Assignment #3 HUPU – Boys’ Dormitory

It’s hard to say that HUPU is a successful online community. As one of the oldest Chinese online sports BBS community. HUPU was founded by Dr. Hang Cheng in Chicago in 2004 which was the year after Yao Ming entered NBA. The original name of HUPU was “hoopChina” which reinforced its function as an online basketball forum. After 16 years of its establishment, HUPU still hasn’t obtained the right to broadcast NBA games. Compared to Tencent Sport’s 26 million users, it only has 5 million users with 12.6% market share.[1]

This is a male community where 89.48% of the users are male under 40[2], In China, people call them “Staight Man” which means an immature man who have little understanding of women and is slightly macho. HUPU is also a warm community. Its user’s loyalty is extremely high, over 40% of users have used it for more than 5 years. [3]“Family” is the core concept of HUPU. people call each other “JR” (Jia-Ren) which means brothers and sisters in Chinese, and the designer also combine the word “JR” with “HUPU” to generate the logo. It has even became a secret code for users to recognize each others in reality. When some JRs have difficulties in their lives, others are always willing to help them out in real life. HUPU is not a perfect community. There are also prejudice, ridicule, jealousy and bragging just like any other communities and are not free from misinformation or disinformation as well. But most JRs are willing to accept these defects and try their best to make the community a better place.

The lecture “Six Essential Pillars of a Healthy Online Community” provides a definition of a healthy online community. It defines a healthy community is:

“A community where the achievement of its core goals and mission is possible; and a place where its members can contribute and fulfill that vision without being harassed, threatened, or abused.”

I partially agree with this definition and I think a healthy online community is a community like a family that gives people a sense of belonging. It is also a community of sincerity and genuineness where people can easily “be themselves” and are encouraged to share their opinions and communicate with others sincerely without interruption of external or internal factors. From this perspective, HUPU can be seen as a healthy community.

The Establishment of HUPU Family

Before the advent of the smartphone era, TV was the only resource for Chinese people to watch NBA games. However, most NBA games were only broadcasted in the morning in China due to different time zones, and the majority of the audiences are students at schools or young professionals in the offices. Therefore how to watch the NBA games became a tricky problem. In this circumstance, HUPU came up with a solution of “NBA text streaming”. The hosts of the live room vividly described the process and scores of the games, meanwhile people can discuss with others on the comment area which also greatly added to the fun of watching NBA games.

HUPU played a significant role in propagating NBA culture after Yao Ming entered NBA. For me, as a user for more than 12 years since middle school, watching NBA games through HUPU’s “NBA text streaming” in classroom constituted my unforgettable youth memory. It even became a “classroom culture” for all the boys, we talked about “Lakers vs Celtics”, “Lebron vs Kobe” and even the sneaker cultures after class. HUPU not only introduced an exotic western world to us Chinese boys but also brought all the NBA fans together as a big family in the early age. In this way, HUPU accumulated the initial large number of loyal male users as the foundation of the dormitory culture.

With the introduction of smartphones in the next decades, the HUPU community became diversified, its topics has gradually extended from basketball, sports to technology, traveling, education and other sectors. The most famous sector is called the “Pedestrian Street” where people sharing their personal stories and opinions of almost everything from campus life to work experiences, from girlfriends to their employers. It has also became the most attractive part of HUPU and gradually formed its unique dormitory culture.

The first generation of JRs like me played a pivotal role in shaping the culture and spirit of the community. Encouraging them to stay active inside the community is the key for a healthy community and its fascinating culture.

The “Pedestrian Street” – Boy’s Dormitory

The “Pedestrian Street” is the most famous sector of HUPU.

With the rapid development of China in the last decade, Chinese young generations are under increasing pressures due to the horrible house price and the peer competition especially in tier 1 big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. It’s not easy for people to make real friends under such situations and they are no longer willing to share their true feelings and opinions with others in real life. In other words, people are always wearing a mask instead of being real. In this case, HUPU provides an excellent platform for like-minded people (They are at least NBA fans, otherwise they would not know this app) to communicate with each other and be themselves. Users are not in their real name, instead they can choose their own names to feel more comfortable. It’s just like a big dormitory for college boys, where people relaxing in their beds, listening to other people’s stories and talking sincerely about their embarrassments, secrets, their favorite basketball players, their final exam scores and the most important thing – their stories with girls.

JRs love beautiful girls like any young boys in the world and it also becomes one of the main topics of their discussion. They even run competitions for their favorite actresses every year to select the final champion after multiple rounds of voting and scoring.

JRs also love to hear others’ embarrassing stories with girls, especially stories about how others broke up with their girlfriends. JRs laugh at these ridiculous stories but also give them sincere advices. In HUPU, some animal or words were given new meanings based on these stories and even became the icon for the “Pedestrian Street”. For example, in “Pedestrian Street”, Honey Badger means people who are overconfident, it came from a story where an overconfident boy with a similar hair cut as a Honey Badger who was rejected by a girl. Most of the stories cannot be understood without the HUPU’s context, so it contributes to the formation of exclusive HUPU family to some extent and some of them even had been put into the exam for getting into the community.

Regulations and Management for HUPU Family

A healthy family ought to have their own norms to ensure that their family members are all welcomed.

People are usually tend to be more sincere and relaxed with old friends and like-minded others. Besides, high-quality and genuine stories can attract more people and contribute to the creation of a more healthy community. In this way, HUPU created its management and regulation system to reward the loyal and high-quality users and to eliminate undesirables.

To ensure the user’s quality of HUPU community, users need to browse the posts to have a fully understanding of HUPU’s culture without logging in first and have to finish an exam to be tested if they are qualified before creating a new account. The exam contains 20 questions about community culture, regulations and basic sports knowledge like “which team won the NBA championship in 2016?” or “What kind of posts would be banned?” Users have to answer 18 questions correctly to become a JR.

HUPU also has an evaluation system for users, it has 10 different titles based on JRs’ credits level. A new user cannot make new posts directly after creating his account. Instead, he or she has to make high-quality comments to gain credit first. Only JRs over level 5 can create new posts. Moreover, JRs can “like” or “dislike” the comments and posts to increase or decrease the credits of respondents. Those who deliberately insult and attack others or spread disinformation will be kicked out of the community by the administrator。

HUPU is a huge dormitory for both young boys and old boys, It is a place where people treat others like family members and can talk about anything just like college students bragging with their roommates. It is a place where everyone can express themselves sincerely. The name “JR” bond all members together as a family, which I think is the core factor for a healthy online community.

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References:

【1】http://www.woshipm.com/evaluating/1605762.html accessed November 8,2018.

【2】http://www.woshipm.com/evaluating/3278945.html accessed January 2, 2020.

【3】http://www.woshipm.com/evaluating/3434393.html accessed February 27, 2020.

【4】https://chuansongme.com/n/2546358247811 accessed September 12, 2018.