In China, many social media users began using the meme "garbage time" (a sports terminology) to criticize the state of the economy.
As that meme grew here in 2024, China's central authorities began cracking down on it.
But many Chinese citizens are adept at moving around censorship. When desiring to criticize the current state of the Chinese economy, many of them will instead bring up historical examples of prior Chinese dynasties that made similar errors, and draw clear parallels to the present, while maintaining plausible deniability and difficulty of censorship.
Pretty interesting. My hat is off to the Chinese social media users working around top-down censorship with memes and historical analogies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/asia/china-economy-garbage-time.html
LynAlden / Lyn Alden
npub1a2…cw83a
2024-09-14 00:00:36
Author Public Key
npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83aPublished at
2024-09-14 00:00:36Event JSON
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"content": "In China, many social media users began using the meme \"garbage time\" (a sports terminology) to criticize the state of the economy.\n\nAs that meme grew here in 2024, China's central authorities began cracking down on it.\n\nBut many Chinese citizens are adept at moving around censorship. When desiring to criticize the current state of the Chinese economy, many of them will instead bring up historical examples of prior Chinese dynasties that made similar errors, and draw clear parallels to the present, while maintaining plausible deniability and difficulty of censorship.\n\nPretty interesting. My hat is off to the Chinese social media users working around top-down censorship with memes and historical analogies.\n\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/asia/china-economy-garbage-time.html",
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