Ahh yeah…can you smell that? That’s the smell of the Chinese Internets tearing the government’s censors a new asshole. It’s one thing to try and purge all memory of a certain incident that happened 20 years ago today from the national consciousness that for the most part has been successful. It’s another to go overboard and create a cause for concern into what that incident was.

Back in the day, when I was cruising through the suburbs with my friend Mike on our bikes, we stumbled across an area the size of a small house that had been walled off using particleboard with large warning signs on all sides, saying “Keep Out”. You just don’t do something like that. If you’re going to put up a conspicuous looking set of walls in the middle of nowhere, at least make them dirty and covered with wines and shit so that anyone who happens by the thing will ignore it for an old shed or something. Instead it looked as though those plywood walls held secrets just waiting to be exploited for our amusement. Abandoned military installations? Area 52? Weird Science? BOOBS??! Hell, the damn signs were basically an R.S.V.P. invitation to see what was on the inside of that enigmatic rectangular space. With some MacGyver work jigging our bikes into a ladder of sorts, we were able to climb up and into the space. Low and behold, there was nothing there. But that’s not the point.

In the Chinese Government’s all knowing, all seeing, and all screwing wisdom, the censors have been blocking every popular site you can think of. Even poor old Microsoft had their new search engine’s birthday bash rained on with the blood of the Net Nanny’s rag. Many popular Chinese sites have also been forced into shutting down during this time. While they aren’t blocked outright, they’ve taken to self-censorship in order to avert being completely shut down, or maybe receiving a special visit from some random acts of violence. A bunch of them have put up pages saying that their sites are under “Server Maintenance”. Some are even going so far as to reference other sites being shut as National Server Maintenance Day.

The government played its hand poorly. Most of the 80’s and 90’s generation kids don’t give a fuck about what happened 20 years ago today even if they do know. Regardless of whether or not they’ve heard what happened, they almost all think that China’s development in areas of the economy, living standards and technology are like moving forward like a stallion in the moonlight. Who needs the abstract concept democracy when you’ve got online games, video-chat, and free porn to keep you busy? But what happens if out of the blue, for some mysterious reason, the popular websites like Dance Dance Super Dancer and all 700 Twitbook clones are undergoing maintenance, or blocked completely over till around June the 7th. Well if I was some Internet café dwelling troglodyte, I’d probably hop on my magic proxy carpet and fly over the Great Firewall to see just what the eff was going on. Once I found out, not only would I be steamed like a dumpling that all my sites were shut or blocked, I’d also be angrier than a bunch of bees on Nic Cage that it’s cause of the shit that went down 20 years ago.

We can infer from this highly illuminating analysis of socio-networking dynamics in modern day China that the government committed an EPIC FAIL x2. Trying really hard to hide something is only going to make people try even harder to find it, and they will find it. Blocking millions of people’s regular web activities (porn) because of the slight chance that someone might ask what the deal is with that giant piece of pavement outside of the Forbidden City is only going to enrage millions of people and make them ask what the deal is with that pavement. My suggestion to all you Chinese netizens out there is: prime those proxies, activate those VPNs, get some of that sweet SSL action going on and fly my pretties, fly!!!

Filed under: dragons