Anything from rubber ducks to iPads are being used to keep the memory of Tiananmen alive
Censors work overtime cracking down on obscure memes that might reference the Tiananmen Square crackdown
Chinese internet users have many ways to refer to June 4, 1989. Some call it May 35th. Some write 6489 or 8964. Others turn to mathematical equations to refer to those number sequences: 32x2, 88+1, 65-1, 2^6.
But the effort to obliterate the event from China’s collective memory doesn’t stop there. Pictures, expressions and anything else that could potentially remind people of the event can disappear from social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo in a matter of seconds.
To avoid censorship, savvy online users have been disguising the event in memes. Instead of putting up real photos from the protests, they concoct their own, with many referencing the famous Tank Man -- including one famous meme that replaces the tanks with rubber ducks.
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The censors’ efforts, however, have made users turn to more obscure references. A black square, a string of characters that vaguely resembles a man and a tank, or even a 404 error message can be used to point to June 4th.
It’s a cat-and-mouse game between censors and online voices of dissent. The event has been erased from public consciousness to such an extent that the memes might not even make sense to many people even if the censors let some slip by.
“Memes are truly the next gen’s method of communication,” he said. “With my connection with the youth (as I am young too), I want to reach out [with] the message of truth [to] where it has long been distorted.”
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