90 Miles From Tyranny : Milk Tea Alliance Takes on China's Little Pinks in Meme War

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Milk Tea Alliance Takes on China's Little Pinks in Meme War

Screenshot of a Twitter fight between China's "Little Pink" nationalists, who started trolling Thai users after an
 online altercation with Thai actor Vachirawat Cheevaari (known as Bright) and his girlfriend Weeraya Sukaram.





















Social media users from Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong have taken to Twitter in recent days to hit back at China's "Little Pink" nationalists, who started trolling Thai users after an online altercation with Thai actor Vachirawat Cheevaari (known as Bright) and his girlfriend Weeraya Sukaram.

The row erupted after online supporters of the Chinese Communist Party, known as Little Pinks, took issue with a tweet from Bright, the star of hit Thai TV show 2gether, who seemed to imply Hong Kong was a separate country from China.

Weeraya also drew their ire by suggesting the coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, prompting Chinese netizens to threaten to boycott Thai soaps and not to travel to the country as tourists after the pandemic.

Thai users hit back with video of Chinese tourists piling their plates and shoving each other at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and multiple references to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, including the "Tank Man" image in a number of guises, including an impromptu sculpture made from fast food.

In a loose confederation of Twitterati known as the "Milk Tea Alliance" and using the hashtag #nnevvy, Weeraya's Twitter username, users from Thailand, Hong Kong and democratic Taiwan also fought back with a string of memes.

Meanwhile, Weeraya commented that she dressed more like a "Taiwanese" after being told she looked like a "cute Chinese girl", drawing down further Little Pink ire on the couple.

While Chinese users hurled insults at the Thai king and called Thais poor, Thai users responded with photos of collapsed apartment buildings due to substandard building materials linked to official corruption in China.

When they claimed Taiwan as belonging to China, Thai users asked why Chinese nationals need a visa to visit the democratic island, which remains a sovereign state as the 1911 Republic of China.

The clincher, according to some comments, lay in the Thai users' keenly developed political humor and their freedom to deploy it, for example, when a Thai user responded to a Chinese insult targeting the Thai government with the words: "Say it louder!"

'Your mother is dead'

The flame war quickly drew the attention of other Twitter users tired of being targeted by Little Pinks, who need to use a banned VPN to evade their own government's Great Firewall of censorship, and whose comments often include the insult "ni ma sile" (NMSL), meaning "your mother is dead."

The alliance was soon joined by users from Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea and India.

One meme, posted by Twitter user Amazing, referenced the anniversary of the Boxer Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty on Tuesday.

In a retake of a painting commemorating the Seymour Expedition of 1900, the meme shows an overwhelming force of soldiers carrying aloft the flags of eight nations, including that of Taiwan, and advancing on a lone Chinese who utters the words...


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