No laughing matter: China's media regulators ban puns

Highlights:

The State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued an order restricting puns and irregular wordplay on television and in advertising.

... Puns are ubiquitous in Chinese, which has countless homophones. Substituting one character for another can easily change the meaning of a phrase while barely altering the sound.

"The big difference in the Internet age is that the people who have the privilege of creating puns and idioms have changed. [...] It is no longer restricted to the elites. [...] A migrant worker, or even a elementary student who knows how to use a computer, can join the conversation online and create his or her own puns,”

...The attempt to ban puns comes as China’s government is stepping up control over the media and launching a new push to inculcate “traditional” values.

...“Maybe in the short term, no one wants to be the one [to flout] the government's new rule,” said Wang. “But I don't think the rule can stop similar tweaking of words to be used in future commercials.”

So there you have it. Use of wordplay in media could now get Chinese punished.

lol punished. XD

That's really strange to me. What an odd thing to get banned. O.o

Originally Posted by Nephila

lol punished. XD

That's really strange to me. What an odd thing to get banned. O.o

The UK just banned like 10 different sexual acts in porn.

Why?

This week has been weird.

You know I have to ask... which acts? I mean, if they're inherently harmful or drastically unethical (i.e. beastiality), then that's understandable.

I know one of them was face sitting. I read an a post about how a lot of them are pretty specific to female dominated BDSM porn. Which is a weirdly specific thing to attack.

ANYWAY *cough*enoughaboutyourpornknowledgebearzy*cough*, it's interesting that the article mentions that puns no longer belong to the elite. It's weird, cutting off something that is breaking down class boundaries. I thought that China was communist??

China is a strange form of capitalist communism.... And it makes sense with the whole elite class banning something that was formally elite only now that the common or lower classes have access to it. And I'm sure they will continue to allow the elite to create puns, and only punish the lower class offenders.

Here they come…

China: Taking the "GET OUT OF HERE" response to puns to a whole new level.

I don't know how I feel about this. I mean . . . there just puns. What could go wrong, Ya'know?