to set up an account. Normally, that involved a time consuming process where she would have to fill out an online form, input a working email address, actual physical address, and other information that she’d have to make up on the spot, all of which took time. Time to set up the fake email address, time to fill out the other information, which all had to be done before she could do her post. The other employees didn’t even bother going to these sites because of that hassle.
Which was a mistake, in her opinion. These types of sites were the best ones to use. It was a target audience for this particular product. Bubba had even picked up a following here. Other gamers sometimes responded to his posts. He was what she liked to call an “influence leader”. Big marketing term; she’d picked that up from a freebie ebook. Anyway… Na had figured out she could bypass all that registering nonsense by doing one simple thing. To leave a post she just had to go to the site and log on using a Facebook profile.
Facebook.
Man oh man, had that surprised her. She used Renren , Qzone, Sina Weibo and other social media sites all the time. But Facebook?
WOW. (^_^) !!!!
It was her second day on the job when she realized it. She was doing some searches to find good sites to leave posts. When typing in certain key words, she was pulling up links—working links!—that she could never get at home.
OMG.
The computers in here were not affected by the Great Firewall. That ninny, bullying, Big Brother nincompoop that regulated the Internet.
!!!!!WHAT!!!!!
She’d looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was behind her. She didn’t believe what she was seeing. She could click on anything and it would pull up.
This was amazing. Beyond amazing. She’d clicked on a few sites, and then had gotten scared. This was illegal what she was doing, banned by The State. Men in grey could come any moment and put her in a dark, wet place and she would never be heard from again. Who would know? Who would miss her?
Those thoughts depressed her. Nobody would, of course. SAD. (Q_Q)
She was alone in this world. And she could be silenced at any moment just for doing this. She’d stopped clicking on the links. The Great Firewall may not work in here, but she wasn’t going to take the bait.
Maybe this was a test? To see who was tempted? The whole premise of this gig was crazy anyway. All employees needed to know to work here was how to write English? Yah! How stupid could she be? She’d fallen for that nonsense. The State had created the perfect honey pot. A way to lure potential dissidents, those not loyal to The State. They could weed out traitors. Weed out all those sympathetic to westernized thinking. If a person could read and write English, they were already suspect. So they had advertised on walls. Can you write English? Yep! Me! Me! Na had read it, been tempted, and walked right into the honey. Man, was she a dummy.
Now she was stuck.
THEY HAD HER. Right? Any day now. She waited. Didn’t run. Didn’t disappear, though a part of her thought that might be her best option.
The only reason she stayed, was she ran the percentages. No, it was better to stay. If they were monitoring her somehow, they’d see she didn’t go down that road of temptation. She’d only clicked on the sites. She hadn’t taken it any further.
So, she came to work. Day 1 ticked to Day 2, 3 and 4. And nothing happened. No consequences. No men in grey came. Instead, nothing .
During those four days, she noticed that both Chun and Jing-Wei frequently went to off-limit sites to leave posts. Either they didn’t know those sites were banned, or they didn’t care. Still, Na played it safe. She only went to sites she knew were okay to do her work. She kept that up, all the while observing Chun and Jing-Wei on the sly, as