22: Deconstruct, Debunk, Debase
Neiyu Wrapped 2024
Hi there. Welcome to Active Faults.
When I made my predictions of 2024 at the start of the year, I didn’t expect to be so spot on. Foreign artists did visit and appeal to Chinese markets. Producers have indeed steered clear of trite heterosexual romances, with the exception of reviving tried and tested pairings that would guarantee traffic. We did return to celebrities from past generations in disregard for the younger stars of today. Neiyu, overall, had indeed been unprecedentedly unpredictable, shifty and senseless. I, the fandom observer, was haunted by the hunch that we had finally lost the plot.
What shocked me the most was something else: people’s visceral reaction towards media and entertainment. It’s the intensity of the anger, the paranoia, and the almost total rejection of celebrities and fandom in disdain and contempt.
We’re entering the era of misanthropy in neiyu and I know I won’t like it.
Everyone spent November and December going ballistic over the unimaginably dysfunctional celebrity couples on season 4 of See You Again (再见爱人). I wasn’t going to inflict that on myself despite it being gold AF materials, but my friends were staying over, and they forced me to watch the reality in want of an ally in their frustration. I tried to empathise. We ended up marvelling at the TV together, staring agape at such codependent, identity-consuming, downward-spiralling relationships that none would call it quits. How guilt and shame are weaponised, and the need for power drives them into deliberate attacks strenuously disguised as miscommunication. How emotionally stunted, cowering and egomaniacal men victimise themselves and hide behind the “hysterics” of the women. How a debilitating feedback loop is cemented over the years, where both are too desperate for love, too damaged to know what that means and too spiteful to leave.
I won’t bore you with the specifics of their toxicity, because I want to talk about the public response it elicited. I saw disproportional fury all around. It was plastered all over the hot searches, everyone’s short-video algorithms, WeChat Moments and private group chats. There were vitriol attacks on the couples’ entire beings. The scale of it was and is astounding - how is it still airing new episodes and giving people ammunition?
Similar sentiments simmered in the background throughout this year. I’ve written about the term “208”, which is now so standardised you rarely see celebrities being referred to in any less derogatory ways. It has now permeated into the daily vernacular and applied more generally to anyone who’s privileged and entitled. Beyond the linguistic level, people have become very quick to accept all celebrity scandals, or “house-falling”, as the norm. That’s just how they are, how revolting this industry is.
Fans rush to pounce and point fingers, to find a punching bag and the butt of the joke. I’d argue that it is a completely valid move, considering how miserable this generation is. Rage, anxieties and sufferings of the Trash Time Epoch have to be held up by something, or someone, or everyone. Neiyu takes the blunt force of it as the epitome of the immune Ruling Class. Media and entertainment are not sought out this year for materials and subjects to love, but to unanimously hate.
Presuming every celebrity’s immorality leads to pervasive paranoia, which I’ve also mentioned before. Everything has to be zoomed in, paused, chewed over, interpreted, and made into 2-hour analysis videos on Bilibili, especially any form of media that is supposedly “authentic”. Simply refer to “春山学” after the Spring Festival Gala, “珂学” coined by the actor Huang Xiaoming’s new wife, Ye Ke, or “花学” from Divas On the Road. Such “Schools of Thought” or “Studies” on entertainment content surfaced more than once in 2024, where viewers tear certain videos apart like anthropological artefacts. They draw information from them, extrapolate and piece together narratives that are mostly baseless. But finding out the truth is beside the point. If the Ruling Class stands by “deny, defend, depose”, the Everyman Audience resists through “deconstruct, debunk, and debase”. It’s all about power within the process.
再见爱人 would have never ever garnered attention had it been a drama or a movie, set in fictional contexts and acted out by professionals. It would’ve felt like bland theatrics. Some have suspected that the dysfunctionality and the hot-cold ups and downs are scripted to farm for views, but I now doubt it after watching it myself. You only know how to hit where it hurts the most with a tonne of experience and practice. Real relationships are fickle. Now, more than ever, neiyu audiences need to see that the Better-Off are not necessarily faring any better, especially in romantic relationships that society tries so hard to pitch.
This also explains the rise of pan-celebrities that indicate, ultimately, an appetite for counter-intuitively unattractive figures to gain traction. The messy and the “发癫” lot, the unconventional lot, like the Japanese mukbang vlogger “米饭仙人”, newly viral, who eats 3KG of rice in one sitting on Bilibili. His side dish is one spoonful of Lao Gan Ma. The view count currently sits at 10.95 million.
In 2024, you’d go viral in neiyu if you’re deranged enough. The ex-EXO member Huang Zitao has been dubbed “White Phosphorus” for how flammable and quick-tempered he is in live streams, always yelling at fan comments. His nonsense rant about domestic abusers has been choreographed by a Bilibili creator, who then gained 900K views tailgating Tao like that.
Millions camp out to watch him these days, so much so that his ex-teammate Lu Han is vying for a slice of his cake. Probably jealous of Tao’s whopping metrics, he’s now jumping on the late-night streaming bandwagon, clapping back at haters and hard-selling their bromance for views. It’s an embarrassing look on him and makes people think he’s on some kind of illegal substance.
When the zeitgeist is misanthropic boredom, entertainment content worthy of critical engagement slips through the cracks, its message warped and misses the mark. What remains is everything that made a noise and kicked up a fuss, TV shows that were overtly melodramatic (玫瑰的故事) and realities that were rife with tension (歌手). The cinema just didn’t bounce back.
So. What next? I sense an onslaught of content that preys on everyone’s pent-up discontent. Designed to be dummies to fire your shots at, punch mitts to embrace your jabs, things that intentionally rile you up and let you punch it to keep sane. Rage-baiting will keep the clicks rolling. I wrote in the last No Beta that neiyu’s first roommate-observing reality show is about to air, which is already a sign of this approaching trend. The trick is, then, to produce such content while channelling these negative energies towards the right direction, away from what people should be angry at, and contain it within the parameters of trivial entertainment. I wonder who’s next after reality shows put spouses and roommates on blast - toxic parents? Siblings? After all, the laughing stock should always be in the domestic sphere, because of course that’s safely depoliticised. That’s private business behind closed doors. Never teachers, bosses, politicians.
On the other hand, there are more pessimistic, existential questions to ask: what happens to the art itself when anger and paranoia towards the industry flares? Will there be genuine appreciation again? What happens when no one ever identifies or builds a deep, meaningful emotional connection with a piece of media, ever again?
*Cover Photo: Thumbnail of a compilation of Tao’s angry moments on live that reads “got pissed several hundred times within a minute”