Memes @lemmy.ml

11mo ago

Happy Lunar New Year

240 comments

My Culture is not your prom dress 2: electric boogaloo.
As a chinese, you're welcome to do so. It's Lunar new year, there's nothing special or specific about it. Pop a beer, play firework, or whatever. Make up your culture for celebrate the new year, that's how culture is born! There's not even a standard for it in China, different region have different way to celebrate. And each household even have their own way to celebrate! How is any of this gatekeeping make sense i don't know.
It's so sad to see a melting pot now call for separation.
- For you I had a cigar and sipped some bourbon. In great hopes of a fine new year for us both!
  
  this is the way
- Imma crack some beers .. Cheers man
- I’m gonna buy some tikoy/tekoy today!
- It's not sad, and it isn't a melting pot calling for separation.
  It's some dumb a****** who was corrected by some a****** with a broadened perspective.
  
  We're on the Internet, it's ok to swear.

Gatekeeping is a special form of being special
- Especially when you also don't belong to said group.
- Yeah but only if—-

How pathetic do you have to be to gatekeep a celebration?
- I do think it's important that people know what it is they're celebrating, but yeah like my local Chinese community always does a lunar new year celebration that is open to everyone. I think a lot of Chinese people (and other communities that celebrate the lunar new year, like Okinawan Korean Vietnamese and many others) see open celebration as creating more appreciation for and understanding of their culture.
  
  Crazy, what an entirely reasonable thing to think.
  
  I can't wait to take Christmas off you all
- More importantly: a celebration that you can get to by just looking at the bloody sky.
- Hey, a white lady is telling people how to do shit. Shut up and let her speak. /s
- Probably about that Karen-level right there.
  Right about where you're that desperate for attention, it isn't your place to say and it helps literally nobody.
  Just about that pathetic.

These people want to show, so hard, that they care but in the end they don't realize they are practically pushing for segregation.
- This is what happens most of the time when people scream cultural appropriation. The problem is that people without understanding of the terms use the terms every day. This leads to scenarios like the one above, or where someone is getting offended you're enjoying a cultural food, or listening to a specific kind of music. Appreciating other cultures isn't appropriation.
  
  Exactly, appropriating means to take and pretend you invented it or created it. Interacting with culture or enjoying other people's culture isn't harmful and if these people actually went to other countries they'd realize their people WANT to share their culture.
  
  I remember someone giving a huge speech on...tumblr probably it sounds like something that would come from that shithole...that white people learning Spanish was cultural appropriation.
  
  That's why people who do understand the terms need to call the people who don't out at every opportunity, but they won't do that because of "solidarity."
  
  これは本当すぎる
  (I'm white btw 😱😱😱)
- These people are racists. That's it.
- Hundred. Percent. It's astounding, I am astounded at the number of messages I have received as a result of this post exactly mirroring the less desired sentiment you've described.
  But it's cool, they can go f*** themselves, there's like 2 billion people wholesomely celebrating this holiday in defiance of bigotry, so it's not a real problem.
- That's why I laugh at anyone who unironically says "Cultural Appropiation"
  I wonder if they realize that if cultures didn't borrow from other cultures we wouldn't have anime or instant ramen.
  
  Or colleges, paper, math, the entire judicial system, and fireworks.
- plus imagining thinking that, as a white person, you have the ability to decide who gets to celebrate what, while speaking over Asian people. like that was a bigotry 360°; you went right around to being racist again lmao

I'm Jewish. I invite you all to celebrate any Jewish holiday. But they're all stupid religious bullshit other than the food part, so I wouldn't bother.
- The food is the best part of any holiday, to be fair.
  
  I agree. Unfortunately, with Jewish holidays, you have to sit through what feels like about 10 hours of prayers in Hebrew before you get to the food.
  Which especially sucks when you're a hungry kid who doesn't understand Hebrew.
- Yeah, but... the food part.
  
