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Tencent has a meaningful ownership of American youth. 12% Snap 7.5% Spotify 40% Epic Games 100% Riot Games 100% Supercell 5% Reddit Hollywood has also bee

by theNJR 8y ago

Tencent has a meaningful ownership of American youth. 12% Snap 7.5% Spotify 40% Epic Games 100% Riot Games 100% Supercell 5% Reddit Hollywood has also been moving in this direction, with a lot of Chinese investment in the studios, and blockbusters adding special scenes with Chinese actors and locations. What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? It's historically one of our largest (and most important) exports. I'm not sure if that claim to fame is a net positive for the world, but the changing of this guard will certainly have a local impact. I'm just not yet totally sure what it means, broadly.

mulmen 8y ago
It sounds like you're conflating entertainment with culture.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  I’m not sure we have culture anymore that isn’t entertainment.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    Really? That's sad. Our democratic values are not motivated by entertainment as far as I can tell. Neither is our capitalist approach to the economy. Really I'm not sure what component of American culture is driven by entertainment, other than the consumer oriented nature of our economy. But in that case entertainment is just one of many products.
    - atomicUpdate 8y ago
      The president is literally an ex-host for a reality TV show.
      - mulmen 8y ago
        And most Americans don’t like him.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > I’m not sure we have culture anymore that isn’t entertainment. I think that's pretty unnecessarily cynical. It's all around you. It's in the people: their beliefs, their charity, their hopes, their parents, their children, their food, their routines, their compassion, their striving. 330 million people and dozens of major cultural sub-groups, it's extraordinarily rich.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Cuisine, fashion, religion, basic attitudes, lines of acceptable thought, how to behave as an individual, how to behave in a group, how to behave as a leader, how to behave as a subordinate, acceptable vices, social progress… plenty more I can think of, the majority of them not entertainment. In the US alone, this can very wildly between cities, counties, states, etc. What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different to what it means to be American in Hawaii.
    - anonlurking 8y ago
      >Cuisine, fashion, religion, basic attitudes, lines of acceptable thought, how to behave as an individual, how to behave in a group, how to behave as a leader, how to behave as a subordinate, acceptable vices, social progress Not sure if you're doing this intentionally, but these are all the things Americans definitely don't share in common or agree on, even within the same cities and states. In fact, we have never disagreed more on the subjects you listed. Largely because individuals have become increasingly atomized due to the internet age and a multitude of socioeconomic trends. In fact, I'd posit that it's not very likely that the average american shares much with his neighbor culturally, outside of entertainment, even if they superficially seem to have a lot in common. It's more common to seek out a specific group(or faction) that you can relate to, than to form a local offline community with people physically near you. >What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different than what it means to be American in Hawaii And yet there are all sorts of people in both Idaho and Hawaii. Many of whom agree on little and share almost nothing in common. I'd bet that even in a small town in Idaho very few citizens would agree with more than two of the things you listed. In general, I'd have to agree with the person you're responding to: shared, common American culture is mostly the lowest common denominator entertainment we get through TV and Internet. For example, recognizing references from "The Office"
