It's not really comparable... but they compared it anyways

Blog post 9

The video showing a controversial environment conservation advertisement

It's not really "one of the worst tragedies in history", honestly any natural disaster will cause more people to perish than this, but the 9/11 incident definitely caused one of the most serious consequences of terrorism in history. Aside from the international conflicts, the 9/11 incident has been (unfortunately) brought into mainstream culture as an icon of many things, from terrorism, racism, to the consequences of working in a highrise and power of airplanes.

What's interesting is that the advertisement shown in this video, about environmental conservation again, compares one disaster to another.  The logic behind this, although quite clear, does not explain the motive behind creating an advertisement like this. Yes it is true that a tsunami will kill many more people than an airplane, but a tsunami is not an act of terrorism, neither is terrorism an act of nature. These are two completely unrelated acts that both resulted in tragedies. It is as if the designers of the advertisements are saying "car crash is bad, but genocide is worse". The severities of different tragedies is incomparable, because one incident of suffering of mankind cannot be worse than another. In all cases of disasters, people lose their homes, lose their lives, and lose their loved ones. Just because one disaster killed more people than the other does not mean one should be compared to the other.

It's also interesting to note that although 9/11 has been used to iconize countless things in mainstream culture, this is the first time I've seen it used as a comparison of severity to other disasters. Perhaps it's one thing that it's not effective at iconizing.

Getting rich through playing video games

Blog post 8

Although video games have long been considered for entertainment purposes only, the advancements in MMORPGs have turned many gamers into sly businesspeople selling in-game items or money for real life items or money.

Sites such as IGE are, to put into simple words, making money off of another company. They focus on selling in-game items and gold in popular online games such as World of Warcraft, Aion, Final Fantasy, or Lineage to players for real-life revenue. As to the method at which these companies, often referred to as "gold sellers" or "gold spammers" (when their avatars are seen in-game), they either negotiate underground deals with the online game, or use an army of bots to "farm" (collect) in-game gold and items. While it is usually slow to accumulate any wealth with only one in-game avatar, with multiple computers and hundreds of bots, these companies or individual sellers are able to accumulate unbelievable amounts of wealth.

 Screenshot of the IGE website, one of the most popular sites for this market for video game commodities

Although many gamers secretly purchase in-game advantages through these external sources (mostly so they can power up their character and advance faster than normal grinding), most players look down upon these "shortcuts" to fame and glory in the cyberworld. After all most online games are based on the power of characters. Whoever is stronger will be able to defeat others, just as the same in real life. The "real" route as intended by the developers of the online games is for one to grind endlessly until he or she has a strong character. In other words, whoever spends more time on the video game will ultimately be stronger. With the introduction of these gold sellers, now it turns into whoever has more money will be stronger. Most online game developers also dislike gold spammers because, evidently, these spammers are making real money off of their game without paying them a cent, since it is almost always free to create multiple characters from the same game account.

A complaint form to Game Moderators about gold spammers

Although it is definitely annoying to have spammers constantly advertising their services, I have to admit that making money off of simply playing a video game is ingenious. Although it's not exactly original since video game tournaments with prizes have existed for a long time, such as Starcraft tournaments, those tournaments are mostly based on skill, and not unlike a chess tournament. However selling in-game items is based purely on taking advantage of the intention of most players to get their characters stronger quicker than others, at little or no cost (cost of running computers such as electricity excluded). This type of gold selling was most prominent in Asian MMORPGs such as Aion: The Tower of Eternity (Korean: 아이온: 영원의 탑), Perfect World (Chinese: 完美世界), or Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (Chinese: 天龙八部), but have also spreaded to almost all free-to-play MMORPGs in the world.

Summarily, this is simply another business, and all businesses make money by taking advantage of consumer psychology and reducing costs to a minimum. This type of video game business does not offer a high rate of return (after all it's not too often to find someone who will spend several hundred dollars on in-game items), but has almost no cost associated. And this is all possible thanks to the cyberculture of online gaming, and gaming addiction.

The Human Database

Blog post 7

Warning: this post contains information describing extreme maltreatment of animals, viewer's discretion is advised.

"Human Meat Search" - although very grotesque at first glance, the actual functions of this cult search engine is even more so.

