Taking to the Virtual Streets

China’s massive gaming community is making its presence known
online and in the real world. Stephen Hutcheon of the Australian
newspaper
The Age reports that roughly ten
thousand avatars — online representations of human players —
quit competing and rallied in the virtual streets of the game
The Fantasy of the Journey West to protest the display
of an image similar to the rising sun of the Japanese flag, or
Hinomaru. The controversial sun graphic was first spotted in a
government office inside the game about the same time a leading
player’s avatar was virtually incarcerated for refusing to
change his screen name, Kill the Little Japs. The ‘arrest’ then
forced the disbanding of The Alliance to Resist Japan, a guild
of 700 players led by this avatar.

The idea of online political action is not entirely new.
Activists have been staging virtual sit-ins for years, and
hacktivists also have established an online
presence. A 2002 AlterNet piece tells of a 160,000-strong
virtual sit in against the World Economic Forum that caused the
international organization’s site to collapse. Smaller sit-ins
supporting the Zapatistas in Mexico took place as early as 1998.
More recently, in July of last year, 27,000 protesters made several
anti-immigration websites unreachable for three days through an
action organized by the group
SWARM the
Minutemen.

In the Chinese case, the use of avatars made the incident
uncannily similar to a real-world protest. (Images of the rally
depicted protesters lambasting the internet portal that runs the
game with signs like, ‘NetEase, you have even hung out the sanitary
napkin,’ a reference to the Hinomaru’s red circle on a white
background.) The root of the protest has real-world ties as well:
Though the Chinese government has previously sanctioned nationalist
protests against Japan, NetEase claimed the measures against the
anti-Japanese avatar were based on rules formulated by the Chinese
government’s National Internet Supervisory Bureau. With plenty of
crossover between the real and virtual worlds, the Chinese example
may point to a new front in the rapidly evolving landscape of
online protest.

Go there >>
Avatar Activists See Red

Go there, too >>
Hacktivists Stage Virtual Sit-in at WEF Web
site
SWARM the
Minutemen

Related Links:
Hacktivist.Net
EastSouthWestNorth Blog