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        > Not sure if you're doing this intentionally Don't say things like this. If you have a problem with my argumentation, then just say it; don't couch it in weasel words. As it happens, I addressed the assertion that people are different. Of course people are different, between individuals, between cities, between regions, between states, etc. You then proceeded to refute that very point, so I'm not sure what your thesis is. Is there a vast, shared culture or not? Well, obviously, I say there is. The word 'culture' doesn't dictate that everybody has exactly the same mentality, a mistaken line of thought which is very sharply indicated by your assertion that people from a small Idaho town wouldn't 'agree' with more than two of the highly general potential cultural artefacts I listed. People don't 'agree' with cultural artefacts; they participate in them, their world views are informed and shaped by them; their ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, acceptable and unacceptable, healthy and unhealthy, proper and perverse, are all developed by cultures of all sizes: from the micro of the family, the neighbourhood, and the city to the macro of the state or the nation. Whether all or even the majority of Americans are adherent to the full sum of a describable "American culture" is not the question, and it was never my thesis that it was. If I made any assertion, it's that Americans, as a whole, still adhere to at least some of the tenets of some overaching American culture, something distinct enough that it could be identified by outsiders, taking an etic point of view, as unmistakably 'American' when sufficient cultural artefacts become apparent enough. It's embedded in the language, in the way people speak, the choice of language they use, their insults, their slurs, their forbidden words, their spelling; it's embedded in the way they interact with others, the space that is kept between interlocutors, the way that strangers are treated, the relationship between a manager and his or her subordinate, and what constitutes professional courtesy; it's in the way that money is spent, the willingness to give a tip, to donate, to accept paying things at retail place, to argue when something costs too much, to seek reparation when overcharged, the wherewithal to demand to see whoever is in charge; it's embedded in manners, the use of 'please' and "thank you", the offence caused to people from other cultures who use 'please' and "thank you" in different ways, how people should address each other. There are so many more aspects of culture that I really think you're failing to see because, from an emic point of view, as a participant of the culture, you have no clue that they even constitute your culture. But even if you could identify them, cultural artefacts aren't items on a checklist, whereby only by ticking 80% or more of the boxes does one belong to the culture. Think more high for it exists, it's still relatively vast, and it's deep; some Americans might only dip a toe in it, others might be positively drowned in it, and I'd be willing to say anybody who claims "people only recognise internet memes and references from 'The Office'" are more firmly in the latter camp than the former, unbeknownst to themselves.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    I've been meaning to count the number of "news" articles on television that are stories about personalities versus non-personalities but I am positive the number is far too high.
gammateam 8y ago
> What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? A broader perspective on the world
paxys 8y ago
TikTok is fully Chinese-owned as well, and is probably the most used app by teenagers today.
- icelancer 8y ago
  Is that true? Wasn't aware that it had a significant hold in US society. Thought Instagram and Snapchat still dominated quick engagement.
  - theNJR 8y ago
    Yes, it's big and growing quickly. The structure of kids memeing kids (who are told to do so by the TikTok AI and marketing team) plays well and spreads quickly.
    - doorbellguy 8y ago
      I agree, apps like these and previously musically (sp?) are extremely shallow and promote narcissistic traits in gullible teenagers. Glad I was not a teen in 2019.
      - icelancer 8y ago
        There were plenty of other mechanisms whenever you were in high school to promote "narcissistic traits in gullible teenagers," a sentence which is probably the most "old man yells at clouds" thing I've heard in a week.
        doorbellguy 8y ago
        Let me clarify : I did not say this was the "only' thing that distracts teens. Your passive aggressive statement shows that you're having a bad day and want to be rude just for the sake of it. Good day.
        dang 8y ago
jorblumesea 8y ago
China "owns" them in the investment sense, but is hardly responsible for creating it or the culture that birthed the ideas. That's the real key here. If many home grown Chinese apps or concepts take off (ala TikTok), you may be right. But at the moment, like everything in China it seems they are just keen to buy/cheat/steal. The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform.
