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New bit idea: Any time someone argues with you about China online and uses Winnie the Pooh as an argument/picture, act like you straight up have no idea what they are talking about “What’s that bear?” (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago by CoolerOpposide@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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I tried it a few times recently when I’ve been down in the trenches of shitposting and it is very funny to make them try to explain their argument to you as if you have no idea what they’re saying. It’s so easy to bait them into thinking they’re about to bring up this amazing dunk about how China banned Winnie the Pooh or whatever and win you over, and then you get to just tell them that’s not true because you just looked it up plus now it feels racist.

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[-] WideningGyro@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

I'm a bit OOTL on the Winnie the Pooh thing. I always just assumed it was just a bunch of redditors making a racist effigy out of a fake news story, but googling it does give a bunch of (western) news outles, wikipedia pages etc. saying the character was censored/banned. Can someone pill me on this/direct me to a less brainwormed place than wikipedia for learning more?

[-] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago

It was actually a Chinese internet joke to compare Xi to Winnie the Pooh. Supposedly people had social media accounts frozen for that and Western media outlets spun that into a story about Winnie the Pooh being censored/banned nationwide and if you posted a picture of Winnie the Pooh you would be thrown into the Uyghur death camps. Iirc there were also some Winnie the Pooh films that didn't get released in China?

Anyway, the ride at Disneyland Shanghai still exists so I suppose the evil CCP hasn't found it yet.

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 14 points 1 month ago

A few years ago, I traced the original claim of it being banned to an article in Fortune or Forbes, or one of those sites for a paper magazine. And their reasoning for claiming it was banned is that, while it was still being shared, it wasn't as popular a few days later. tails-startled