Is This Racist Towards Asians? | Fung Bros

Is this white TikToker being racist by making jokes about living with her Asian boyfriend? What do you think? What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Hot Pop Boys. David and Andrew here. We got to talk about this. There's this white TikToker girl who I believe is in Germany, and she's going super viral for making these jokes about how different the culture is when she's living with her Asian boyfriend. People being outraged at her, people supporting her, people being outraged at the outrage. Man, I'm telling you, this is where the Asian community split. They cannot decide on anything. Yeah. Apparently this issue is of extreme gravity. All right. But it does bring up some interesting points and we want to talk about it. So first off, let's start off the video talking about the things we like about her TikToks and the things that we might not like so much. Okay. First off, you got to say it is comedy. She is attempting to be a comedian. Her TikTok career is based around cultural comedy. I will say one thing. She is, generally, I think the intent is to be positive about her boyfriend. She lives in a household that's very, very traditional, and she is experiencing all these things. She's immersed in the culture. However, she is poking fun at him. I would say on the downside, the content or the comedy execution is cringy. That's fair. I mean, I think that she does have some kind of surprisingly deep cut jokes in there about culture that you kind of have to live in a Chinese household to even experience. But the kind of the faces she's making, this whole TikTok meme thing, it's executed a little shaky. Right. It's a little cringy. She's clearly not Tina Fey. She is an amateur comedian, which is what people go to TikTok for. Right. One thing that I know a lot of people, and they're mostly guys who are championing her on this, is she said her Asian boyfriend's penis is large. And that was just like, you know, a lot of Asian guys are just taking that as a compliment. But some people are seeing that as kind of fetishization and exoticizing something and maybe trolling other Asian guys to get views because she knows that when she says stuff like that, there will be like Asian guy fans who appreciate that. A pro you could argue is the content side. It's funny enough that some people would argue that a con, you know, a knock against her is also the content because she could be viewed as exoticizing the Asian culture, saying that chopsticks are very complicated to use, like being like, what are these sauces? This is weird. I think she's literally German in Germany. Another good part is it actually did make me laugh when she pointed out the grandparents' paintings because I was just like, yo, we got some grandparents painting in our, you know, house that we grew up in. So I was like, what a good point. Hey, when she said that you eat off art as in to compliment how beautiful the fine China plates are, I thought that was clearly a compliment. You had some nice plates. Yeah. Like if a white girl was dating me, she could not make these TikToks because my house will not look like this. No, you wouldn't have the rice cookers from 1995. Yo, those are some old, those are not the cuckoo rice cookers. Not with the digital. It's not the Zojirushi. At the end of the day, I think that a lot of the crowd that went out against this German TikToker, white girl, essentially don't like it. Like white people commenting on the culture. Like for example, had she been black and doing the same thing, I think people would have been more like more receptive to it. Yeah. I think what you're saying is that basically when we see a white face say anything about Asian culture, and even if it's kind of positive, but still also has a tinge of kind of jokingness that we usually, or otherness, we usually roll with the negative side of it. And we're like, whoa, this person's being negative because they're white. Now she is, if she's from Germany and in Germany, you know, they're not as like woke like America is. So this is not like a liberal arts school, a white girl from the East coast. This is literally a girl in Germany. If that's the case, then like, do we give her a break and kind of give her a pass? Like, Hey, Germans are kind of like behind on the whole woke stuff, like chill on it. And I would say on this particular issue, the large pool of like gray colored moderates are actually more going, going against the woke crowd. I do think that not to fully defend her, but we do have to look at the intentions of the TikTokers because I've seen a lot worse TikToks out there. Well, if she's living with a Chinese dude and dating him, and I'm assuming having sex with him and enjoying having sex with him, if she enjoys having sex with this guy, because she loves him, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that, that provides a lot And it also matters that, you know, I think a lot of Asian bros are feeling like, Oh, this is complimentary. And a lot more people on the woke side are like, Hey guys, this is the same stuff that white men do to Asian women. And it's problematic. It is true that if she, if it was a white guy making these exact same TikToks about his Asian girlfriend, he would get roasted. Yes, that is, that is true. That is true. But you would also have to say that the gender dynamics would be also completely different. And it's not right. It's not wrong. It is what it is. You could argue we live in a patriarchal society. It's been that way for a long time. So when it comes to the question, is she being racist or not, David, what's your take? No. I mean, I think she's just being German. You know, Germans, they don't have that good of a sense of humor for people who have spent a lot of time internationally. Like I remember when we were living, I was living in Shanghai. There was like a lot of Europeans around and I would always try to find out the European stereotypes about everybody. And everybody said the Germans like kind of struggled with modern sarcasm. From a comedic standpoint, from a TikTok standpoint, she's not being racist. Unless. Was it cringy though? Unless. No, it was cringy. But unless she touted herself as like a super woke person, I don't think it's racist. I do think that once you put that label on yourself, like, hey, I know better. I know culture. Then you probably can't fully make these like simplistic jokes. But no, I don't think it was racist. Now what would have been racist is if she did stuff like, well, when me and my Asian boyfriend have babies, they'll look like this. That would have been like a little bit like, whoa, chill, girl. Like that's not really, that's really bad comedy in that sense. But yeah, I mean, I feel like there's more racist jokes you could have made. It's not racist. I thought it would have been funny if she would have put a wiener schnitzel on some noodles or something. I don't know. Some German or some Asian. I don't know. It would make me laugh. Like, it's interesting to see because it's like a lot of people don't understand when you're even though it's an interracial relationship, it's not an intercultural relationship because both people are like born and raised in America. This is a true interracial, intercultural relationship, like where this person's in Germany, which is homogenous. This guy's from China. That's homogenous. And she's living in a Chinese household in Germany. So of course, they're going to have like these crazy perspectives on comedy and like the differences like that we might find like cringe inducing in America. You know, for me, with everything that's going on and all the Asian attacks that are very, very real, taking all that stuff into consideration because we think about that stuff a lot. I kind of got like this new standard on how to judge stuff on how racist it is. And my standard is how directly does this encourage hate crimes against Asians? That's my new standard. Is this thing going to lead to a crime? Now, there are different acts and things that are said that you can say pretty clearly are going to lead to more hate crimes against Asians. And there are things, in my opinion, like this TikTok that are very, very, very far from it. Just sometimes I'm shocked that the Asian community gravitates like fireflies to a lantern to the most trivial things. I get it. It's a little bit easier to understand these like softball microcosms than like actual issues that like dictate these larger dynamics. But hey, man, 2022, however you need to think about it, think about it. I know that fetishization, true fetishization is actually overall not good. I agree. However, there's a thin line between feeling desired and appreciated and fetishization. There's a line that you can cross. And I feel like Asian guys are like, dude, we just got ignored and rejected by so many women over the decades that we could use just people who tow that line, please. We'll call it out. Let us call it out. There is a little bit of a feeling of like, you guys are not going to cancel this one above average white girl who likes us. Like you're not canceling her. We're taking this, guys. Let us be the one. And you know what I did like about it too is like, this guy is not like a K-drama, K-pop model. This guy is like a Chinese hacker, which is like, you would say on the scale of Asian desire, really below the K-pop guy. So, you know, I think that's noteworthy. She's literally saying she appreciates traditional Asian guys who use the computer a lot. Do you understand that on the internet, she is going to be very, very popular? Okay. Her TikToks could have been racist, but I don't think they were. So anyways, guys, that's going to wrap up our take on whether this white TikTok girl from Germany is being racist when she makes jokes about her Asian boyfriend. Please let us know in the comments down below what you think. And again, it's the Hot Pop Boys. Until next time we out. Peace.