The show was so popular that it was suspended. Da Bing, who was ridiculed by the public, made a comeback through live streaming.

In the whirlpool of online public opinion, Da Bing's name was once pushed to the forefront. Facing ridicule and controversy, he chose to stop broadcasting. However, it was this decision that unexpectedly became the turning point of his image turnaround. On the live broadcast stage, Da Bing reshaped his Internet image with sincerity and humor, winning new recognition. This can't help but remind people of the old saying: "A blessing in disguise." Da Bing's story is about how to find a turnaround in adversity and how to stand firm in the storm of public opinion. This article will explore how Da Bing achieved a gorgeous turnaround in his image during live broadcasts, and the deep cultural significance behind this phenomenon.

Da Bing, who was at the center of the storm, chose to stop broadcasting.

On October 17, Da Bing, the new "confidant" of the Internet, posted a text in his own account, saying "Heavenly wealth, mirror flowers and water moons, don't wait or rush, I won't start the show for now, and I won't be able to take over this wave of traffic", announcing his retirement from the limelight.

Image source: Da Bing Kuaishou account

Suspension of broadcasting can be seen as a way for influencers to protect themselves. @K总 and @听泉鉴宝, who became popular at almost the same time as Da Bing, chose to stop broadcasting to "avoid the limelight" after experiencing a sharp increase in fans and a surge in online discussions. Although compared with these two, Da Bing's increase in fans and live broadcast popularity is not that exaggerated - in his "home" Kuaishou, the increase in fans in the past 7 days is only more than 200,000, and the live broadcast audience is about 100,000+. Instead, it is the sliced ​​videos distributed on Douyin, Kuaishou, Video Number, and Xiaohongshu that have driven Da Bing's popularity across the entire network.

No one might have expected Da Bing's comeback. After all, Da Bing's reputation on social media was not entirely positive, and his "Bingxue" was ridiculed by the entire network. But in the past month, starting with "Plum Connoisseur", Da Bing's Internet image has been reversed by his witty responses and humorous expressions in live broadcasts, and he has become a veteran artist and a caring mentor.

At the same time, Bingxue has entered its second stage. Users are playing with the required memes of the "old Bingxue", and are also enjoying his new memes of "being sent flying by a dog during a live broadcast", "the king of identifying positions by sound", and "a connoisseur of prunes", suspecting that "all of his more than a dozen identities are real".

Image source: Da Bing Kuaishou account

And when ice science became popular again against the trend, people couldn't help but wonder: it is a popular subject on the Internet, so why can't "late learning" make a comeback?

1. Da Bing made a comeback and live broadcast was a great success

Even if you haven’t read Da Bing’s books, it doesn’t mean you haven’t come across the “Ice Science” meme.

The so-called "X-study" is a new academic model on social media. The research object can be a film or TV work, or the words and deeds of a certain person. Ice-study is to conduct text analysis with Da Bing as the research object.

The ancestors of this model are "Hongxue" and "Zhenxue". At that time, the public was eager to interpret the plot frame by frame with a magnifying glass, while the current popular "Bingxue" and "Kexue" have been condensed into a collection of hot memes. Its "new" is that the public pulls down everything they don't like to deconstruct and build their own interpretation safety zone. The "trend" is that this type of text is spread through social media, and it is easy to get a lot of response.

If you want to get started with ice science, you must first take the "required courseware." For Big Ice, users' enthusiasm for making jokes is mainly directed at its incomprehensible title - "Amitabha Mua" and "Okay? OK"; as well as the dozens of identities listed under the author's profile, including the golden left face, the old backpacker, the Zen disciple, etc., which has created the most popular ice science joke "There is no room for all these old people."

Image source: Geng Science Popularization

In the years when Da Bing stopped publishing books, the value of "ice studies" continued to rise, even expanding to the international arena. When Marquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, the first paragraph began with "Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano would recall the distant afternoon when his father took him to see Da Bing"; American five-star general MacArthur also commented, "In front of Teacher Da Bing, I am like a new ice egg."

However, it is also because of Bingxue that when Da Bing gradually faded out of the public eye, he still had considerable popularity on the Internet. Now it seems that according to the theory of bottoming out and rebounding, when Da Bing was ridiculed on the Internet, his turnaround script was quietly written.

In May this year, Da Bing started a live broadcast on Kuaishou and chatted with netizens via microphone, thus starting the road to reversing his reputation.

In one of the most widely circulated clips, a netizen who was live-streaming with him questioned, “Isn’t it wrong to give a well-intentioned reminder?” Da Bing was silent for a moment, “How do you know that your reminder is well-intentioned?” Then he took out the oval-shaped snack he had been eating, “For example, a friend in the comment section just now left several comments asking Da Bing not to eat betel nuts. This reminder is very well-intentioned.” “But this thing is called prunes.”

Image source: Internet

This live broadcast clip, which was both abstract and funny, became an important part of Da Bing's ice-breaking. His smooth expressions of twisted mouth, frowning and wry smile when he held up the plums also attracted imitations from experts. For example, Li Dan and talk show actor Liu Yang picked up big bags of sunny plums to imitate Da Bing during the live broadcast, and the barrage of comments was full of hahahaha.

