How a cyberwar sparked by a report against a fanfic led to the boycott of Chinese idol, Xiao Zhan
How Chinese TV star and boy band idol Xiao Zhan was brought down by his own fans https://t.co/AwkG09rmKf
— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) March 22, 2020
Kinda like a follow-up to this post from February 29 "AO3 is banned now in China".
Summary:
- Xiao Zhan starred in a period drama series, The Untamed (2019), which depicts implicit love between two male protagonists (starring Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo). The pair solves murder mysteries and battle evil in the fantasy series.
- A fanfic depicting Xiao Zhan as a cross-dressing sex worker who fell in love with another male idol, Wang Yibo was published on fanfic website, Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) and a Chinese social platform, Lofter.
- Fans of Xiao Zhan, who were offended by their idol's image being given the homoerotic treatment in that fanfic, reported the piece to the Chinese authorities for containing "prostitution and pornographic content".
- AO3 and Lofter were soon taken down by China's censorship police.
- Other internet users of those sites, who were not Xiao Zhan fans, got upset by Xiao Zhan's fans for reporting to the Chinese authorities, which led to those websites becoming inaccessible to everyone.
- Hence, they called for a boycott against Xiao Zhan and the brands associated with him (Estée Lauder, Piaget and Cartier), which led to brands dropping Xiao Zhan as their spokesperson and brand ambassador. Besides that, they also gave low ratings to shows that Xiao Zhan appeared in.
- Xiao Zhan's disappearance from the public eye has been called "The 227 incident" because of the date when the fanfic was published: 27 February 2020.
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Source: SCMP | timeoutshanghai
ontd, what are your bad experiences with fandoms?