Keyboard Kops

The Chinese may be a lot of things, but stupid is definitely not one of them. They are apparently the first country in the world to officially qualify “internet addiction” as a disease.  And, surprise surprise, they have a treatment.

Nanometre wave machines, military formation drills, gruelling exercise regimes and electric shocks are being used to cure China’s ballooning number of internet addicts.

Some 300 treatment centres across the country hope to tackle the growing social problem of web addiction that has accompanied rapid modernisation.

“[Internet addicts] can’t adjust to school and society, so they try to escape their difficulties and avoid problems,” psychologist Tao Ran, who runs a treatment centre on a military base outside of Beijing, said.

“They lack self-confidence and often don’t have the courage to continue their lives,” he is quoted by ABC News as saying.

See, in the West, we call these losers World of Warcraft fans.  However, you need to read the subtext here.  China clearly censors the internet, they admit that, so I’m not giving away any state secrets.  And I’m sure that in China, just like in other countries, there are antisocial losers who have no lives outside their computers.  All this is stipulated.

However, methinks there’s a little more than meets the eye here.  Suppose there was someone who was writing something on the computer here wasn’t supposed to, something that agitated the people and stirred up discontent.  Why, all it would take was a diagnosis from a doctor and he could be whisked off to one of these “rehabilitation camps” which sound oddly like Abu Ghraib.  When the western media eventually find out about it the Chinese now have plausible deniability—“No, no no.  He’s not being locked up for what he said, he’s been locked up for his terrible affliction in a facility where he can get the political reeducation, uh, I mean medical care that he needs.”

You gotta hand it to them sometimes, you really do.  Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go download a few gigs of porn.

So, they treat “Internet addicts” in the same way as they treat political dissenters and mental patients. One treatment fits all! Well, in a society where individuality is still considered rather naughty, one is not surprised.

Are these so-called “Internet addicts” really “antisocial losers”?

Just because they don’t live their lives the way the Chinese government would like them to doesn’t make them “antisocial” or a “loser”. If someone in the USA refused to live their life according to the wishes of the Republicans/Democrats, would that automatically make them an “antisocial loser”? Methinks not.

Also, take a quick look at the “social winners” (e.g. my students at Tsinghua uni). I mean, the rest of you guys might have struck gold, but I can tell you that the Chinese people I’ve met since coming here nine years ago are, in general, the most utterly antisocial people I have ever met. “Ooo, I can’t go to a bar!” “Ooo, I can’t talk to foreigners!” “Ooo, I have to be back home by eight o’clock!” “Ooo, my hobby is sleeping!”

If the height of your social activity is standing with your mates on Wangfujing pointing at foreigners, sleeping in a dorm for 12+ hours a day or going to have flowers painted on your nails, yeah, you’ve really got a society that can point the finger at so-called “Internet addicts” and call them “antisocial losers”.

Heh, you d/l your porn, if something goes wrong I’ll visit you in Gansu.  I’ll keep on buying mine from the sidewalk vendor.

The cases of internet addiction I’ve heard about so far seem to be adolescents whose parents wanted them out of the wangba. You have a point though that it allows easy abuse. OTOH here no excuse is really needed.

Happy Year of the Cow!