Author: Eliot Tang

With all the news and controversy around Trump and his possible impeachment, something that is not brought up enough is his influence and impact left upon other world leaders. I’m not talking about the impact and influence he inherited as a by-product of leading one of the world’s most impactful countries but rather the impact and influence of his remarkably different leadership style. Compared to Obama’s relatively honest presidential term where The New York Times claims that he only lied 18 times¹ within his 8-year term; Trump has been unabashedly aggressive and has lied time and time again even to the point of attacking journalists he disagrees with. Unfortunately, Trump’s tactics have worked, and other leaders have taken notice.

Now elected leaders in other countries such as Brazil and India are starting to mimic his tactics of harassing journalists to suppress news that may paint them in a negative light. This is an interesting parallel of the cascading effect. Previously, elected leaders had to lead honestly and follow certain societal guidelines in fear of angering the masses, thus losing their influence over the nation. Trump has completely flipped the script and has demonstrated that if you decide to just go on the offensive, things will work out for you, and unfortunately other countries are copying the tactic. This would be as if there was a new social media tool that was so impressive that it didn’t matter that most of your friends shunned it for having shady practices and morals, the benefits are potentially so large that it only took a couple of friends to use it to cause you to use it too. This cascading effect can be terrifying as we know that it only gets easier for a cascading effect to occur as more people within the network follow suit. If more and more people decide to follow suit we may be in for a world with more and more leaders who imitate Trump and if the popular vote is anything to believe in, even the Americans didn’t want that.

Reference Article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-is-spreading-his-fake-news-rhetoric-around-the-world-thats-dangerous/2019/11/19/a7b0a4c6-0af5-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html

Works Cited

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/opinion/sunday/trump-lies-obama-who-is-worse.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-is-spreading-his-fake-news-rhetoric-around-the-world-thats-dangerous/2019/11/19/a7b0a4c6-0af5-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html

Blizzard has been a mainstay in the video game industry for 19 years creating games which were massive successes and which have spanned through generations including titles such as Warcraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, and most recently Overwatch. Although Blizzard Entertainment has been a giant in the video game industry for 19 years, the company has not held a spotless track record, and the company is continuing to add blemishes to their reputation as time goes on.  

Earlier this October, controversy struck as Blizzard disciplined a player for speaking up on the recent political events happening in Hong Kong. During a tournament, a player was interviewed after a match and brought awareness to the Hong Kong protests by donning a ski mask and gas mask and stated “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age.” This put Blizzard Entertainment in a difficult position due to their ties with China as Tencent, a giant in the Chinese gaming industry, owns a stake in Blizzard and the relations between China and Hong Kong are obviously not great at the moment. Blizzard responded with a harsh disciplinary action of removing all earnings from the player, as well as banning the player for a whole year. Additionally, Blizzard punished the two commentators giving the interview by immediately dismissing both of them. This has led to an uproar within the community against Blizzard for their actions which draws a parallel to the Balance Theorem.

Prior to all of the controversy and prior to the political disagreements between China and Hong Kong there was relative balance between Blizzard, China, Hong Kong, as well as the community. If represented by a signed graph, it would be a complete signed graph with only positive edges. However, China and Hong Kong has had conflicts between each other which disrupted the balance between the four parties. This has led to the divide where Blizzard sided with China and the community siding with Hong Kong to form two parties and it has partitioned the group.  

However, Blizzard has recently taken a step back on the disciplinary actions on both the player and both commentators so it remains to be seen if the parties involved will in fact make peace with one another or if there will be a permanent divide caused.

References:

https://time.com/5702971/blizzard-esports-hearthstone-hong-kong-protests-backlash-blitzchung/