The total number of online views exceeded 3 billion, and "scare yourself" swept the screen, controlling abstract netizens

In this era of information explosion and content being king, an unexpected meme can quickly go viral and become the focus of the entire network. This article tells how an animated film clip unexpectedly became popular due to its unique "abstract" style, triggering widespread imitation and discussion among netizens.

2024 is worthy of being the first year of abstraction, and every meme is unexpectedly popular.

Recently, an animated film "Summer of the Mermaid" which took two people 7 years to produce was released in theaters. Its classic clip "scare yourself" has become popular on the entire Internet and is expected to win the title of the finale abstract meme in 2024.

The meme comes from a scene in a movie where the heroine was humming a song while walking along the river, when suddenly a gust of wind blew by. The heroine was startled, and when she looked around and found nothing had happened, she smoothed her hair and uttered the classic line "You scare yourself~", but then she was pushed into the river by a man in black who suddenly appeared.

Whether it is the unique painting style or the weak dubbing of the heroine in a "tipsy" state, every point has touched the hearts of contemporary netizens, allowing this short 30-second movie clip to spread rapidly across the entire network, attracting countless people to imitate it.

Some netizens imitated the tone and movements of the heroine frame by frame; there were also professional dubbing artists who dubbed the heroine, bringing the quality of the entire movie to the next level; and some netizens remade the dialect version of "Scare Yourself" using Chongqing dialect, Guiyang dialect, and Tianjin dialect.

At present, the views of topics related to #scare yourself# and #mermaid's summer# on Douyin and Xiaohongshu have reached 2.7 billion and 260 million respectively, and the number of video views on Bilibili has also exceeded 130 million.

The traffic from the memes also fed back to the movie "Summer of the Mermaid" to a certain extent. Many netizens walked into the theater with curiosity. Some thought that "it was all about emotion, no skills", while others lamented the difficulty of the duo making the movie and gave it a 4-star rating on Douban.

According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, as of now, the box office of this movie has reached 658,000, ranking fourth on the mainland cartoon box office list in December.

So, how did "scare yourself" become a new generation of abstract meme? What other interesting abstract materials are there in "The Mermaid's Summer"? What discussions did the movie itself spark on the Internet?

01 The total number of online views exceeded 3 billion, and netizens used various memes to "scare themselves"

The first person who imitates "scare yourself" must be a genius.

On November 26, the funny blogger "Jin Dui, who is very dramatic" released a video recreating the "scare yourself" incident and claimed that he was the first blogger on the entire Internet to imitate the meme.

"The Drama-Savvy Jin Dui" not only reproduced the scene of the heroine walking on the shore, but also "vividly" interpreted the scene of the heroine's feet glowing and turning into a fish tail after falling into the river. The video has been played more than 400,000 times on Bilibili and received 78,000 likes on Xiaohongshu.

Netizens with a keen sense of smell immediately understood the abstract meaning of "scare yourself", found the dubbing magical and funny, and called on their friends to enjoy it together in the comment section. From that day on, the number of secondary creations about "scare yourself" on the Internet continued to rise and spread to various fields.

Starting from November 26, the number of works related to "scare yourself" increased sharply, reaching a small climax on December 3.

Among the many secondary creation bloggers, "Charlie Beng Beng" is the most similar. He even restored the slow-motion freeze-frame state of the heroine being pushed down, and when he said "I scared myself", the gentle and slightly ethereal tone in his voice was also praised as more interesting than the original film. The video received 2.43 million likes on Douyin and became the video with the highest number of likes under the topic #Mermaid's Summer#.

Celebrity Zhu Xudan also joined in the fun and imitated the video, which netizens commented was more human-like and funny than the animation. The video received 2.1 million likes on Douyin.

In addition to bloggers and celebrities imitating each other, "scare yourself" has also spread to the pet circle, as well as dialect versions of "everyone hey everyone" and "what the hell, I'm scaring myself here".

Moreover, bloggers who have studied and understood the essence of the film in depth are not limited to imitating the original film, but directly start "secondary creation" in real life scenarios, breaking down "scare yourself" into three progressive emotional states for interpretation:

First, they become alert immediately when encountering the slightest disturbance. Then, after realizing that nothing happened, they sigh that they were "scared themselves". Finally, when they let down their guard, a reversal occurs and they are startled by something that suddenly happens and shout "Ah~".

For example, the blogger "Maomaomao" was addicted to games for too long. He suddenly remembered that he had a girlfriend. He opened his mobile phone and found that there was no message push. It turned out that he "scare~ himself". He continued to play for another 2 hours. When he looked at his mobile phone again, he found that his girlfriend had sent him 31 messages.

Another example is the "headband queen" who was hiding in her bed and playing with her mobile phone. After hearing a strange noise, she quickly put down her phone. After waiting for a few seconds and finding that no one came in, she comforted herself that she was "scaring herself" and continued to play. As a result, her mother suddenly lifted her quilt, and she screamed and flashed out of the screen. Netizens commented that her behavior was even scarier than the original movie.

The ghost animal section of Bilibili was also occupied by "scare oneself", with the UP host directly changing the plot and making his imagination bigger and more abstract.

For example, the weak heroine who originally "scares herself" can not only defeat the enemy with one punch, but also take out a pistol and kill the man in black.

There are also videos with hundreds or even thousands of heroines appearing, causing the men in black who originally wanted to push the heroines into the water to exclaim, "I can't push them all, I can't push them all at all." Many secondary creation videos have been viewed over one million times.

02 The animated version of "Dreaming of the Entertainment Industry" is expected to become the finale of 2024 abstract meme

As the saying goes, it is better to be born with an abstract body than to stay up late to memorize jokes.

