Elderly Care: Taking the Good Morning Image Seriously
A guest essay from Sam Robbins and Mei-chun Lee. We also mourn the passing of Chandler Davis.
Dear all,
Hello from rainy Taipei. We mourn Chandler Davis, who passed away last week. His extraordinary life moves us to be more brave, more present, more alive.
A bit about Chandler: He was a math professor at the University of Michigan when he was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953. He refused to answer their questions. He was fired by Michigan and charged with contempt of Congress. After losing his court case, he spent six months in prison. Later, having went to Canada, he continued to be active in political battles. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. For decades, every Friday he stood in the Toronto Vigil against the Occupation of the Territories, a movement inspired by the Women in Black in Israel.
We were lucky enough to meet Chandler and were instantly struck by his soulful presence, sense of humor, and total adoration of his family members. Among them are his wife, the legendary historian Natalie Zemon Davis, and their daughters, Hannah Davis Taieb and Simone Davis, both of whom work with Michelle at a nonprofit.
Today we’re honored to share a guest essay by Sam Robbins and Mei-chun Lee. It deals with an urgent topic close to our hearts—how the elderly in Taiwan stay connected to their loved ones. Their essay offers a fresh take on how LINE—Taiwan’s most beloved messaging app—is central to the social lives of the elderly.
Guest Essay from Sam Robbins and Mei-chun Lee: Elderly Care and the Good Morning Images.
Mei, 64, lives alone with her dog in Taipei. Although she typically has a rich social calendar—karaoke, fitness and computing classes, hanging out with friends, and of course walking the dog—Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak last year brought an abrupt end to most of it. Morning dog walks became the only time she left the house, after which she would come home and check LINE. Of the many Good Morning Images (zǎoān tú) circulated in the many group chats she’s in, she would pick the one she liked best and send it on to about fifteen other group chats filled with friends and family. To complete the ritual, she’d send a different image back to the chat where she found the first image. Then she went on with her day, in solitude.
It's hard to overstate how crucial LINE has become for elderly people in Taiwan. The platform is just over ten years old, but it’s already achieved a stunning ubiquity. Many of the elderly people with whom Professor Mei-chun Lee talked gave explanations for why they rely on it: some said other platforms like Facebook, with its expansive profiles, felt too public; others who lived with family revealed that they’d been banned from the family computer for fear they’d mess it up, leading them to rely on phone-friendly platforms. LINE synthesizes many of the tools elderly people like to use—phone calls, messaging, and forwarding—into an intuitive platform already used by many people in Taiwan. Indeed, those who aren’t on LINE are often seen as outsiders by their peers who bemoan the difficulty of getting in touch with them.
LINE isn’t just where elderly people go to connect with others: it also serves as a way to send and receive news, organize events, and share jokes. And as the platform has become dominant in Taiwan, new cultures have emerged, enabled by its design, including its vast arsenal of stickers that enable mood-specific responses to messages. And, of course, the sharing economy that’s grown up around the Good Morning Image.
The Good Morning Image, long maligned by self-appointed bearers of “good digital taste,” combines positive, overly earnest text with cutesy photos, producing a saccharine feel that’s somehow at once jejune and geriatric. The style is often seen as an example of 華國美學, or Chinese aesthetics, which values contrast and bold colors; it’s also often associated with the Taiwanese government. Young Taiwanese people have taken to parodying fake Good Morning Images, using the format’s rhythmic text pattern to make ironic jokes. These parodies often use as their backdrop lotuses—a favorite flower of elderly people. Interestingly, in Professor Lee’s database, lotus-themed Good Morning Images are actually quite rare, but the popular imaginary still holds lotuses as the quintessential Good Morning Image background.
Whether Good Morning Images are to our taste or not, it’s important to recognize what they represent to elderly people: a means of communication, a way to stay connected, and a cultural practice with defined rules and customs. Phones are the main point of access to the internet for many elderly people, and are especially crucial for those who live alone.
