Two days ago, I took my children to play in the fitness equipment area of the community.
Suddenly there was noise from behind: “Oh, you are at the dribbling level of Master Wanliu!”
“Master Wanliu!” “Master Wanliu!”
Turning around, it turned out that a group of elementary school students were playing basketball.
But what amazes me is that children absorb hot spots so quickly now?
The “Master Wanliu” incident, which had been raging before, ended with the high school teenager who posted the video deleting the video and disappearing.
Screenshot of the Douyin page of the video publisher “Master Wanliu”, photo provided by the author
A brief summary of the whole hot event is that a young man who didn’t show his face the whole time released a video on Douyin of a not-so-stunning crotch dribble + cross-dressing.
However, in less than half a minute, it got hundreds of millions of onlookers on the whole network, and also made the publisher gain millions of followers overnight.
The reason for the huge crowd is not because of the teenager himself, but because of the “family background information” he inadvertently disclosed:
Because the video is located in Wanliu Academy, a mansion representing “wealth and high society”, and someone recognized the painting in the background as the authentic work of Qi Baishi, and the poster studied at No. 101 Middle School, a prestigious school in Beijing, and so on.
Screenshot of the video of “Master Wanliu” that sparked heated discussions, photo provided by the author
If it’s just “Mu Fu”, this video will only ignite people’s curiosity about “high society” at best, and it will be over after watching and expressing emotion.
However, subsequent developments were beyond everyone’s expectations:
Under this video, many people began to call themselves “old slaves”, “servants”, “maids”, “feet-washing maids”…
Screenshots of a large number of netizens leaving messages in the comment area before the video was deleted, photo provided by the author
Although there were mostly jokes and jokes, a large number of accounts scrambled to publish a handwritten letter to the author of the original video (known as “Yu Shao”) to express their yearning for Master Wanliu.
The immature handwriting and wording on many of these letters make people reasonably suspicious, and many of them are still minors: 
The fancy “Yu Shao Confession Letter” released on Douyin, photo provided by the author
As the first Wanliu boy took the initiative to delete the video and hide his real body, this business opportunity was keenly captured by other Internet celebrity organizations.
Thus, another young man who lived in Wanliu Academy was born. He opened his house and invited Internet celebrities to visit his luxury villas in Beijing and Guangzhou. For “Master No. 2”.
Then there is the plot we are familiar with:
Young Master No. 2 quickly gained fans, bringing huge traffic, starting live broadcasts, singing, chatting, receiving expensive gifts, attracting fans, and entering a “positive cycle”.
Screenshot of Young Master No. 2’s live broadcast, during the live broadcast, netizens continued to give rewards, photo provided by the author
Seeing this, you may be as confused as I am:
What kind of people are this group of people who call themselves “old slaves” and desperately give rewards to the rich in the live broadcast room?
From the background data of Douyin, we can see that the account followers of the two young master Wanliu who became famous one after another have the following things in common:
Mostly young people, mostly in third-tier cities, mostly women.
The analysis results of Douyin’s fans’ portraits of Young Master Wanliu No. 2, photo provided by the author
Further fan data shows that some of these self-proclaimed “old slaves” are underage men and women.
It stands to reason that the post-2005 and post-10 generations are more knowledgeable and self-aware than our generation—then why are they willing to kneel down and call themselves “old slaves”?
One possible reason: They see people in close proximity online as a substitute for a youthful fantasy world.
According to the “interpretation” and “association” of netizens, Master Wanliu is rich, handsome, low-key, gentle, kind, connotative, polite, good at learning, sunny, energetic, and a good athlete…
This is perfectly in line with the setting of the male protagonist in Jinjiang’s novels or two-dimensional works!
Not to mention, some people on Weibo and Tieba have already written novels based on Master Wanliu, and there are many young girls in the more secretive QQ community, begging “wives” to customize Master Wanliu’s fanfic arts……
When teenagers finally find themselves in reality, seeing characters like paper figures, this kind of distance that seems close but far away and can interact with money can easily stimulate the emergence of “sliding and kneeling behavior”.
Worshiping such a rich and seemingly “perfect” online object is much easier than expressing appreciation for an outstanding but ordinary companion in real life.
Another possible reason is that the boys and girls of this generation grew up with much wider access to social information than us .