The phenomenon of "human meat search engine" (Chinese: 人肉搜索) started with a group of very disturbing pictures posted on a popular internet forum. The pictures depicted a group of fashionable young women with high heels stomping a kitten to death, with the camera focusing on their heels as well as the bloody bits of the victim kitten. This immediately became a viral phenomenon not unlike the infamous Two Girls One Cup video as countless internet users began to search for the identities of the girls as well as the photographer. After a long searching involving journalists, bloggers, forumers, and even the police, the identities of one of the girls as well as the photographer were found.

The ultimate effect of this phenomenon was not the the apologies issued by several sadistic psychopaths. It spawned an entirely new form of internet search called "human meat search engine", where the internet is used for the spreading of personal information, tracking down specific individuals, or more often used for posting gossip, scandals, and shock news. In the words of many, it has "personified" internet search, moving from the traditional search for objects, ideas, and hard facts to the identities of every individual on earth. Anyone is able to post personal information on the web and it would be picked up by "meatified" search engines and forums, such as Baidu (largest search engine in Asia) and Maopu (Chinese social forum and search engine), whether the person wants to glorify his favourite celebrity, take revenge on a friend by posting his or her personal information and twisting them, or even track down a missing individual. This new form of internet search penetrates the layer of privacy that had traditionally been offered to all netizens, thus the name "human meat search".

Mop.com, one of the largest social forums for all kinds of purposes in Asia, including the human meat search engine.

Although the term of "human meat search" is new, the act of posting personal information is not. Human meat search simply tracks down the bits and pieces of personal information that we leave on the web, in sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Xiaonei (Chinese equivalent to Facebook), forums, online games, and even shopping sites. It connects everyone and makes searching for information more convenient, however it also lifts that layer of anonymity and security of netizens. The cost of being more connected and knowing more, is that someone will know more about you.

The Ten Forbidden Mythological Beasts

Blog post 6

Warning: This blog post contains some profane (but censored) language and crude humour, viewer's discretion is advised.

Around two years ago, the "Baidu Ten Mythical Creatures" was born from an internet prank. It wasn't simply an internet prank aimed at making fun of the government (again), it represented the People's resistance against the iron fist of Chinese governmental rule, and the power of the internet community. "These hoaxes, ten in number, originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship in China, and have become an icon of citizens' resistance to censorship." (Phrase from Wikipedia)

[Reference Link]

Leader of the Mythological Beasts - the alpaca, or in hoax language, Cao Ni Ma (Chinese: 草泥马, lit: Grass Mud Horse), a homophone for the Chinese profanity "f*** your mother"

The hoax started when some person posted an article in the Wiki section of Baidu, the Chinese equivalent for Google, representing the largest search engine in Asia, writing about ten fictional deities that had no apparent source of origin. Upon closer examination, each of these names was a homophone to a profane word or phrase. The obvious purpose for this hoax was to circumvent the government censorship on internet communication (such as blocking various sites, banning use of profane language, etc) in a humorous way, showing that the internet community can easily find other ways to get around the censorship. By turning profanity into mythological creatures, the government can only watch as "new forms of profanity" are created right before their eyes.

The following list contains some of the creatures, for a full list see reference link:

Cao Ni Ma (Chinese: 草泥马, lit: Grass Mud Horse) - Icon is the alpaca. Homophone for "f*** your mother"

Fa Ke You (Chinese: 法克鱿, lit: French-Croatian Squid) - Icon is the small and agile sea squid. Homophone for "f*** you"

Ya Mie Die (Chinese: 雅蠛蝶, lit: Small Elegant Butterfly) - Icon is a small butterfly from Qinghai discovered in January, 2009. Homophone for "yamete" (Japanese: 止めて, lit: "stop it", commonly cried out by females in Japanese pornography during sex)

Da Fei Ji (Chinese: 达菲鸡, lit: Daffy Chicken) - Icon is a type of energetic rooster that resembles Daffy Duck. Homophone for the Chinese slang for masturbation, "da fei ji".

 Ya Mie Die (Chinese: 雅蠛蝶), one of the creatures

The hoax represented one of the most successful "rebellions" in internet culture against censorship. These ten beasts have become so popular that they are now used in everyday slang language, have sprung other fan-made "mythological beasts", and even spread to the commercial market. Keychains, backpacks, and action figures of these animals are seen everywhere in gift shops (mostly online since it's safer) and represent a niche in Chinese cyberculture - the countermeasures against an iron fist government. It's pretty amazing what the internet community is able to accomplish, because the entire movement started out from nothing more than a small wiki article on an online encyclopedia.