It’s the game of the moment. No, not Plague, Inc., but Animal Crossing. With millions of people under Covid-19 lockdown across the globe, the game has provided a much-needed bout of escapism and become a huge hit in the process.
Chinese players have flocked to the Nintendo title, which allows you to “create a home, interact with cute animal villagers, and just enjoy life.” With users also able to add their own images into the game, Covid-19 temperature checks, Chinese propaganda posters, and pictures of former Communist Party leaders (including meme god Jiang Zemin) have been populating Animal Crossing in recent weeks.
“Time-to-Jiang-Zemin” is the most reliable meme metric of the Chinese web – Animal Crossing got there in….3 days? #膜蛤
(On a related note, is “toad worship” the most censored yet resilient meme in the world? https://t.co/BI81yvrPyY) https://t.co/rt4owPJySk— Krish Raghav (@krishraghav) March 28, 2020
Now, Beijing art institution M WOODS is joining the fray. One of China’s pioneering art museums, M WOODS had already been playing with “hypothetical shows” in the digital realm after its doors were shuttered by the country’s novel coronavirus outbreak. This new venture take the form of a “virtual museum” with “significant past exhibitions from our history turned digital, such as: David Hockney, Lu Yang, Nicolas Party, and Andy Warhol, amongst others.”
The space will launched with a special livestream event on video platform Bilibili, where staff will be offering up free tutorials on how to get into the “museum.”
Related:
