It is a paper written in fulfillment of a course taken in HKUST - HUMA062: Human, Culture, and Society.
The grade of the course is already out so I believe I have the rights to post my article in my blog here.
A rising faction without border
An insight to cyber culture from HKGolden Forum
Introduction
For the last 10 years, a faction has raised, from only known by a few to only unknown to a few. This faction is without border. The population of this faction is over a quarter of the world’s population.[1] In Hong Kong, a penetration record of around 70% is recorded 5 years ago.[2] It is believed that as of today, a more dense penetration will be recorded if surveyed.
It is almost imaginable that online communities and cultures are well formed among these years. These communities are formed by the introduction of various ways of communication in the Internet. At first, the users merely communicate with each other by setting up stationary web pages and sending and receiving emails. These methods however do not respond instantly. After a while, instant messengers were invented and more instant feed online forums were set up. Users interact with each other by posting and receiving feedback instantly. Once a post, or thread, is uploaded and published, users that are online within the same web site will see the post instantly, and multiple users may reply it at the same time. This usage can be pictured as a group of users roaming around a room, with everyone is allowed to erect a sign or a banner of specific topics. Other users see the sign and approach to the sign and start conversation. This way of communication is considered more influential to others, as all content and conversation is opened to the public and is not volatile.
This project focuses on one of the most influential forum in Hong Kong, the HKGolden forum.
Description of the organization and the activities
History
HKgolden forum is also known as Hong Kong Golden Forum, or香港高登討論區. The web site was originally aimed to provide an online platform for computer enthusiasts to share computing tips. The web page provided hardware market prices, computer related articles and links. A forum was set up to supplement the web page at around 2001. Because of the creativity of its members, various online products and artwork were created and quickly spread across the Hong Kong network. These works drew attention of other forum users, attracting them joining HKGolden. The forum then became famous, but also infamous for some reason. At around 2007 to 2008, more and more newspaper reporters started reporting events of the forum, creating even more fame. The number of users grows vigorously and slowly. The trend of discussing computer related topics is also no longer the main theme of the forum, as more users of diverse background joined.
People
Ethnicity
The people of HKGolden are mainly ethnically Chinese, and based in Hong Kong. It is very possible that it is because of the language used. The forum activities are mainly conducted in Cantonese grammar and Traditional Chinese characters. Other than Hong Kong Chinese, there are also a few Macanese and overseas studying Hong Kong citizens. It is also believed that some ethnically non-Chinese living in Hong Kong able to understand Cantonese also participate in the forum. However, as posting personal photos is an extremely uncommon practice in the forum, and among the uncommon photos posters, there were no non-Chinese, it is very impossible to prove if such non-Chinese groups do exist in the forum.
Age
The age groups of the forum users are ranged from as young as secondary 2 students and as old as married mid-agers. The main active age groups are however high school students, higher-education students and middle ranked company staffs. These groups are possibly ranged from age of 16 to 25. Users from different age groups do show distinct styles of posting and replying and it is not hard to distinguish users to be in different age groups.
Gender
The gender distribution in the forum is remained mysterious. The forum allows users to choose the gender to be shown. Male users have their username in blue and female users have their username in red. It is however quite common that those users would prefer to be shown as the other gender. Therefore a blue username could represent a female user and a red username could represent a male user. As posting one’s own photos, as well as other details, is a rare practice, there is no evidential support on whether a specific user is a man or a woman. There is also a trend to assume every user to be a man, until there are reasons to believe one to be a woman. Experienced users would claim to possess the ability to identify female users by looking at the writing style and topics. However, their observation would be not perfectly reliable.
Estimation would suggest a radio of 5:1 in gender. In words, in a random picked group of 6 users, there will be 5 men and 1 woman. This estimation is based on attending meetings, exchanging personal details privately and the previously mentioned experienced user observations. However there is no absolutely reliable means of determining the truth of this estimation.
Member classes
There are 3 main classes of users. These are upper class, normal class, and CD-ROM’s. Upper class members have exactly the same privilege to normal class members except they are allocated with an avatar image. Members who registered for more than 4 years will automatically become upper class. However, as those avatars are unchangeable, and the selection is not very in the member’s favour, some users make fun with the avatar images. The posts started by a member having popular avatar will never get a serious reply. Repliers will only play around with the avatar image.
