Forums in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, there are three major online forums, namely Hong Kong Discuss Forum, Uwants forum and Hong Kong Golden Forum. Among the three popular forums, Hong Kong Golden forum are generally considered to be the one to form itself as an online community with a unique cyber culture. Some of their posts are often so controversial that they are made headlines in newspapers and magazines.

Culture of HK Golden Forum

Clown God - Ideological representation of HK Golden Forum

 “Hard-plastic” is considered as an intrinsic culture in HK Golden forum. “Hard-plastic culture” (translated as “nonsense culture”) is represented by the clown symbol of the forum. This tradition encourages the members to churn out meaningless posts. The attention they receive is seen as a form of recognition. To compete for the honor of “the Hard-plastic Star of the Month” or “the Hard-plastic Star of the Year”, others will follow suit and join the discussion to gain popularity.

With increasing media attention, some terms coined solely in Hong Kong Golden Forum are being increasingly used by the general public as the new slang expressions.

 

巴打 (baa1daa2)

Literal meaning: transliteration of ‘brother’ in English

Actual meaning: a form of address to other members so as to create a sense of brotherhood in the forum

Derivative jargon: 絲打 (si1 daa2) > transliteration of ‘sister’

是咁的 (si6 gam2 dik1)

Actual usage: to mark the beginning of an account of long story, roughly similar to English ‘this is how it happened…’

Special features: the expression combine spoken Cantonese (‘咁’) with written Cantonese (‘是’ and ‘的’), in which the latter is seldom used in oral conversation

Unique forms of communication

It is worth noting that the HK Golden forum doesn’t rest itself on the verbal form of communication, the culture of parody also takes shape in terms of editing pictures and adapting songs.

Fourth Chief Executive of Hong Kong Leung Chun-Ying portrayed by Golden forum members as former Communist leader Mao Zedong

 

a song in response to the June-Fourth Incident comment by Ma Lik, adapted from 'Just Because You Are Here', had been previously used to celebrate the 10th year of 1997 handover

Images:
http://evchk.wikia.com/wiki/%E6%AA%94%E6%A1%88:N1151_029_1150true_new.jpg

http://evchk.wikia.com/wiki/%E6%AA%94%E6%A1%88:NewClownGodcopy.jpg

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3vh55SSVw