A Deep Dive into subtle asian traits, Three Years Later

Growing up in Sacramento, California in a mixed race family, I did not have a lot of exposure to or experience with the Asian American community. Though I attended predominantly white Catholic schools my entire life, I had the privilege of participating in a Filipino cultural club, Pearl of the Orient, at my all-girls’ high school, which introduced me to the most Filipinos I’d ever met in my life at that point and my favorite cultural tradition, the tinikling dance.

(Tinikling is the national dance of the Philippines. Here is an example by my college’s Filipino club, Isang Bansa, from our Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN) in 2018. I’m dancing in the light green dress in the front on the left at the beginning.)

After my high school very generously defunded and disbanded the very Filipino cultural club that made me passionate about my family’s culture and history (okay, maybe I’m still bitter), I immersed myself in the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community at my college, Loyola Marymount University, during my freshman year. For the first time in my life, the majority of my friends were Asian American. I even went on to minor in Asian-Pacific American studies, hoping to learn more about the history that shaped my family and bring our peoples’ stories to the table in my film classes.

At the beginning of my third year in fall 2018, I started learning more about our community in a format I hadn’t before: memes.

Back when Facebook memes were still considered cool and “dank,” my friends introduced me to a growing Asian meme FB group called “subtle asian traits.” (Frequently referred to as “SAT.”) Started by Asian Australians, the group was a platform for Asians from across the world, both in Asia and the diaspora communities, to share memes about their experiences that other Asians could relate to. Memes ranged in topics from food (mostly boba), to language, strict parents, academia (mostly Kumon), and more.

My friends and I constantly tagged each other in posts to share the laugh, and soon enough, it seemed like everyone in the API community around me in real life was part of the group.

What started out as jokes between friends and community members exploded into one of the largest Asian diasporic community spaces online, with nearly 2 million members ranging widely in age, background, and location. Even non-Asian people began joining to consume and share memes with their Asian friends, partners, and family members. SAT spawned dozens of spin-off groups with more specific focuses, such as topics, industries, and different Asian ethnicities. Some examples include Subtle Filipino Traits, subtle asian mental health, Asian Creative Network, Subtle Curry Traits, and arguably the most popular spin-off, subtle asian dating.

FB Groups that pop up when I search “subtle.” Yes, even “subtle christian traits” is a (more white) spin-off.

Three years later, SAT remains incredibly active, with new memes and the occasional heartfelt post about family or culture gracing my feed. SAT won a Facebook Community Award this past October and stories from the group will even be adapted into a TV show.

Even major celebrities have participated in SAT and its off-shoots for years, such as comedian Hasan Minhaj, Shang-Chi actor Simu Liu, and singer AJ Rafael.

SAT has become a cultural hub for Asians across the world to gather, exchange experiences, and support one another. But as with any community, SAT isn’t without its issues, many of which reflect the real-life problems within the API community.

Though many people view the memes as lighthearted and fun, some Asians believe that they reinforce stereotypes of Asian people. The memes often reference generally surface-level Asian diasporic experiences of drinking boba everyday or having tiger parents—stereotypes that are already circulated and perpetuated by non-Asians. Where is the line drawn between joking about experiences that happen to be common within the community and applying stereotypes onto ourselves for external parties to continue laughing at?

The Asian immigrant and diasporic community is also not a monolith, which others have pointed out as an issue raised by these posts. For example, many memes reference Asian immigrant parents putting their children in extracurricular activities growing up, which requires parents to have disposable income—overshadowing the existence and experiences of Asian families who don’t. This erasure is already a major issue within the Asian American community, where the struggles of working class Asians and Asians living in poverty are hardly acknowledged due to the Model Minority Myth.

Another major issue is the Asian representation in SAT, which tends to usually be… East Asian. Sometimes Filipino or Indian, but almost always East Asian.

South Asians have especially reported experiencing racism in the group since its inception. In 2018, member Alisha Vavilakolanu witnessed the use of slurs against South Asians in the comment sections on SAT posts. When she looked up the group’s moderator team, she found no South Asians; she worried her community would continue to be overlooked and harmed in SAT. Others shared her concerns, which eventually led to the creation of Subtle Curry Traits.