Normal class members are the most common class of members. An ISP email is required to register. These members have all the privileges of posting and replying.
T he final class is the CD-ROM’s. The terminology comes from “Copy Download Read Only Member”. These are those who read the forum without an account, thus the privilege to post and reply. As registering membership requires an ISP email, which is the email account given by the Internet Service Provider when an Internet connection contract is issued.
Language
Language system
The language used in the forum is primarily Cantonese grammar with Traditional Chinese characters. It is the very same way of language of Hong Kong population uses. The linguistic structures are almost the same to the real world, mainly Chinese with code-switching. The Chinese characters are not precisely used. Some characters of old origin, but used daily in Cantonese and considered dialectal, are replaced with similar sounding characters or English letters or phonics. These words are hard to be input into the computer, as the whole Chinese word input system was constructed based on Mandarin instead of Cantonese. The original character of these words can only be seen in academic papers about Chinese linguistics and it is not hard to imagine why such words are not commonly used by online users.
There are a few users in the forum would prefer using a language similar to English as their primary language. The language is constructed by English words with phonics. The grammar is mainly Cantonese. A sentence is formed by English words and phonics representing a Chinese word. According to a few individuals, these people use such language just because they do not possess the skill of typing Chinese words. It is however unknown if it is the case for every one of such users.
Usage of icons
Icons are small images, mainly gifs, which are accessible easily. These icons can be inserted into the message easily by clicking at the image beneath the textbox. It was originally aimed to supplement text messages, as texts are insufficient to represent emotion and gesture. However in HKGolden, it is very common to reply only icons, or using icons to substitute a word. For instance, if a message of “I am very sad” is intended to be posted, a message composed by “I am very” and a sad looking icon will be posted to the forum.
There are two particular icons to be believed to be the symbol of HKGolden, they are used most frequently. One is a small icon of a white clown with red nose and black eyes. The other one is a yellow, vertically-shaking head with three hairs and tears spilling, named “sosad”.
The clown icon became popular by its unfriendly teasing appearance. When users post something considered stupid, other users will reply the post by the clown icon, laughing at the poster. The clown icon is also associated with the word plastic. In Cantonese, the profane word of stupidity sounds very similar to hard plastic. And so plastic is associated with the meaning of stupid. There is also a trend to post stupid posts, to make other users laugh, as it is considered glory. So the clown icon was chosen to represent the whole community culture, or creating stupidity, or handily, hard plastic culture.
The sosad icon, on the contrast, is less representative even it is used more widely than the clown icon. The feature of the sosad icon looks more like laughing rapidly until a point that tears could spill. So the icon is used to represent reactions to hilarious contents. For topics of stupidity, both sosad and clown icons are used to express the teasing of the poster that such teasing causes uncontrollable laughter so tears are spilled. There are also some other icons to supplement the expression but they are less representative and not to be discussed here.
Profanity
As the forum is moderated with high liberty, words of profanity are considered normal in the forum. Such norm comes to an extent that not speaking profane words is however the rare case. The use of profane words is more frequent than the real world in Hong Kong. It could be suggested that in these users’ real life, their parents or teachers or boss may forbid them from using such inappropriate languages. And the desire of expressing the inner emotion is unleashed to the forum, as everyone else is using these languages. However, there are two main use of profanity of in the forum that differs from common uses.
The first example is the expression of intercourse with the person’s mother. In Hong Kong, such expression is only used under wrath that the swearer wants to insult the sworn by having intercourse with the sworn’s mother. However in the forum, when a poster posts a thread to be insufficient of resources, like posting an alluring topic without a picture or a download link, the repliers will curse the poster and imply him to be lack of filial piety because he makes his own mother suffers.
The other example of special profanity is the use of the word of male’s genital. In Mandarin, the pronunciation of male’s genital is very similar to the word man. In the forum, carrier of specific traits or interests are referred as a noun created with the interest plus the word of male’s genital, in which normally we construct the noun using the interest plus the word man. And when female users are targeted, the word of west is used, as it sounds similar to the profane word of female’s genital. It has become so common that not using such words to refer people are considered abnormal.