  Eh, you can have charoset any day of the year if you feel like it.
- Food holidays are my favorite holidays, and also because of Jon Stewart, I irrationally appreciate the abundance of Jewish holidays.
  Which Jewish holidays should I celebrate?
  
  Well the problem is that Passover has the best food, but it's also celebrating a genocide, so I don't really have a good recommendation.
  Purim maybe? It's mildly less stupid than the others since it's actually based on something that really happened? But it's still based on an arranged marriage, so even that's kind of fucked up. I don't know. The Bible is ridiculous.
- Hamantaschen are amazing and I'll make them year round, no one can stop me!
  I also make the donuts for Hanukkah for my mother
  At least we're out of the years where we were making like a gross of them. That was exhausting.
  
  Every year my mother buys jelly donuts for us when we come to visit for Hanukkah and every year, we all tell her that we don't like jelly donuts.
  At least she doesn't try to cook them. She's an awful cook. And she doesn't understand food. She makes latkes in the oven (not fried) the day before we come, freezes them, then defrosts them when we come over. And we eat two and pretend we like them and cover them with enough sour cream so that we can't taste them.
  We used to go home and make our own another day, but they're also kind of a pain in the ass to make, so we just deal with shitty latkes once a year now.
  Her matzoh ball soup is fine, but it's very hard to fuck that up.
- hi fellow Jew pls celebrate the holidays with me
  
  I'll celebrate with you, but can we make up a new holiday with the same food but none of the boring prayer parts?
- Our white versions don't involve the food :(
  
  There's plenty of Jewish food cookbooks out there! I'm personally a big fan of kugel.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugel
- Judaism is a closed religion, lighting candles for Hanukkah is one thing and that's cool if you want to partake in some fun. Saying prayers over those candles is markedly different and definitely appropriation.
  
  I wouldn't call it appropriation. Appropriation would be claiming those weren't Jewish prayers or a menorah, they were Christian (or whatever).
  A non-Jew saying Hebrew prayers doesn't offend me. My non-Jewish wife has done it before because she got a masters in folklore and wanted to take part. She didn't claim it as her own, she just took part in the ceremony. And plenty of non-Jewish spouses of Jews have done the same thing.
  Honestly, if you're curious and you want to take part in Jewish ceremonies, go for it. Judaism is not as closed as you think. If it was, you wouldn't have famous converts like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Isla Fisher (and Ivanka Trump, unfortunately). It's not a simple process like turning around three times and saying "I'm a Jew!" but it's not exactly a ridiculous challenge either.

Nah, as a cracker ass American I think I will celebrate Lunar New Year and immerse myself in the lore and customs of people I share this plant with because history rocks my fucking socks.
- Fuck yeah I love this plant
- F*** yeah. Happy February 10th and Happy New Year!

A friendly reminder that gatekeepers are walking, talking mindrot.

Chinatowns and Mayors of metropolitan cities with Chinatowns : Here's the schedule of Lunar new year celebrations, come along and enjoy the culture!
This gatekeeping idiot :

Nothing friendly about gatekeeping, it’s just a patronizing way to be a giant fucking removed no one wants to be around.

I invite everyone here to Pancake Day on Tuesday :)
- I work. Can we do it today?
  
  You and all your friends are hereby invited to Pancake Saturday !
- The hero we never knew we needed
- THANKYOU

Friendly reminder that nearly everyone on Twitter are fuckheads.
- HangonletmecheckokayIseewhatyoumean.
- Friendly reminder that nearly everyone on ~~Twitter~~ the Internet are fuckheads.
  
  wait wait wait, but I'm on the internet! :o
  
  Friendly reminder that nearly everyone on ~~Twitter the Internet~~ the planet are fuckheads.
- I just call them "twits".
  
  It's x now, they are xhits.

Cultural appropriation hater VS Cultural sharing enjoyer

I feel like her reply is just as likely to be to call him a race traitor or whatever. It's hard to reason with people who gatekeep that hard

she says while wearing clothes made in said countries typing the message on a device also made overseas.