SAT also tends to stay out of politics as much as it can, especially internationally. I remember a couple years ago, when news about China placing the Uyghur population in concentration camps in Xinjiang gained a lot of traction in Western media, members of SAT tried to post about it to raise awareness, but the moderators wouldn’t approve their posts for publication or would immediately turn the comments off, shortly before deleting the post altogether. I even remember some members trying a Trojan horse tactic, submitting memes for post approval and, once they were published, editing the posts to instead raise awareness of the concentration camps. It didn’t take long for moderators to figure out what was going on and delete them.

I can’t provide screenshots or links since the posts I personally saw were deleted, but it appears that this avoidance of international politics remains a major issue to this day.

Any kind of political advocacy that is allowed in the group is generally shallow, usually focusing on softer issues like Asian representation in media. It’s fighting racism against mostly East Asians without questioning the larger government systems at play perpetuating it or showing up for other communities of color. This political approach in the Asian American community is often called “boba liberalism.” Sarah Mae Dizon explains it best:

“It’s viewing Asian-American identity in the exact way that SAT portrays it: merchandise to buy, content to consume, and food to eat. Boba liberalism is reliant on capitalism and fails to interrogate the way our homelands have been ravaged by the Western countries in which we grew up. It’s about being solely focused on representation in media and politics; it’s about viewing our collegiate Asian student organizations as the vanguard of progress for our communities. Boba liberalism gave us Andrew Yang, who used model minority jokes as a campaign strategy.”

The moderators seem to want to avoid rocking the sociopolitical boat as much as they can in the group, considering the diversity of backgrounds and countries represented. But this instead leaves us with half-hearted responses to issues facing Asian communities worldwide, such as the surge in anti-Asian racism in the pandemic and our community’s allyship to the Black community in 2020.

To the moderators’ credit, SAT is a very high-traffic group that was originally run by teenagers for free; content moderation is going to be difficult. SAT’s “about” section states: “While we try our best to monitor posts and comments in the group, we claim no responsibility and do not endorse/dissuade what occurs inside this group.” But as SAT becomes more commercialized, I would expect that the people and resources needed to better moderate the group are much more accessible now.

SAT will likely never provide ample space for or celebrate all Asians, but the moderators still need to put in the work to do better by the members. Thankfully, the off-shoot groups provide better spaces for those of us who don’t fit the Western-raised, middle class, East Asian mold.

But I still can’t completely write off SAT, at least for myself. Between all the meme posts, it’s not hard to find long, heartfelt posts people share about their personal lives. I’ve read moving accounts of people’s complex relationships with their parents, usually written in reflection after losing a parent. I’ve also witnessed people celebrating major milestones in their lives, such as finishing a project or winning a competition, where they felt pride in their ability to represent and uplift our community in their success.

Over Halloween, my feed was filled with countless photos of SAT members excitedly dressing up as characters from iconic Asian-centric media from the past year, such as Raya and the Last Dragon, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Squid Game.

I’d never seen so many new Asian characters in the span of one year that could become popular Halloween costumes; even outside of SAT, I saw countless Squid Game inspired costumes on other social media. This Halloween truly felt like something special for our community.

Despite the silliness of the memes and occasionally shallow portrayal of Asian identity, this online community has still impacted countless people’s real-life relationships to their cultures and families. Anne Gu, one of the group’s creators, shared that a post in 2018 reminded her of a traditional Chinese dish her family used to cook for her as a child. After asking her parents to prepare it for her again, she felt a new level of intergenerational connection. I love sharing the memes with my own family, especially Tagalog-related ones with my relatives who actually understand the language; it always gets a laugh out of them! Tagalog wasn’t passed down in my family, so being able to connect with my family through these jokes feels really special.

Many of my friends still actively use SAT and its offshoots as well. Since graduating, everyone’s moved far away, leaving us spread out across the world. But the rush of nostalgia I feel when I see my friends tag each other in memes on my feed makes the distance feel just a little shorter, if only for a moment.

SAT may be the start of one’s foray into online Asian community spaces, but it shouldn’t be the last—especially at a time when we need to unite in our advocacy both for our own community and others. The issues highlighted in the lack of representation in the memes—the treatment of South Asians, the erasure of poor Asians, the avoidance of major political issues—are great places to start for your education and activism.

Do you feel represented by groups like SAT and their memes? Let us know in the comments below! Thank you!

Lynna Burgamy

Update: 2024-12-03

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A Deep Dive into subtle asian traits, Three Years Later

Lynna Burgamy

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