow with these things. Like, even though Instagram was already a bit popular then, I kind of resisted getting Instagram until a lot way later.
SPEAKER_06Last year for me. I tried it early on, and I was like, eh, because I had tw I was a massive Twitter person, and I had gone on and off Facebook. I was off Facebook for 10 years until like last month. Wow. So I I had my main source and I was like, I'm good. I don't want another one, I don't want another one.
SPEAKER_08Exactly. You want to just have a main source so you don't waste all your time on these different things.
SPEAKER_06Which is so easy to do. It's so easy to do. Yeah, so I wanted to just streamline it and just have one, but Twitter kept getting blocked for me last year. So I started going over to Instagram because you can post to Twitter via Instagram. So I'm like, okay, fine, well, you guys are sorting out why you think I should be kicked off for a while. I'll go do this. And and then I got addicted to the videos and the pictures. Uh-huh. I really found that a lot easier than just constantly clicking and reading articles. And I was like, oh no, what is happening to my brain? A new addiction. So yeah, so streamlining on Facebook sounds like a really smart choice to as a college student. With a time budget, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's say 2013. So when did you leave college?
SPEAKER_08Well, four years later, so 2017.
SPEAKER_06You did it in four years.
SPEAKER_08Oh, I think that's expected because um I had some people that I knew that just they were so ready to work, did it in three what? Yeah. With what majors did these what oh like not really hard majors too, but I think they were just like, you know what, we're ready to be done. Those are the hired cheapers that took like eight classes a semester.
SPEAKER_06Oh my god, eight? Yeah. Oh my god. I went to a polytechnic school and I was around a whole bunch of engineering students who took like three or four and still like a semester because the courses and the labs were so intense. Oh, that it took there were a lot of people, let's just say, who went beyond four and five years. Oh wow. Just for sanity's sake of being able to do and retain some of the information or there are things, yeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, everyone is different. Three years.
SPEAKER_06Wow. Yeah, I was so not that high achiever in high school or even in college. I always wanted to just explore and share and learn about other cultures and other people and other things. And one of the things that I've been learning about for the past couple of years has been podcasting. She podcasts. I have two Facebook groups because one's not enough, so I suppose that's high achieving. One is the general group that anybody can join, and another one is uh a five-dollar fee. It's called their super squad group, and I'm in that group. I love that group. The attention that they give us is just insane. It is a lifeline to have that smaller community of women podcasters that understand the trials and tribulations of trying to have a female voice be heard.
SPEAKER_01Hi, this is Jess and Elsie. And we wanted to take a quick moment to tell you all about the upcoming podcasting event that we created just for women called Shitty Podcasts Live. We started with choosing a hotel that not only has amazing ambiance and a four-star spa, but hotel rooms with optional aromatherapies, circadian lighting, air purifiers, and an alarm clock that stimulates the dawn.
SPEAKER_04We then created the content to be chock full of sessions that are specific to women's needs. Confidence, fear, supporting women through podcasting, the power of being unique, work-life balance, and more. Optional morning yoga sessions.
SPEAKER_01Of course, we'll still have sessions about editing, social media, monetization, and growth, and every session is being taught by a successful woman podcaster who has immense experience and knowledge in their topic of expertise. Some examples.
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SPEAKER_06Alright, alright, alright. Let's get back to Ting and her story and her documenting TCK voices in her own project. Okay, so after 2017. Singapore.
SPEAKER_08Oh, Singapore was in college. It was for exchange. Ah. Oh, that was actually so 2015? School 16, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And that was like a school exchange or just a school exchange.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_08What were you studying? Well, I changed my major like a million times coming into college. Oh I'm glad there's a club. So I went in as an econ major, and then after about you know four or five switches, I decided to study global studies, which is like international relations. Yeah. Because that's a topic that just really drew me and I felt like would be fit for uh my experiences. Uh so it was after that that I kind of decided that you know North Carolina is great, but probably not the best place to expose myself to international elements. So I was like, well, I think I wanted to study abroad. And since my area of focus at the time was Asia, I chose Singapore. And Singapore just it stood out to me because I visited once prior, and you know, it was just really known as like the cultural I think part of Asia with so many different people living peacefully side by side and just a harmony of different culturals, just living with each other, and just yeah, so it just it was a huge appeal to me at the time.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So what was it like going from North Carolina to which is not terribly multicultural to Singapore that is pretty international, right?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, very multicultural and international. Oh, I felt like I was liberated on. I think it has to do with the fact that I'm still like a city person. So just being back in a city again was like a huge relief to me. Yeah. Being able to, you know, be exposed to all these different types of people, especially on an exchange program, because as exchangers, you have this community where you have people from all around the world, and I think that really opened up a lot of my worldview because back you know, back then, whether it be China or the US, all of my friends. just either Chinese or American, I wasn't exposed to as many other cultures other than that.
