History of Hongkongggag 2024-Present: Difference between revisions

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Created page with "== Hongkongggag Renaissance (December 2024-December 2025) == With a transition in leadership, new reforms, more new citizens in the server, as well as increasing follower numbers in 2025, Card0 would officially announce on March 18th 2025 that a new era had (retroactively) begun: the Hongkongggag Renaissance. The new era was characterized by structural and creative innovation, including the 18 District Miku Project, the creation of the International Queer Initiative, an..."
 
 
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=== Scheduled Events Policy ===
=== Scheduled Events Policy ===

Latest revision as of 22:26, 11 August 2026

Hongkongggag Renaissance (December 2024-December 2025)

With a transition in leadership, new reforms, more new citizens in the server, as well as increasing follower numbers in 2025, Card0 would officially announce on March 18th 2025 that a new era had (retroactively) begun: the Hongkongggag Renaissance. The new era was characterized by structural and creative innovation, including the 18 District Miku Project, the creation of the International Queer Initiative, and Card0’s formal step back from daily operations, a transition he had planned for years. The year ended with the community rallying to provide aid after the Tai Po fires and the fifth Community Awards.

Staff during this period:

Founder: Card0

Admins: Lemontea, Salmon, Tolmo, Bossuuu, Jasper, Astra, Greentea, Salami, Joyce

Moderators: Lieutenant.Quattro, zt, Polaris, Sumii, Ame, Saera, Boba, Livie, Chris, Sleepy, Tuck, Nigel, Syntax, Expired Potato, Asianbarb

Promotions: Nigel, Syntax, Joyce (December 2024), Expired Potato (May 2025), Asianbarb (July 2025)

Resignations/Demotions: Saera (January 2025), Thoth (February 2025), Sage (May 2025), Sayonara (July 2025)

Notable members who joined during this era:

2024 Community Awards

The Fourth Hongkongggag Community Awards were hosted on December 12th 2024, which marked the first awards ceremony to not be co-hosted or co-planned by flutters. The event was hosted by Card0 as well as some other Staff members like Astra, Syntax and Zt. Around 30 people received awards, with around 30 people in total attending, though only around 20 people were in the VC at any given time. In addition, several categories were open for public voting, including the Member of Impact Award, which was awarded to Nigel.

Expanding Page Access

On January 25th 2025, after weeks of deliberation, Card0 announced he was, for the first time in years, expanding page access to 2 admins, those being the newly promoted Astra and greentea. These two Admins were also the first Admins with access to the page that didn’t come from the old WhatsApp group, with Lemontea and Salmon having page access from during the early period of the page.

Follower Boom

February marked a pivotal moment for Hongkongggag as the page experienced a sudden surge in followers, riding a wave of renewed interest that swept across Hong Kong’s meme scene. New formats like viral starter packs roasting local schools and neighborhoods that resonated with people, while new reels capitalized on trending audio clips. Collaborations with pages like br0wnhub, majorcantotraits, chaoshongkong, and thehkobserver amplified reach, increasing the follower count of the page.

Behind the numbers, though, was a shift in creative energy, accompanied by a shift in the energy of the Staff team. Memes became sharper, more self-aware, and unapologetically local, with a return to more community participation in helping make memes, something that had been lost during late 2024. With this, the community realised that the vibe of the page was shifting, especially as Hongkongggag became more dominant in the Hong Kong English meme page sphere, regaining more of its influence that had been dormant for a while.

Creation of the Advisory Groups

To help with improving tier lists, as well as a new format: bingo card templates, Card0 would create two new advisory groups: the Tier List Advisory Group and the Bingo Card Advisory Group. These groups helped improve the quality of bingo cards and tier lists. He would later create the Shenzhen Memes Advisory Group.

18 District Miku Project

Although this project had begun in September 2024, the project was completed on March 9th 2025: Miku Day, following several delays. Initially, while Card0 wanted the project to be done in December, this was scrapped. Card0 had organised this alongside Rena and TearCea, who and 16 additional artists helped create a Hatsune Miku OC for every district in Hong Kong. Despite difficulties, the project was deemed a relative success by its organizers.