"friendly reminder that if you're white, you'd better be uptight to the point of constipation at all times, except for moments of stress-induced diarrhea"

That ratio lol

I mean, it's not like there aren't large communities of Asian immigrants all over the world. In most countries, and definitely the English speaking ones, I almost guarantee your country celebrates it somewhere. Beyond all the other problems with this, it erases the experiences of Asian immigrants, I live in the US and I know for a fact there's going to be tons of celebrations here for it organized by people whose cultures it is.
- Nearly 2% of all Japanese people live in Brazil, for instance, so yeah.
  
  The Chicago area has more people of Polish descent than Poland.
- Happy New Year!
  
  Happy New Year to you too!

Wat? This is so stupid it actually causes me physical pain. That's like telling anyone who's not a Christian they can't celebrate Christmas. 🙄
- I think this should be reinforced. If your name isn't Christian then you can't celebrate Christmas :(
  
  I think if your name is Jesus you get to celebrate it
- Or anyone who is, considering it's not a Christian holiday by origin

I recall when I was first informed about “cultural appropriation” and how it boiled down to the concept that if a white person enjoys any aspect of a non-white culture it was an act of racism. Gotta love the gravity well of ultra liberal bullshit warping back in on itself and becoming fascism.
- That's a bullshit explanation of cultural appropriation and the person you heard it from is an idiot. Actual cultural appropriation is when you take something from another culture and either erase or overwrite its origin, so the original culture in its original form becomes forgotten.
  For example, when white artists re-recorded songs from black artists and specifically removed them from the credits and claimed them as their own, that was cultural appropriation. When movie studios chopped up Indian culture and presented it in a completely distorted and inaccurate light, so much so that the original meanings were lost, that was cultural appropriation.
  Simply being a participant in someone else's cultural celebration is not cultural appropriation.
  
  Considering I've seen a lot of gatekeeping morons go on about cultural appropriation without ever mentioning that, I think most don't understand this crucial distinction.
- Even though you're totally wrong with your definitions and facts, I do like your writing and appreciate your poetic license.
  This isn't fascism, this is social conscience.
  A lot less severe than what you pretend fascism is.
  
  TBH though I do find the term used to gatekeep far more than I see it used to promote respect. Most cultural arts and traditions formed from bringing a few items/ideas from other cultures back to their own and overtime they incorporated it into their own. Shit like wearing a cultures clothing item that requires significant cultural acts to obtain in said culture when you are not a patt of it, theres nuance and issues of cultural respect to talk about there. But "cultural appropriation" as a term doesnt really get used that often with that level of nuance
- It's not any form of liberalism. The troll depicted in the original post, is building a strawman. A ridiculous opinion nobidy believes. The goal is simple to delegitimise the whole idea of cultural appropriation. To basically say, Disney did nothing wrong taking children's public domain folklore and locking it behind an intellectual property paywall for 100 years.
  That's the real goal here. As usual the powerful taking away from the weak and saying they're not allowed to complain.
  You are ultimately right, this is fasch behaviour. This is fasch wearing fake liberal faceskin.
  
  Sorry to inform you, but I know people like this, and they're not building strawmen or false flags. They sincerely think they're helping, when all they're doing is creating strife and division.
- Gotta love the gravity well of ultra liberal bullshit warping back in on itself and becoming fascism.
  Racist fascism in the guise of anti-racist inclusion.

Happy city lunar new Year!!
- I no joke found a restaurant named city wok in China.
  It was a weird moment.

Who cares. Happy Year of the Loong to everyone!
- Haha you should have all the upvotes.
  Folks, upvotes over here!
  "Long" is crappy pinyin for dragon, and it's year of the dragon, baby.

Hati Hróðvitnisson says shut the fuck up.

I'm gonna celebrate like there's no tomorrow. What can you do?

Racism from the left is just so unexpected, but here we are
- Overprotectiveness. It's irritating and misguided, but it isn't bigotry.
  
