Some non-Chinese women who cosplayed Corona-chan and posted photos on the Internet were criticized by Chinese users and eventually apologized. Samantha Cole of Vice Media believes that the character is Chinese at first sight, which is racially offensive, but it can also make people relax a little in the continuous negative news. Moe anthropomorphism had been applied to diseases online before: during the Ebola virus outbreak of West Africa in 2014, the character of Ebola-chan was already circulating on image boards and online discussion forums in the English-speaking world. Lushsux created a wall graffiti showing the coronavirus Corona-chan standing behind a mask-wearing PewDiePie. There are Corona-chan galleries on the Internet. The subreddit "r/coronachan", which features illustrations of the character, had 2,000 subscriptions by 2020. As a pun, she was also often represented holding or drinking a Corona beer. On 4chan, a user made a thread titled “All hail, Peng Zhou, creator of Corona-Chan”, linking to an article by Zero Hedge, claiming that the new coronavirus may have been created by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Her Chinese appearance may have also promoted xenophobia and racism related to the pandemic. These features reference the popular bat soup and Wuhan lab theories for the origin of the virus. In some representations, she holds the flag of China and hands out bat soup. In mid-January 2020, 4chan users created the Corona-chan character as a girl with bat wings and green eyes wearing a red cheongsam, an item of traditional Chinese clothing, with thorny spheres for hair buns, symbolizing the virus. Corona-chan (Japanese: コロナちゃん) is a moe anthropomorphization of the coronavirus which became a popular meme on 4chan, Reddit and other websites during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
0 kommentar(er)