Technological Reforms

Throughout March, a few reforms were created in the server to help streamline the process for new members in the server. Specifically, the new introduction system was fixed by Syntax to make it so brand new people joining the server had to send an introduction, with no texting access to any other channel at all, before they could be given the citizen rank. More importantly, Jasper implemented automatic ranks that were given through Arcane levels, making the system automatic for the first time.

International Queer Initiative

After a few months of planning, following its proposal by Card0 in Vision 2025, the International Queer Initiative was announced to the public on March 27th 2025, with a few LGBT+ pages, most of them based in Hong Kong as its first members. The group aimed to spread LGBT awareness and co-share news/petitions/resources together.

Spring Follower Boom

For the first time in a while, Hongkongggag had experienced a major follower boom, in the sense that the page would go from 86K to 90K in the span of a week. Although follower growth had been fairly positive since late 2024, things would improve drastically in March as well as April, with a few posts going semi-viral. This continued into May, with school starter packs, as well as other semi-viral memes.

Pokemon TCG Pocket Tournament

With the popularity of Pokemon TCG Pocket, Card0, alongside Joyce decided to co-host a Pokemon TCG Pocket Tournament, with over 20 players taking part. The winner, decided by coin toss as a result of the other person being suddenly unreachable, was Renee.

Hitting 100K

Thanks to a surge in followers, fueled by a string of semi-viral memes, the page’s growth skyrocketed throughout early 2025. By May, hitting 100K followers wasn’t just a hopeful milestone; it was practically inevitable. Card0, Tolmo and Polaris had initially guessed it would happen before July, but as engagement kept climbing, the timeline shifted. By May 10th, the numbers were rising so fast that reaching the goal by the end of the month seemed almost certain, if not within the week.

On the night May 12th 2025, with the follower count being so close, an impromptu watch party, which saw around 25 people join, was held in the server as Card0 implored everyone he knew to get others to follow. And at around 10:12pm, the page hit 100K, though the number fluctuated slightly for 15 minutes. This was marked by celebration in the voice call, as well as reactions in the server and page at large.

Card0's Step Back

From June/July onwards, Card0 formally stepped back from his server responsibilities. While he remained semi-active to active within the community, he no longer handled the day-to-day administrative tasks, which included managing smaller server operations like issuing punishments or dealing with problematic members. In addition, other staff members began to take a more active role in the server. He also encouraged non-staff members to host more events in the server.

In addition, this period also saw the promotion of new Staff to the team, with Expired potato promoted on May 30th 2025, and Asianbarb on July 11th 2025. In addition, both Salami and Joyce to the role of Admin on May 25th 2025 also solidified the leadership transition of December 2024, with Joyce gaining page access as well. Inactive moderators Sage and Sayonara would be demoted around the same time as well.

Note: Thoth resigned in January 2025 as well, due to real life reasons.

Blood on the Clocktower

Throughout the summer, Number_21 would host a variety of sessions of Blood on the Clocktower biweekly, a social deduction game similar to Mafia/Werewolf. This event was also promoted on the page, and saw considerable popularity.

2025 HKGAG Music Festival

With the success of the previous two Music Festivals in 2023 and 2024 respectively, a third MusicFest was announced in June 2025, with the submission deadline set to August 12th. However, this time the competition was slightly changed as it would include a competition format, in which artists would be given a score out of 10 by Boba who was serving as the Judge, and the winner being the one with the highest score. This also marked the first MusicFest to not include Drotoch, who was unable to host the event. In addition, the event was pushed to August 16th for a few days, before it was delayed back to its original date of August 17th.

During the event, over 25-30 people joined the event, though there were also technical difficulties on Card0's side. This also marked the longest MusicFest in terms of time with the event lasting for 2 hours. The winner was The Lemon Ones, with Ombré coming in 2nd place, and Marcus Pangregrew in 3rd.