Still, digital communication isn’t always easy. Having grown up in an age when writing characters on paper was the norm, the elderly typically have less facility with bopomofo, a Chinese transliteration system, especially with the small buttons on phones. Writing characters on the phone is another option, but the system can be frustratingly inaccurate. The same is true of voice-to-text dictation, in particular for people with Hokkien-accented Mandarin. So sharing an existing image is one of the easiest ways for elderly people to connect with each other. And while the sharing itself is easy—LINE’s design makes it possible to send images to hundreds of people at once with a simple click—it’s the selection of the best image that imbues the practice with the thought and care they’re often unable to transmit by other digital means.
Like all cultural practices, Good Morning Image culture has rules and standards, and ways of enforcing them. These determine both the content of the images and, more interestingly, how they’re shared. Although Mei sends images to many groups every day, she also varies the frequency as a way to mark her closeness to different people. She avoids sending them to those with whom she has any kind of business relationship, such as her tenants, and sends them less frequently to those who haven’t reciprocated her images in the past. If someone spams her with too many images, she’ll determine how many to send back based on how close she feels to him or her. She’s active in sharing Good Morning Images with close friends, but only sends them to less close friends upon receiving one first. For instance, since her husband’s death, she’s maintained that latter, more passive relationship with his family members.
Although they can’t necessarily articulate the rules of the trade, many elderly people similarly vary the frequency of their Good Morning Images as a sort of smoke signal to indicate degrees of closeness. The images and text also change depending on the time of the year: tigers are common around Lunar New Year; seasonal greetings are shared during festivals; and texts more recently include wishes for good health as a response to the pandemic. If it’s the thought that counts, a lot of thought can go into a Good Morning Image.
The form can also be a site of linguistic innovation. For example, the text in the above image is written in a traditional style of poetry, with clear rules regarding rhythm, meter, and tone:
話不在多
入心則暖
情不在熱
貼心最真
Care does not need many words
Your heart will warm if you are mindful
Affection does not need enthusiasm
You’ll feel sincere if you are attentive
There are also social punishments for those who fail to understand the rules. One user in the group chat Professor Lee joined was chastised for forwarding too much content, implying her inability to curate as others did. Similarly, in interviews, some expressed discomfort at receiving religious-themed images from people of different faiths, explaining that this caused them to be cautious about continuing to exchange Good Morning Images. The greatest social exclusion perhaps falls on those who fail to separate Good Morning Images from other forms of content, sharing indiscriminately without understanding what recipients want to see. After all, Good Morning Images exist not in a cultural vacuum, but rather next to many other forms of sharing, including political ones.
The practice has its dissenters as well. Among elderly people, this mostly includes those who consider themselves more digitally literate than their peers and bemoan the rigid structure of Good Morning Images. For those with a broader arsenal of communication strategies, these images can indeed seem narrow and repetitive. Kelly, a woman in her sixties who knows how to edit photos and create albums—making her the envy of her computing class—opts to show care via more personalized content, such as videos collaging photos of her and her friends. Equipped with these skills, she tries to set herself apart from the stigma around elderly internet users, rejecting Good Morning Images in the process.
It's also worth noting that, although the association with elderly people may make Good Morning Images seem parochial and uniquely Taiwanese, the culture is deeply transnational. Tracing the genealogy of a meme format is never easy, but it’s clear that the same style is present in many countries: many stories have been written about a similar trend in India, and a quick Google search yields results for the same style in Indonesia and Latin America. Wherever the format travels, it’s not only translated but also adapted and remixed. In Taiwan alone this has included the introduction of religious, typically Buddhist, themes; text in the style of classical Chinese poetry; and crossbreeding with the animals of the zodiac. Curating and sharing these images, not to mention creating new ones thanks to various apps, turns elderly users into active participants in, and creators of, a global culture.
But if we take these images seriously, we must also be willing to criticize them. The images and text are never random, but represent certain cultural biases and assumptions. For example, Professor Lee’s review of nearly six hundred Good Morning Images sent and received by elderly people in Taiwan reveals that images of girls are the most common base, representing 22 percent of the entire sample. Images of boys, by contrast, made up only two percent. Even if both men and women send these images, the preference for images of women—especially in combination with text about keeping calm—likely reflects an implicit assumption that caring for others is a woman’s work.
