Hongkongers may have arrived late to the online game phenomenon Popcat Click, but they have raced to the global top spot with no sign of waning enthusiasm.

The most ardent players admit this competition requires neither skill nor hard work. All you have to do is click on a picture of a cat. That makes the cat open its mouth, forming a big “O”, with an accompanying “pop” sound.
There are no prizes for individual players, but every click scores a point for the player’s city or country.

So far, Hongkongers have chalked up more than 121 billion clicks and counting, because the playing never stops.

The city has been No 1 since August 24, when it overtook Taiwan. This week, Thailand was in second place, followed by Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

“It’s a channel for Hongkongers to display their sense of identity,” declared real estate employee Carson Woo, 23, who claimed to be among the first in the city to play.

The game was created last December by computer science students Joshua O’Sullivan, Edward Hails and Freddy Heppell at the University of Sheffield in England.

They were inspired after a Twitter user posted an image of his cat named Oatmeal on a group chat last October, sparking a chain of edits that resulted in the popping cat meme.

Their clicking game took off slowly, then picked up and went viral worldwide in April and during the Tokyo Olympics, resulting in it being dubbed the “catlympics”.

Hongkongers only joined in from around May and by mid-August, the city reached the 28th spot out of more than 200 countries and territories. Then it crossed 105.72 billion clicks to become No 1.

Japan chased Hong Kong for a while until Thailand took over as the city’s keenest rival last month. Finland, an early leader in the game, sank to seventh spot.

As of Saturday afternoon, the United States stood at 15th spot, China at 25th and North Korea languished at the bottom with a single click.

The game can be played on any device at any time. Players can click manually over and over again, or use autoclicker software to do the work. The global leader board is updated continuously with 25 countries and territories scoring more than a billion clicks so far.

From October 1 to November 20, Hong Kong players added more than 4.7 million clicks every single day, on average.

Local players insist there is more to Popcat Click than meets the eye.

Secondary student Marcus Leung, 17, began playing in July and was thrilled to watch the city rise to the top.

He was spurred to take part by the strong showing of Hong Kong Olympians who won six medals, including a gold, in Tokyo.

“Popcat enables Hongkongers to unite and makes them determined to do the same thing together,” Leung said.

At his peak, he added about 900,000 points a day to Hong Kong’s total, using autoclicker software.

He was also inspired to start a Facebook page called “Popcat Hong Kong’s Delegation” for enthusiasts to exchange ideas.

Carson Woo said that like the Olympics, the game helped Hong Kong to be visible globally. “We got medals at the Olympics, now we can contribute our part as citizens, we can’t be defeated in the game too,” he said.

He added it also provided an outlet for younger Hongkongers to let off steam in the wake of the national security law imposed on the city by Beijing in June last year.

He scored as many as 10,000 points in one night using assisting software. He guessed that many Hong Kong players used autoclickers, as did their rivals elsewhere. If the game detects autoclicks arriving at a pace above a certain level, the scores are not counted.

“What matters is not the scores, but why Hongkongers are so keen to get to the top,” he said.

Game co-creator O’Sullivan told the Post he and his partners came up Popcat Click just for fun. When it did not catch on initially, they added the leader board to inject an element of team competition, and encouraged people to share the game.

“It was definitely a surprise to see it go viral in Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan,” he said.

Associate professor Chung Peichi of Chinese University’s department of cultural and religious studies said the game was not as inane as it appeared, but could be viewed as a way for Hongkongers to build a community and let the world see them.

“Taking part lets people express themselves, ” said Chung, who studies play culture. “Becoming the top scorer could be the biggest reward to some local players.”

Tang Ling, a postdoctoral research fellow from Baptist University’s academy of film, said games of a frivolous nature like Popcat, or the non-competitive mobile game Travel Frog (Tabikaeru) released in 2017, tended to be popular in high-pressure East Asian societies such as Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

No matter how boring or aimless Popcat seemed, it put players in a competitive arena, Tang added.

The game inspired several clones, including Popdog, Popass and Popxi, the last using an image of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Pet sitter Yoko Tse, in her 40s, contributed more than 6,000 points a day at her peak, all manually and using all 10 fingers to tap her phone. She was playing on the day Hong Kong reached the top spot.

“People want the whole city to win the game,” she said. “Since 2019 and even now, the whole city has not been happy. People may want to make something they can be happy about where they live.”

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