#Purify app archive archive#

вЂњThey still push me to marry and have kids,вЂќ he said. Leo said that reading these emboldened him to come out to his own family, which ended less well. Feizan also hosted stories about men coming out to their families that all had suspiciously happy endings. вЂњThe revolution is not yet done all my tongzhi must strive on.вЂќДЄround 2010, gay men began to create profiles, journal, and list events on Feizan, a site similar to Facebook. (It is still active today, though the domain name changes all the time to avoid the censors.) Aibai, where a gay Asian American columnist doled out advice, was backed by Chinese NGOs working on HIV/AIDS prevention and public education, and became an authoritative source of information on LGBTQI issues. Soutong hosted classified advertisements where users sought advice, dates, and prostitutes. Danlan, an online social forum started by Ma Baoli (also known by the alias Geng Le, and who is now CEO of Blued) used plenty of that, mostly erotic novels and pictures, to attract traffic. He remembers that even soft porn was easy to find. вЂњIt gave you the false belief that things would get better.вЂќ вЂњCensorship wasnвЂ™t as strict,вЂќ he said of those early years. He discovered forums like Guangtong, where you could search for queer people living in the same region there was also BF99 - one of the predecessors of the now-dominant gay dating app Blued - where you could look nationwide. вЂњNo one posted any personal information online.вЂќ LeoвЂ™s name, and those of others in this piece, have been changed to protect them from reprisals. вЂњThey were crude,вЂќ he said of early queer websites. He was the first person in his class to have access to a computer and get online. Leo, then in his teens, grew up in a small city in southern China. Gay sex was decriminalized in China in 1997, but by then, there was already a thriving online community. When the country went online in the 1990s, so did many queer people who wanted to find others like them. He said that now he wants to tangping - to stop struggling, and just lie down. Mei doesnвЂ™t want to conform to the mainstream idea of what a good, acceptable life entails in China, although thatвЂ™s how he lives now. Anything rights-related is now a target.ДЇeeling something between fatigue and numbness, MeiвЂ™s society began using a backup account they set up years before. ItвЂ™s not just LGBTQI issues, in MeiвЂ™s view. Things that were acceptable to speak about online before can now open you up to attack.

Instead of LGBTQI, the term used in China is tongzhi, literally meaning вЂњsame purpose.вЂќ ItвЂ™s drawn from a saying from Sun Yat-Sen, considered by the party as the forerunner of the revolution: вЂњThe revolution is not yet done all my tongzhi must strive on.вЂќ The term refers to other comrades in the struggle towards revolution, and the LGBTQI community has taken it to describe their own struggle for legitimacy. Over the past few years, the school administration had applied increasing pressure on MeiвЂ™s society online, nationalists had become increasingly vocal, decrying any non-mainstream behavior as a security threat. He doesnвЂ™t think there was any single trigger for the sudden crackdown. The internet was, by nature, muddy and borderless, a place where ambiguity worked in the queer communityвЂ™s favor.ДЄround him, people reacted with shock or anger, but Mei felt nothing. For decades, ChinaвЂ™s queer community has been faced with a central government that seems to neither support nor actively oppose LGBTQI people local governments that refuse to register organizations and state agencies that call to ban queer content and effeminate depictions of males. Since the early days of the internet, queer Chinese people have gravitated online first, to connect under the safety of anonymity, and later to organize.

#Purify app archive archive#

Those hard-earned followings could take years to recover, and there was no way to restore an archive of their activities. In July, 14 of the largest and most prominent accounts were banned, cutting connections between thousands of members scattered across the country and casting them adrift. But on July 6, he signed in with trepidation heвЂ™d heard that other societiesвЂ™ profiles on the social messaging platform had been censored, and were now appearing as вЂњunnamed accounts.вЂќ Minutes later, so was his.ДЄcross China, queer college societies, which had been rare spaces to safely push boundaries, were being swiftly erased from the Chinese internet. For six years, he helped run one of ChinaвЂ™s most prominent groups. For Mei, logging into the WeChat account for his queer student society was habitual, like eating or sleeping.