SPEAKER_06Okay. And that kind of just blew that over. Exactly. I want to geek out about two things. One is when you went from Beijing back to the US, did you continue to use WeChat? Even though you were in the US? Okay. Yeah. And then when you moved to Singapore in 2015 as an ex-teacher, I really want to ask you to compare the use of technology and the internet in both the US versus Singapore.
SPEAKER_08I would say there wasn't like a huge difference. But one thing that was different in Singapore versus I guess the US or China is that you know WhatsApp is a very huge thing. You know, anyone you meet you would just ask for their WhatsApp. And that was just also when I had to like the first time I had to get WhatsApp and um figure out how to use it. But WhatsApp struck me as a more private communication mechanism as opposed to like you know maybe Facebook or like WeChat because all these were connected to like the different photos you shared in your online presence at the home whereas WhatsApp was just it was simply a way to replace text and it did nothing much more.
SPEAKER_06That's a really really good point. I've just gotten on WhatsApp recently I thought it's a really really good point. Yeah because it's just between either the person to person or the person to group. Yeah. And it's not exposed to the world. Why is Facebook exposed to the world? Okay now that you bring that up I'm very curious why we want that.
SPEAKER_08Yeah because yeah like Facebook yeah back then even when people you would like meet once you would exchange Facebook and you know they had all this information about it.
SPEAKER_06And this is exactly why I was off it for a decade because that got really awkward.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah I'd meet someone and suddenly I had access to everything on their account and they had access to everything to mine because in the beginning it there weren't a lot of layers to Facebook. You were either their friend or you weren't. Exactly. And I would just then I'd see them again and I'd be like all awkward because I knew what they had for lunch for the past week and then this super dramatic emotional moment that they you know had post after post about and I'm like I think this is too much it was just very strange. Exactly in what sense it's got rid of all of that. What what what why do we want that stuff online? You really got me thinking now because it because Facebook, Twitter, Instagram they're all you you can have private messages but a the vast majority of it is for the for public consumption.
SPEAKER_08Yeah people I guess just need an outlet to express themselves publicly and these social media kind of just like jumped on that. WeChat you do have moments. Exactly but moments I think weChat is it's funny because weChat is something I've been using on a fairly like regular basis no matter you know where I move both like the messaging and the moments option.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_08And I think the reason why I feel more comfortable with you know making posts on WeChat well less so now because I have like work people on there but in general it's because in WeChat for example if someone likes or comments on your photo like no one else can see that unless they're also that person's friend. I've wondered about that but not actually asked that question. Okay. Yeah and that just that to me was like a layer of like privacy that was great and also you know they've also rolled out this new system where basically you can also just not show your complete like posts you know they can disappear in like three days six months or you can hide it not disappear. Yeah. So like that was also like a privacy improvement. So it just makes people feel a lot more comfortable.
SPEAKER_06Because so many times the news about Chinese internet and Chinese media gets really distorted in the US so I think it's funny that you that's an awesome moment. I'm I I think it's funny that weChat has more privacy options than like the Facebooks and the Twitters and Instagram especially Facebook. Exactly that's funny anyway sorry I'm sure you get a lot of questions by people when you when you leave China about China. Yeah of course and it's always like well how do you explain to them how this works that they've never been through it and it's always like really too often it's a little too fear based and they want to hear the negative exactly and it's like well I don't even want to answer that because one I'm not technically from from there and I've only been there for a couple of years maybe three if you really want to clump time together but more importantly they're already they already have an idea of what they want to hear and they're not going to hear anything but what confirms that and that's an awkward conversation to have.
SPEAKER_08Yeah it helps for the person asking to just have an open mind for whatever you're gonna say but yeah it just it depends.
SPEAKER_06Yeah it totally it totally does all right so Singapore and WhatsApp and oh so school wise it's sorry but yeah really different so there wasn't much comparison wise in in coursework that you were supposed to like do research and things like that.
SPEAKER_08Oh no everything was still pretty similar you know like even most of the teachers you had they were from you know the Western countries so like it felt really familiar but um the only thing that was different was just like in terms of students in class class participation how they were participating were different you know classroom discussions on a general basis at least that didn't feel as active as those in the US but that's just like more of a culture thing I think sure sure sure sure sure okay are you still on WhatsApp now have you kept using that yeah I am still on WhatsApp and I think the only reason is that my best friend who I met on Exchange uh in Singapore but grew closer in Hong Kong because she's based in Hong Kong is she's super private like she doesn't have Facebook, Instagram, anything that exposes her identity online except for you know communication tools like WhatsApp. So it's something that I would just use to stay in touch with her because otherwise we're gonna probably have to resort to email or something. Or calling with a phone. Oh yeah yeah we dun dun dun blasphemy well yeah we we we do well the good thing about WhatsApp you know it has that too so like we also just call on WhatsApp so it's just become a thing that you would use to like talk to one person.
SPEAKER_06Right right right yeah oh no wait wait wait wait like I said I'm pretty new to WhatsApp probably a few months in can you actually make calls because I've been leaving voice messages but can you actually call someone with that too? Yeah. Oh sweet okay I learned so much from this podcast it's ridiculous. The reason I went back on Facebook actually was because one of my guests mentioned that you could be in the groups and basically turn your timeline off. And it was the timeline part that was that really creeped me out the first time I was on. So I was like oh so now I'm back in all these groups for like podcasting and different things and but I don't have to like deal with the lunches and the far too intimate conversations that I don't yeah separating the functions. Yeah yeah yeah like I can make connections but I don't have to see everything. Okay so Singapore and then Hong Kong what did but that wait is Hong Kong after the US? Uh no that was after Singapore. That was after Singapore? Yeah while you were still at university yeah it was another exchange that I did. Oh wow whoa okay were these exchanges through uni university in the US?
SPEAKER_08They were very open about me not being there about students not being there so was Singapore a year?
SPEAKER_06Yes okay and was Hong Kong a year? Uh it was half a year. Half a year okay and kind of same questions what what were the differences when you shifted from Singapore to Hong Kong online?
SPEAKER_08Online wise I think it's actually it's pretty similar like you know people still mostly like used WhatsApp in Hong Kong as well. Yeah I would say school wise was also pretty similar there wasn't like huge difference in terms of how people used their online presence but I would say there's more like politically like heated discussions online Hong Kong at least because just because you know they're in a more politically heated environment. So online political activism was really big in Hong Kong especially um when I was there because I think it was during the time of the new elections I think.
SPEAKER_06Did you get involved in any of the the heated political stuff?
SPEAKER_08Uh no I didn't I just well number one it was not suggested by our study abroad so I get involved in local politics and two just because I felt like I didn't know enough about the situation to you know jump into the conversation that makes sense.
SPEAKER_06Alright so after a year and a half abroad then you went back to the US uh yes I had to finish basically my last semester of university okay wow okay so you returned to the US for one semester and then so you went to the the east coast of the US for university but we're a year and a half of that was overseas. Yes that sounds like the perfect experience not the US part but but like having it be in different countries. Exactly sounds like a really really cool experience.
SPEAKER_08Yeah did you have the intention to do that when you first started university no I mean I just I don't know why but back then I just didn't think too much about why I wanted even to go to university in the first place. It was one of those things I was like oh everyone is going I will go but obviously in university you're really pushed to make more conscious decisions about what you want to study what you want to do with your life and that's when I decided that you know I feel like it would be helpful if I got more of an international exposure instead of just staying here for all four years.
SPEAKER_06Gotcha.
SPEAKER_08Now global studies is that politics like political science or yeah so it's it's people always joke in my university that it's like the closest major to a non-major and for me I didn't mind that because you know I had a broad variety of interests and I liked how this major kind of gives you the opportunity to mix and match those interests because within global studies there would be different concentrations or themes so for example politics or global health and there'll be different area concentrations for all the areas in the world. So for me I chose one that I had to do in politics and then for region as I mentioned previously it was Asia. Gotcha gotcha.
SPEAKER_06That's really cool. That's really cool like I said I went to a polytechnic and I didn't pick one engineering course. I ended up picking one that included many like I did a course in mechanical engineering a course in chemical engineering course it like it included all of them. We were supposed to be kind of the middle managers that could talk to the business people and the engineers and kind of be so you learn a bit of everything. Yeah. So it was actually really fun for me. I didn't end up using it not formally yeah I'm sure skills could be applied massively applied to many different situations but not formally but it was really fun to be able to dip into all of those yeah and everybody kept saying the happiest engineers on campus are were the people in my group because they didn't have to go so far into the one specific kind of engineer.
SPEAKER_08Exactly and I was like yep I'll be a happy one thank you so but global study sounds kind of similar where you had more variety than just someone in political science or something you were definitely more exposed to more like disciplines basically yeah that's really really cool.
SPEAKER_06Alright where are we geographically you came back to the US you graduated in four years wow and then you came back to China did you go back up to Beijing or did you come to Shanghai then?
SPEAKER_08Yeah um so I was in Beijing for about a year yes although I did travel a lot in that year.
SPEAKER_06In Beijing for a year and then you moved to Shanghai?
SPEAKER_08Yes.
SPEAKER_06Had you visited or lived in Shanghai before that point?
SPEAKER_08So before I went off to college I briefly you know visited Shanghai but that was very brief and I didn't do anything in Shanghai except you know the touristy areas around the bud. So I don't think that was like the full Shanghai experience but I didn't like know the other side of Shanghai until I you know moved here you know all the little different alleyways the laying houses but I think for me why I chose to move to Shanghai is just because I just having moved around like so much in my life I kind of just get really like itchy feet sitting in one place and at that point in my life I was gonna do a new job and I was just like you know what I'm gonna take this opportunity to get out of Beijing because I think I had enough for now.
SPEAKER_06Fair enough. And they're really different places.