TearCea Incident

On October 12th 2025, Card0 made an announcement in the Affiliates group chat on Instagram, asking that he would be accepting new applications for Ambassador, in the hopes that a new round of affiliates can be promoted, the first in over a year. TearCea, having helped Card0 a lot on the 18 District Miku Project as well as other advisory groups, applied to join, however Card0 vetoed him on the grounds that he was too passive-aggressive, while also trusting misinformation from banned members before even clarifying with Card0. Shortly after, TearCea accused Card0 of covering up incidents in the server, despite counter-arguments by Card0 and Nigel, he then proceeded to send a screenshot of staff-chat, which he didn't elaborate on how he found it. As staff-chat was obviously supposed to be private, Card0 tried to get him to explain where the screenshot came from, but TearCea would then leave both the server and chat.

Shortly after, TearCea was formally demoted from both Affiliate, and his role in the advisory chats (Card0 had already told him he would be demoted after sharing misinformation about covering up incidents).

Password Crisis

Around 11pm HKT on November 2nd 2025, Card0 reported that someone had sent an odd message on the account in the Tier List Advisory Group, as none of the Admins who had access to the account said that they sent it, Card0 thought that this was a security breach, with someone somehow gaining access to the page. He the resetted the password, however upon sending it to the other Admins with page access, they said that they couldn't login, with Card0 being unable to login on other devices. Later that night, Card0 would make an announcement in the vice-and-above channel asking for help, with catgirlmutant providing most of the advice alongside other Staff such as Astra and Polaris

The next morning, at 10:37am, Card0 would make a plea to the community, both on the discord server and the page, asking for anyone who might know the issue. Later that day, Tier List Advisory Group member Chzvii said that they had been the one to sent the message, but the conversation made it seem like it was being sent from the Hongkongggag account, causing a mass panic. However, the issue with the password persisted, until around 6:30pm, when Cardigan Pardeau helped Astra to solve it while Card0 was busy. For some reason, the password reset worked on his end, and soon all access to the page was restored for all Admins with page access.

New Ambassadors & Functional Affiliates

After more than a year with no new Ambassadors, Card0 would promote the following Affiliates to Ambassador on November 7th 2025.

Shortly after on November 14th 2025, Card0 would introduce the idea of Functional Affiliates, which would be just like regular affiliates except that they represented a specific professional community or passionate interest group (eg: music, engineering), similar to Hong Kong's real life functional constituencies. The first Functional Affiliates were AquaEclipse324 for Science, GravityDuke for Chemistry, and Polaris for Medicine.

Aftermath of Tai Po Fires

On November 26th 2025, a catastrophic fire broke out in Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po, which lead to Card0 turning the server and page into a resource sharing page, sharing updates and how volunteers can go and help. Many Tai Po-based followers, as well as those who lived near the area, would join the server to help out, such as Yuma and Vespera/MV3 no.1 fan helping coordinate. As the server also made pings about important updates regarding the fire, many new members joined as well, as Jasper waived the introduction requirement for new members if they wanted ot get Citizen. This also put a pause on memes and regular content, which only resumed the following Monday. Several fundraisers were also posted on the page, with multiple artists collaborating with Hongkongggag in order to post art fundraisers to raise funds for those affected by the fires.

2025 Community Awards

For the fifth time, the Hongkongggag Community Awards were held once again, on December 17th 2025, with around 28 people winning, with the competition lasting for around 40-45 minutes. Several categories were open for voting, but because of many people filling in answers that didn't make sense, Card0 said that next year's awards will feature only multiple choice pre-set answers. Lieutenant Quattro won Member of Impact.

Outreach Era (January 2026-Present)

Hongkongggag during this era has so far, experienced notable changes to the interactions with the page, as well as ways of boosting community activity. Reforms continued with relaxed meetup rules for adults and the introduction of a seventh rank, Luminary, signaling an evolving hierarchy.

Staff during this period:

Founder: Card0

Admins: Lemontea, Salmon, Tolmo, Bossuuu, Jasper, Astra, Salami, Joyce, Boba

Moderators: zt, Polaris, Sumii, Ame, Chris, Sleepy, Tuck, Syntax, Expired Potato, Asianbarb, Blep, Hill, Aurelia, Sugar, Raymond

Promotions: Blep (March 2026), Hill, Aurelia (April 2026), Sugar (May 2026), Raymond (June 2026)

Resignations/Demotions: Livie, Greentea (March 2026), Nigel (April 2026), Lieutenant Quattro (June 2026)

Notable members who joined during this era:

Scheduled Events Policy

As part of Vision 2026, one of Card0's main goals was to "have at least 2 scheduled events per month", something that was put into action by him and other staff members, especially Expired potato and Greentea. This increased over the course of 2026 with more and more scheduled events, with at least 3 scheduled events being held each month.