In the live broadcast room, Da Bing abandoned his "golden left face" and had to show his "golden full face", but this image unexpectedly broke the public's solidified stereotype of him. When he was connected to a parent on the mic, facing the other party's remarks urging marriage, Da Bing responded repeatedly, "Does your family have a throne to inherit?" "People are not animals, they don't have to mate when the season comes." His words were rough but true, and they touched the hearts of young people at once.

Of course, Da Bing’s live broadcast also has a heartwarming part: a seriously ill father who receives subsistence allowances wants to borrow 3,000 yuan to buy an electric car for his child before he dies. Da Bing rejects his proposal to repay 700 yuan a month, and instead makes an agreement to repay the money in five years. He also refutes the user who joked in the live broadcast room, “Everyone has difficulties.”

A young man born in 1993, who was abused by his father and sent to a juvenile detention center for slashing his father, repeatedly said during the call that he had no hope of survival. Da Bing first changed the subject and asked him what kind of job he had done, then suggested that a big brother in the live broadcast room take him to eat a bowl of Zhengzhou stewed noodles with double the amount of meat, and then suggested that he go out to sea to make a living.

Image source: Da Bing Kuaishou account

There is also a "conquering others with virtue" segment, for example, when connecting with anti-fans on the live broadcast, the other party repeatedly said that he did not like Da Bing and that "the books he wrote are worthless", to which Da Bing ended the confrontation with "You are right"; also talked about a lot was that Da Bing was sent flying by a dog during a live broadcast, and netizens immediately gave it a new meme "Wangwang Shattered Ice".

These real and vivid scenes dispelled the stereotype of Da Bing in the minds of young people. Just a month ago, Da Bing joked that there were only 3,000 viewers on average in his live broadcast room, "One dollar can make you number one." In the past 30 days, his Kuaishou account has gained more than 450,000 followers, and his Douyin account has gained 2.5 million followers.

After Da Bing was freed from the "black and red" stigma, users who had not dared to speak out when Bingxue was ridiculed finally dared to openly show off their collections of books, "I have liked it since middle school."

2. “Ice Learning” has made a comeback, but “Late Learning” has not

Generally speaking, the popular trends on the Internet will eventually form a track - the track of "being ridiculed by the crowd and then becoming popular" that Da Bing entered is already full of people.

Da Bing is not the only one who has turned his image around through live streaming. Other examples include @张大大, @李旦, and even Giao Ge. Take @张的大的大, for example. At the beginning of last year, Zhang Dada started live streaming on TikTok, and his reputation suddenly went from "everyone in the entertainment industry hates him" to "my connections in the entertainment industry," according to netizens.

On Douyin, Zhang Dada’s account profile reads, “Hello, I’m Xiao Zhang, how can I help you?” Netizens were not shy about asking gossip and making fun of his live broadcast.

Some people used entertainment hot topics to "make things difficult" for Zhang Dada, hoping that his revelations would quickly explode on Weibo; some people threatened to make their relationship with the movie emperor public, and Zhang Dada was stumbling in his response, afraid but also with a look of "wanting to eat melons" written all over his face; some people missed their mothers because they had not been home for a long time, and suddenly changed the subject after expressing their feelings, "Can I call you mom?" At one point, Zhang Dada was covered with many labels such as "entertainment customer service" and "turtle in the wishing well".

Image source: Zhang Dada’s Douyin account

The reason is that we are now in an era of deconstruction. The public is used to using meme culture to deconstruct everything that was originally high and mighty. When celebrities enter public spaces, they also have to deconstruct themselves first. For example, when Yu Hua entered the Internet, he was immediately given the nickname "sloppy puppy". His good brother Mo Yan also did not escape the "dogization". Later, Mo Yan asked Yu Hua to write a recommendation for him, and in the chat records he posted, he also arranged the two of them in their respective puppy images.

The recently born "Xiangxue" is also a good example. After the movie "The Treasure Land" was criticized and the clips of Xiang Zuo touching his nose and slapping himself were mocked by the public, Xiang Zuo quickly joined the atmosphere of Internet mockery: a user in Zhang Dada's live broadcast room connected to imitate his nose-touching action, and Xiang Zuo directly went online to give intimate guidance; funny blogger @李濡濡 imitated Xiang Zuo's lizard-style fitness, and was chased by the original host, saying that she had imitated one action forgot, and then the two stood at the bottom of the stairs and slapped themselves in the face.

Although this series of operations has a strong marketing flavor, Xiang Zuo's character as the "silly son of a capitalist" has taken root in the hearts of users. How can this not be considered a turnaround in word-of-mouth?

In comparison, Huang Xiaoming's recent official announcement of his girlfriend Ye Ke's "micro-do" of "a little bit of technology, 40% of technology" seems too insincere. One of the famous scenes of "Kexue" is that Ye Ke forcibly applies the description of wine tasting to cake explanation during the live broadcast. The evaluation of "light milk flavor plus milk flavor" and "straight to the palate" has also become a popular formula imitated by netizens.

