author | Mao Lina
editor | Li Chunhui
Internet disciplines are upgrading so fast that even hard candy guys who surf 5g are a bit struggling.
Teacher Wanyan Huide has not finished studying a series of ethics (lonely) courses. Ms. Xie Bingyi gave birth to Xiaobingxue because of her fake character creation. Stars covered their mouths after the show, triggering mass rebellion, and "Lonely" has become a popular course on the Internet; and At the same time, the guest conflict of the farming variety show has been extended to "Island Learning" for students who have spare capacity.
Fortunately, it is common sense that Internet celebrities and Internet celebrity culture will each lead the trend for two weeks. Even if they cannot keep up with the rhythm, the limelight will pass after two weeks. But there happened to be an existence that challenged common sense, almost making Mr. Hard Candy wonder if he was in an information cocoon - that was studying late!
Who can ask: Apart from us Internet veterans who secretly followed Douban Goddess to learn how to dress, who is making Wanxue prosperous? Especially recently, Wanwan and his wife have begun to start live broadcasting seriously. A large number of new coursewares have been produced in Wanxue, attracting a large number of new students. They have also gone out of Douban and spread everywhere on Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Douyin.
Obviously the life cycle of Internet celebrities is getting shorter and shorter. How come Ms. Wanwan has been the subject of research and interpretation for almost 20 years after becoming famous? How come those new netizens who have never experienced "The Mysterious Case of Thick Eyebrows" and "Old Castle Wedding" are obsessed with this classical subject? For the pinnacle work in the history of internet celebrity culture co-creation, let's learn!
Wanwanxue on all platforms, each with its own emphasis
"Wanwanxue" was probably born in 2017. The base camp is Douban, which is also where Wanwan started as the first generation of Internet celebrities.
In the beginning, Douyou fans only had sporadic discussions about Wanwan, mainly criticizing her. The starting point was Wanwan posting on Weibo to show off the wedding anniversary gift her husband Lin Han gave her, and the public discovered that it was a brand soft advertisement. So some good people began to follow the clues and discovered that the life of a famous lady on Douban literary and artistic goddess cannot withstand scrutiny.
This group of netizens are also the earliest late scholars. In order to have fewer restrictions on gossiping, late scholars have established a special group to speak freely. After the special group was bombed, the Xiang Group, which specializes in discussing Internet celebrities, became the home base of late scholars.
As the activity of Douban groups generally declined, late scholars no longer guarded one-third of an acre, and began to preach on various platforms, and different schools emerged based on the temperament of the platforms.
Xiaohongshu’s algorithm recommendation method and information flow arrangement characteristics have made it replace Weibo to a certain extent and become the first front for people to eat melons. The evening classes here mainly focus on pictures, text and short video clips. The main focus is short and quick, which is suitable for old students to get first-hand news, or new students to get started.
Because of the platform algorithm, as long as you search for "Wanxue" or other related words once on Xiaohongshu, your homepage will be contracted by Wan Wan, Lin Han and his wife in the next 3-5 days, and it is difficult to avoid it.
On the "Young People Learning Community" site b, Wan Xue washes away the smell of gossip and brings a strong academic flavor. Students who have a preliminary understanding of late learning in Xiaohongshu can go to Station B for more in-depth and comprehensive study.
Among the students at station b, the courseware content of teacher aka Huanqiu Daren is the most academic. Classic late-school jokes such as "Lei Wanying, you are my grandma" and "Let's love" are all broken down in the same way. Each class has a theme, relevant learning materials, blackboard writing while speaking, small questions in class, and After-class homework and extended questions are completely modeled on the online course model for college students. Moreover, in the comment area of each "Late Learning Online Class", there are really studious people handing in homework, focusing on a full simulation immersive learning.
There are also some late scholars active on Douyin, but the content is not very original, and they mainly focus on multi-platform transfer and integration. Of course, TikTokers love abstraction, but imitation shows have not yet become popular.
Generally speaking, the current popular courseware on various platforms has not changed much from the content of the first version of Douban. In addition to the accidental death of a worker at Mumu Art Museum in 2021, the "core crimes" of Wanwan and his wife are also commonplace vanity, lying, and spending small money to brag.
But Douban was relatively closed back then, and Wan Xue’s influence was limited to a small circle. Nowadays, Wanxue is blooming everywhere, and Wanxue, which has been overused by Dou friends, has become a new thing in another place.
Especially contemporary young people pay attention to rituals in everything they do, or to put it another way, they pursue conversational topics. When netizens fight with internet celebrities, the most fearful thing is that the netizen yells at the top of his lungs for a long time, but the real person does not say a word. However, Wanwan and his wife not only competed with netizens during the live broadcast, but also often blocked netizens on various platforms, which greatly enhanced the interactivity and participation of this Internet entertainment activity.
was blocked by Wanwan and was called "graduated" by Wanwan scholars. Some netizens, even if they are not so sincere, still study the course seriously, go to the comment area to poke people's hearts, and strive to win the "graduate" qualification, so that the conversation topics will follow.
Female Internet celebrities who are not in his favor
Although contemporary netizens are keen on judging, they are also prone to pity the poor and the weak. Many Internet celebrities have experienced a resurgence in word-of-mouth. Like Wanyan Huide, with the release of Douyin's official documentary and the broadcast of the variety show "I Love Me, Great" that she recorded with three guests, Yu Xiuhua, Su Min, and Deng Jing, her reputation has drastically improved.
What’s interesting is that from the moment Wanxue was born, Wanwan’s public reputation has been declining. It is said that negative word-of-mouth will eventually bottom out, but Wanwan’s downward curve seems to have no end. Mr. Hard Candy summarized the public opinions on various platforms and believed that there are two reasons.
First, as an Internet celebrity, Wanwan has almost no altruism.
People are all emotional animals. Our social relationship is based on exchange. Give me a peach in return and give you a Qiong Yao. It is really good to treat everyone well. Especially in the current mobile Internet era, the relationship between people and stars and celebrities has been infinitely closer, so this kind of altruism has become even more important.
Wanwan is an existence with no altruism. Wanwan's popularity back then was related to the dividends of the times. At that time, Internet celebrities only needed to provide enough imagination space. But things are different now. Netizens pay more attention to the "exchange" process.
For example, before most Internet celebrities become popular, they will appear as "good friends" and "good sisters" - I use my knowledge to bring real changes or happiness to netizens, such as teaching them how to put on makeup, how to Outfits, etc. Regardless of whether it is true or false, at least the person is showing goodwill, "I don't want to make money from you, I really want to help you."
But Wanwan is different. The main theme is "I am different from you, and you can't learn my style."
In her early years, when her popularity was good, someone asked for the lipstick color number, and Wanwan said, "It's not for sale, I made it myself." When she asked for a link to the clothes, she replied, "I knitted it myself." Of course, if she puts down her posture tonight and starts selling goods live, it is said that the income per session is at least hundreds of thousands. How can the public not be annoyed by this? How can they believe that she is sincerely sharing?
This brings us to the second point: In fact, Wanwan is living a pretty good life, far from being "pityed" by netizens.
Although in the Wanwan courseware, Wanwan is a poor lady who cannot afford Hermès and lives in a self-built house with rent arrears. But to be fair, Wanwan did complete the transition to a certain extent. Looking at the Xiaohongshu Dandelion platform’s quotation, Wanwan is priced at 150,000 yuan for pictures and 200,000 yuan for videos. The commercial value is not low. Now may even be the time when she can generate the most immediate commercial value.
Yu Ma has a theory about the "ancestor" in "The Sideburns Are Not Begonia Red", which is very appropriate to put here. The general idea is that when you are stronger than others, others just want to step down on you.But when you become the Patriarch, everyone will love you and support you.
Those towel princes and leather shoe princesses on the Internet celebrity rich second generation circuit may not be flawless. But they are too far away from us ordinary netizens, and there is no point in trying them. Instead, netizens are willing to regard them as "Internet connections" and "rich friends I have never met."