My good friend’s son is in the first grade. In addition to his parents, classmates and teachers, his sources of information include phones, watches, Xiaohongshu, Baidu, Douyin, and even DingTalk and check-in applets for online classes. Hot Spot of the Day…
And these unverified and complicated information are constantly impacting the set of traditional values they have learned from books and classrooms:
- In school, what they hear is that through continuous study for exams, they will become top students and find a good job after being admitted to a good university;
- In reality, on the Internet, they will see that the wealth of many rich people does not come from “study and work hard”, and even some people who do not study or work hard have obtained wealth and success through other means.
They discovered that some of them had been born in Rome when they tried to go to Rome, spurred on by their parents and teachers.
CCTV interviewed elementary school students, what is their dream when they grow up? The child replied “Being an Internet celebrity”, source: CCTV, photo provided by the author
The pervasive, mixed and contradictory information is enough to dazzle the inexperienced teenagers.
Young people’s natural obsessive psychology, as well as showing off their wealth, introversion, and anxiety everywhere on the Internet, make it difficult for them to calm down, and they will only focus a lot of attention on those dazzling appearances. Betting on the “upper class” who they think is rich and powerful, if these “upper class” are young and handsome, it will be more attractive.
From the original Mu Qiang, it is easy to gradually become “Mei Fu”. Not only envious in the bottom of my heart, but also expressed in words and actions.
As for why young people are willing to call themselves “old slaves”, substituting themselves into such a class symbol of “distinguished superiority and inferiority”. I think it’s because: such a title can quickly establish a kind of forcible bond with Master Wanliu psychologically.
That is, “I am your person, and I am by your side” – even as an “old slave”, he is a head above others.
In fact, this kind of behavior is essentially the same as the words “Papa Ma” and “Husband Sicong” that netizens once called out.
Of course, when these Internet buzzwords are spread layer by layer and passed on to younger groups, many teenagers will leave a message under the video as “old slave” or call ” Master Wanliu”.
This kind of mentality is understandable. Many children don’t even understand the ins and outs of things, just to have something to chat with their peers , and to learn other hot words on the Internet, such as “siege q”, “you are the sixth”, ” Retire, retreat”, there is not much difference. Such words and deeds tend to be gradually no longer mentioned as the hotspots are metabolized.
When I talked about this topic with a few friends who are mothers, some people said: “Old slaves are old slaves. Anyway, I will forget about it after a few days. My daughter once liked 6 male stars at the same time, shouting every day. As for my husband, I’m leaving now.”
Some people also said: “What is the value orientation now? Is money the whole meaning of life?”
I was also a little speechless for a while.
To be honest, I feel from the bottom of my heart: If my child calls himself an “old slave”, I will definitely stop it. But there is no need to make too much fuss about one or two “Master Wanliu”.
The Internet can make everyone famous for 15 seconds, but once the traffic and popularity subside, it often dies down, and people will soon have new objects of attention.
When I was still studying, many students called “Papa Ma” popularly, but few people really stopped studying, working and struggling because of calling “Papa Ma”. People would express their emotions on the Internet, Play a certain kind of character design, and experience the mixed flavors of reality in reality.
Even for adults, every individual is complex, diverse and contradictory.
The younger generation Mu Qiang is in full swing, so they will inevitably envy “Master Wanliu”, but they will also pay attention to Wang Yaping, Zhai Zhigang, Li Ziqi, classmate He, Su Bingtian and Quan Hongchan.
The information they accept is more complex than ours, and the popular memes are more diverse and iterative quickly.
But they still have a long way to go in society. Helping them understand what is truly powerful and what is the success and happiness they want to pursue is the top priority.
What we need to do is to guide and educate children to learn to recognize what is truly “strong”.
The real “power” is neither relying on the wealth accumulated by parents and grandparents to satisfy one’s own selfish desires, to show off one’s wealth; nor is it to pretend to be strong in order to make others feel strong; even to pay a price that one cannot afford for such a disguise, Pretend to the point where you don’t even recognize yourself. The former is like Zhou Jie who flaunts his wealth and power in his circle of friends, and the latter is like the group of girls in Shanghai who work hard to pretend to be famous ladies and take turns renting and filming videos in high-end hotels.
The real strength is to understand the situation you are in, to be clear about the goal you want to achieve, not to complain about yourself, and not to aim too high. Neither humble nor overbearing, down-to-earth.
Edit 丨Qu An, Kangkang title map 丨Tu Chong Creative
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