What Is The 'Tiananmen Square Copypasta'? The Censorship Hack To Silence Gamers Explained

If you ever need to win an online argument with a Chinese user, there is one surefire trick according to meme lore: bring up the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

4chan users arguing on long threads and in gaming chatrooms with Chinese users figured out they could enlist the Great Firewall and China's army of internet censors to do their work for them. Bringing up a forbidden topic like Tiananmen Square led to an automatic internet service disconnection and ban.

So what exactly is this copypasta and how is it used around the world online? Let's explain.

What Happened At Tiananmen Square?

In June 1989, a massive pro-democracy protest movement swept across China, centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Rather than listening to protestors, however, the government chose to use massive and overwhelming military force to crush the demonstrators, killing upwards of 2,000 according to estimates.

After the protests, the Chinese government created a massive censorship campaign to erase public memory of what happened, banning all discussion in the media and online. The notorious Great Firewall of internet censorship around China works diligently to scrub any references to Tiananmen Square and other events that show the Party in a bad light.

Where Did The Tiananmen Square Copypasta Come From?

In 2016, a South Korean poster on 4chan arguing with a Chinese user on the /int/ board posted the earliest findable version of the copypasta, which includes a variety of terms that Chinese internet censorship algorithms tend to catch and take down.

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

The tactic spread widely across 4chan, with many joking (in a dark way) about seeing the power of authoritarian state surveillance used against citizens.

What Does The Tiananmen Square Copypasta Mean?

Memes and the people who make them often have a complicated relationship with authority. The internet is a place where the actions of governments and big companies often collide with the joyful chaos of users doing what they want to do, leading to friction.

Triggering government censors could be seen as a sophisticated hack of the censorship machine, or an act of protest, in some way illustrating the power and force of the Chinese government's anti-free speech commitment.

For the full history of the Tiananmen Square copypasta, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's entry for even more information.