- theNJR 8y ago
  I think the cheat/steal method of describing China is becoming outdated. Cheat/steal is a viable technique to quickly catch up if you don't mind being a bad actor in a game theory setting. Then you have to surpass. In AI they seem to be at the late stages of stealing. The top two films in the global box office last weekend were both Chinese (The Wandering Earth, $172m and Crazy Alien, $77m). Chinese blockbusters seem to just flip American tropes (The Chinese coming to save the day Rambo style).
  - withhighprod 8y ago
    Late stage of stealing.... check out who invented resnet and the Chinese names on NIPS, CVPR,ICCV
- gruez 8y ago
  >The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform. I doubt they'll do any overt censoring (eg. "no talking about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989), but I wouldn't be surprised if they do subtle manipulation like silently deemphasizing anti-China content, or emphasizing anti-westnern content (eg. infighting, failure of western democracy). The latter probably would probably even good for the site (in terms of engagement) as outrage drive cilcks.
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    They’ve been plenty overt when someone talks about Taiwan...
  - 8y ago
adventured 8y ago
> What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? That premise is no more valid today with China than it was at the height of Japan-takes-over-the-world mania. Japan via Sony accumulated a large ownership position in US music. Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989 for $3.4 billion, a huge deal at the time. Nintendo and Sega took over US video gaming from Atari. What did it mean? Nothing as it turns out.
- colordrops 8y ago
  It's very different this time. Japan was under the American umbrella of influence when it was supposedly going to take over. China is a rival and a resource-rich nuclear super power with orders of magnitude more leverage and a very different set of cultural norms and behaviors. I don't think it will go the way it did with Japan.
  - theNJR 8y ago
    I tend to agree. "It will be like last time!" doesn't pan out when viewing history. The only constant is the shift in power dynamics.
  - adventured 8y ago
    Japan had a larger GDP per capita than the US from 1987 until 2000. Inflation adjusted their GDP was nearly as large in 1995 as China's is today. They did that with 1/11th the population. China will never accomplish something that dramatic economically. Japan held a lot more influence over the US at the time precisely because we were allies. China will never be allowed to acquire large numbers of important US companies (and vice versa), because we're unlikely to ever be allies. Japan's holdings of the US national debt back then as a % were also far greater than China's position is today. In 1991, it was Japanese billionaires dominating the global richest 50 list. Taikichiro Mori and Yoshiaki Tsutsumi were the two richest people in the world, at $15b and $14b. That's nothing like what is occurring today, American billionaires are dominant. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the Japanese corporate giants that ruled the global economy. Today it's American corporate giants by a large margin. China's giants mostly can't leave their own borders and never will. The regressive command economy straight-jacket - mixed with political doctrine-based restraints - that their companies are permanently ruled by, won't allow it. China's leverage today is not orders of magnitude greater than Japan at its economic peak. Asia as an example was far poorer across the board in 1985-1995 than it is today, Japan towered over Asia economically in a way China never will. In 1985, South Korea's GDP per capita was 20% that of Japan; China was 2.5% that of Japan; and so on.
bluetwo 8y ago
Look not the movie business. Even more investment.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Also a big chunk of Kik. Also note in the 1980's the Japanese were buying up a lot of Hollywood.
zwaps 8y ago
China is fighting a cultural war, as they have so often stated, and shown in Xingjang.
theNJR 8y ago
I've been thinking a lot about this since writing the parent comment two days ago. I wrote a post [0] that expands on how China uses investment to control American culture. Appreciate the great conversation had in this thread, as it helped inform my thinking. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19166794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19166794

