By Hung Yu-jui 洪昱睿
Taiwanese Internet celebrity Holger Chen (陳之漢), who often uses chauvinistic and vulgar expressions, has changed. After years of portraying himself as being highly critical of politics, he has started siding with certain politicians over others.
Chen is well within his rights to argue that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should be “discontinued,” while singing the praises of Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), as Taiwan is a democratic and free country.
However, many would say that Chen and Ko are simply using each other to increase their own popularity, and not to further their respective political visions.
On July 16, Chen and former New Power Party legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) collaborated to host a rally. Those in the know understood that the event was meant to elevate the status of the opportunist Ko. As things turned out, when Ko and Chen joined hands, Taiwanese saw how truly misogynistic they were.
Earlier this month, a group for female supporters of Ko’s presidential campaign arranged a performance in which dancers wore sexualized flight attendant outfits. The event was meant to repair Ko’s misogynist image, but it had the opposite effect.
In a livestream, Chen defended the event, saying that DPP Legislator Lai Pin-yu’s (賴品妤) cosplaying also “objectified women.”
It seems that Chen does not know what cosplay is. For years, Lai has been a renowned cosplayer. If Chen has no idea what a cosplayer does, he should have learned some basic information about it before making a comment.
It is almost certain that the number of cosplay fans is larger than that of Chen’s livestream audience. Once Chen’s viewers can no longer stand him, the vocal ones would criticize him directly, and the quiet ones would simply forget him. In any case, Chen’s fan base will decrease day by day, because he has been turning more people away from him.
Hung Yu-jui is a Japanese-language teacher and translator.
Translated by Emma Liu
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