Pro-Hong Kong Mei

About

Pro-Hong Kong Mei refers to the Chinese Overwatch character Mei being used as a symbol of Hong Kong protests and in various memes criticizing China. The trend gained popularity after Overwatch developer Blizzard banned Hong Kong Hearthstone player Chung "Blitzchung" Ng-Wai from participating in Hearthstone tournaments for one year and stripping him of his winnings after he called for the liberation of Hong Kong during a post-game interview, which caused a large-scale online backlash against the company and the Chinese influence on foreign companies.

Origin

On October 6th, 2019, following the final match of the group stage of Blizzard-organized GrandMasters 2019 Season 2 tournament,^[1] professional Hong Kong Hearthstone player Chung "Blitzchung" Ng-Wai participated in a post-match interview with the casters. During the interview, Chung, who had just been eliminated from the tournament, shouted "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!", calling for the separation of Hong Kong, where a series of anti-China protests had been being staged for several months, from China.

The VOD of the game has been subsequently deleted by Blizzard.^[2] On October 7th, 2019, Blizzard published a statement^[3] in which the company announced that Blitzchung has been removed from the tournament and stripped of his winnings (3,000 USD). Additionally, Blitzchung has been suspended from participating in Blizzard-organized Hearthstone tournaments for a period of one year. The company also announced that they cease working with both casters who took the interview.

Following the ruling, the company met a major backlash online, with multiple users announcing they would quit Hearthstone and boycott future Blizzard titles.

On October 8th, 2019, Redditor batture made a post in /r/HongKong subreddit in which they suggested that Overwatch hero Mei, who, according to the Overwatch lore, is Chinese, should be made a pro-democracy symbol in order to get Blizzard's video games banned in China (post shown below).^[4]

Spread

In the following hours, posts presenting Mei as a symbol of the Hong Kong protests gained popularity online on Reddit and other platforms. For example, an October 8th, 2019, post by Redditor FloL00L received over 58,400 upvotes in one day (shown below, left).^[5] A Twitter post by user @Kaipo_Rozwolf received over 1,500 retweets and 5,000 likes in the same period (shown below, center).^[6] A Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions /r/memes post by Redditor yamideath gained over 130,000 upvotes in 13 hours (shown below, right).^[7]

In the following hours, #MeiWithHongKong hashtag gained popularity on Twitter and other platforms, used for posts related to the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References