GENERALLY I count myself among the few remaining tech Rip van Winkles in an age of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and refuse to wake up and adapt.

Whenever my friends urge me online to open an account at Sina Weibo, a twitter-like service, and start enjoying the fun of microblogging, I often decline, saying I have no time for it.

It's not that I pride myself on being a strong-headed loner at a time when the whole world seems to be busy networking via social media. My inertia is based on a very pragmatic concern.

Knowing full well how the Internet can make and break a person's reputation, I have yet to muster the courage to speak as bluntly as some people do in their weibo accounts.

A widely known cardinal rule of surfing China's vociferous cyberspace is never call attention to yourself with silly antics.

Some people might not be silly, but their treatment of weibo as a private place where they laid bare their dirty little secrets is indeed silly enough.

Two recent scandals that broke out in the micro-blogosphere and spilled over into the real world underscore the danger of dabbling in weibo when one is technologically or mentally unprepared for the prying gaze of online vigilantes.

Xie Zhiqiang, ex-health bureau chief of Liyang City, Jiangsu Province, became the target in June of mass "spying" when he flirted on weibo with a married woman presumed to be his mistress.

The official, apparently unaware that messages posted on weibo were visible to the public, even asked the woman out for an adulterous rendezvous.

Thousands of silent spectators reportedly monitored every word of the lovers and went to great lengths not to alert them to surveillance; thus, they made no effort to befriend them or re-tweet their posts.

Xie's "well-concealed" extramarital affair - at least he thought it was hidden - was first exposed when a reporter called him and asked about the scandalous messages. That was when he realized his weibo content had not been private at all.

Xie has since been suspended from his post and is probably the first official to fall from grace over a faux pas in weibo.

The case is all the more interesting in that most vigilantes following the episode didn't explode in knee-jerk indignation and report Xie to disciplinary authorities as they normally would have. There was a conspiracy of silence as Internet users watched the affair unfold.

When a few did plan to barge in on Xie's hotel room tryst with his mistress, the majority talked them out of intervening. Just stand back and enjoy the show, they said. Vigilantes even criticized the impatient reporter for breaking the story. They believed if Xie had been left alone, he might blurt out more damning details that could be used as evidence against him.

Maserati girl

While Xie's downfall will surely make plugged-in officials think twice before twittering, public scrutiny of Guo Meimei - at the center of a national charity controversy - has been even more hard-hitting.

The woman in her early 20s posted photos of her Maserati luxury sedan and Hermes handbag in her weibo and identified herself as the general manager of the General Chamber of Commerce of the Red Cross Society of China.

Her blatant flaunting of wealth provoked widespread outrage and vigilantes began probing her real identity, for a woman at her age normally couldn't amass on her own the fortune required to purchase such luxuries.

The uproar dealt another blow to the Chinese Red Cross Society, whose bruised reputation had yet to recover from a scandal in which some of its Shanghai staff were found to dine at an expensive restaurant, presenting a bill totally out of whack with what a standard official meal would have cost. And mind you, it was paid with donors' money.

The charity frantically dismissed speculation that the woman was the daughter of its deputy chairman. But the public appeared unconvinced and even more determined to get at the truth.

As more people linked to Guo continue to be implicated in the widening public investigation - including her married lover who was affiliated with the Red Cross Society and reportedly funded her lavish lifestyle - the charity is desperately trying to control the damage and repair its image as a "transparent and accountable" organization. That, of course, requires first of all disowning Guo at all costs.

We don't know how long this furor will last, but something about it is very disturbing, and it's not just the extent of possibly hidden sleaze.

While Guo's materialist flamboyance is truly repulsive, the whole affair has reminded us of the necessity to scrutinize the charity establishment that had been left to its own devices for too long.

And when we eventually did take a look, what we saw was a grim reality: Detection of endemic corruption is often the result of accidental revelations on the Internet, thus a low probability event.

In other words, the efforts to locate, let alone stamp out, corruption are far from systemic and adequate.

Those who extol weibo for providing a novel way to blow the whistle on corruption had better moderate their praises, for whatever little sleaze that is uncovered online says a lot about how much more has been swept under the carpet offline.

'Fans' for sale

Further undermining this highly unreliable graft-busting campaign is that information on weibo can be fabricated at a price.

This widespread phenomenon in China was well documented by my colleague Xu Chi in "Water army pours it on," Shanghai Daily, February 28, 2011.

On Monday, Xinmin Evening News reported that an illicit business of creating and selling phantom fans is booming on weibo. Bloggers who hope to attract visitor traffic can hire these shady vendors to create tens of thousands of "fans" on their profile page, for a pittance.

The "fans" appear real with frequent updates of blog entries and work by engendering the illusion that the blogger is influential and read by many.

One such vendor called "ucoolmall" sold 1,000 "fans" for 8 yuan (US$1.20) and completed 832 transactions within 30 days, the report said.

And the urge to have as many "fans" as possible is driven by profit-making motives rather than the desire to flatter one's vanity as a social king or queen.

Companies interested in less expensive but more effective word-of-the-mouth marketing eagerly turn to popular bloggers and pay them for their good publicity.

A weibo account with hundreds of thousands of fans sells for 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. Bloggers can earn up to 1,000 yuan for each advert they run on these weibos, according to the report.

Some technicians at Sina Weibo apparently believe there is money in it. They go through the motions of screening users' credentials and charge for bestowing VIP titles on those users aspiring to fame by hook or by crook.

In her initial profile, Guo identified herself as an actress. Later she applied to add Red Cross affiliations to her bio. Strangely, Sina agreed to the change without much delay or investigation. It's not clear if Guo paid for the quick service.

Were it not for the frenzy Guo sparked, we would never know about Sina's lax regulation of its online content.

Sina's perfunctory verification, if any, has provided customers with masks to disguise their true identity.

As befitting an actress, Guo was permitted to change her identity as she chose, but that only started all the trouble. Had she been wise enough not to get Sina's technicians to add information regarding the Red Cross charity, she would be just another decadent "material girl" wallowing in ill-gotten gains and happy in her pampered ignorance - if the vigilantes hadn't bothered giving her a hard time.

That again strengthens my skepticism as to how far weibo can go in the ongoing fight against corruption. Do weibo and its revelations really amount to much in a world plagued by lies and manipulation?

Of course, the popularity of weibo has underpinned the rise of a twittering class. Young, informed and tenacious, their online civic activism counters to some degree the prevailing cynicism. But the weibo generation has yet to pass the litmus test of staying power and most important, critical thinking.

Although weibo indeed gives a voice to the voiceless and empowers the powerless, as the Chinese media like to say, how can we remain sharp and avoid being misled by a deluge of information, the veracity of which we cannot easily ascertain?

That's a question our newfound dalliance with weibo has left unanswered, with potentially dire consequences.