Chinese Video App Bans Peppa Pig

The Internet has a strange relationship with Peppa Pig, a globally popular British children’s animated TV series about an anthropomorphic pig and her friends and family. In addition to the memes and a mix of subversive and sexually explicit parodies and remixes featuring Peppa, the character's popularity has been exploited through a series of algorithm gaming systems that generated a slew of fake Peppa Pig videos to garner views from children on YouTube.

Well, it seems that Douyin, one of China's largest video-sharing platforms, has had enough. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of images and videos featuring the British television cartoon pig were scrubbed from the platform, leaving users to wonder what happened.

Shortly after Peppa vanished from Douyin on Saturday, a screenshot of what appears to be the company's content blacklist began circulating on the Chinese social media, which lists Peppa along with other state-imposed censorship on images of nudity, gunplay, cross dressing and depictions of cults. Prior to the ban, the hashtag #PeppaPig had been associated with at least 30,000 posts on the platform.

The ban, which has yet to be officially confirmed, has not stopped all users from sharing images of Peppa as some have begun sharing under the alternative hashtags #PiggyPiggy and #PeppaPeppa.

Since first rising to prominence in China in 2015, when the show made its debut in China, Peppa Pig has become associated with the shehuiren subculture. Shehurien, which is roughly the equivalent to "productive memeber of society” in English. However, online, the means the exact opposite, referring to the community of people who oppose and subvert mainstream culture. According to the Global Times, shehuiren “are usually poorly educated with no stable job. They are unruly slackers roaming around and the antithesis of the young generation the Party tries to cultivate.”

Peppa Pig blocked on Chinese video app after becoming a 'subculture icon' https://t.co/PYoCCNRGpc by @mikehwalsh with quotes from me pic.twitter.com/jTEU65FIFL

— 💯Fergus Ryan (@fryan) May 1, 2018

Some believe that Peppa Pig’s association with the subculture is likely what led to its banning.

Last month, Zhan Timing, the chief executive of Bytedance, the owners of Douyin, said that they would increasing its censorship efforts at Toutiao, Bytedance’s popular news app. Timing said that they would be raising the number of employees working to ban content that violates the company’s policy to 10,000.

Online, people are voicing their support of Peppa:

Peppa Pig as a symbol of rebellion and anti-Communist resistance is the best thing I’ve read all year. Made even more perfect by its accidental inversion of Orwell.🐷 🐽 👊 https://t.co/wCnqOETa15

— Matthew Thompson (@mattuthompson) May 1, 2018

Apparently Peppa Pig has been banned in China, because Peppa encourages rebellion……..🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/cvi5geNNwf

— 💃🏼🚴🏼‍♀️💋Lainsuze💋🚴🏼‍♀️💃🏼 (@Lainsuze) May 1, 2018

Is this the end of Peppa Pig in China? Unlikely, the character is massively popular among children. The show's success has led to parental concerns, as pre-schoolers are apparently flooding classrooms with oink sounds. Two theme parks based on the character are slated to open in 2019 in Shanghai and Beijing. Needless to say, they'll have to do a lot more scrubbing to get rid of Peppa Pig.