Until last year or maybe a few months back, memes were a source of humour and entertainment. However, of late, memes have only turned into a fodder for controversies and with each passing day, the curators are finding themselves falling in deep sh*t. Earlier, AIB suffered a wrath of Indians when they posted a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Snapchat's dog filter along with his lookalike, and now one of our favourite Disney characters has fallen in trouble for something that wasn't even its fault. According to some Chinese trolls, ‘Winnie The Pooh' looks like their President Xi Jinping and this irked the authorities so much that they banned this adorable yellow bear on Chinese social networks.    

© Walt Disney

Wow, what did the poor bear, who cares for nothing but honey, do to China's censors that they took that character away from the kids. Well, these comparisons have been doing rounds since 2013 when Jinping's meeting with former US President Barack Obama was compared to Pooh walking with his friend Tigger. Later, a handshake between Jinping and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was compared with Pooh and his friend Eeyore. While, these memes were adorably funny, they clearly didn't go down well with the censors. In fact, GIFs of Winnie the Pooh have been deleted from China's instant messaging app WeChat and if you write a message mentioning the bear, you will get an error message.

© Twitter

Twitter was definitely not in the mood to let this pass and started giving their opinion on the social media.

RT @benyunmowang I really should read Winnie the Pooh... #Xi #Abe #APEC2014 #China #Japan @EleanorFreund @mwings17 pic.twitter.com/W9nr0Hx1XA

— Nancy 韵 (@NancyYunTang) 10 November 2014

Pooh was blacklisted in China because of the popularity of this photo. I guess China won't take criticism sitting down. pic.twitter.com/ISbDdoBkwz

— JoeAm (@societyofhonor) 18 July 2017

I log into Twitter and the first news article I see is "China censors Winnie the Pooh because of meme." What a time to be alive.

— Kira Buckland ★ (@rinachan) 17 July 2017

yuzu: shld we go Cup of China next season?
pooh: im banned in China
yuzu:
yuzu: oh bother

— texts from pooh (@poohbear_txts) 17 July 2017

Winnie the Pooh has been banned in China b/c he's an icon for dissidents.
That's probably why Chinese dissent fails so badly.

— Populo Iratus (@cmahar3) 17 July 2017

Winnie the Pooh is banned in China after memes appear comparing Chinese president to the character. pic.twitter.com/eRrnEbjNSl

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) 17 July 2017

This is not the first time that something like this is happening. Earlier, in India a cartoonist from West Bengal was called out for making cartoons on Mamata Banerjee. Wow, so much in the name of censorship. Time and again, all these incidents have proved that we people are still not ready for taking jokes the way they should be taken.