by theNJR 8y ago

mulmen 8y ago

It sounds like you're conflating entertainment with culture.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
I’m not sure we have culture anymore that isn’t entertainment.
- mulmen 8y ago
  Really? That's sad. Our democratic values are not motivated by entertainment as far as I can tell. Neither is our capitalist approach to the economy. Really I'm not sure what component of American culture is driven by entertainment, other than the consumer oriented nature of our economy. But in that case entertainment is just one of many products.
  - atomicUpdate 8y ago
    The president is literally an ex-host for a reality TV show.
    - mulmen 8y ago
      And most Americans don’t like him.
- adventured 8y ago
  > I’m not sure we have culture anymore that isn’t entertainment. I think that's pretty unnecessarily cynical. It's all around you. It's in the people: their beliefs, their charity, their hopes, their parents, their children, their food, their routines, their compassion, their striving. 330 million people and dozens of major cultural sub-groups, it's extraordinarily rich.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Cuisine, fashion, religion, basic attitudes, lines of acceptable thought, how to behave as an individual, how to behave in a group, how to behave as a leader, how to behave as a subordinate, acceptable vices, social progress… plenty more I can think of, the majority of them not entertainment. In the US alone, this can very wildly between cities, counties, states, etc. What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different to what it means to be American in Hawaii.
  - anonlurking 8y ago
    >Cuisine, fashion, religion, basic attitudes, lines of acceptable thought, how to behave as an individual, how to behave in a group, how to behave as a leader, how to behave as a subordinate, acceptable vices, social progress Not sure if you're doing this intentionally, but these are all the things Americans definitely don't share in common or agree on, even within the same cities and states. In fact, we have never disagreed more on the subjects you listed. Largely because individuals have become increasingly atomized due to the internet age and a multitude of socioeconomic trends. In fact, I'd posit that it's not very likely that the average american shares much with his neighbor culturally, outside of entertainment, even if they superficially seem to have a lot in common. It's more common to seek out a specific group(or faction) that you can relate to, than to form a local offline community with people physically near you. >What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different than what it means to be American in Hawaii And yet there are all sorts of people in both Idaho and Hawaii. Many of whom agree on little and share almost nothing in common. I'd bet that even in a small town in Idaho very few citizens would agree with more than two of the things you listed. In general, I'd have to agree with the person you're responding to: shared, common American culture is mostly the lowest common denominator entertainment we get through TV and Internet. For example, recognizing references from "The Office"
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      > Not sure if you're doing this intentionally Don't say things like this. If you have a problem with my argumentation, then just say it; don't couch it in weasel words. As it happens, I addressed the assertion that people are different. Of course people are different, between individuals, between cities, between regions, between states, etc. You then proceeded to refute that very point, so I'm not sure what your thesis is. Is there a vast, shared culture or not? Well, obviously, I say there is. The word 'culture' doesn't dictate that everybody has exactly the same mentality, a mistaken line of thought which is very sharply indicated by your assertion that people from a small Idaho town wouldn't 'agree' with more than two of the highly general potential cultural artefacts I listed. People don't 'agree' with cultural artefacts; they participate in them, their world views are informed and shaped by them; their ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, acceptable and unacceptable, healthy and unhealthy, proper and perverse, are all developed by cultures of all sizes: from the micro of the family, the neighbourhood, and the city to the macro of the state or the nation. Whether all or even the majority of Americans are adherent to the full sum of a describable "American culture" is not the question, and it was never my thesis that it was. If I made any assertion, it's that Americans, as a whole, still adhere to at least some of the tenets of some overaching American culture, something distinct enough that it could be identified by outsiders, taking an etic point of view, as unmistakably 'American' when sufficient cultural artefacts become apparent enough. It's embedded in the language, in the way people speak, the choice of language they use, their insults, their slurs, their forbidden words, their spelling; it's embedded in the way they interact with others, the space that is kept between interlocutors, the way that strangers are treated, the relationship between a manager and his or her subordinate, and what constitutes professional courtesy; it's in the way that money is spent, the willingness to give a tip, to donate, to accept paying things at retail place, to argue when something costs too much, to seek reparation when overcharged, the wherewithal to demand to see whoever is in charge; it's embedded in manners, the use of 'please' and "thank you", the offence caused to people from other cultures who use 'please' and "thank you" in different ways, how people should address each other. There are so many more aspects of culture that I really think you're failing to see because, from an emic point of view, as a participant of the culture, you have no clue that they even constitute your culture. But even if you could identify them, cultural artefacts aren't items on a checklist, whereby only by ticking 80% or more of the boxes does one belong to the culture. Think more high for it exists, it's still relatively vast, and it's deep; some Americans might only dip a toe in it, others might be positively drowned in it, and I'd be willing to say anybody who claims "people only recognise internet memes and references from 'The Office'" are more firmly in the latter camp than the former, unbeknownst to themselves.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  I've been meaning to count the number of "news" articles on television that are stories about personalities versus non-personalities but I am positive the number is far too high.

gammateam 8y ago

> What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? A broader perspective on the world

paxys 8y ago

TikTok is fully Chinese-owned as well, and is probably the most used app by teenagers today.

icelancer 8y ago
Is that true? Wasn't aware that it had a significant hold in US society. Thought Instagram and Snapchat still dominated quick engagement.
- theNJR 8y ago
  Yes, it's big and growing quickly. The structure of kids memeing kids (who are told to do so by the TikTok AI and marketing team) plays well and spreads quickly.
  - doorbellguy 8y ago
    I agree, apps like these and previously musically (sp?) are extremely shallow and promote narcissistic traits in gullible teenagers. Glad I was not a teen in 2019.
    - icelancer 8y ago
      There were plenty of other mechanisms whenever you were in high school to promote "narcissistic traits in gullible teenagers," a sentence which is probably the most "old man yells at clouds" thing I've heard in a week.
      - doorbellguy 8y ago
        Let me clarify : I did not say this was the "only' thing that distracts teens. Your passive aggressive statement shows that you're having a bad day and want to be rude just for the sake of it. Good day.
        dang 8y ago

jorblumesea 8y ago

China "owns" them in the investment sense, but is hardly responsible for creating it or the culture that birthed the ideas. That's the real key here. If many home grown Chinese apps or concepts take off (ala TikTok), you may be right. But at the moment, like everything in China it seems they are just keen to buy/cheat/steal. The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform.

