MCLC: Internet meme finds its way to Jeopardy

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Rowena He <rowenahe at gmail.com>
Subject: Internet meme finds its way to Jeopardy
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Source: The Atlantic (5/15/13):
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/05/when-did-the-tiananmen-squ
are-massacre-happen-tune-into-jeopardy-to-find-out/275879/

When Did the Tiananmen Square Massacre Happen? Tune In to Jeopardy to Find
Out!
A Chinese internet meme used to evade censorship finds its way onto the
popular American quiz show.
By Matt Schiavenza

BECAUSE INTERNET CENSORS BLOCK MENTIONS OF THIS 1989 DATE, CHINESE
BLOGGERS WRITE IT AS "535".

Here was the "Final Jeopardy" clue for last night's episode of Jeopardy.
Can you guess the answer? (Or, um, the question.) I'll wait.

If you don't know, don't feel bad -- none of the three contestants got it
right, either. Of course, it's difficult to expect game show contestants,
even ones especially good at trivia, to know anything about Chinese
internet memes. But the fact that this clue surfaced on Jeopardy, in and
of itself, is welcome proof that the remarkable ingenuity of China's web
army isn't going unnoticed on this side of the Pacific.

"535" refers to May 35th which, put another way, is June 4th -- the date
of 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre. The term exists because media
discussion of the event in China is prohibited; in 2007, three newspaper
editors even lost their jobs when they failed to censor a one-line ad
praising the mothers of the victims. Internet users initially referred to
the event by its un-hyphenated date, "64", but once government censors
caught up to them they needed to conceal it even further -- hence the
invention of "535". This sort of clever wordplay is seen all across the
Chinese internet, where the list of "sensitive" subjects is long.

Alas, it appears that China's ingenious netizens will have to go back to
the drawing board; according to Shanghaiist
<http://shanghaiist.com/2013/05/15/jeopardy_contestants_cant_answer_questio
n_about_june_4_tiananmen_square_incident.php>, censors have caught on to
"535" and have even begun deleting the roman numeral rendering of the
Tiananmen date. On the Chinese internet, no clever ruse lasts forever.

But in any event, it's remarkable to think that despite an education
system that makes no mention of the controversy surrounding the massacre,
a media which ignores it, and a significant chunk of the population too
young to remember it, a national conversation surrounding events like the
Tiananmen Square massacre continues to persist on the Internet. And little
by little, the outside world has begun to take notice.