Many new users open RedNote, The Chinese social media app is suddenly on the radar of U.S. users, who have a familiar face popping up in their feeds: Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Brian Thompson.

Mangione gained notoriety in the United States because many viewed him as a working-class folk hero, although others condemned his alleged violence. This week, Americans got a clear message on the app, People who are looking for a new platform before TikTok is about to be banned, Even those within China's opaque cyberspace have made him a common subject in fan cams, paintings and latte art.

RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese (literally "little red book"), jumped to No. 1 in the Apple App Store earlier this week as U.S. TikTok users turned to other apps. Many people posted that they joined Shanghai-based RedNote out of dissatisfaction with U.S. officials, who cited national security concerns related to TikTok's Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

With a surge in international interest, RedNote now educates many Americans about China's online culture, where the internet is heavily censored. Chinese users on the app often express a fondness for Mangione, cute animals and American media, all of which provide ample fodder for memes.

Reaction images, or humorous pictures intended to depict specific emotions, are among the most commonly used memes on RedNote. One popular post - a reaction image pack - featured an edit of Mangione's face wearing a green Luigi (from Nintendo's Mario series) hat and surrounded by yellow cats holding hands . The text on each cat is filled with hilarious compliments, including an English version with lines like: "Funny and perfect Luigi" and "Kind and lovable Luigi."

The app has about 300 million monthly active users, according to 2024 data from Xiaohongshu brand marketing company Qiangua, and is especially popular among young Chinese women. Like Instagram and TikTok (both of which are technically unavailable in China), it offers lifestyle, travel and shopping content, as well as a variety of other topics.

But this is a Chinese platform that has never marketed itself to foreigners. It operates within the so-called "Great Firewall" of China, the country's legislative and technical internet censorship system that works to block topics deemed politically sensitive, such as LGBTQ-related content and discussions of political dissent, leaving some users' content vulnerable to removal.

For now, however, many Chinese and American users on RedNote welcome the cultural exchange this week's event fosters. Cat memes are one of the most common forms of casual humor on the app, as many Americans learned when Chinese users asked them to pay the "cat tax" by sharing photos of their cats when they joined.

Just like Western social media platforms, RedNote also has a large number of "thirst traps", or fan edits of celebrities and influencers. These include numerous fan edits of Mangione, such as a compilation of videos of him in court set to Usher's "Hey Daddy." Some men on the app also cosplay as Mangione, sharing makeup tutorials and outfit checks.

Western movies and TV shows are also popular on the app, with users regularly posting content ranging from "Pride and Prejudice" fan edits to funny "Family Guy" clips and reaction images. Jokes originating outside of China sometimes show up on RedNote, such as one user who posted a "cold guy" meme with a long caption about the pain of having no friends in a foreign school, which later gained tens of thousands. A thumbs up.

In recent weeks, one of the most popular brain rot titles on the platform has been the wrinkled and eerie Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants. It has become a meme template for jokes about the discomfort of running out of toilet paper, "accidentally dropping a mango on your new white shirt" or getting chili oil splashed in your eyes while eating noodles.

One of the videos, about how to restore the temperature of the shower water after accidentally turning off the tap, received 265,000 likes on I cry in all the languages."

This has led some Americans online to note that memes appear to be a universal language despite language barriers. As one X user said: "People are starting to realize that the Chinese are just as unserious as us."