After state media launched an aggressive propaganda campaign around two major hashtags — “#The U.S. is the world's biggest human rights deficit country” and “#Extreme feminism is a poison on the internet” — a wave of public anger was ignited. In response, large numbers of netizens engaged in counter-commentary and frequent “tower crashing” (a form of online defiance against censorship and authority), forcing authorities to initiate a comprehensive lockdown on related topics.
At the same time, netizens began using various alternative tags to circumvent censorship surrounding the Shanghai lockdown policy, enabling freer discussion and protest. This led to a surge in newly banned hashtags, such as “lalaland” (a reference to La La Land, used to mock Zhao Lijian’s infamous remark: “If you’re living in China during the pandemic, just secretly be happy”), “call me by your name” (a sarcastic nod to state media’s labeling of the U.S. as the “world's biggest human rights deficit country”), and “sneaky joy/Zhao sneaky joy” (another mockery of Zhao Lijian’s quote). Even the first line of China’s national anthem, “#Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves,” has come under censorship on Weibo.