Words like 518, 89, and the Indonesian riots are often used in Chinese discourse to prove that "the rulers fear the people." This explanation flatters too much. A version closer to reality is: above are emotional fools, below are fools immersed in self-delusion. The former fear being exposed, the latter misread the former's shame as "we have power." Both sides enable each other, burying the real issues together.

I. Two Types of Fools: Emotion and Illusion

Rulers (emotion-heavy):

• Information filtering leads to cognitive deficits, historical shadows amplify risk expectations.
• When seeing reference symbols like "Gwangju 518" or "June 4th," the instinctive reaction is not risk assessment but shame-stopping—don't make me embarrassed, don't make me accountable tomorrow.
• Subordinates' approach is simpler: delete. The faster they delete, the more loyal they appear.

Ruled (illusion-heavy):

• Seeing posts deleted and blocked creates the illusion "they fear us"; treating bans as proof of their own power.
• In reality, there's no organization, no protection, no community willing to pay the cost. Power never existed, only imagined through bans.

In one sentence: what's forbidden is not danger, but embarrassment; what's misread is not power, but shame.

II. Foolish Reaction Chain (The Real "Stability" Mechanism)

Face trigger (superior's displeasure) → Responsibility tracing (who didn't block who takes the blame) → Escalation (more than the superior's intent) → Widespread silencing (visible actions replacing governance) → Statistical reporting (how many posts deleted, how many words banned) → Wrong learning (path dependency of "delete=safety") → System fragility (lower threshold, faster deletion next time)

This chain explains why bans become harsher even under "two-legged sheep" conditions: it mainly serves emotional appeasement and promotion games between superiors and subordinates, not addressing real dangers from the masses.

III. Why "Knowing Won't Lead to Action"

Even if you post all the truth about 518 and 8964 on Chinese people's faces, they'll find the content too long to read

TL;DR Political Science: Seven Reasons Why Reading Doesn't Lead to Action

1. Cognitive budget exhaustion: Livelihood and family consume full brain computing power, long materials = high-energy input, automatically discarded.
2. Risk-reward extreme asymmetry: Reading zero cost; forwarding/taking sides high risk zero reward, rationality stops at spectating.
3. Coordination failure is constant: No unions, no self-governing associations, no religious networks, no organization means no sustainability.
4. Algorithmic anesthesia: 30-second emotional slices, extremely short half-life, can't accumulate action energy.
5. Psychological defense: Turning trauma into memes, derealizing for self-protection while losing capability.
6. Systemic shame transfer: Upper-level shame → bans; lower levels treat bans as cheap self-esteem of "I'm powerful."
7. Learned helplessness: Long-term ineffective experience, automatically equating "correct" with "useless."

Calculable intuitive formula: P(action) ≈ max(perceived benefit − expected cost, 0) × coordination degree × organizational availability × emotional half-life / attention noise

In current China: high cost, low coordination, absent organization, massive noise → multiplication ≈ 0. Thicker archives, lower unit emotional output: "too long won't read" isn't laziness, it's rational survival algorithm.

IV. From Riots to Turning Points: Four Threshold Model

Abstract "spectating → overthrow" into four switches that need to be lit simultaneously:

1. Survival threshold: Hunger/supply cutoff/can't pay wages.
2. Coordination threshold: Unions, self-governing associations, religious groups, guilds, campus organizations, credible communities.
3. Protection threshold: Judicial/media protection, local protection, international attention, selective failure of suppression systems.
4. Narrative threshold: One coherent slogan and "success reference system" (Gwangju, Berlin Wall, transition cases).

At least two of ①②③ must be satisfied, then amplified by ④, to cross the political critical point. Applied to Chinese reality: ① not systematically maxed; ② long cleared; ③ almost non-existent; ④ forcefully erased. Result ≈ 0. Saying "unless starving to death" actually means only when ① is extremely maxed can it force cracks in ②③, but that's more like collapse and famine flight, not regime change.

V. Why 518/64 Must Be Erased

The real motive isn't "people are strong," but superiors are fragile:

• Face politics: Stop shame first, let the leader sleep tonight.
• Accountability avoidance: When incidents occur, can submit "operation traces," proving "I handled it early."
• Evidence fear: Worried about future reckoning, archives will become nooses rather than articles.
• Coordination point fear: Dates/symbols can "synchronize" scattered dissatisfaction, clear the clock first.

Conclusion: Bans are weak governance substitutes, not sophisticated risk management.

VI. What Really Changes the Game Isn't the Masses

Historically, variables that change the game usually come from outside the system:

• External supply cutoff (financial sanctions, trade decoupling, technology blockade) → Suppression costs rise.
• Protection windows (international attention, refugee and media protection, neighboring country shelter) → ③ lit up.
• Organizational input (funding/training/safety tools) → ② lit up.
• Suppression system failure (can't pay wages, loyalty collapse) → Critical state appears.

Two-legged sheep at most cause riots, won't produce institutions; real turning points come from the critical state created by overlapping organization, protection, and supply cutoff.

VII. To Those Who "Think They Have Power"

Misreading the ruler's shame as your own power only makes you softer. Power = organizations willing to pay costs + sustainable protection + replicable narrative. Without these three, the rest is emotion and memes; history isn't hidden, it's drowned by noise.

Three Closing Sentences

• Blocking 518/64 isn't fearing people's rebellion, but fearing historical reckoning.
• Two-legged sheep won't revolt; at most they'll flee famine.
• This order's opponent isn't "people's power," but its own incompetence and external supply cutoff.

—This is the complicit structure of "foolish rulers and foolish ruled": above maintains dignity through emotion, below maintains self-esteem through illusion; appearing opposed, actually mutually causal.