That reminds me of an interview with a Chinese esports team I saw at a tournament a few months ago. The interviewer was doing a light-hearted game where they showed twitch emotes to the Chinese team and asked what they thought the emotes meant. One of the emotes was a frog (the creator of the game goes by IceFrog), and the Chinese translator said that the players weren't allowed to say anything about the emote. We later found out that they were afraid to say anything because the nickname of the former president of China was "Toad King", and the players were worried that they'd get in trouble if they said anything about the frog emote.
In China, Toad King Warship (膜蛤文化) is very popular in some people, espcially young ones. There are tones of memes and internet jokes around that and obviously nobody gets into trouble because of it.
I don't know why your interviewer told you he was afraid. A wild guess is that he was one of those young people who loves Toad King Warship, and your ice frog reminded him of it. But it's hard to explain it to a foreigner (or he find it inappropriate to mention in an interview. it's a sub-culture anyway). So he just say he cannot say about it. As you further asked for reason, he gives you the answer you have in mind, by acting as victim of surveillance state (another culture thing).
Perhaps comparing how different cultures dramatically interpret or react to images, and how we often view the behavior of other cultures in this respect to be odd or silly, while our unique behavior is based in rational, fact-based logic. But that's just a guess.
Take your interpretation for example, am I mistaken to conclude that you believe all who post that frog are both misogynist and racist, or did I guess wrong? If so, could you clarify?
I did not say that. Not really interested in clarifying for you here, sorry. Not was the poster I replying to making a good-faith philosophical inquiry of the sort you’re suggesting.
You can always find someone willing to jump to conclusions. It's easy to have an in-depth discussion about the history, symbology, use, the way meaning and irony are twined together... and if someone lowers their opinion of you after that then oh well, either there's no pleasing them or you earned it from your opinions. It's a far cry from having something that can't even be brought up, ever.
Yeah, but this is about when an interviewer with a camera asks for a quick comment about the meme. There isn't time to have an in-depth discussion about it. And it's difficult to be put on the spot like that with a camera in your face, and you know that whatever you say, people can replay that clip over and over again and spread it about the internet to criticize you. To avoid the potential backlash, declining to talk about it could be a smart move.
The closest person I was referring to is the player in the "Chinese esports team" that dx87 was talking about. Or possibly a hypothetical white player on who could have been put in a similar situation by an interviewer. I guess they have a little bit of power due to their position on a top team, but I don't consider that to be much power. I don't consider them victims either, just humans who have their own set of goals and fears, that I can try to analyze.
Right, I got it, here in the free world we should totally avoid Winnie the Pooh, Llamas, frogs, river crabs, or other things that are seen as anti-central-authority/anti-government by the powers in Beijing.