"The Summer of Mermaid" is such a work. In fact, the story of the movie is quite common. After the mermaid heroine mistakenly entered the human world, she met the hero and his mother-in-law. After several twists and turns, the heroine finally returned to the sea.

Although the plot is simple, the heroine's erratic voice-over and other characters' not-so-smooth lines always make netizens laugh.

For example, the heroine likes her mother-in-law very much and says, "It would be nice if I had someone like my mother-in-law as my mother." And the mother-in-law's answer is, "My mother-in-law has never been a mother. She has always been a mother-in-law." The plot, which was intended to be lyrical, was turned into a comedy by this line.

For example, when the heroine first met the hero, she was still a mermaid who had just arrived on land.

In order to remind the heroine to adapt to the human world, the hero touched his chin, showed an evil and crazy smile and said: "You'd better be obedient, this is land, the territory of humans." The official Douyin account of the Traffic Police Detachment of the Haikou Public Security Bureau, "Coconut City Traffic Police", also imitated this clip and changed the lines to: "You'd better be obedient, this is the lane, the territory of cars." The video received 1.3 million likes and over 1.8 million reposts.

Due to the high density of memes in "The Mermaid's Summer", many netizens joked that the creators "took two people seven years to post it". However, the story behind the two creators is not so abstract and funny.

According to public reports, the core creative team of "The Mermaid's Summer" consists only of Shen Xiaoyang and Xiao Xiaoyue, a couple. Previously, Shen Xiaoyang had spent a year alone making a sample of the animated film "Chronicles of the Mountain God", which received good word-of-mouth feedback.

During the seven years of preparation for "Summer of the Mermaid", Shen Xiaoyang and Xiao Xiaoyue independently completed all the work including animation, editing, and production. The production took a long time because they had no money, and they needed to take other jobs to make money in order to continue creating.

Since there was not enough money to hire a professional voice actor, Xiao Xiaoyue dubbed the female lead herself.

In 2022, the two released the trailer of "Summer of the Mermaid" on Bilibili, and the barrage at that time was once flooded with "Supporting every dream".

But when the film was released in 2024, "Summer of the Mermaid" did not receive support and recognition.

The "hardest hit areas" are the out-of-place dubbing and crude character modeling.

Some people wonder why the animation effect is still so rough after the director spent 7 years on it, and whether the scenes were painted by AI.

Netizens discussed whether the long production experience of the main creators was "marketing by selling misery", and pointed out that hard work is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, and the fact that the film's quality is poor cannot be ignored just because of creative difficulties.

Therefore, the film is called the animated version of "Chasing Dreams in Show Business" by many netizens.

It is worth noting that when making "Summer of the Mermaid", Shen Xiaoyang and Xiao Xiaoyue went to Gulangyu Island in Xiamen for field trips many times, and incorporated a lot of local scenery and customs of the southern Fujian region into the film. Their spirit of promoting southern Fujian culture has also been recognized by many netizens.

Some netizens also expressed their support for the director on social media, believing that it was not easy for two people to make an animated film, and suggested that the audience could watch it as a comedy.

Recently, the Xinbang editorial department also went to a cinema in Shanghai to watch this movie.

According to the observation of the editorial department of Xinbang, at least 15 people watched "Summer of the Mermaid" that night, while the audience of other movies in the same time period was only about 5. During the movie, people were constantly amused by the plot and dubbing, especially the famous scene of "scaring oneself", the laughter was even louder.

Everyone seemed to be watching the movie for fun, and when they saw the list of only two people on the staff list at the end, some people smiled and took photos as a souvenir.

Some netizens joked at the end of the Douyin video that the two were "competing for roles" in different positions. Regardless of the plot, at least the people who came to watch the movie had fun, which also echoed the abstract process of "scare yourself" becoming popular on the entire network.

The word "abstract" itself has no meaning, and even if many people discuss it, they still cannot understand its deep meaning. It can express a state of mind of talking nonsense and forming one's own school, and it can also be seriously interpreted as a rebellion against mainstream culture and the world.

In short, anything confusing you see on the Internet can be classified as "abstract". The popularity of "scare yourself" is an example of this. Behind this is the nonsense of the joke itself and the netizens who love abstraction.

In the craze of playing memes, abstraction has become the traffic code for creators, driving many people to break out of the circle. For example, Wanyan Huide, who was "pushed out" by netizens, and Xiang Zuo, who touched the bridge of his nose with one hand, and Huang Zitao, who recently made fans laugh and sent them to the hospital with his "white phosphorus personality" live broadcast, are also playing with abstraction.

Abstraction has therefore become a hot topic on major content platforms. The annual keyword of Xiaohongshu in 2024 is "abstract", with more than 10 million related notes. On Douyin and Kuaishou, the playback volume of #abstract# topic videos reached 74.6 billion and 24.4 billion times respectively.

It can be seen that the Internet today is full of people who love to have fun with abstract things.

But not everyone is willing to take on the abstract traffic. Although the abstract "scare oneself" has made "The Mermaid's Summer" a hot topic and the box office has increased slightly, it has also caused the two main creators to fall into controversy.

At present, Shen Xiaoyang has cleared his updates on Bilibili, and the Douyin account "Summer of the Movie Mermaid" used to promote the movie has also restricted netizens' comments.

Although it is an innate abstract body, this may not be the effect the creative team wanted to achieve. To some extent, abstraction has also become a traffic metaphysics, always randomly descending on those who are talented, regardless of whether they need it or not.

Author | Xiaoya Editor | Xiaoba