At the same time, although the emergence of social etiquette has begun to counteract this effect, the culture’s roots in the “share” function allow it to exist in the same space as disinformation, turning many elderly people into its unwitting agents. Even if many know not to forward suspicious-seeming political messages, it only takes one click to pass such content on to hundreds of people. Since Good Morning Images are a way for elderly people to take care of each other and fight loneliness, it can be awkward to call out those sending political disinformation, which might risk damaging social ties. Professor Lee observed a group chat for a computing class that had clear “no politics and no religion” boundaries, but politics still slipped in. (In that case, one student used a fact-checking tool —learned in the class—and replied to debunk the disinformation.) Learning to be digital literate and socially polite at the same time is a long process.
If any blame lies with Good Morning Image culture, it’s the way it frames the share button as a primary form of social connection. When sharing becomes a cultural norm, all types of content begin to travel more rapidly. The pandemic has provided an interesting example of where good intentions and bad information can overlap. As well as sharing cute images and nice blessings, some elderly people have begun sharing videos describing ways to avoid getting COVID-19, with the advice often being wrong. One video I saw, styled with the font of a Good Morning Image, explained the “German prevention method”: drinking lemonade. The sender of this video merely meant to express to other that they were concerned for their health, but by picking this video as the conduit for their sentiment, they became a part of the spread of disinformation.
While some elderly chat groups accept any content, others are more discerning. In some groups, sending political content is seen as a breach of etiquette and the offenders will be called out. Whereas many elderly people resemble Mei in their facility at navigating the norms of the group, others don’t know how to anticipate the reactions of others, and share for the sake of sharing.
At its best, the Good Morning Image has created a way for people to come together and engage in a digital subculture. As outsiders looking in, we may criticize it—but we shouldn't be too quick to write it off as tacky junk. Cultural practices associated with stigmatized identities are usually stigmatized by proxy: the policing (and subsequent appropriation) of fashion, slang, and music associated with racialized minorities in the United States is a case in point. And the practices of elderly people online would seem to follow a similar pattern—indeed, there are few surer death knells for a social media platform or for online slang than its uptake among old people. So it may be that the "coolness” of Good Morning Images is already a moot point. But we can at least try to understand what they mean for those who use them, and see that such images are imbued with care, concern, and even curation. Forwarding them reduces the barriers to digital participation for elderly people, and makes it easier for them to stay connected in a world that can be alienating and lonely.
Their value, then, is best judged by their effect on those for whom they mean the most. In her research, Professor Lee heard a story about a middle-aged man who wanted his eighty-two-year-old mother to send him hundreds of Good Morning Images each day. Communication is difficult for his mother, who looks after herself and her eighty-eight-year-old husband. Since she doesn’t like to call or text, Good Morning Images are one of the few ways he knows his mom is still okay. For this mother and son, they’re a way to say “I’m thinking about you” when most other ways of doing so are taxing or difficult. Even though the image may be tacky, the sentiment is real, and perhaps that’s all that truly matters.
About the authors:
Sam Robbins is a researcher and writer on the intersections of tech and politics in Taiwan. He is an editor and translator for Taiwan Insight and a participant in Taiwan’s g0v community.
Mei-chun Lee is an anthropologist who studies digital activism and network politics. She is an active participant of g0v, a Taiwan-based civic tech community. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California-Davis and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. She also the co-authored of Taiwan Open Government Report 2014-2016.
Thank you all for your warm responses to Kevin Pham’s guest essay about how he came to learn the stories of his parents, who are refugees from Vietnam. Please feel free to write in with any responses to his essay (or any other pieces) by replying to this email.
Book Club: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing
For our next book club we’ll read Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing. Can’t wait! It will be Friday, November 4th, 7 PM EST / Saturday, November 5th, 7 AM Taiwan time. Please email us at broadandampleroad@gmail.com (or reply to this email) if you want to join.