In 2021, BBC released a video about China causing an earthquake. Now it’s a meme that glorifies Chinese cities

Trends on social networks are, in many cases, inexplicable. Overnight something goes viral and it’s easy for us to not even know where it came from. In the summer of 2025, chinese networks began what from the West we could see as a simple memeeven nonsense: many videos that show panoramic views of Chinese cities to the rhythm of the mythical BBC intro. This meme spread and is useful for observing some of the most impressive cities in the world from a drone view. There are even users commenting on how some cities, like Chongqing, had undergone a radical transformation in just 20 years. The videos, without a doubt, are impressive and there is a example after other…and after other. But behind the meme there is something much more interesting: an outbreak of international conflict because of… the BBC. BBC News countdown intro style meme continues in China. Below in order is for Guiyang, Nanjing, Jinhua and Jieyang. https://t.co/EKZopt48Pc pic.twitter.com/LhjHVATMKW — JR Urbane Network (@JRUrbaneNetwork) September 1, 2025 The BBC video that angered 1 billion people In February 2021, the world was still reeling from the aftermath of COVID-19. Wuhan, the Chinese city identified as the focus of the global pandemic, was a monitoring point for world news due to the government’s policies to fight the virus. And the BBC published its controversial ‘How everyday life has changed in Wuhan’. It’s this video: Up to this point, we might think that it is just another report, but they published it in duplicate. The one above is the international version, in English. The one I leave you below is the version for China: Have you noticed any difference? Let’s go with some screenshots: International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version International version Chinese version Already we saw it in Xataka back in the day: The international version has a gray filter, while the Chinese version shows more vivid colors. That, without us realizing it, creates a narrative. And those who did notice were some Chinese Internet users and the state media Global Times. Chinese social networks named the filter used in the international version as “underworld filter” or “gloom filter”but the one who gave it the most importance was the aforementioned state tabloid. He accused the BBC of adding greyish filters to its reporting on China to make the country appear dystopian and polluted. It did not stop there: the matter spread like wildfire on networks and the tension escalated to the point that the international broadcast of BBC World News was banned in China that same month. In fact, international spokespersons have on occasion used the hashtag #GloomFilter to criticize Western coverage of China. The BBC defended its editorial independence, rejecting accusations of bias, but both the BBC and Chinese media have since starred cross attacks. A lot has rained since 2021 and, as I pointed out at the beginning of the article, it is now meme stuff. The BBC intro accompanies luminous images of Chinese cities without the “underworld filter.” And it is an example of how something that, at first glance, may be a story without much history, hides much more. And, well, the story of Global Times throwing darts at the BBC did not end in 2021, but has lasted until recently, mentioning that “BBC has become one of the most destructive negative examples in the global media landscape.” But beyond all this, the truth is that the videos are impressive, showing dystopian cities in some cases. Images | BBC In Xataka | China loves Europe so much that it has built its own: these are the replica cities that populate the country

The female pockets are so useless that they became meme. The serious thing is that they have centuries to be