Wanwan and his wife are better than the masses in this life. They have stepped into the trend of the times and continue to gain the attention of netizens and monetize their popularity without any altruism. How can people not be angry? "Master Wanliu" or "ordinary people" all have a chance to get people's applause, but "former colleagues" who have had bad luck and feel good about themselves cannot.
The love and hate of the same group of people
Back to the original question, why can late learning continue to flourish?
First of all, it is because the two protagonists are unwilling to be forgotten and are always active in front of the stage to provide the latest materials. Goffman believes that people spend most of their lives acting in order to win the audience's recognition and even applause. Ordinary people like you and me have to edit a picture when posting on WeChat Moments. The long-term ridicule of Wanwan and his wife is to present an elite image in front of others, but it is far from their actual life.
In this pull between acting and reality, various flaws are always exposed, leaving the couple in a awkward and funny state for a long time. This attracted the attention of many "immoral people" who simply wanted to have fun, not to talk about love or hate.
What is more noteworthy is that changes in the ideological trends of the times are also adding fuel to late learning.
When Wanxue was first born in 2017, everyone’s mentality was gossip. Because the original style of Douban is also "no one should be picked on, and nothing should be picked on". Rather than having any likes and dislikes towards them, it is more about the desire to voyeurize and reveal secrets about celebrities.
As a witness to the birth of Wanwan, Mr. Hard Candy even felt that everyone’s attitude towards Wanwan at that time was mostly pity. The reason why she gossiped about her and found all kinds of bad evidence about Lin Han was to anger her and hope that she could live her own life without breaking or establishing.
The Mumu Art Museum incident in 2021 is a watershed. In an interview with Jiang Sida, Wanwan said that was the year she felt the most malicious intent from the Internet. It is true that the people's dislike is related to her frivolous "dead person" remarks, but more importantly, the people really need an outlet to vent their emotions.
Judging from the direction of public opinion on the entire Internet, entertainment is the main outlet for public negative emotions. And when celebrities become more and more well-behaved and behave like AI, only Internet celebrities, it is best to come from the PC Internet era, are well known to the public, and have left many unobstructed words and deeds. Internet celebrities are the most suitable to be The emotional target of the public.
Especially with the slowdown in economic growth, since upward mobility has become quite difficult, the elite is no longer the object of worship and learning. Deconstructing the elite is the source of happiness. "Poor lady" and "Internet celebrity couple who owe rent and are called for payment", in this process of deconstructing skin picking, class differences are temporarily smoothed out.
Why are people keen on deconstructing Wanwan instead of other "upper-class" people? Because her identity is untenable, she is a self-glorifying pseudo-elite. Therefore, when she is hit in a painful spot by the crowd's deconstruction, her reaction will be more intense and it will be easier for her to break through her defenses.
Wanwan and his wife's breach of defense, in turn, means the victory of ordinary netizens against the elite. In addition, Wanwan has an "original sin" (the Mumu Art Museum worker incident), and when she is deconstructed and tried, her psychological burden is even smaller, because she is the righteous party no matter what.
In fact, although the people who looked at Wanwan ten years ago and imagined literary and fashionable poetry and distant places, and the people who now complain about Wanwan and expose the mask of elites may not necessarily be the same group of people, they are generally the same class and type of people. Everyone yearns for a better life in a higher class and is not completely satisfied with their current situation. When wealth and honor are available, everyone competes to help.When wealth is hard to come by, it’s fun to watch fake elites break defenses.
For Internet celebrities, black and red are also red, and traffic is money. After studying several live broadcasts of Wanwan products, Mr. Hard Candy even felt that the two couples were deliberately cueing controversy, causing a rebound in public sentiment, and harvesting traffic by acting as Internet clowns. So, whether it is true literature or art, or pseudo-gentlemanship, a cat is a good cat if it can catch mice. Wanwan starts his career, isn’t this coming?
