and Sky Canaves

From China Real Time Report:

Chinese gamers and non-gamers alike are hailing “War of Internet Addiction” as a poignant, insightful take on the long and difficult battle with government Internet controls and the general lack of public empowerment.

The movie — a 64-minute three-dimensional computer animation film with subversive themes that are none-too-subtle — would itself be a logical target of government censors. But so far, it seems they haven’t reacted. Aside from reports that the video was initially removed from popular online video Web site Youku.com, the new Internet sensation continues to circulate on the Chinese Internet, including on Youku now, weeks after it was first published. Tallying up the views from Youku, Tudou.com and other online video Web sites, it has been viewed at least several million times.

Some speculate the government is holding back because a crackdown on the viral distribution of the video would just fuel the fire. According to Bill Bishop, an online game entrepreneur and investor in China who was among the first English-language commentators on the movie, a criticism of the video popped up on a Sina.com blog saying it must have been backed by “foreign forces,” but has since been removed.

Meanwhile, people are freely discussing the video and all of its messages, from soaring home prices to class controversies that add up to a feeling of helplessness among “common people.” “The video shows the fact that, as ordinary people living in this current society, we feel helplessness all the time,” commented one user on QQ.com, a popular Web portal. “We suffer from the abuse of power, and [the Internet] becomes the only way for us to express ourselves.”

Another Internet user on Sina.com said “We’re powerless common people, but we still have our rights … I raise my hand since that’s the only thing I can do!” referring to one of the final scenes in the movie, where the hero asks his comrades to raise their hands and join forces to defeat Yang Yongxin, a villain whose character is based on a psychiatrist who is known in China for having used shock-therapy to treat so-called “Internet Addiction.”

The video is based in large part on the real-world World of Warcraft conflict in which access to the game has been limited and interrupted for months because of a conflict between two government regulatory bodies. But it “covers everything that has happened in the last 15 months on the Internet in China,” Bishop says. Kaiser Kuo, consultant for Youku, called the film “genius.”

If such glowing reviews have spurred you to watch the video, be warned that it will be difficult for just about anyone to catch all of the inside-jokes and references made in the film. To help, some viewers including Bishop, Kuo and other reviewers and gamers eagerly dissected the film and documented their analyses on public documents posted (in English Chinese).

We’re still waiting to see if the creator, who goes by Corndog in English and “sexy corn” in Chinese, will provide more insight. In an emailed response to a Phoenix TV reporter in January, he said, “My original purpose was to make this video for WoW players. All the funny details in the video are supposed to communicate with people who are familiar with the game and its culture.” But he understood once the film took off and seemed to resonate with a larger audience.

“The point is much broader … it’s not about gaming, it’s about the fact that we all have to exist in an Internet that’s controlled and not free,” Bishop said. “It’s optimistic that people online can work together. I don’t think it’s optimistic that they’re going to win anytime soon, but they can [defeat] someone like Yang Yongxin … it’s not hopeless, but it would be a long fight.”

Below, watch two scenes from “War of Internet Addiction.” Video courtesy of Corndog.

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