A trend a little less than two months ago on social networks call Claw Grip It showed how women held several objects – mild, keys, wallet – in one hand, because the pockets are so small that there are hardly any pañuelos package. What seems a fun occurrence is, in fact, a daily photo of inequality in clothing design. “Has pockets”. It looks like a pretty silly phrase, but among women finding pockets in the pants is an almost impossible mission. The expression has become the forced comment, already converted into a cultural meme. In social networks, frustration has become digital activism. With hashtags like #Wewantpocketsthousands of users denounce the absurdity that in the 21st century it is still exceptional to find a garment with useful pockets. The data reflects it. According to the pudding studywomen’s pockets are on average 48% shorter and 6.5% narrower than men. In fact, just 40% of female front pockets can save a smartphone. The consequence is in sight: pockets unable to put a phone, a small wallet or even the full hand. The contrast is even more ironic if we think that, in parallel, many men They start buying bags As a voluntary accessory, while women continue to claim pockets out of necessity. More than fashion: autonomy. The pocket is not a simple aesthetic detail: it allows you to leave home without a bag, with your hands free, without depending on loading an accessory to carry the basics. In a report for the BBC They have detailed that in feminist history it has been claimed as a tool of freedom. At the beginning of the 20th century, the British voters summarized it in a clear slogan: “votes and pockets”, Remember Caroline StevensonDirector of the Cultural and Historical Studies Program of the University of the Arts of London. “It is interesting that a pocket became one of the symbolic forms of counteracting the desire for women’s independence and freedom,” he adds Elizabeth Evitts Dickinsonauthor of a new biography about the American designer Claire McCardell, a pioneer in trying to solve this problem from fashion. For them, having their own space in the clothes equal independence, not to depend on a husband or a bag. The case of little Golden Cameron, eight years old, demonstrates it: indignant because girls’ school pants had no pockets, he wrote to the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain asking for a solution. After viralizing its letter, the company modified its designs. The episode, counted in another BBC report, It shows how even girls detect textile inequality from an early age. A problem with historical roots. In the seventeenth century men enjoyed pockets reited in pants and jackets, while women used Small little bags tied to the waist Under his skirts. That difference implied more than fashion: a woman’s value objects were hidden under layers of clothes, quickly inaccessible and dependent on the design of the dress. The situation worsened in the nineteenth century, when the tight fashion that directly eliminated female pockets was imposed. “Depriving pocket women was also depriving them of liberty,” Explain The Atlantic. In addition, after the years, fashion reinforced the stereotype that the female body should prioritize aesthetics over functionality. Christian Dior verbalized it in 1954 In a phrase that still resonates: “Men have pockets to save things, women for decoration.” The catwalks are pronounced. And it is that the debate continues to speak today. Some brands, such as Chanel or Saint Laurent, have been incorporating pockets as a gesture of modernity for some time. In the 2022 Oscar, Penelope Cruz surprised with a chanel of pockets, something that stood out as an unusual detail On the red carpet. In parallel, independent brands such as The Pockets Project o Sports clothing firms have made a wide pocket an emblem: leggings with mobile space, cocktail dresses with secret pockets. But in Fast Fashion reality is another: false pockets, useless seams or ridiculous sizes. The problem is costs, As the BBC points out: Adding real pockets implies more fabric and more preparation time, something that clashes with the tight fashion margins. The pocket as a social reflection. The debate, in reality, is not just textile. An interesting report by New York Times, deepens more than the absence of pockets is linked to bag dependence. In other words, the bag sector is a global market that moves more than 8,000 million dollars. Fashion seems to have pushed women towards mandatory bag consumption, while men leave home with their hands. It is no accident that in 1937, when Diana Vreeland assumed as editor of Harper’s Bazaar, proposed to dedicate an entire number From the magazine to the pockets. In his autobiography DV remembers that the idea was immediately discarded by the pressure of advertising: “Do you realize that our bags by bags are millions a year?”, Its director warned. The anecdote reveals to what extent economic interests also weighed in what seemed like a simple clothing detail. In itself, the pocket is a mirror: it shows how for centuries the male fashion privileged functionality, while the female sacrificed autonomy in the name of aesthetics. Everything remains the same. Five centuries after men released sewn pockets and women were relegated to hidden bags, the debate is still in force. What is expressed in networks with memes, hashtags or the uncomfortable gesture of the Claw Gripactually points to a deep issue: who has the right to dress with autonomy and who is still conditioned by designs that prioritize aesthetics and the market on equality. Therefore, when a woman proves a dress, pants or skirt, and exclaims: “He has pockets!”, He is not celebrating only a sewing detail. He is celebrating a small triumph in a long struggle: that of being able to keep the same, on the same. Image | Freepik Xataka | From six -digit liftings to a German Viper Serum: Hollywood’s new obsession is “liquid surgery”

The first photographic meme of history was extremely macabro: posing as beheaded corpses

Who says that before the Internet people He made less bullshit? They were the same, what happens is that there was no potential audience of millions of people to reach (and was not monetized). What gives even more merit to analog memes, the fashions due to infection that passed from hand to hand, generating absurd fashions that followed thousands of people. One of the first of these fashions was the Horsemaning (either Jinetism), such a delicious way to make the fool that it was not as isolated at the beginning of the century. What is it. He Horsemaning It shows a person pretending to have been decapitated. Actually, two people participate in the joke: one, the body, placed at an angle that either the camera shot or the position of the deceased assumption makes the neck not seen; Another subject, the head, places the neck on the edge of a table or buries its own body in the sand of the beach, so that it looks decapitation. Both added things create a very shocking and hilarious effect, especially since it is obvious where the trick is. It is fun because we see people lose their composure before the camera, which always laughs. Why Jinetism. By the headless rider of ‘The Sleepy Hollow ‘Legend of Washington IrvingAbsolute classic of Anglo -Saxon literature. The story was written in 1820, a century before the popularization of meme. But it is a story that returns to the collective imaginary over and over again due to its powerful imagery, so linked to Halloween. In it appears a spectrum, that of the headless rider, a decapitated gentleman (supposedly a Hesian soldier) that he was left without a gunshot. Of Victorian England … Although it was in the VCEINTE years of the last century when it became fashionable, we can track the origins of the macabra jokes further back in time: to Victorian England and the first steps of photography. At that time, in times prior to television, the newborn invention caused a sensation in very different environments (from family chascarrillos to the first and disturbing pornography steps). Since their first steps, photographers experienced with tricks: overlays, transparencies and trapantojos, and fashions such as those of the BeachBackground of this Horsemaning: People with heads in the lap or under their arm, and sometimes were achieved with multiple negatives. … to when Facebook cool. Around 2011there was a resurgence of the photos of beheaded with perspective tricks. Surely you remember it, because around that year became fashionable he Stocking (imitate photos of image banks), the Planking (Photos of people laying down in the most incongruous places), the Owling (disturbing snapshots posing as owls), the Plowling (the two previous meetings) or the Batmanning (Hang upside down). Loquisimo Pre-Tiktok times, and still overwhelmed an endearing digital naivety. In Xataka | Putting the testicles in landscape photos is the latest crazy photographic fashion of the Internet. There are more

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