Look at this antique-like interface, filled with the endless ramblings of a multi-billionaire tech tycoon.
Frankly speaking, the most regrettable thing about today’s tech industry is that those tycoons who once used blogs and social media like late-night food stalls to vent their frustrations have now completely zipped their lips.
It just so happens that today in Shanghai is a sunny 24 degrees Celsius, perfectly suited for brewing a cup of tea and engaging in some idle chatter. I recently read a fluff piece with a title along the lines of “When Company Executives Neglect Their Duties to Write Newsletters for Attention.” To be honest, I completely disagree with this condescending accusation.
Running a business is like opening a restaurant: R&D and management are like tossing the wok in the back kitchen, while executives writing newsletters and posting updates is like the head chef taking off their apron to mingle with the diners in the front of the house. If they want to come out for some fresh air, it is absolutely not just “seeking attention.” It’s not that complicated.
Part 1 — The Chatterbox You Would Never Expect
Speaking of executives neglecting their duties, there is a particularly interesting story.
You might not know this, but Meituan’s Wang Xing used to be an exceptionally rare chatterbox. From what I know, over a span of ten years, he posted exactly 12,838 updates on his own startup platform, Fanfou. You might think he was posting profound corporate strategies. Absolutely not. The content he shared read more like the musings of an endlessly curious idler.
Just think about it: a CEO managing tens of thousands of employees and a market cap of hundreds of billions, staying up in the middle of the night just to post online, “Why does the Chinese character for ‘stupid’ (蠢) look like this?”
Sometimes, he would suddenly pop up with questions that leave you not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He once posted asking why the word “kide” doesn’t exist in English, completely wasting such a resonant combination of letters. Truly mind-boggling.
Not only that, he even worried about other people’s affairs. Once, he actually posted a sigh of amazement that Turkey somehow had an aircraft carrier. His tone was exactly the same as the colleague slacking off in the cubicle across from yours.
This almost obsessive habit of collecting obscure trivia makes it seem like he has an encyclopedia installed in his brain, hitting shuffle every single day. These fragmented thoughts held no commercial value whatsoever. But he just couldn’t resist pouring them out. This makes me feel that he isn’t some deified money-making machine, but a living, breathing person who spaces out and lets his mind wander.
Looking at the few words in this vintage screenshot, you can tell the tycoon’s thought process is indeed quite peculiar.
Part 2 — They Were Serious About Exposing Their Own Dark Histories
In fact, it wasn’t just occasional idle chatter; once some of these tycoons got into long-winded rants, they’d expose their deepest embarrassing secrets without hesitation.
Take Zhou Hongyi from Qihoo 360, for example. The articles this guy wrote in his early years were fiercely raw. He didn’t put on airs at all, directly recalling in his writing the embarrassing moments from his college days when he traveled to Beijing’s Zhongguancun acting like an expert just to resell digital products.
To avoid showing his amateurishness, he deliberately clasped his hands behind his back, looked at the merchant’s laser printers with extremely critical eyes, and shamelessly demanded to print 20 test pages first to check the quality. It ended up making the shop owner ache with distress over the wasted ink and paper.
He would even meticulously describe how he once ran off to Tsinghua University to visit a girl he secretly admired, a crush that ultimately faded into nothingness. He then returned to his dorm to listen to Jonathan Lee’s “Hard to Bear the Loneliness” while silently grieving.
This kind of self-deprecating vintage gossip, if put through today’s editorial review process, would absolutely be killed on the spot. Reviewers would sternly warn: This strictly contradicts the highly profound and professional brand image of a cybersecurity company. Don’t even think about it.
But you have to admit, it was precisely these seemingly nonsensical words that let the outside world know that this boss, who fired shots everywhere in the business arena, was also just an ordinary geek who experienced heartbreak and confusion. This was far more interesting than tens of millions spent on hard-sell advertisements.
Part 3 — Sometimes, a Brand is Ruined by a Single Poem
However, the risk of the head chef personally coming out to greet the guests is simply too high.
Once, while chatting about this with friends, we all agreed that the main reason these tycoons have now completely muted their microphones is mostly because they’ve learned bloody lessons. The moment you step out of the safe back kitchen and into the spotlight, every casual remark you make can be used as evidence against you. One slight slip of the tongue can directly ruin the entire brand.
Back in 2021, Wang Xing took a massive fall on Fanfou. He was probably getting carried away reading a book that day and casually posted a late-Tang dynasty poem, his original intention likely just sighing over the rise and fall of history. But the problem was, the capital market was extremely sensitive at the time.
People took a magnifying glass to analyze it word by word, forcibly extracting a tens-of-thousands-of-words conspiracy theory, insisting that he was hinting at some specific industry landscape. As a result, in just a few short days, Meituan’s stock price took a crazy dive, and massive amounts of market value evaporated just like that—all because of a poem. Truly brutal. The cost was incredibly agonizing.
Afterward, that chatterbox Wang Xing completely disappeared. His Fanfou homepage was set to private. Not only were his past 10,000+ ramblings locked away in a black box, but the Chinese internet also lost an interesting soul forever.
Actually, it’s the same in Silicon Valley. Years ago, Elon Musk casually made a joke on Twitter about taking Tesla private. As a result, he was heavily fined by the SEC and even lost his position as chairman. But he’s a rather bold character; to continue freely posting those nutritionally devoid memes and dark jokes, he simply spent tens of billions of dollars to buy the entire platform outright. Shrugs.
This belongs to an exceptionally rare “superpower of money” tactic to prevent account bans—something ordinary executives couldn’t possibly emulate.
Part 4 — Everyone is Chewing on a Tasteless Plate of Pre-packaged Meals
Because of the fear of making mistakes, the current situation has become extremely comical.
I saw a saying before that the biggest task for the PR departments of major companies right now is to confiscate their bosses’ social media passwords. They are extremely terrified that the boss might say one extra casual remark in the front hall, scaring away investors and key clients.
As a result, they package these brilliant minds tightly and flawlessly. Occasionally updating a public account, all they post are safe, overly steady industry predictions and impeccably grand New Year greetings. You can’t even tell who wrote the article; it feels like boilerplate text randomly generated by a snippet of code. How boring is that?
This is just like going out to eat, hoping to taste the head chef’s unique craftsmanship, or even hear a bit of industry gossip from him, only to be served pre-packaged meals processed on an assembly line. Standard, rigorous, and flawless. But chewing it feels like eating wax. You look at the perfect formatting—it seems high-end, but in reality, it’s completely plasticky.
Part 5 — Leave Some Imperfect Authenticity Behind
After reading all this, my biggest takeaway is that an industry’s golden age is often the era when its prominent figures speak freely and unguardedly.
At that time, nothing was set in stone; people weren’t afraid of looking amateurish or worrying about saying the wrong thing. You would see bosses throwing tantrums directly on their blogs or casually snapping a photo of themselves eating a cheap boxed lunch from a street stall. Even if outsiders laughed at them for slacking off, or even if the ideas they popped out were sometimes absurd, it was still an authentic record carrying human warmth. And that was enough.
Technology itself is already cold enough. If even the people creating the technology and leading the enterprises turned into precisely operating broadcasting machines, how boring would this tech circle be? 🤷♀️
No matter how fast business models iterate, what truly moves people will always be those imperfect, authentic moments. Since they’ve already reached the position of top executives, if they don’t even have the freedom to rant a few times on their own turf, what’s the fun in being a boss?
References:
- Over Ten Years, Wang Xing Posted 12,838 Messages on Fanfou…
- Zhou Hongyi: A Person Who Loses Their Curiosity Gets Old at 20
—— Lyra Celest @ Turbulence τ.
