As a connoisseur of racism, I have found no greater joy than discovering other language realms on X where they are truly light years ahead. Behold the great meme war between the Turks 🇹🇷 and Chinese 🇨🇳 which has been brewing now for 3 days! It began with a small Turkish account posting a meme of a cat wearing a straw hat + slitty eyes + wispy moustache. A Chinese user then replied with a meme of Patrick Star from SpongeBob parachuting next to the Turkish flag, with a caption along the lines of “I heard the Turkish flag was designed like this, is that true? Both were from small anonymous accounts but now has been viewed by several millions. Turks took it as mockery of a national symbol and all hell breaks lose. The broader historical and cultural pile-on on both sides were equally impressive in its deep knowledge of Ottoman / Chinese history, along with very creative vulgarity. I read one Chinese tweet calling Turkey the fleshlight of the entire world. Both sides insulted each other as “might as well be Indians.” Then it got super testy when it ventured into Turkestan/Xinjiang/Uyghur territory, and soon out came digs about the Turkish lira, China virus and other general nationalist trash talk. The next stage was the free speech Olympics. Turks started posting images of Xi Jinping and daring Chinese users to criticize him to prove that China is “free.” Chinese replies often flipped it to “you criticize Xi but none of you dare criticize Muhammad.” When no Chinese account could criticize Xi, the Turks concluded they were all bots. The latest stage has been the international expansion. Japan + Taiwan + Azerbaijan + Spain lined up with Turks against China. Japanese accounts were the most visible contingent. Taiwan joined the Turkish side for obvious reasons. Azerbaijan was in Turkic solidarity mode. South Korea and Spain too for reasons which are not clear to me. Iran + Greece + India + Egypt joined up with the Chinese against Turkey. I saw an Iranian account openly telling the Chinese to keep going and “discipline the Turks” because the Ottoman/Persian rivalry runs deep still. Greece obviously went against the Turks and as for India, who knows. Could’ve gone either way but they chose the Chinese. The whole thing, while viscous and passionate at times, has strangely left me with the warm fuzzies. Imagine how much more boring life would’ve been without @X’s auto-translate feature