SPEAKER_08Yeah yeah let's stay online did you notice any difference in what people were doing with their phones in Beijing versus Shanghai when you made the shift on their phones I would say at least for me I can't say for like everyone I think this also depends on the type of people I'm surrounded with but I noticed I think in Shanghai like uh well I might like delivery for food is like more widely used. Really? Yeah oh what I I I don't know if this is like accurate but at least with the people around me because I feel like a lot of the times whether it's because they're busy or they're too lazy to know walk and eat food. Or traffic is so bad. Yeah but no Beijing is actually worse.
SPEAKER_06That's true. And Beijing is also huge. Yeah geograph I mean it's very spread out.
SPEAKER_08Yeah but it wasn't until like I guess Shanghai as well that like I got delivery not just for food but also for like groceries and everyday items because it's like so convenient.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah I switched from trying to find stuff in stores to now if I can't find it in places I'm walking by that day I will just come home and order it. Yeah like I used to go I can't I don't know where what store this is even in and I'll look in this one I'll look in that one I'll message a few people and go where would you find this and finally I was like what am I doing? Everything's delivered exactly but it kind of makes the process a lot less fun it's less of a scavenger I know but there's so many things when you first move to a place you know there's so many things that you need that I was just like that's it I just need to get set up everybody keeps saying Taob let's go yeah and the number of things you can get delivered if you can't get it delivered it probably isn't a thing yeah everything is on top of but like here there's also other apps for just you know fresh groceries and it just makes life a lot easier especially for like the really heavy items. Oh my gosh yes yes yes and yes yeah this was this desk was delivered all of these mic stands were delivered to be fair that chair was delivered a few weeks ago that was delivered most of the other furniture is actually came with the apartment so it was probably delivered by someone else yeah but yeah literally everything it's so crazy. That's interesting that that it's not as popular up there. I didn't even realize as an expat I needed a little more attention from my passport country until very recently then why did I start to think about this is because of the impending elections in 2020 in the US? No not really it's a simple tweet I got from a Michael Ramos and he said hey Stephanie could I trouble you to please retweet my call out for survey participants for US XP no not at all. I found it very interesting and I'll tell you why in a minute but right now I want to have Michael in his own voice tell you what the research he's working on is.
SPEAKER_03Hi guys thanks for your attention my name is Michael Ramos and I'm an American currently living in Melbourne Australia. I've been enjoying the Geopaths podcast and I hope you've been enjoying it too. So I wanted to let everyone know that I'm actually in the middle of conducting a study and I could sure use your guys' help. So in short I've started an online survey open to all Americans living abroad who are at least 18 years old. The overall goal of my study is to better understand that unique relationship between American expats and the United States Congress. And so if there are any listeners here who are in fact voting aged Americans living abroad and wouldn't mind taking a few minutes of their time to participate in my study, please consider clicking on the link provided to access the survey I really really appreciate it. Thanks for your time.
SPEAKER_06I took Michael's survey what did I think? I thought it was super interesting. The survey questions were clearly trying to tease out American expats' expectations of our local and our national government the questions did get me thinking of my own tenuous relationship with the US and with the government especially right now. And other than reporting my income taxes which some expats from other countries don't have to do other than for that I don't really hear from the US government. I have a mailing address in the US and I have an email address and I have a passport but I generally don't hear from anybody unless something's going wrong with my income taxes. Do I want more than that? And I never really considered that question because I like the hands-off approach. I wish it was more hands-off honestly I don't have any conclusions I just have questions so I'm kind of curious what Michael is going to collect with his research and if we're able to I will share this information as Michael's research continues. I'd love to have him on Virtual Expats as a guest in 2020 and I'd love to have him talk about the results of this research as well. Would you like that? If you'd like to hear about that do let me know and I'll extend the invite to Michael if he is interested. I'm excited that Michael reached out to us and I'm excited to hear more about what he's going to do with it in the future. Let's get back to Tink. So we've got the chronology down now we have some questions from previous guests on your online experience. So are you still just on okay you said Facebook, WhatsApp are those the two places in social media that you're still And we chat and we chat.
SPEAKER_08Oh and now you know it's funny that it was after moving back to China that I decided to get on Instagram. It happens yeah and I think Instagram was just because you know I was traveling so much I was like I should put my travel photo somewhere.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah so I think that was an appeal basically oh yeah no what they've done with pictures and videos is exactly pretty awesome. Yeah yeah it they serious them in LinkedIn for some reason LinkedIn is getting really popular oh yeah I'm also on LinkedIn that was in the middle of college though but you know just to prepare for the future when you had to have this profile and like appear professional with me something what it was. Yeah. But for almost a decade LinkedIn was just the sleeping sleeping sleeping thing and nobody was doing anything except uploading their stuff and giving that link to people.
SPEAKER_08And then all of a sudden about a year or so ago people started posting articles and pictures and different professional things and talking about their their work day and I'm like what just happened Yeah I noticed that too like before I would never be on like LinkedIn looking through other people's stuff but like now I find it more engaging to be on LinkedIn looking at the feed than Facebook.
