Crossfire- Post #5

I was watching ChannelNewsAsia a few weeks back and I came across this interesting report on Youtube video that has garnered more than 5 million views to date. Some of you might have watched it since it was circulated extensively within the Internet community.

The Youtube video was about an middle-aged woman of Chinese descent throwing a tantrum at the Hong Kong Airport when she missed her flight. At first glance, it might have looked amusing to see a fully-grown woman rolling around the floor and screaming hysterically. But the responses left by some Youtube users were pretty jarring.

The ugliest responses that immediately caught my eye were the recurrent use of derogatory terms that mock Chinese people. The users responsible for these comments justified their remarks by bringing in recent scandals which occurred in China, for example the melamine poisoning case.

Interestingly, it was the assumption of the identity of the woman in the video that sparked off a multi-faceted conflict. The users identified the lady as a mainland Chinese, judging from the accent she was speaking in. As a result, the slew of negative remarks not only seemingly came from non-Asian users, but also from users who are of Chinese ascent. Phrases that went along the lines of “I’m ashamed to be a Chinese”, or “Not all of us are mainland Chinese” were used. That set me thinking: a single event not only sparked off a crossfire between users of supposedly different nationalities, but it also illustrated the possible tension and conflicted views people of Chinese descent have about each other. Personally, I felt that the issue of an underlying tension among Chinese people from different Chinese-dominant countries  should be reviewed seriously. I would start pondering over questions like “Why is there tension among people of the same ancestral origins?”.

Another point that came to light after watching this video was the rampant posting of such negative and detrimental racist comments on a widely used platform like Youtube. Singapore laws have been increasingly strict about the posting of any racist material on the internet, such as the recent cases of bloggers who posted racist entries. Yes, measures have been taken up to curb the flow of more racist materials from appearing on the Internet. But the 19,905 comments on this video, some of which are splattered with strongly racist terms, are not helping much either. Others might argue the violation of people’s rights if huge internet platforms like Youtube were to be censored. That might be another big problem, but the consequences of allowing such highly negative comments to manifest into the minds of users and other viewers might be very detrimental to the global Internet community.

I would love to hear opinions from you:)

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Published:
March 16, 2009 / 9:30 am
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