🌊 Free Tide: ‘My Wife Married Mirror and Left My Marriage in Ruins Concern Group’
Boy band 'victims' create viral Facebook group
Good morning
We’ve got some heavier news to report today…but thankfully our first headline is fairly light-hearted. Enjoy!
~ Sze Yu
Facebook group for ‘victims‘ of boy band explodes in popularity
A comedic Facebook page called ‘My Wife Married Mirror and Left My Marriage in Ruins Concern Group’ has become an overnight sensation (paywalled). The group – devoted to husbands who’s wives have been ‘stolen‘ by the boy band Mirror – was founded by RC, a 32-year-old former tour guide.
RC said his wife, whom he has been happily married to for over two years, recently joined Mirror’s fan club, and has become obsessed with everything about them. RC started the ‘My Wife Married Mirror and Left My Marriage in Ruins Concern Group’ with the aim of bringing together other husbands who were suffering the same predicament—in just three days the page has drawn over 200,000 followers, with thousands of husbands joining in to share their stories.

In other related news, yesterday was Mirror member Anson Lo’s birthday! His fans paid tens of thousands of dollars to splash his face on KMB buses and light up a cruise ship with a birthday wish.

COVID news


Coronavirus in Hong Kong
New cases: 1 (imported)
Total cases: 11,946 cases so far (91 active cases, 212 total deaths, 11,643 total recovered)
Hong Kong expected to extend most social distancing rules. Despite 30 straight days without local infection, health experts still consider the situation to be unstable. Current social distancing measures, due to expire on Wednesday, are expected to largely stay in place for at least another two weeks (paywalled).
Chief Secretary criticises ‘apologists’ of July 1 stabbing
Chief Secretary John Lee accused academics and political commentators of condoning last week’s stabbing of a police officer. He called apologists for terrorism are “sinners for 1,000 years”. Lee also warned public figures (paywalled) that freedom of speech did not absolve them of social and moral responsibilities.
“There are people who tried to play down the adverse consequences and possible harm that the extreme acts could inflict.”
— Chief Secretary John Lee
Former HKU Law dean Johannes Chan Man-mun had previously said that suggesting that residents were promoting terrorism simply by laying flowers was far-fetched. Chan argued that the laying of flowers could instead represent an act of sympathy for the attacker’s plight or an expression of dissatisfaction with the government.
Other updates
Social media accounts of major university LBGTQ+ rights groups have been blocked from WeChat. The pages of groups such as Huazhong University of Science and Technology Gay Pride and Peking University’s ColorsWorld have been removed from the app, sparking fears of LGBTQ-targeted censorship.
Hong Kong lawmaker urges government to build a Chinese Communist Party museum. Non-official Executive Council member and lawmaker Jeffrey Lam believes that the museum would help education the public on the “correct ideology“ and “correct history“ of the CCP.
UK Labour Party urges officials to snub Beijing Olympics. Britain’s main opposition party has urged ministers and the royal family to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to protest China’s refusal to allow the UN to probe human rights abuse claims.
Pro-democracy activist Andy Li could be facing life imprisonment after his case under the national security law was transferred to Hong Kong’s High Court. He is accused of conspiring with media tycoon Jimmy Lai, Lai’s aide Mark Simon and self-exiled activist Finn Lau to request external forces to impose sanctions on Hong Kong or China.
Thank you for reading Free Tide!
Donations on HT’s Patreon and PayPal pages. You can also help us out by sharing Tide with a friend!
Or consider subscribing to Paid Tide for more quality content from yours truly!