Zhang 3 Feng’s World | “Patriotic Humor”

According to a Reuters report cited by Lianhe Zaobao, a student from Tongji University asked German Chancellor Scholz: I heard that Germany has legalized marijuana. I want to study in Germany. What should I do if I don’t want to smoke marijuana?

It doesn’t seem like a question that someone with normal intelligence would ask.

However, if there were reporters at the event, they wouldn’t have misheard the question. Some netizens further verified that Reuters would not have fabricated the story.

I also checked, and Scholz’s second stop during his visit to China was in Shanghai, where he interacted with students at Tongji University. It is said that the students have very good foreign language skills and expressed themselves entirely in German.

There may be a problem of using a foreign language imprecisely. But the general meaning should be this: Germany has just legalized marijuana, and this student who is about to study in Germany is very worried, or maybe it’s a deliberate humor, that’s why he asked this question.

His underlying logic is probably this: marijuana legalization equals everyone has to smoke marijuana, equals marijuana is grown in the dorm, equals it’s troublesome if you don’t smoke…

Don’t think that such people are a minority. On the Weibo of the German Embassy in China regarding Scholz’s visit to China, the most liked comment is this:

It is estimated that the relevant parties are also very troubled. You know, in the current environment, leaders of major Western countries are rarely willing to come to China. It’s not easy for a Scholz to come, and he encounters such ‘humor’.

Tongji University was very popular some time ago because many students went to listen to Zhang Weiwei’s speech and took photos with him, all showing confident and charming smiles. Some people defended those students, saying that they were actually there to watch the joke, not really liking Zhang Weiwei.

In many articles, I support today’s young people, but I know not to have high expectations for college students (it is said that it will be better after graduation). Students from Tongji University must support Zhang Weiwei the most, not only Tongji, but also other universities, otherwise, it would be ‘abnormal’, and the school leaders would not be able to sleep.

Regardless of whether the students in the group photo agree with Zhang Weiwei, it will not affect their happy group photo, because that is the face they want to show to the world: patriotic, happy, and consistent.

I don’t know if the student who asked the question went to listen to Zhang Weiwei’s speech, but his thinking is consistent with Zhang Weiwei’s remarks circulating online. He is good at German, and Zhang Weiwei is said to be good at foreign languages and familiar with life abroad. They don’t really not know the situation abroad, but it’s a kind of ‘habitual disparagement’, a speaking habit.

This is the current common ‘patriotic humor’ on the internet, and it is also a common logic. In the public account background, I see similar messages almost every day. Anything from Europe or Japan is bad; because I was a visiting scholar in New York, the address of the article shows New York, and almost every day someone accuses me of ‘why are you writing about China in the US’.

I don’t quite believe these are AI, or some kind of ‘sewing machine operators’. On the contrary, they are people living around us. In fact, according to my observation, some people have still been to university, but under the daily shaping of current public opinion, they have developed a subconscious reaction.

This ‘reaction’ is safe and ‘correct’, and because of its ‘safety’ and ‘correctness’, there will be more cheers. After repeated practice, it becomes a kind of ‘true thinking’. He will believe it from the bottom of his heart. The tears shed by the masses in North Korea are no different in composition from those of people in other countries.

More than a decade ago, we still had to organize students to post such comments online and issue subsidies. Now it is almost an automatic, subconscious biological reaction, saving at least a batch of funds.

I also understand them very well, because doing so actually helps to improve or maintain their own sense of happiness. If they think more and understand reality more, people will only feel more pain.