Expats in Shanghai are annoyed at the selfie obsession on WeChat. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's expat population is expressing disappointment and irritation over the social networking app WeChat, which is very popular in the country.
Various expats said that they are annoyed with Chinese girls taking pictures of themselves and posting selfies every chance they get.
WeChat currently has 927 million active subscribers and is the fifth largest site in the world. Globally, WeChat lags behind Facebook and QQ but ahead of Twitter and Instagram.
China's expats expressed their opinion on the flooding of selfies and scams on the social networking app. They observed that there is an obsession with people posting photos of themselves.
According to Catherine Valley, a Russian student at Fudan University, "Chinese girls seem to use their mobile phone as a mirror and cannot stop taking selfies. They post selfies like every hour."
Brandon Powell, another expat, agreed. He said, "I don't like posts where people only take pictures of themselves. I was in Starbucks yesterday and a Chinese woman with a kid sat down. She didn't pay any attention to her kid, she just kept taking selfies."
Aside from selfies, Powell noted that comments on WeChat usually are about "dictating how you should act" or similar preaching posts on social propriety.
"People on WeChat tend to tell you how you should behave. I don't want to hear your advice unless I ask for it," he said.
The social networking app is also flooded with scams and fake news. Powell observed that there are a lot of fake news circulating about Donald Trump.
He said that this phenomenon is the same in any social networking site, which is an effect of people being unaware of the truth and "thinking it's breaking news, but it's just not true."
Shanghai's expat statistic show that the city is becoming a hub for foreigners. The population of expats has been steadily increasing.
By 2012, Shanghai is home to 208,300 overseas residents. The city joins other expat-filled cities like Hong Kong, Guangdong, Macau, and Taiwan.