SPEAKER_06Yeah it's probably this is a terrible thing to say one of the few things that Microsoft has taken on and made better that's I think that's probably about the time that it started to do that. So touche yay thank you Microsoft So let's see what are some of the questions a previous guest ask ah Stevie who is a life coach in Hong Kong funny enough says are you happy when you use social media?
SPEAKER_08I want to say happy and just I mean when you're on social media you're obviously just looking for something to entertain you. So I would say I'm definitely very entertained on social media.
SPEAKER_06That sounds borderline happy we've talked a little bit about it being easy to get caught up in what you're doing online. Do you feel like you're we play with terminology on this podcast too we've got IRL which everybody uses and we wanted a counter acronym for that so we made up one VRL virtual reality life in real life so do you feel like your IRL VRL life is balanced what you do online doesn't interrupt what you want to do offline in in real life basically yeah I feel like obviously sometimes you have your bath days where you just want to lay in bed and spend an hour on social media and be fine but I think overall it is balanced but right now I think a big thing that has occurred and which also relates to why a lot of people might be increasing their posting activity on LinkedIn is something of like online branding personal branding like who do you how do you want to present yourself and how for example how do you want to share like the different
SPEAKER_08Accomplishments or opinion that opinions that you have online with a wider audience, which leads to more people, you know, utilizing social media in their favor instead of just getting tangled up in social media and being a content consumer. They're producing more and more content that kind of boosts their self-image.
SPEAKER_06So it sounds like you, from an early age, were very conscious of what you were doing online. At any point in your like teenagehood or young adulthood, did you find yourself pulling any of your friends aside and saying, Hey, do you really want to put that online? and giving them some advice about their online presence. And you don't have to use names or anything like that.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I'm trying to think, and actually not quite, because I think happily, pretty much, most of my friends are pretty responsible in that. You know, they wouldn't post a lot of inappropriate things online, especially since nowadays there's a lot of articles on how employers kind of dig through your social media. So I think people are more aware of that. But that's probably for the more public social media that we talk about, like you know, Facebook, Twitter. On WeChat is not so because it's more private, like your employer can't just search you up on WeChat. Even if they're your friends, you know, you have the option to just block them. So on WeChat, I definitely like see more content that reflects, I guess, human nature. What do you mean by that? People would be more comfortable with posting maybe like a screenshot of a conversation they had with friends on WeChat.
SPEAKER_06Okay, I'm gonna mention that. Yeah. That could that perplexes me a little bit. Yeah. When people do that. When did people start doing that? Because I've I've just seen it fairly recently.
SPEAKER_08Well, the funny thing is when we went back geographically to uh when I was in San Francisco and I talked about using AIM as like an online minister.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_08So like back then that would be a thing as well. If your friend said something like really funny, you would kind of like you had this little bio where you can post it, and then it would be something you would continuously update.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_08So it wouldn't be for long. And that was like copy and paste, not screenshot. But with WeChat, I think there's just always been there in that when people post screenshots of you know, not just WeChat conversations, any conversation on any messenger app. Yeah, they would have the comfort of knowing that their friends on the other messenger apps probably wouldn't even see these messages. Right. And then your friends on WeChat, you know, if you posted, most people would have like the courtesy of maybe using some app to like smudge the icon photo of like whoever they were talking to, yeah. And just the content, or sometimes it'd just be like out there, but that's probably like agreed upon. Yeah, but yeah, it'll be all kind of things, most of the time it'll be like really like fun jokes between them two that like the person just wants to share, like, oh, this is really funny, but then other times it could just be like huge disagreements and group chats and that kind of thing that kind of just gets used to public shame people.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's the version I've seen. There I'm on like an expat legal board, and I'll see sometimes arguments between employers and the employee, and the employees piss, so they screenshot it and put it over in there, and I'm like, this is not gonna help you. What are you doing? If they find out you've done this, that sounds like it's just gonna snowball the situation. And I just ah yeah. Shocked me the first few times I saw it, I was like, you do realize that person's name is there.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. In every part of that conversation. Yeah, I think they're definitely maybe like a bit less social media aware in terms of this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. And when people do that kind of screenshot, do they usually do it like send it to one person? Or like my example I just had was into a group, but do you usually see it? They're just sending it to one person to say, Can you believe this happened? or how funny is this? Oh yeah, it's everything, you know.
SPEAKER_08You send I get screenshots of stuff sent to me by friends, or you know, sometimes I will send them to friends, and then you would have people just on WeChat moments that would post it to the public. And yeah, it would be all types of things, but most people I would say wouldn't post it to like a large group chat because you know. Although I don't really see the difference between doing that and posting out. Your moments, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Maybe there'd be more people that you wouldn't necessarily want. Be in regular contact with in the group versus your moments, you can really, really control who sees yours and you see theirs. Yeah. Still, it still shocks me to this day. But then I overshare on social media, so I don't know why I can't because it because it's me sharing that information, not somebody taking mine and that was private and putting it in public. Yeah. I think that maybe that's it. Exactly. I don't know. Or maybe I'm just a pre-internet chick. I don't know.