  It is. I'll elaborate. The neonazis in France, Germany, Hungary, and other places with a growing nazi problem are calling for ethnostates. One country per ethnicity. No cultural exchange, no learning from other cultures, no exchange and most of all absolutely no exchange of people.
  Now if you take the idiotic idea of "cultural appropriation" to its natural conclusion, you arrive at very nearly the same idea. Hermetically closed cultures separate from each other, no exchange. Everyone only gets to enjoy the culture they happen to be born in.
  This is why it is racist. Because the separation of peoples and cultures is a racist idea.
  Humanity absolutely thrives when cultures mix. The whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. Racism and bigotry cease to exist the more cultures and peoples mix. And I mean mix, not live separate lives that just happen to be in the same geographic location, just to be clear.
  
  It's also big on assumptions to
  A problem society has is often making assumptions about something rather than getting information from a direct source for example getting information from the actual people they are making assumptions about instead of making assumptions about them
- Assumptions made about people instead of information coming from the people they are talking about
  Whrn I was on reddit I saw this alot on reddit with foreign companies and was reading a thread where someone asked if people in Japan where racist
  It was filled with people saying yes but something about the thread felt ungeniune so I went on the japanlife subreddit about this topic and they haven't experienced racism and that most of it is misunderstandings and not understanding the people
  I also went to watch those videos on YouTube where people from Japan interview Japanese people and most Japanese people where not racist and it was only the rare occasional one that was but they where older people and they where in the single digits range so japan just has a few racist people like every other country and most people are open
  Its typically the younger generations that are more open and I tend to see that it's the younger generations that are open in every country so I think we are just waiting for the old bigots to turn over and die
  It's best just to get information about a people from the people itself instead of looking at random people's opinions online

No one falls on a sword for people who didn't ask like left leaning white women in first world countries.
- You understand countering ignorance with prejudice isn't helpful, right?
  
  Hey, you leave them and their strawwomen alone!

Not every "lunar new year" is on the same day in every country; there are different lunar calendars.
The Chinese New Year is not the Buddhist New Year is not the Islamic New Year, yet we're smashing them all together.
This is cultural insensitivity.
- China, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, lots of countries use lunar calendars that arrive on the same date.
  Calling it the lunar New Year is not a cultural sensitivity, it's simple accuracy.
  
  Even countries that use the same calendar don't call it the same thing!
  Korea and Vietnam each have their own Korean and Vietnamese New Years, but Malaysia literally calls it Tahun Baru Cina (I'll give you three guesses what Cina means). In fact, several countries call it something like that: Singapore and the Philippines calls it the Chinese New Year, Brunei calls it Tahun Baru Cina, etc. Meanwhile, China doesn't even call it a lunar new year, they call it the spring festival.
  Lumping them all together is just something we're doing to make it easier for Americans.

Self-identification is such a bizzare polarized issue. On one side, you have sexual self-identification being embraced by the same people who bemoan cultural self-identification. I don't understand this cognitive dissonance. Alas.
- you have sexual self-identification being embraced by the same people who bemoan cultural self-identification
  citation needed
- You probably don't understand it because those aren't the same people.

Woke, then SMACK! back down to sleep.
- Literally what?

It's chinese new year? Why they call it lunar year? Yes I know their calendar is running by the moon. Is "lunar year" ultra-woke to avoid a "ugly" word like "chinese"? An other case of woke racism?
- It's celebrated in many Asian countries, so calling it lunar New Year is a simple way to not group them all as Chinese.
- No racism, just accuracy.
  It's more because so many cultures have a lunar calendar, so even though China is the largest population that uses the lunar calendar, it's not precise to just call it the Chinese New Year, since so many countries and cultures also have a lunar calendar that share significant dates.
  
  Sorry, today it's New Year in the Chinese Calendar. It's celebrated by Chinese all over the world. And it's not even a really "lunar" calendar. More precise is to call it a "lunar-solar" calendar. Racism, not accuracy.

240 comments