"Wanxue", another popular subject on the Internet, has not yet stepped out of its own narrative system. "Wanxue" first emerged in 2017 and refers to a subject built around the "upper class life" displayed by Wanwan, the first generation of Douban Internet celebrity, and her husband Lin Han. After the worker fell from the building at M Woods Art Museum, Wanwan's reputation completely collapsed.

Wan scholars love to deconstruct and expose Wan Wan's wealthy life. For example, they revealed that their Beijing villa was actually a self-built house. "If you don't show it, you don't have it" has become an iron rule for Wan scholars to study. "Lei Wanying, you are my grandma" and "Let's fall in love" are the most popular courses. On Xiaohongshu, Wan scholars have tagged many courses with "poor couples are sad about everything."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

In 2024, Wanwan lowered her profile and entered the live streaming market, selling M Woods Museum peripherals, skin care products, clothing, etc. However, given that her early statement "I have no obligation to share" is still echoing, the "black and red" traffic did not support her live streaming. According to Chanmama data, Wanwan's last live broadcast was on September 27. Within five and a half hours that night, Wanwan's live broadcast room had 1.19 million viewers, but sales were only 1,000 to 2,500 pieces, with sales of 100,000 to 250,000 yuan.

Wan Wan is also trying to deconstruct herself. Her two assistants played "one night in Beijing" in the live broadcast room, and the first sentence was Wan Wan's famous saying, "The cup can hold more than people", but netizens immediately warned, "Don't send her traffic."

While Bingxue is making great strides on the Internet, Wanxue, which has been ridiculed for seven years, has not yet made a comeback. One of the reasons may be that the Internet really still needs Da Bing.

3. The Internet still needs Big Ice

In 2024, Li Dan won the live broadcast by doing nothing, and transformed himself into a mental decompression agent for young people. On Xiaohongshu, he embarked on the wild path of a late-night emotional anchor, reading fans' submissions while shouting to sell goods for the canteen, and he has been ranked No. 1 on the platform's buyer list many times.

In terms of consulting on emotional and life problems, Li Dan and Da Bing are on the same track, and "Midnight Tree Hole Live Broadcast" is also how Da Bing defines his live broadcast room. If Li Dan represents the emotional needs of young women in first- and second-tier cities, Da Bing is the intimate uncle of lower-tier users in second-tier and lower-tier cities. Although his reputation has reversed among young people, Da Bing's live broadcast hometown is Kuaishou, and there are probably not many literary and artistic young people among his audience, but his remarks hit the pain points of young people.

To some extent, Da Bing and Li Dan are both people who chase the trend and can accurately hit the next trend. Previously, Da Bing created a hard-core literary youth persona for himself, traveling all over the country, and taking poetry and distant places into his pocket. For students who were floating in the ocean of learning at that time, Da Bing's books, in addition to chicken soup, were somewhat wild and unorthodox - at that time, Da Bing's persona was in line with people's imagination of "literary youth".

At a time when literary youth is no longer a fashionable item, the literary youth characteristics displayed by Da Bing are outdated. People re-examine the emptiness and exaggeration of his writings, and also re-examine his once pretentious self. When poetry and distant places become illusory bubbles, Da Bing appears in the live broadcast room again to face the suffering of reality.

Image source: Da Bing Kuaishou account

It is undeniable that Da Bing is talented. As the former host of "Sunshine Expressway", Da Bing's expression logic is higher than most anchors, and he understands the ways of the world and has rich experience.

For example, when he talked to a girl who likes to play on the live broadcast, he said, "It won't work without a strong external constraint." When a netizen asked a question about decoration in the live broadcast room, Da Bing talked freely and almost came up with a plan on the spot. He was so professional that the baseball cap on his head looked like a safety helmet. When he entered the live broadcast room with a sincere attitude and talked to the user on the live broadcast, these characteristics would offset the empty part to a certain extent and rebuild his image.

Da Bing may still be the same Da Bing, and the general public in reality still needs "chicken soup", but it's more down-to-earth and concrete.

In fact, the words printed on the cover of Da Bing's novel, "May you and I wander the world with the lightest luggage and the richest self" and "Please believe that there are people in this world who really live the life you want", are a little bit jolting, but they do not seem to be out of touch with the popular spirit of this era. They can also be said to be a replica of "Life is a wilderness" and "The brave enjoy the world first".

And when he said seriously in the live broadcast, "Humans are not animals. They don't have to mate when the season comes," or with a crooked mouth and frowned, "This thing is called prune," everyone suddenly "fell in love with a specific person."

It is precisely because people are complex that their images on the Internet can be reversed. After all, the public as judges also have limited perspectives, which also means: whether the Internet has memory depends on whether the audience is pleased at the moment.

Regardless of what happens next, at least netizens are trying to "vindicate" Da Bing - "Stop using Da Bing's jokes, okay? Okay."