{"id":1250,"date":"2014-06-07T02:50:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-07T02:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2014-06-07T02:50:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T02:50:33","slug":"type-out-an-ideal-china-meet-chinas-keyboard-supermen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/type-out-an-ideal-china-meet-chinas-keyboard-supermen","title":{"rendered":"Type out an ideal China, Meet China\u2019s keyboard (super)men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alia | June 4th, 2014 – 10:15 pm<\/span>
\n\u201cShame on those bystanders who watched a woman beaten to death without any intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus is the response by many Chinese netizens to the recent news that a mom of seven was beaten to death in a Mcdonald\u2019s in the city of Shandong by a group of six for refusing to give her phone number. They angrily asked: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t anyone at the scene, especially those young men, try to stop the murder?\u201d The more interesting question is: Would these netizens, if put in the same situation, take any action themselves?<\/p>\n

If one\u2019s answer is no, then he or she is probably one of China\u2019s \u201ckeyboarders,\u201d or, as referred to in Chinese, \u201ckeyboard (super)men (\u952e\u76d8\u4fa0)\u201d. Keyboarders are quick and enthusiastic to criticize and fight all kinds of social injustice, inequality or wrongdoing\u2026but only when it\u2019s behind the screen.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nCartoon by @\u8fa3\u6912\u4e8c\u8205 on Weibo<\/p>\n

The tragedy happened in the Shandong McDonald\u2019s isn\u2019t the first case in which China\u2019s netizens were indignant by the indifference of bystanders, and will definitely not be the last one either. One has to wonder: why bystanders in China never stop being indifferent even after so many waves of condemnation online? With 618 million strong Internet users \u2013 that\u2019s nearly half of the country\u2019s population, China\u2019s indignant netizens and indifferent bystanders cannot possibly be mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

The answer lies in keyborders, a not-small proportion of China\u2019s online population. As many reflected, keyboarders are \u201call empty words and lip service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKeyborders are many, but at heart, they are all the same: naive, hypocritical, superficial, and without any independent or critical thinking.\u201d One netizen \u521d\u5fc3\u4e0d\u6539\u7684\u6770\u6590 summarized.<\/p>\n

The existence of keyboarders doesn\u2019t seem like a big deal if each individual case is reviewed separately. But applying the highest moral standards to their peers online isn\u2019t all of what they do in the virtual world. In a sense, keyborders are angry youth 2.0, with a very idealist and simplistic view of what China should be.<\/p>\n

They are the quickest to blame the Chinese government for everything that goes wrong in China, and the ones who believe that democracy is the answer to all of China\u2019s problems. While online, that is. In real life, it\u2019s very questionable how many of them would say no to bribes and shortcuts, or refuse to take advantage of guanxi to get around hurdles in life.<\/p>\n

Will and can the Internet bring democracy to China? Maybe. But don\u2019t expect the country\u2019s vast troops of keyboarders to become the next tank men.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From:http:\/\/offbeatchina.com\/type-out-an-ideal-china-meet-chinas-keyboard-supermen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alia | June 4th, 2014 – 10:15 pm \u201c … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[94,101],"views":665,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}