SPEAKER_08No one can be pre-internet anymore to consume this.
SPEAKER_06I remember dial up. Okay, but oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't ask you this yet. Because you've country country helped is so the wrong word. You've changed countries a few times. Yeah. What languages have you used online?
SPEAKER_08Language. So of course on Facebook and Instagram would just be like English. Because I feel like most it depends on like who my friends are on that platform, and if they're mostly English speaking, then yeah, English seems like the way to go. But on WeChat, I would kind of tend to juggle around between English and Chinese depending on what's the best way I can like express that. And I don't think it's a big deal because on WeChat it's like obviously most of my friends is still like Chinese, but then you also have a lot of foreign friends that are using WeChat nowadays, so it's become this whole mesh pot of everything. Yeah. Your friends, family, your colleagues, people you meet at work events, everything. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Do you ever switch if you're talking to someone who knows English and Chinese, do you do you tend to code switch within the the messages?
SPEAKER_08Oh yeah, that definitely happens. It only happens with other third culture kids, I guess, because uh they tend to have, you know, an equal grasp of those languages, so it's like it makes sense. But usually I would just stick to whatever language I first met the person in. Like if we met first and we talked in like English. You are this language, yeah. Then you're this language. If it's Chinese, then you're this language. I get that.
SPEAKER_06Oh my gosh. Have you ever deleted a social media post after you put it out into the world?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I have. I think most people, mostly most people have. Because you post something and you realize, wait, this is not something I actually want to have out there. So uh let me just this is delete that really quick and hope no one else saw it.
SPEAKER_06I bet everybody has. Yeah. Yeah. Jo, who was the first person I interviewed for this podcast. Hi Joe. She wanted to know do you share more stuff in real time or do you share it after the fact, like a day or two later or something? Oh, that's actually a really good question.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, a lot of people share in real time. Um, for me, I guess I used to share in real time. Also depends because a lot of functions are made for sharing in real time. I remember back when oh yeah, this is something I forgot to mention because my addiction with it was so brief. It was Snapchat.
SPEAKER_06Oh you were the first person to talk about Snapchat.
SPEAKER_08Is it still around? I think so. I just it's just gotten replaced by Instagram stories and Facebook stories. Poor thing. And now Leaf Chat has stories. Everyone is doing these stories. Yeah, what is that?
SPEAKER_06What is it just popped up like two weeks ago? Yeah. Were you only on there for a little while?
SPEAKER_08I think it was like also one of those fans that just became so huge that like you can't ignore anymore. Yeah. So I was on it, and I guess I kind of like see the appeal because it's like before maybe on social media when you post, you kind of have to think about it because it's like there, it's gonna be forever there unless you purposely delete it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Whereas on Snapchat, your your head doesn't even have to go through a filter whether you want to post this or not. And most people on your Snapchat is gonna be your close friend, you're not gonna be anywhere else. So you feel really comfortable.
SPEAKER_06How long did it last for once you posted something?
SPEAKER_08Uh, I think it was like 24 hours.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay. So people could scroll through for those 24 hours and they would see your stuff, but after that point it would just go away.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, that was like your stories, and then you can also, you know, send picture snaps to your friends. And those were just like once you opened it, they were gone. So you couldn't save pictures? No, but and also like like okay, so for example, your friend sent you like a picture, and you would like open it and it would be on the screen for like like 10 seconds, five seconds, and afterwards it'd be gone. But you could say pictures they sent you, you just screenshot it, but then they would know if you screenshotted it.
SPEAKER_06Really? Yeah. Oh, it's send them like an indication that you like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08So like they would be aware of it.
SPEAKER_06You'd have to be pretty quick to also to open it and know that you wanted to screenshot it and stuff to yeah.
SPEAKER_08Wow. But because of the temporariness, people were just free to send whatever they wanted.
SPEAKER_06That sounds somewhat dangerous. It does, it does. Now, where were you when you were using Snapchat?
SPEAKER_08I think it was around maybe like a little bit US and uh more so in like Singapore actually.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_08I've heard about it. I just haven't really I missed that moment. No, I I think um they they also like purposely targeted like you know students.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and my nieces were about that age, and I remember them like talking about it with their mom, but I just was like, what another app? Go away. I was just so saturated at that point. I'm like, no, can't handle it. So do you think that in your movement from China to the US and back and Singapore and Hong Kong and all of these places? Do you think that what you did online changed because of where you were or because of that stage of growing up? Because you've you've used online stuff longer than anybody I've interviewed yet. So we've got the complication of what you're doing in life changing a lot, yeah, along with your geography, along with online things becoming available.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I think I think it was a combination of all those because being like social media slow, it's kind of like I didn't feel like I had a lot of control over like what online mediums I chose to like express myself. It kind of just felt like oh, you're pushed by this big wave of like what everyone else was using, and sometimes it just becomes like necessary that you have to use this tool. Right. Um, you weren't really making the conscious decision, like, oh, I I should get on this because you know, I feel the I I like want to or something. But I think as you get older you have more control over it.