Values
Religion
In the forum, the religion distribution is not very clear. It agrees with the real life situation, as Hong Kong youngsters are not very religious. Most of the users claim themselves to be Atheist or Agnostics. Besides having no specific believes, majority of the forum users are anti-Christians. These users start posts with offensive terminologies against Christianity. They are also keen to offend Christians, even if the Christian has not posted anything related to religion. As soon as they identify a user as a Christian, they start to offend the belief of that user. Those anti-Christians also like to interpret the Holy Bible in a way different from any church and use such interpretation as evidence against Christianity. It is also notable that more users are against Protestants than against Catholics.
Some of the users believe that there are completely nothing supernatural. They believe there are no Gods, no ghosts and no demons. They practice their beliefs into an extent that they joke about religious rituals. For instant, they joke about breaking into a Christian funeral and perform Daoist ritual of siege of the hell. They would also organize ghost facing tours visiting abandoned sites where commonly believed to be haunted.
Apart from anti-Christianity, there are no remarkable offences against other mainstream religions.
Political view
Majority of the forum supports League of Social Democracy as well as democracy itself. Like LSD, most of the users are against Communist Party, into an extent of disliking mainland Chinese citizens. Users with different view to LSD face difficulties of expressing their opinion. When such post is posted, users who are loyal to LSD will start taking offend against the poster. It is interesting that the forum administrators have never had any policies in favour to any political party, while it has become impossible to express different opinion towards politics.
Gender stereotypes
There are special stereotypes on male and female users in the forum. Male users are stereotyped as lusty but hopeless nerds. They are considered to be odd looking and lack of confidence. A term literally poisoned male is used to describe these users. Such terminology could be traced to a Japanese term for single males, as the Chinese character of single sounds very similar to poison. A user is considered poisonous if he satisfies these characteristics.
Female users are considered to be male when their real gender is unknown to other users. For female users that are confirmed to be female, they are stereotyped as beautiful, Goddess-like ladies. There are occasions that their personal photos are leaked and posted to the forum. When such happens, these female users will be named as Madam Guan Yin. The etymology of this term is traced from an expression in Cantonese. A man persuading woman, that the woman not being his girlfriend and the man has the will of satisfying the woman unconditionally, is called a Soldier of Guan Yin. The connection to the Buddhist deity of the same name is however not to be determined. However, in the forum, even the females of this situation is called Madam Guan Yin, the male counterparts are not called as Soldier of Guan Yin. They are instead referred as male dogs.
View on Homosexuality
In HKGolden, homosexuality is basically denied. There are some members of the forum are considered to be gay. The truth of their sexual orientation is beyond investigation. These well-known gay users often post posts that is completely normal and unrelated to sex or homosexuality. But repliers always interpret their message as if these messages imply the poster to be gay. When there are threads that the content could potentially imply homosexuality, users will reply one by one “This”, “Thread”, “Is” and “Gay”, forming the expression “This thread is gay.” Such reply implies the denial of male homosexuality. It is however interesting that female homosexuality is not as much denied.
Derivatives
Because of the difficulties of registering, there are quite a few derivatives of HKGolden forum. A forum named HKGalden was established in September, 2006. It is one of the biggest derived forums. It attracts mainly CD-ROM users as a substitution to HKGolden forum, as it provides features very similar to HKGolden forum. There are also many MSN Groups formed around the forum. These are groups that instant messages using Microsoft Network. As it does not require ISP emails, these MSN Groups are filled with both CD-ROM users and membership users.
Interests
Pornography
In the forum, posts about Japanese Pornography can be seen frequently. The forum policy does not ban such contents. Only pictures embedded into the forum that contains genital of both sexes and female nipples will cause a ban to the poster. Repliers that mistakenly quoted the pictures will also be banned. These banned members will be referred as martyrs, and granted the highest glory and respect to other members, as they are thought to be scarifying themselves for pleasures of other members. Members of the forum usually openly discuss pornography, and in details. They will explicitly mention their masturbation, into a level of details that they would mention the moment of ejaculation without hesitation.
Posting pornography movies cover pictures, or simply related pictures without giving the download link is highly hated by the forum members. These users believe that posting any pornography related material without the download link is a betrayal of other users. The poster will be offended with profane words described previously.
