Lyndon LaRouche posted:

You are a gullible retard.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Echo Chamber posted:

I'm a 35-year-old Taiwanese American. When I was a teen I had sympathies for Taiwanese independence when even my parents didn't really.

Well before 2016, my sympathies already shifted towards "status quo", and now it's probably in the "reunify; without war" camp.

My journey on this issue isn't that interesting or unique. It's quite ordinary. Realized just how much America sucks; how overrated "liberal democracy" is; how much China doesn't suck, and how weird Asian diaspora folks pushing US foreign policy against Beijing are. That's the short version. Ultimately, my interest is more about wanting the US to withdraw from Asia and not meddle anymore, and not so much telling people in Asia what they should do; which I'm pretty sure is a sensible opinion here. But a completely communist asia would be based lol

crepeface posted:

lol a casualty from friendly fire syq

Tankbuster posted:

Much of the world defaults to the american viewpoint on everything.

ikanreed posted:

I browse the Ukraine thread and I still don't know what the gently caress a syq is

indigi posted:

that’s not universal at all!

ikanreed posted:

Okay I have this red text and I still don't know what the gently caress a syq is

Raskolnikov38 posted:

so a hotbed of espionage activity by both sides? i'm sure the PRC would love that

FrancisFukyomama posted:

asked in the Covid thread but I think it got lost with how fast the thread was moving but you mentioned a Chinese vaccine efficacy scandal. do you have more details on that? i have a relative visiting the us who is considering getting mRNA and I need to check what brand they got if that were an issue.

also a bit curious about the CPC having epstein level scandals basically weekly you mentioned. remember an anti CPC person I knew that talked about something like that but they were pretty far right so I assumed it was just pizzagate style conspiracies

unwantedplatypus posted:

What's the direction these sorts of services are going? Do you think things will improve, stay the same, or get worse over time?

Kekeke! posted:

It's wild as an American to live in a country that feels like it seriously tries to address developmental issues at such a massive scale.

Kekeke! posted:

Back in 2018 there was a scandal about useless DPT vaccines and it sparked a lot of conversation online. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002661/china-panics-over-substandard-vaccine-scandal

That was the most recent scandal I was aware of, but last year I noticed a lot of my university coworkers expressed hesitancy at getting vaccinated against covid. It's not that they weren't planning to, I think it was more that they weren't rushing to do so because of the relative lack of covid in China and the fact they felt it was better to delay in case of any problems with the vaccines. I'm fairly sure most have them have done so by now. I think a lot of data out of Hong Kong seems to show the Chinese inactivated vaccines have comparable efficacy to mRNA vaccines in terms of hospitalization and death rates. I'm quite confident personally in the domestic vaccines but I havent completed vaccination as my doctor suggests I wait given I would need to come off immunosuppressants to do it and they consider that more of a risk than contracting covid. Should I want to return to the US or covid finally breaks out here, I face some tricky calculations.

Kekeke! posted:

That was the most recent scandal I was aware of, but last year I noticed a lot of my university coworkers expressed hesitancy at getting vaccinated against covid.

crepeface posted:

interesting! a lot of your attitude is mirrored in what i've seen/heard from my HK friends/fam (not independence, but having to reconcile the national identity with a rising mainland and realising how much the west sucks).

Echo Chamber posted:

FrancisFukyomama posted:

leftist or even flat out ML Asian Americans seem to be becoming a bit of a thing as a reaction to American sinophobia bleeding out into anti Asian American violence as of late

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

it is. i think it's also due to the contradiction between liberals sinophobia and saying "stop asian hate" at the same time

FrancisFukyomama posted:

leftist or even flat out ML Asian Americans seem to be becoming a bit of a thing as a reaction to American sinophobia bleeding out into anti Asian American violence as of late

that being said I would say that most Asian Americans seem to just be standard middle class libs, maybe a bigger Bernie type socdem contingent than usual taking into account how well he polls with them

first generation otherwise apolitical Chinese Americans at least seem to consider anti China stuff worrying if they’re not the vocally anti communist types. especially with how the fbi keeps harassing Chinese American scientists for innocuous stuff like going to academic conferences in China

Echo Chamber posted:

Not really relevant to the Asian geopolitics, but a tendency within the "Asian diaspora tankies" umbrella that I want to mention are those who are neither enthusiastic about MLism or Bernie/Corbyn-esque social democracy. They offer critical support against the American Empire, at least aesthetically, and then galaxy-brain themselves into thinking Andrew Yang is good or something stupid like that. It might be comparable with Afro-Pessimism in some ways; they still find an excuse to reject actual Left Wing movements before "capitulating" to liberalism or libertarianism under the pretense of survivalism.

