Mary Roettger was just one of millions of Americans seeking a social media life raft when she warily logged onto China’s RedNote platform for the first time in January.
As fears loomed over a threatened US ban on TikTok, the Florida writer braced for a clumsy, spam-filled experience full of “negative people”.
Instead, she was struck by a starkly different culture. Roettger was “blown away with the amount of tenderness and excitement” of the online community suddenly before her.
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“That was new,” said the 27-year-old, who shared on RedNote her poems, pictures of her cat and videos taken during casual strolls. “It was people speaking with people, not taglines and hollow trends. These were real people connecting and sharing.”
Like Roettger, droves of other RedNote migrants – self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees” – swapped jokes, memes and pet photos with their Chinese counterparts, talking about life across different countries and cultures, from food and make-up to common day-to-day struggles.
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Their spontaneous exchanges, many of which evoking the original dream of the internet as a global village, offered a glimpse into a flourishing rapport between Chinese and foreign internet users – one shaped by fun trends and playful interactions on social media, transcending political divides.
It has not gone unnoticed.