For me, both Joan McNeil's article "The Facebook Bully" and An Xiao Mina's "Batman, Pandaman and the Blindman" highlighted problems of online censorship and institutional control. McNeil underscores how Facebook's "real name" policy is bigoted and may put users who do not wish to reveal their given birth name in numerous dangerous or potentially hostile situations.
Similar to An Xiao Mina's description of government censorship in China, McNeil reveals how "someone with an IP address connected to the US House of Representatives is a serial troll who has vandalized the pages of Chelsea Manning and pages related to the Gamergate controversy." In contrast to China, however, the address associated with Congress was actually banned from editing Wikipedia.
I found An Xiao Mina’s article regarding meme-resistance entirely fascinating. For me, it really put into perspective how while we still struggle with censorship and discrimination here in the US such as the Facebook issue, in China those who speak out may be in real danger of being threatened with force, abducted and imprisoned by their own government. Building upon the article regarding meme aesthetics we read earlier in the course, Mina’s article shed light on the great power and diversity of meme cultures and production across the globe. When I was a teenager memes were funny, poorly rendered jokes we’d pass around to our friends. I would never have imagined them as tools of resistance or social change. Despite all of the turmoil our country may be facing in the future following the results of this election, I still am happy to live in a country where I can speak my mind and share my opinions openly instead of having to make coded memes about them.