Revival of Satirical Maps

In early January, Card0 asked on the page story on whether people would want to see a revival of Satirical Maps, with most saying they would. The first of these would go live on January 8th 2026, depicting Tsim Sha Tsui. This time however, the maps were branded as "honest maps", and they would become a semi-regular occurence rather than being seasonal, though they would be posted more infrequently.;

New Advisory Groups

On January 23rd 2026, Card0 announced the creation of new university advisory groups in a similar vein to the tier list, bingo card and Shenzhen meme advisory groups, with the universities covered being HKU, CU, UST, CityU, PolyU and EDU. A few days later, he would revamp the Shenzhen meme advisory group by purging people who didn't contribute, leaving only 4 members left in the group.

Anti-MLM Campaign

In Early February, Card0 announced an anti-MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) campaign, which included an awareness infographic posted on the page, as well as an event educating people on how to spot and avoid MLMs.

Bauhinia Rising Political Sim

While there were previous discussions of another polsim after Tsz Kong, none came to fruition until Card0 decided to host a new one, this time set in Hong Kong in a timeline where the 2019 protests didn't happen. The sim began with 6 players, each representing the Democratic, Civic, DAB, FTU, PP-LSD and Demosisto parties respectively, with more members joining later. The sim ended on July 19th 2026 after low activity, though a Taiwan sim was proposed.

Channel Reorganisation

Throughout February and March, some channels were moved around or deleted to avoid clutter, with the school-specific channels being moved to their own category, while the interests channel was split, with the latter being done after a discussion on how to increase the usage of lesser used interest channels. Moreover, the driving-motoring and general-hobbies channels would be retired, with the latter replaced with a forum for specific hobbies that were too niche to deserve their own channel. This inadvertedly had the effect of improving member retention as with less clutter, more members were keen to stay and chat.

Shadowban Crisis, New Moderators

On March 28th 2026, the page found itself hit with the worst shadowban in its recent history, while followers decreased over the weekend at a rapid rate. Initially Card0 only decided to ask the Staff, Ambassadors and Affiliates to help, however seeing that many members were too busy or ghosted him, he called on the entire community to help, where reception was initially limited but soon intensified as people began to help.

The issue would gradually recover from Monday onwards with a new meme that went semi-viral, giving the page a follower boost. Around the same time, Greentea would resign from Admin, while Boba would be promoted at the same time.

hello all. zoe here. i think some of yall probably don't know me since i never talk anymore. therefore i am retiring after 4 yrs effective immediately. i can finally be free from this godforsaken hellhole

jk this server is amazing. ive been here since 2021 which holy shit five years. for a long time it was a big part of my life, maybe even one of the most important things. ive made a lot of really happy memories here and met a lot of amazing people here. special thanks to @zt because im probably closest to you; im very happy to have found a friend this great through here. hopefully now that im gone cardo lets u take my place as admin. but it has been four years and this server has watched me grow a lot, move to two countries, and ive outgrown being active here although i still very much treasure this place.

this will probably be the only time you ever hear me say this so listen up but you should appreciate card0 more. as the self proclaimed #1 cardo hater ik its rly fun to hate on him but he's done, obviously, an insane amount for this server. he's created a lgbtq friendly pandem english hk space, and he's put a lot of work into doing it.

its sad that i wont be able to fulfill my plan of taking over the server when cardo dies of stress bcs of us in a few years but honestly, this place is a shithole i ain't want it obviously i won't be leaving so if there's any events fun enough i will join. hit me up if u play val on hk servers or watch vct. thanks to staff and everyone for a very, very good four years. glory to yuutopia.

In addition, reforms to the mod nomination process were passed with members now allowed to self-nominate, so long as they had backing from two members. Aurelia and Hill would also be promoted around the same time albeit under the old system, while Blep was promoted a month earlier. Salami would also be given page access around the same time, marking the first time since 2020 that 7 people had access to the page.

