Internet slang is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is "lol" meaning "laugh out loud." Since Internet slang is constantly changing, it is difficult to provide a standardized definition. However, it can be understood to be any type of slang that Internet users have popularized, and in many cases, have coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes or to compensate for small character limits. Many people use the same abbreviations in texting, instant messaging, and social networking websites. Acronyms, keyboard symbols, and abbreviations are common types of Internet slang. New dialects of slang, such as leet or Lolspeak, develop as ingroup Internet memes rather than time savers. Many people also use Internet slang in face-to-face, real life communication.
China censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government, and severely restricting freedom of the press. China's censorship includes the complete blockage of various websites, apps, video games, inspiring the policy's nickname, the Great Firewall of China,simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城; pinyin: Fánghuǒ Chángchéng. which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing, blocking access to IP addresses, analyzing and filtering URLs, packet inspection, and resetting connections.
China has been on the Internet intermittently since May 1989 and on a permanent basis since 20 April 1994, although with heavily censored access. In 2008, China became the country with the largest population on the Internet and, as of 2024, has remained so. As of December 2024, 1.09 billion use internet in China.
The Chinese Wikipedia is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Started on 11 May 2001, the Chinese Wikipedia currently has 1,429,835 articles and 3,546,557 registered users, of whom 65 have administrative privileges.
Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market, and provides a wide variety of other internet services such as Baidu Baike, iQIYI, and Baidu Tieba.
China Digital Times is a US-based 501(c)(3) organization that runs a bilingual news website covering China. The site focuses on news items which are blocked, deleted or suppressed by China's state censors.
Kuso is a term used in East Asia for the internet culture that generally includes all types of camp and parody. In Japanese, kuso (糞,くそ,クソ) is a word that is commonly translated to English as curse words such as fuck, shit, damn, and bullshit, and is often said as an interjection. It is also used to describe outrageous matters and objects of poor quality. This usage of kuso was brought into Taiwan around 2000 by young people who frequently visited Japanese websites and quickly became an internet phenomenon, spreading to Taiwan and Hong Kong and subsequently to Mainland China.
Profanity in Mandarin Chinese most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's ancestors, especially their mother. Other Mandarin insults accuse people of not being human. Compared to English, scatological and blasphemous references are less often used. In this article, unless otherwise noted, the traditional character will follow its simplified form if it is different.
Baidu Baike is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. The beta version was launched on 20 April 2006, and the official version was launched on 21 April 2008. In November 2019, it had more than 16 million articles and 6.9 million editors. As of February 2022, it has more than 25.54 million entries and 7.5 million editors. It has the largest number of entries in the world of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia.
Martian language, sometimes also called brain-disabled characters, is the nickname of unconventional representation of Chinese characters online by various methods. For example, "一個人的時候" can be changed into "ㄧㄍ人ㄉ時候" since the word ㄍ (gē) is consonant of 個 and the word ㄉ (dē) is consonant of the word 的 in bopomofo.
The Grass Mud Horse is a Chinese Internet meme and kuso parody based on a word play of the Mandarin profanity cào nǐ mā (肏你妈), which literally means "fuck your mother".
River crab and harmonious/harmonize/harmonization are Internet slang terms created by Chinese netizens in reference to the Internet censorship, or other kinds of censorship in Mainland China. In Mandarin Chinese, the word "river crab" (河蟹), which originally means Chinese mitten crab, sounds similar to "harmonious/harmonize/harmonization" in the word "harmonious society" (和谐社会), ex-Chinese leader Hu Jintao's signature ideology.
Very good very mighty is a catch phrase and internet meme in China that originated with the WoW Chinese-translation group in June 2007. Using the syntactical structure very X very Y (很X很Y) became increasingly popular among netizens of Mainland China as internet slang and snowclone.
The Yax lizard or Jacques lizard is a Chinese internet phenomenon related to the Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures. It mocks a musical dance program that excessively praised the Chinese government.
Standard Chinese, like many Sinitic varieties, has a significant number of homophonous syllables and words due to its limited phonetic inventory. The Cihai dictionary lists 149 characters representing the syllable "yì". Many Chinese take great delight in using the large amount of homophones in the language to form puns, and they have become an important component of Chinese culture. In Chinese, homophones are used for a variety of purposes from rhetoric and poetry to advertisement and humor, and are also common in Chinese loans, for example phono-semantic matching of brand names, computer jargon, technological terms and toponyms.
Chun Ge, which means "Brother Chun" and is often translated as "Spring Brother", is a nickname for the singer Li Yuchun, which subsequently became a popular Chinese Internet meme. In her early years as a Super Girl star, Li is known for her androgynous appearance.
Hexie Farm, by an author known as Crazy Crab, is an online political cartoon in China critical of the Chinese government. Hexie in Chinese Pinyin is a pun on harmony and river crab. The cartoon started running in August 2010, focusing on animal characters living in a "Harmonic Farm". It is loosely based on George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.
Chinese Internet slang refers to various kinds of Internet slang used by people on the Chinese Internet. It is often coined in response to events, the influence of the mass media and foreign culture, and the desires of users to simplify and update the Chinese language. Slang that first appears on the Internet is often adopted to become current in everyday life. It includes content relating to all aspects of social life, mass media, economic, and political topics and the like. Internet slang is arguably the fastest-changing aspect of the language, created by a number of different influences—technology, mass media and foreign culture amongst others.
Li Yi Bar is a subforum of the Baidu Tieba forum. The subforum was originally opened for ridiculing soccer player Li Yi. It is well known for its large number of followers, who often flood other Internet forums or subforums.
