i’ve never really watched this dude before but i’ve been marathoning his videos of him going to all these countries after seeing him in china, and he just gets followed around by massive crowds where people set up shows/performances for him that he just plays along with. people give him gifts and he interacts with them. that’s the whole thing as far as i can tell. he just walks around interacting with people and their cultures how they want to present it to him. it’s a genuinely fascinating thing to watch lol
un-ordered thoughts cw: descriptions of racial abuse towards ishowspeed
He’s a young guy lmao, not an ambassador, imo. I wouldn’t make it out to be more than it is. Ambassador is taking it a bit far. And if he were, Who is he an ambassador for? Gen zedders? The USA? The amorphous west looking into and ‘discovering’ China? He also cops a /shit ton/ of racist flack from chatters and ‘fans’ irl and as far as I can tell it’s not adequately pushed back on by his community, I’ve said it previously but there’s a whole swathe of Chinese kids who now think it’s funny and cool to shout the n word at black and brown people because of the plausible deniability they’re saying a near-homophonous Chinese word. There’s been people immitating monkeys at him and a girl in cosplay who straight up came and said ‘Im racist I hate n words’. The comments on that video were a mix between “This paints the otaku community in a bad light”, “otaku are just like this” and “yes, I’m racist too so what of it”.
We can’t lay that at all at Speed’s feet, but likewise we shouldn’t lay some weird ambassadorship at his feet either… I’ve said I’m in two minds about it. His stream has also shown some really touching moments like meeting his shifu, meeting the girl from shaoxing on the boat in HK, but these are person to person moments not person to country moments.
From the commentary here, I’ve got some reading and watching to do re. minstrelship in the online era. Fd signifier was willing to give speed the benefit of the doubt and I am too, but I can’t tell whether his overall impact re. the China trip and perceptions of black people in the country has improved on the balance, or if it’s making inroads for western anti-black internet culture to continue to proliferate. The flip side benefit appears to be that more people outside China are seeing it in a relatively unfiltered way, but that’s a trend that was already happening and is hopefully accelerating.
i think you took this a little too literally
I may have, so I put it under the spoiler tag as un-ordered thoughts, since I want to discuss it and this could be a good thread. Sorry if it came across as too much
What if we drew a distinction between ambassadors of states and ambassadors of the people?
Is that ambassadorship? I’m not really familiar with how it would work outside nation state/embassy/foreign rep functions that I associate with the term, but that’s a shortcoming on my end definitely. I guess my thought is that speed doesn’t appear to be acting in any larger representative faculty at this stage, and his impact/reception in China is mixed. From the commentary I’ve read on wechat and xhs is that he’s seen as a streamer novelty first, a black person second, an American third. This is different to how China Daily and official state media have clipped amd promoted his visit. There are definite flaws and considerations that need to be gone over before upholding him as an official ‘envoy’ or ambassador as posed by OP
I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it in too much depth. It’s interesting to think about though.
I agree that he’s a flawed character and that edgyness is an aspect of his marketing. The question I suspect China will be asking themselves however is whether the positives outweigh the negatives. Cutting through the western propaganda expediently and then allowing more normal tourism and normal engagement with the country to normalise behaviour seems like a useful concession to make. Yes he’s going to make some Chinese people behave poorly, but it’s going to be outweighed by others.
One thing to really be concerned about however is if any of these streamers get large followings in China and then later turn on the reactionary taps. China can ban them from the country and remove their content online but it won’t stop their influence with their fandoms which could be a source of threat. The influencer would be out of reach of arrest outside the country also.
Ty for the reply and entertaining the topic. I guess the solution is ishowspeed go on