Other than pornography, users apply the same attitude towards news event, particularly those related to sexual content, or a sexy celebrity. Users will claim themselves be masturbating with the picture of a celebrity or news event personals. Some leaked photos of female members are also considered “masturbatable”, even those photos are completely normal or without any sexual intention.
Humour
Humour contents of the forum are mostly making fun of other people, or by faking others with creativity. The forum members do rank very high of creativity. The most notable sense of humour is the activity of image manipulators. These people are skilful PhotoShop users. They collect ingredients on the Internet and modify photos from news events or random online pictures. The modified pictures will be posted around the forum and be adored by other members. There have been occasions that those photos were reported in the newspaper.
For topic titles that are considered primitive or low sense of humour, repliers will offend the poster to be low-ranked-plastic, or primary school chicks. The forum members are also quite against the sense of humour of other online forums. They would claim themselves to be more mature and judge others as immature and silly.
Meetings
Various meetings of the forum are hosted frequently. Forum meeting is one of the most reliable ways of determining the gender of a specific member. In some cases, after a meeting, some female users are then named Madam Guan Yin for their appearance. One of the most successful meetings involved around 70 participants, with only less than 10 female members. A group photo of the meeting leaked and was posted onto the forum. Users against the meeting started teasing about the appearance of male members. And some started worshipping the female members as Madam Guan Yin. After the event, meetings were once halted as people gained fear of being posted.
Controversies
HKGolden is also infamous for possible abuses. There are mainly 3 types of controversies. The first type is about when controversial news event is reported, HKGolden members will be very eager to discuss it. Similar to other discussion topics, such discussion usually end with numerous offends against the event proprietor. The second type of controversies is about when there are events or games that are open to public to join. HKGolden members will try to join the event as a united mob of players. For online games, there are some HKGolden servers set up for the purpose of HKGolden members. While these members would join other’s server and helping each other HKGolden member, some of the other players would dislike HKGolden’s banner as they believe the members are affecting the balance of the game. The third controversy is more violence. When some specific member or public personal is disliked by most of the HKGolden members, some activists in HKGolden, will initiate some sort of online violence. That is by collecting personal information all around the Internet, as well as other places. These pieces of information will be posted around the forum with teases and offensive messages. Sometimes the issue is settled only by contacting the police.
Analysis
The HKGolden forum does reflect the common culture and values that youngster’s carry, however not all. It is convincing that the nature of the forum could affect the type of people who join. For example, artwork lovers would prefer places of more colour and decoration, while younger Internet users would prefer places with more functionality and freedom. HKGolden is however, the place without colour or decoration. There is not much function as well, what is has, is a simple instant messaging interface, while absolutely no moderation of opinion is enforced. Thus people who join are believed to be more biased or extreme towards some specific and liberal ideas or views. By viewing HKGolden forum, we can have a glimpse of how youngsters, particular those in their 20’s, view the society and the world.
However, this short report would come short of fact, as HKGolden is a forum of freedom. A free society allows different ideas to be expressed. HKGolden is itself a cosmopolitan small community, just as Hong Kong is.
There are a few points to be made about the forum. The activity shows that, when youngsters are free to express their own ideas, they would go towards extremes. Aside from that, these youngsters don’t actually care how others may feel or hurt. They offend holders of different opinion without mercy. It can also suggest that under Hong Kong’s education, education of being polite and respective has never been fully enforced.
Conclusion
HKGolden is a good reflection towards today’s youngsters. By studying activities of HKGolden users, we can understand what youngsters really desire, while they are under no restriction of expressing.
[1] As of 31st December, 2009, 26.6% of world population is Internet users, according to a usage statistics given by Miniwatts Marketing Group. (1)
[2] As of February, 2005, 69.2% of Hong Kong’s population is Internet users, according to the same usage statistics. (2)
1. World Internet Usage Statistics News and World Population Stats. Internet Usage World Stats - Internet and Population Statistics. [Online] Miniwatts Marketing Group, May 3, 2010. [Cited: May 15, 2010.] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
2. Asia Internet Usage Stats and Population Statistics. Internet Usage World Stats - Internet and Population Statistics. [Online] Miniwatts Marketing Group, May 4, 2010. [Cited: May 15, 2010.] http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm#hk.
