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Yale's Chinese Zombies

When I was home over spring break, a headline in the Providence Journal (Rhode Island's only big newspaper...classic Rhode Island) caught my eye.  It was on the front page of the World News section and read "Yale's Chinese Zombies."  Obviously, I had to read on.  The subhead was "University's social network followers in China explode, but are they people or the walking dead?"  The story refers to China's demand for American higher education and the way universities have responded to this demand using Chinese social media.  However, this becomes difficult because of "zombie followers."  On Sino Weibo, a microblogging site similar to Twitter, Yale has 140,000 followers.  A common feature on these sites are zombie accounts: "fake, mass-prouced accounts that mindlessly follow and artifically boost another account's follower numbers - and thus prestige."  The mindless following of these accounts is what leads to the name "zombie."  The fact that Yale has attracted a weirdly large amount of these accounts is not really that interesting to me, but what is interesting is the zombie terminology used to describe them. Throughout the article they are referred to as "walking dead accounts," "lurk," "mindless," and more.  I just found this an interesting example of the countless ways zombies can be used as metaphors.  They have become so prevalent in modern culture that they are even used in a newspaper article about social media...for Yale...in China... seriously an article that I'm surprised even made it to the cover of the section.  But the zombie metaphor makes the information accessible and understandable to all readers because the zombie and its characteristics are something the majority of people are familiar with.

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4 Responses so far.

  1. Unknown says:
    April 3, 2013 at 11:21 AM

    Poor Rhode Island, we dont have too much going on in the way of news. I do agree though, with this class i have been noticing more and more of the zombie metaphors in articles, movies and tv. Also a side note about Chinese interest in higher education: I hosted a foreign exchange student for a couple years from shanghai, and we went to high-school together. When she started thinking about applying to colleges she was naming places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown (Fuck yeah RI) which her GPA was not suited for with no offense to her- mine definitely wasn't either. But she discussed with me the Chinese mindset about higher education in the United States, these were the schools she heard about and because they were the best, they were the places she needed to go. She eventually settled on Pepperdine University in Malibu and is probably sitting on the beach as i type this, but I always thought it was interesting that applying to colleges in the US for her, and for many other foreign exchange students from China, in the beginning it is basically Ivy or bust.

  2. The Infamous Chad says:
    April 9, 2013 at 12:15 AM

    Hmm....The zombie apocalypse in World War Z began in China... Coincidence? I think not. I think the cyber-zombie apocalypse has begun.

  3. Michael Thulander says:
    April 12, 2013 at 12:53 PM

    As a marketing major it is interesting to see the zombie used in a business sense. While this may not be a direct connection, it is definitely interesting to see it used. Yale has a high level of exchange students and with a lot of young talent coming from China and prestige being a major factor in that culture, it makes sense from a marketing standpoint. The zombie connection is also very clear and seems to be more relevant when compared with the Haitian zombie which is more of a slave, than the American zombie, which is more of a flesh-eating monster.

  4. frankie says:
    April 24, 2013 at 6:27 PM

    This is just another example of just how mainstream the term zombie has become. I think it is interesting to look at the way it is being used in different contexts. It is interesting that a word the provokes so much fear is starting to become a widely used description word.

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