FrancisFukyomama posted:

“is America still too racist to elect a Cringe Asian American?”

yellowcar posted:

sure enough, even some of my boba liberal acquaintances and relatives are starting to balk at the unrestrained sinophobia being peddled through the media and the upticks in hate crimes against asians

Crusader posted:

i think this one is starting to glitch

SorePotato posted:

unwantedplatypus posted:

Much like other contradictions in foreign policy

"We are in Iraq/afghanistan to nation build" vs Iraq/afghanistan being devastated

"We care about human rights" vs the palestinian/yemeni genocide

The contradiction between

"China is an evil, backwards country" vs China frequently having positive aspects

is settled in american discourse with racism. These contradictions exist because the people over there are bad or insufficient in some way.

Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:

the wiki article on the serfdom in tibet "controversy" is funny, theres an anonymous American missionary talking about the communist oppression, just your usual Tom Dooley level CIA lies, and then some anglo diplomat is quoted next saying none of that is happening in my personal observation, pip pip

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/pewglobal/status/1555784993946886144

This does not bode well. If you look at some of the graphs you can see where other countries fall as well, speaking of which, where does Sweden's anti Chinese sentiment come from? Lol

Weka posted:

I like how the first part of the main body of the article just says that Tibet is not real and thus there could not have been serfdom there.

FrancisFukyomama posted:

oh god I checked my post history and I was thinking about someone complete different when I asked about the scandals, I’m really sorry about that.

quote:

Japanese VTuber, a virtual anime pop idol and show host, sets Taiwan alight

Some devoted fans of Momosuze Nene say they spent a chunk of their monthly income to 'sponsor' the character.

Japanese VTuber, a virtual anime pop idol and show host, sets Taiwan alight

In May 2022, a Japanese-style anime girl started appearing in advertisements shown on Taiwan's MRT subway network.

Green-eyed, pink-haired with buns and bangs, Momosuze Nene, sprints away from the viewer's gaze, heading towards "millions of subscribers" on her YouTube channel.

Fans of Nene can sign on to a special website to learn more about her, while the ads hope to spread the word among her growing fanbase in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and the U.S., as well as her native Japan.

And there's one thing that helps this dirndl-miniskirted YouTuber stand out from her crowd of competitors for the time being: she's not real.

Part of a growing phenomenon of virtual YouTubers (VTubers), Nene is "a girl from another world" who nevertheless plays video games like her contemporaries, commenting and laughing as the game progresses, and chatting in real time with viewers leaving messages at a rate of several a second in the chat window.

She also sings and dances, chats with viewers and reads out their messages. While her shows are in Japanese, her anime persona and upbeat attitude have made her a hit far outside of Japan.

And her expansion is being funded by fans like tattooed Taipei resident Chiu Wei-chun, 31.

"The advertising agency has no faith in us," Chiu said. "They said the average fan would likely donate between 30,000 and 50,000 Taiwan dollars."

An advertisement of the Taoling Yinyin Million Support Project was drawn by a number of fans. On the day of the fan meeting on May 23, the artist Sipu (Internet nickname) took a photo with the character he drew. Credit: Yang Zilei

Pop idol approach
When he went to the bank to pay in his donation in person, the bank teller said taking money on behalf of a virtual character was a first.

"In my 25 years as a teller, I've never heard of such a request," Chiu quoted her as saying.

Many VTubers are the creation of two Japanese companies -- Hololive and Rainbow Club -- and tend towards a pop idol approach, although virtual hosts are also found in other genres of video, including technology videos.

