Businessman Roy Tu, 32, says he has no qualms about skewering the hapless celebrities, dismissing most of them as lacking talent. A fan of hit manga Death Note, he saw amusing similarities between players in the scandal and characters in the Japanese series about a student

who kills evil-doers with the help of a supernatural notebook.

'They even look similar, it's uncanny. They fit the roles perfectly,' says Tu, a partner in a plastic resin company.

That spurred him to create a version of the thriller featuring entangled stars such as Gillian Chung Yan-tung of pop duo Twins, and post it on a webpage dedicated to Kira, a key character in Death Note, in the online forum discuss.com.hk.

Believing the person or people behind the leaked photos to be on a quest to topple dishonourable entertainment figures, netizens also dubbed the offenders Kira.

'I have friends who work in the press and, through them, I've known about the hypocrisy of these celebrities for a long time,' says Tu. 'I never liked them anyway, but what p***es me off is they don't have any substance and talent to be entertainers. They are rich and famous because of their good looks. I have no respect for them.'

(Chen admitted last week he took most of the widely disseminated photos of showbiz figures, including actress Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, former singer Candice Chan Si-wai and his latest girlfriend, Vincy Yeung Wing-ching, a niece of Emperor Entertainment Group boss Albert Yeung Sau-shing, and apologised for the distress he had caused.)

Tu also set up a Facebook group to follow the scandal, Star at Hong Kong. But he insists the display of risque photos isn't the main appeal. 'Their pictures do not interest me much and I just viewed them out of curiosity,' he says. '[The group] allows me to learn about the inside stories I wasn't aware of before. The thought of having Kira [the photo disseminator] watching thrills me.'

Billy Yau Chun-kit, a multimedia engineering student, spliced recent clips with footage from a Legislative Council meeting for a flippant take that has former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa 'responding' to Gillian Chung's apology for being 'too naive'. 'I like light-hearted satire like the stuff on Headliner [RTHK's satirical TV programme on current affairs],' says the 18-year-old.

It took Yau just over an hour to create his satirical video, from downloading clips of Tung to editing and uploading the final product to YouTube, where it has received more than 90,000 views.

Such spoofs, called e-gao in Putonghua, are part of a youth-driven web culture that thrives on irreverence and silly antics. Influenced by kuso, the Japanese fad of producing camp send-ups from favourite manga or movies, parody has become one of the liveliest and most creative activities in the local and mainland web scene.

Cultural commentator Bottle Shiu Ka-chun appreciates the vitality of Hong Kong's kuso productions. 'For a while I regarded it as the best barometer of the young generation's creativity and reasoning,' he says. 'Hong Kong young people may not be very good at creating something out of nothing, but give them something to work on and you'd be very surprised by their creativity.'

Popular blogger and writer Yip Yat-chee says the first examples of local kuso appeared in newsgroups six years ago and grew in the lead-up to the massive July 1 march of 2003. In recent years it has flourished through various bulletin boards, especially Hong Kong Golden Forum (forum.hkgolden.com), where there has been a lot of discussion and parodies about

the scandal. 'Hong Kong's conformist education system is suppressing [young people's] creativity and kuso offers a great outlet for them to get creative,' Yip says.

Some are adept at manipulating digital images and design, contributing to a significant number of circulated kuso works, including a film poster based on the movie Catch Me If You Can and a contrite-looking Chen in his first taped apology.

'They are very efficient. There are new works all the time,' says Lee Tsz-hin, a 23-year-old media worker who frequents the forum. 'They are keen to help, too; you can post a Photoshop request and they can have it done the next day.'

Forum mainstays scored a hit with tongue-in-cheek posters about the merger between the MTRC and the KCRC.

Shiu says the oppressive political climate is also why netizens express themselves through spoofs and satire. 'Kuso is especially popular

in stressful societies where there's not much democracy and freedom of expression.'

But between their worship of Kira and gleeful attacks on show business idols with clay feet, it's easy for the satirists to get carried away and produce material that's cruel and nasty, says Yip.

The death of comedian Lydia Sum Tin-ha (also known as Lydia Shum) last week, for example, inspired several spiteful parodies that 'celebrated' the occasion. 'I find it sick,' Yip says. 'Everyone is tempted to be very judgmental these days because putting highly regarded people on trial gives you a sense of power and satisfaction. But I don't see any difference between these people passing moral judgment and the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution. It's dangerous.

'Many people don't bother to scratch beneath the surface and find out the truth any more. They get emotional and cynical easily and derive pleasure from condemning someone because they can't release the frustration and stress from their daily life. The anonymity and anarchy of the internet aggravates the situation.'

Judgment-laden and hostile parody aside, Shiu says there's no harm having a few jokes about the affair. 'Sex is funny. You have to acknowledge their effort in producing such work,' he says of mock posters featuring some celebrities touting abalone and sausages, a cheeky reference to pictures that showed them performing oral sex. 'We can stop being uptight and have a laugh about it.'