SPEAKER_06I don't know. Having just listened to you say that, I was like, yeah, you're so right. And I feel like I still even though I missed, I didn't I didn't have that wave of tech during my oh that's so funny. I listened to a podcast called the The Wave of Tech. Anyway, I didn't have that digital pressure in high school, but I definitely feel like once it became a once the Facebooks and the like I started on Hotmail before Facebook and those kinds of things, once those started to happen, I feel like even now I get kind of caught up in what's available online and what new things people are using, and I'll experiment with it, and like it's probably more important job-wise, where things are, but I definitely want to go to the places where people are because that's where you find the most stuff. Yeah. So I feel like it's still relevant even now. Exactly. To this old person right here.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. It's kind of it's hard to push back against the current, which is why I just find it amazing. Like my best friend is like, how she could just stay away from it. But I guess it's easier because if you decide to not jump on the wagon when it first comes, it's a lot easier to ignore the rest of it. Yeah. Whereas if you kind of hopped on to whatever wagon, it's like you're down this whole sloppy hill.
SPEAKER_06Very, very, very, very big rabbit hole. Yeah. That's so true. Feel free not to answer this, but Alexandra, who was recently on Virtual Expats, wants to know do you use dating apps? Do you or have you ever used dating apps?
SPEAKER_08Alexandra, that's very personal. Uh yeah, I think that was also something that was like you felt caught in the way because in college I think a lot of people were like on Tinder, just like using it to meet people, I guess. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And that was also something. Do people ever really find friends on Tinder? I hear people saying, Oh, I just want to meet some friends, I'm gonna use Tinder. Is that real? Because I missed that entire wave.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean, I just I've also become like a bit skeptical on that. It was one of those things that you kind of hear people talk about so much that you're like, wait, what is this thing that you would like be curious to like want to download and see what it's all about? And I think the app is like I'm gonna admit that like I do at some point like used it, but like it was I just enjoyed being on there and people watching. And you just like you see, you know, especially in a university environment, you see your friends on there, and it's like really funny.
SPEAKER_06Like, haw. So it's not I I literally was married but well before this even came out. I'm so old. So I thought it was just you saw the people that like kind of fit what you were looking for, and then you'd just swipe one way or the other, depending on if you're okay. Oh, so you would see like your classmates on there.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, like sometimes you would like actually a lot of times you would like see people you would know, and it's just like really funny. And yeah, it's just like it's another social media rabbit hole. It's I don't think it's any different than like Instagram or Facebook, and that you just you know, Facebook and Instagram, you slide down your timeline. This you just keep swiping. It's like yeah, it's a way to entertain yourself.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I saw this really creepy video. Actually, it was really informative, but it makes you a little too aware of social media video where they talked about that swiping thing or the timeline, like when you move like this, and I just listeners, I can't show you what I'm doing, but it's kind of like moving your finger down to go to the next part, the next part, the next part is a social media app, as intentionally being like gambling and it being like a slot machine to refresh kind of thing, and that's an intentional thing that we think what's gonna come up, what's gonna come up? And it's like that kind of excitement. Yeah. So manipulated.
SPEAKER_08But a lot of social media is just taking, you know, what you would, you know, what will happen in real life into virtual life. Like you people watch in real life, and then it's just like this. Now you can people watch in virtual life too.
SPEAKER_06Yep. It's so true. Oh gosh, I do that so much. I cannot judge, I am horrible online. Oh, Eva. She recently biked from Shanghai to London.
SPEAKER_05Oh wow.
SPEAKER_06Anyway, Eva wants to know what you would do if you didn't have the internet anymore. So that would take down all apps on your phone, all virtual correspondence.
SPEAKER_08Well, that's uh question. I don't know, I guess people would enjoy life more and be the moment.
SPEAKER_06You're seeing your answer is so peaceful. For me, I was like, yeah, three a day in, I'd start to worry and then start to pace, and then start to panic.