With an energy similar to that of an actor playing a cartoon character at a theme park, and motion-capture technology similar to that used to generate Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, these VTubers are actually played by human actors behind the scenes.

Many VTubers draw heavily from anime, and come in all shapes and sizes, from vampire nurses to mafia bosses to demons and pirate captains, as well as the ubiquitous sexy anime girl.

They can do pretty much anything a real, live YouTuber can do, including singing, playing games, making art and chatting with their audience in real time. Others talk about their favorite comics or play on variety shows, or go to uninhabited islands as a survival stunt.

The idea of a virtual pop idol isn't a new one in Japan.

Miku Hatsune is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media, represented in live performance by the image of a 15-year-old teenage girl with long, turquoise twintails.

The act has opened for Lady Gaga and performed at Coachella, will soon be getting her own animated series.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the development of the industry in Japan, and it has quickly caught on in neighboring Taiwan.

Chiu Wei-chun is one of the main planners of the fan board. He saw the influx of fan sponsorships from overseas, and members from Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan and other places responded to the project, and he felt the huge influence brought by VTuber even more. Credit: Yang Zilei


From white-collar dads to high-schoolers
It's the potential for personal interaction with VTubers that makes them so popular, and they make liberal use of fan sponsorship to take their programming to the next level via the graded, color-coded SuperChat donation function on YouTube.

The highest donations buy fans stickier messages, increasing the likelihood that the host will see the message and interact with the viewer in some way.

The fan base includes white-collar dads to high-schoolers, with some people willing to pay out half their monthly salary on their favorite virtual idol.

Chiu's first encounter with Nene was in September 2020, since then he has been a dedicated fan.

The biotech production line manager estimates that he spends a good chunk of his monthly disposable income on sponsoring Nene, and wonders aloud if he needs to rein it in somewhat.

"I'm going to be marrying my girlfriend next year, so I need to save a bit more," he says. "But I will still need to invest some money in Nene, naturally."

He said he's drawn to the character for her childish innocence and relaxed attitude.

"Kind of like a daughter; maybe I'm practicing how to spoil my own daughter," Chiu said.

According to YouTube's Super Chat sponsorship rankings for the whole of 2021, only one of the top 10 is a real person.

VTubers are mostly female, and mostly broadcast in Japanese, English, Chinese, Indian languages or Korean from a number of countries.

In April, the singer bought a theme light box for Vox's birthday at Taipei MRT Zhongshan Station, and she showed us the light box picture. In addition to expressing their feelings in the live broadcast appeal, Vox also used this picture as a live broadcast schedule. It is a common way of interaction for VTuber to refer to the secondary creation of fans. Credit: Yang Zilei


'Different voices, different genders'
The most popular VTuber in the world today is the English-language VTuber Gawr Gura from Hololive, with more than four million subscribers.

Otaku culture expert Liang Shih-you, says VTubers are popular because they're so much fun.

"VTubers let you play a completely different self from the get-go, different voices, different genders, anything, so it creates a multitude of possibilities," Liang said, citing the example of VTuber Uncle Fox, who looks like a girl with fox ears but has the voice of an uncle.

Taiwan has its own emerging VTubers, including Loco Lost, who debuted in June 2021, calling herself a "17-year-old alchemist," but later mis-typing it as 217 years, winning her the nickname "grandma."

She said in an interview with The Reporter and RFA's Mandarin Service that fans often tell her "I'm working while watching Grandma's show," or "I'm playing games and watching Grandma."

In a riff on the ambiguity around her age, she later changed her avatar into a little girl, using a child's voice for an entire livestream.

Meanwhile, Taiwan VTuber Vox builds the soothing sounds of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos into cooking shows, inviting fans to suggest food to make.

For Liang, the VTuber phenomenon is all about the soundscapes, the minutiae of a person's tone of voice or form of expression, that has its roots in the Japanese "sound culture" evident from the early days of virtual characters.

In a world racked with the effects of the climate crisis, war, famine and disease, many fans find this kind of vocalized companionship compelling.

"VTubers may have blossomed all over the world and use different languages and live broadcast styles according to the countries they are from," he said. "But they are the heirs of those Japanese cultural characteristics."