Reform of Meetup Rules

While the server had a history of new members looking to meetup in real life, this was restricted due to previous incidents. However after some discussions within Staff suggested by Boba, reforms were put out for the community to vote on April 7th 2026 to relax the rules for 18+ members. The poll passed, and a hangout thread was created in the university-graduated channel to help organize hangouts.

Resignation of Nigel

On Aprl 21st 2026, Card0 made a sudden announcement in the morning (HKT) shortly after Nigel left the discord server during the early morrning.

Hi guys, Nigel has resigned from Moderator and left the server due to private reasons

He also mentioned that Nigel also resigned from Ambassador. As Nigel was a popular moderator and member of the server, many people speculated on what happened, with a few being insensitive, making fun of the situation. A day later, he put forward a second statement:

sorry for the ping but with all the discussion that happened with Nigel's resignation, as well as people being very insensitive, I think its important to disclose the fact that he committed many inappropriate actions that crossed many physical boundaries that affected members of Staff and others in this community in real life. As such he resigned due to these reasons.

We advise you to cut off ties with Nigel because of this, and not to joke around about this. While we acknowledge that Nigel has done a lot of good for the community, this does not erase the severity of his actions, which affected several people, including me personally.

I apologise for not elaborating more yesterday, as I was still shaken by what had happened and I didn't know what I could share. But I feel like now is the time to be more transparent about this. I hope the community can heal and move on from this

For obvious reasons, please dont contact me or staff for any further personal questions

This was met with some shock, with a few members also privately messaging Card0 to express their condolences for what happened.

The Seventh Rank

For the first time since early 2021, 852R would see the introduction of a new rank to the six rank system: Luminary, which was created after a poll on April 21st-22nd 2026. This new rank, colored poppy blue, would be ranked above Prestige, be appointed ad-hoc, while Vice would made into a rank that members could achieve via the YUU rewards system.

Diaspora Advisory Groups

In May, Card0 created new diaspora advisory groups for the Canadian, British and American Hong Kong diasporas respectively, while the pre-existing Sydneyggag chat was rennamed into the Australian diaspora advisory group. The British group in particular, was a de-facto successor of the resurgence-era Bureau of British Affairs.

Later, on July 11th 2026, a Singaporean group was created.

More New Moderators

Following the trend set earlier that year, two new members were promoted to Moderator, Saltysugarr on May 3th 2026, and Raymond on June 4th 2026. Interestingly, Sugar was the fastest person to go from Citizen to Moderator since 2022, having joined only in March 2026.

Follower Loss & Backrooms Collaboration

In late May, Instagram began removing bot accounts and inactive followers, leading to Hongkongggag to experience almost daily follower losses for nearly two weeks, bringing the follower count down below 120K for two days. However, at the same time the page also collaborated with Movie Movie to promote the Backrooms movie: Hongkongggag's largest collaboration ever. Aside from a sponsored meme post ranking liminal spaces in Hong Kong, a ticket giveaway went live on June 3rd 2026, with 20 tickets up for grabs. This helped gradually restore the page's followers, bringing it back up to 120K, before the follower count dropped drastically again.

PresidentLee Controversy

PresidentLee, a prominent and active member, had garnered a lot of dislike from other members due to his actions that were seen as annoying or ragebaity, while also saying insensitive messages to try and "trigger" other people. Although he was temporarily banned for a month when he made light of the fallout of Nigel's resignation, he would return not long after his ban expired. While at first most members didn't have any serious concerns, these soon escalated. As a final warning, Lee was told that if he didn't change his behavior, Staff would issue an indefinite ban. With more and more concerns rising from other members, and Lee ignoring this warning, Staff banned him on June 19th 2026 which many active members celebrated.

University Info Night

On July 16th 2026, Polaris hosted a uni info night with several members, both existing and new members, presenting on local and international universities. The event saw good attendance, and even overran due to how many speakers there were. Card0 also livestreamed the event on the page, the first example of streaming from his laptop.

Hongkongggag Medium

Card0 began to publish articles about Hong Kong and other similar issues on Medium, a site he had used for one article back in 2021, but forgot about it. These issues came from a progressive/left-leaning viewpoint.

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