SPEAKER_08But I mean, I think I think this question kind of brings me back to a point in my life. I think it was college. I actually I thought had this thought, like, not of like just the whole online thing, but like technology in general, because I was a bit frustrated that like kind of in college, for example, it was a huge transition, not just in terms of the school, like course load, but also like you discover everything is done through a projector, everything is done through a screen. Like in class, you have to look at a big screen. Yeah, after class, you have to look at your computer screen and finish the work because there's no other way you can do it. Like in elementary, and like at least when I went to elementary, like you'd still have the option of like writing things down, um, having things on paper, you're gonna have to face a screen all day, but in college it just completely shifted everything, and that just that was something I wasn't very used to because high school was not like that yet. Like classes are still small enough that like teachers can just puck at you or like write on the board and you can still hand in things that's written. So I think that was like a huge shift in terms of the amount of technology I was using every single day and getting a bit frustrated with it, and having that thought, like, why do we need all this? This is like a bit too much for me. But as with everything, like I think people get used to things really easily, so you learn to get used to that, and now you know, at work you really can't leave your computer.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Now it's such a vital, vital part of what we do. And I really wonder, like, I was in education for a while, and there's so many times that I wanted to say this that need to be on a screen. Do do we need to be talked at with a digital device, or can we discuss this? Can we break this down on paper? Can we use the chalkboard probably not chalkboard? I did have a chalkboard in Nanjing, but in most places it was a whiteboard or whatever. So it's like, are there is there any other way we can do this so we're actually talking to each other and not just looking at a screen? And I love tech. I love I love mobile tech, but I think there's a lot of times that we revert to things that aren't necessarily productive for what we need to do, and that kind of detaches similar to I think where you were kind of going, is it just the humanity in us kind of gets locked in a screen sometimes? It really does. Yeah. Why do we do that? What would we have done that with before? Like technology-wise, what was before this screen? It probably was the whiteboard and the chalkboard.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. People who actually, you know, wrote stuff.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. But I wonder when people switched from papyrus slash paper to whiteboards and markers, did they have the same sort of kind of reaction to that switch? That's a good question. I have no idea. I have no idea. I remember in one of the teacher training things I went to, they talked about tech uh pencils was once like an innovative technology, and I just went, okay. That really makes you think. Like we get so used to, like you were saying with the screens, we get so used to certain technologies just being there. Like I'm used to having a pen or pencil in my hand. Yeah. But somebody at some point had to create that. Exactly. What the heck were they using before? Oh yeah, they were chipping it into a stone or something, right? Or using that'll be slow. Or using some sort of paint that they had to make with the brush they had to like extract from the animal hair. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But I really wonder what will happen with our screen time. Because it is affecting our sleep too.
SPEAKER_08Exactly. Yeah. And I think in the future it might just, if the screen doesn't exist anymore, it's gonna be virtual reality.
SPEAKER_06Because it'll just be in our heads at that point.
SPEAKER_08Some black mirror stuff.
unknownIt is.
SPEAKER_06It is, it is. But we don't have to be fatalist. But but your answer is like everything else you've described with your relationship to online stuff, sounds very grounded. You're just like, eh, I'll just spend more time in my real life. Or try. Or try, yeah. Alright, so you've heard some of the questions that previous guests virtual expats have asked. What questions would you like future guests to answer? Hmm.
SPEAKER_08That's interesting. I guess. Oh, I thought of a good one. Have you ever look up look back on like previous posts that you made after a long time? And what were your thoughts when you look back on those previous posts that you made?
SPEAKER_06I have an entire podcast about that. Okay, so have you ever I have to plug every chance again. Have you ever looked back at a previous social like social media post?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, social or a bunch of previous social media posts that you made. What were your thoughts when you look back on them?
SPEAKER_06You know what happens next, right? You have to answer your own question.
SPEAKER_08Oh no. At least this one's okay to answer. Yeah, I definitely have with like my own blog posts. Or I just be like, you know, it's almost like you don't recognize this person anymore because you've grown out of that person to completely something different. And I just find it really entertaining nowadays to like look back and like you know, everyone be like, oh, I sounded so stupid back then. But like no, that was like you kind of learn to like you kind of look at it from a third person perspective now, like, oh this person was like this and did this back then. So I think it's always it's always interesting, and I always like do this when I come across it. Like I I would read through my old social media posts and just find it hilarious and entertaining and be thankful for how much I've grown since then.
SPEAKER_06That's a really healthy episode. I listen to far too many podcasts on podcasting, not to get too meta. And they say something very similar. They're like, if you listen to your early podcast episodes and you're not embarrassed, it means you haven't grown. So I think it's very similar to what you just said. If you read something you posted years ago and you not are embarrassed, but you feel some sort of like emotional distance from it, or you feel like that's a different person, then it probably means you've grown and matured. And that feels like a positive step. Yeah. So it's not just about podcasting. It's about life. Every statement about online or about podcasting can be extended to everything. Well, on that note, I want to thank you so much for coming out. Thank you so much. That was a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you to our guest take for sharing her virtual story with us. For more Geopat podcast episodes, including the other two shows, the bookish expats and changing scripts, go to Stefffuccio.com, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. Or you can just search Geopats don't forget the S in your podcast app. If the podcast does not show up on your app, do let me know and I will make sure we get listed there. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or to volunteer to be a guest on the podcast. My handle is literally Steph Fuccio everywhere online. As promised, here is Damon Castillo and his band with the song I Gotta Be Right off the Mess of Me album. Remember, you can find all of his info, including his albums and his tour dates at Damon Castillo.com. More next week.
SPEAKER_09Well the day left, the work that's done at night. Over times right now when we die. So I oh I gotta be right. I get the feeling you believe in the me. But then you always be what you wanna see the place your back on the grave and back and back. Oh you gotta drop them in this fight. And I oh I gotta be back. I gotta be right. I gotta be right.
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