theNJR 8y ago
I think the cheat/steal method of describing China is becoming outdated. Cheat/steal is a viable technique to quickly catch up if you don't mind being a bad actor in a game theory setting. Then you have to surpass. In AI they seem to be at the late stages of stealing. The top two films in the global box office last weekend were both Chinese (The Wandering Earth, $172m and Crazy Alien, $77m). Chinese blockbusters seem to just flip American tropes (The Chinese coming to save the day Rambo style).
- withhighprod 8y ago
  Late stage of stealing.... check out who invented resnet and the Chinese names on NIPS, CVPR,ICCV
gruez 8y ago
>The only issue I can see from ownership is if they start to censor the platform. I doubt they'll do any overt censoring (eg. "no talking about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989), but I wouldn't be surprised if they do subtle manipulation like silently deemphasizing anti-China content, or emphasizing anti-westnern content (eg. infighting, failure of western democracy). The latter probably would probably even good for the site (in terms of engagement) as outrage drive cilcks.
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  They’ve been plenty overt when someone talks about Taiwan...
- 8y ago

adventured 8y ago

> What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? That premise is no more valid today with China than it was at the height of Japan-takes-over-the-world mania. Japan via Sony accumulated a large ownership position in US music. Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989 for $3.4 billion, a huge deal at the time. Nintendo and Sega took over US video gaming from Atari. What did it mean? Nothing as it turns out.

colordrops 8y ago
It's very different this time. Japan was under the American umbrella of influence when it was supposedly going to take over. China is a rival and a resource-rich nuclear super power with orders of magnitude more leverage and a very different set of cultural norms and behaviors. I don't think it will go the way it did with Japan.
- theNJR 8y ago
  I tend to agree. "It will be like last time!" doesn't pan out when viewing history. The only constant is the shift in power dynamics.
- adventured 8y ago
  Japan had a larger GDP per capita than the US from 1987 until 2000. Inflation adjusted their GDP was nearly as large in 1995 as China's is today. They did that with 1/11th the population. China will never accomplish something that dramatic economically. Japan held a lot more influence over the US at the time precisely because we were allies. China will never be allowed to acquire large numbers of important US companies (and vice versa), because we're unlikely to ever be allies. Japan's holdings of the US national debt back then as a % were also far greater than China's position is today. In 1991, it was Japanese billionaires dominating the global richest 50 list. Taikichiro Mori and Yoshiaki Tsutsumi were the two richest people in the world, at $15b and $14b. That's nothing like what is occurring today, American billionaires are dominant. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the Japanese corporate giants that ruled the global economy. Today it's American corporate giants by a large margin. China's giants mostly can't leave their own borders and never will. The regressive command economy straight-jacket - mixed with political doctrine-based restraints - that their companies are permanently ruled by, won't allow it. China's leverage today is not orders of magnitude greater than Japan at its economic peak. Asia as an example was far poorer across the board in 1985-1995 than it is today, Japan towered over Asia economically in a way China never will. In 1985, South Korea's GDP per capita was 20% that of Japan; China was 2.5% that of Japan; and so on.

bluetwo 8y ago

Look not the movie business. Even more investment.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Also a big chunk of Kik. Also note in the 1980's the Japanese were buying up a lot of Hollywood.

zwaps 8y ago

China is fighting a cultural war, as they have so often stated, and shown in Xingjang.

theNJR 8y ago

I've been thinking a lot about this since writing the parent comment two days ago. I wrote a post [0] that expands on how China uses investment to control American culture. Appreciate the great conversation had in this thread, as it helped inform my thinking. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19166794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19166794