Faked!? Yes, a difference in mentality – not surprising

A post at athlists.com has been enthusiastically digged (up to now 2,429 diggs!). Athlists.com finds itself in naive posture, I think, when listing some phenomena and summ it up as "Fake Olympics".

The deeper question is, what is behind the difference on the surface? The Western hemisphere has a different appreciation of authenticity, the "real thing", originality and feels deceived, when things like this happen.

I don't know enough about Chinese mentality, but I suppose it is deeper rooted than in the decades of stupid indoctrination of the "Communist Party" (which is more similar to feudalist structure and with so much corruption all over the country). Manic striving to perfection ends in simulation and inhumanity. The idea of antique Olympics was quite the opposite of what is it today I suppose.

Athlists » Blog Archive » The Fake Olympics: How China Is Using Every Trick in the Book to Dazzle The World http://www.athlists.com/?p=36

Image source http://www.athlists.com/?p=36

The "tag movement" around #080808 (you must have twitter)

That cool 080808 mashup guys

Tag080808

View SlideShare presentation (tags: chinabeijingolympics olympic tag 080808)

Chinese Tweeters Celebrate Olympics With #080808

By STEVEN SCHWANKERT, IDG News Service\Beijing Bureau, IDG
Published: August 8, 2008

A new online movement less than 24 hours old seeks to spread the Olympic spirit among users of the Twitter micro-blogging site.

Using "#080808" (pronounced "tag 080808"), a symbol for the date of the Olympics opening day, August 8, 2008, is "just for fun, a way to 'write down' the day," said Steven Lin, one of the movement's co-founders, who works for official Olympic Web site Sohu.com as a project manager. ...

#080808 | Blog: New York Times Coverage of #080808 http://tag080808.com/2008/08/nytimes-coverage-of-080808-080808.html

Check it out: http://tag080808.appspot.com/

Just do it! Create a web page to collect all user generated content tagged with "#080808" all over the world? ...
#080808 | Blog: Junyu: How the mash-up was created http://tag080808.com/2008/08/junyu-how-mash-up-was-created.html

Compare the tag's fitness with the alternatives

1. BEST #080808 - Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+%23080808+
2. #olympics - Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+%23olympics
3. #bg08 - Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+%23bg08
   

(search.twitter.com shows no numbers, but the popularity can be estimated when you look down to the date of the last tweet on the first page)

tag080808, 080808tag,

Good news: The Great Fire Wall comes down (Guardian)

... Just a week ago, it was impossible to connect to Chinese Wikipedia or the the Chinese BBC News site via a public ISP in China. Your browser either didn't respond or displayed an error message telling you that it couldn't connect to the site. What happened? They were blocked by the Great Fire Wall. Why? Because they were regarded as "dangerous sites... harmful information intending to demonise China and its people". The Chinese authorities think their people need no more information than what the official news agency feeds them. Or rather, they dare not allow them to find out more.

But things are changing. At the beginning of August, these sites suddenly became available to internet users in China. ...

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/10/censorship.china?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews


I appreciate this and hope it will last.