2024, the history of the collapse of the traffic network celebrity

In 2024, influencers in the short video field seem to be facing unprecedented challenges. Frequent collapse incidents not only make fans sigh, but also sound the alarm for all content creators. This article explores the causes and impacts behind this series of events in depth, revealing how influencers find a balance between traffic and responsibility under increasingly strict supervision and scrutiny.

2024 may be the year when short video celebrities’ reputations collapse.

This spring, @Thurman猫杯, a top influencer with nearly 40 million fans online, was banned from the entire Internet for "planning and fabricating videos with colleagues," which caused quite a stir both inside and outside the industry.

Starting from Mao Yibei, the frequency of collapse of short video influencers this year has increased visibly. Now, the progress bar of 2024 has just passed the halfway point, and we have seen @王红权星, @罗王宇, @精灵球收七龙珠, @狂飙兄弟, @空空日记, @七颗猩猩, @大哥远, @一只人的沙士巴尔 and other top Vs or influencers with millions of fans collapse one after another, leaving ruins all over the ground. Some of them were directly banned by the platform, and some lost nearly a million fans overnight.

Screenshots of Ping An West Lake announcement and Mao Yibei Douyin video

The collapse of short video influencers is nothing new. Since the rise of short videos, many influencers have gone from being glorious for a while to being nowhere to be found for various reasons. In 2024, the speed of influencer collapse has obviously accelerated, and the reasons for collapse have become more and more "varied". The alarm bells have been sounded several times. From now on, short video influencers will have to "hold their tails" and be cautious.

1. The image of these celebrities collapsed, and they lost millions of fans

The most recent expert in house collapse who caused widespread heated discussion among netizens should be @空空日记.

@空空日记 has gained a lot of love from users by recording interesting things in life, conducting strange reviews, and sharing personal insights. Before the collapse of the house, its Douyin fans had exceeded 5.5 million.

@空空日记TikTok video screenshot

The reason for the collapse of the post originated from a video titled "How to Demystify Internet Bloggers" posted by a master with the account name @欢乐瓜丝. Under this video, a girl left a message saying that she didn't like @空空日记. After seeing this comment, @空空日记 immediately responded below, "I don't like you either," and blocked the girl and the author of the video. Afterwards, the girl posted a note on Xiaohongshu mentioning this matter. @空空日记 then showed the girl's note to fans during the live broadcast, directly revealing her account ID and cursing the girl, "You must have cancer. If you are sick, reincarnate quickly."

As an internet celebrity with more than 5 million fans, directly displaying the ID of an amateur account in the live broadcast room is tantamount to guiding fans to insult the amateur, which can be regarded as using one's popularity to "bully" the amateur; and the remarks cursing others to get cancer are not only uncomfortable, but also touch the hearts of those cancer patients or users whose relatives and friends are suffering from cancer.

After this operation, @空空日记 immediately attracted massive criticism, and a series of old events were also brought to the surface by netizens, such as exaggerating facts for traffic, causing a Dior salesperson to lose his job; on the one hand, he accepted sanitary napkin brand advertisements on Douyin, while on the other hand, he used dirty words to insult women on Weibo.

In the video, @空空日记 has always created a positive persona of sunshine, positive energy, and willingness to speak out against injustice. He also said before that he "hates people who bully others the most." Now that he has grown into a big blogger, he has unknowingly become "the kind of person he hates the most." Inappropriate words and actions are easy to cause public criticism, and the deviation between his personality and actions undoubtedly made his collapse more complete.

@空空日记TikTok video screenshot

Although @空空日记 posted a video to apologize to the amateur after the incident, netizens did not buy it. According to Kass Observation, in the more than 10 days since the incident, his account has lost 2.3 million followers, and the number of followers has now dropped to 3.229 million.

Not long before @空空日记 collapsed, positive energy blogger @精灵球收七龙珠 also disappointed many fans because of the collapse of his character.

@精灵球收七龙珠, once regarded by fans as "the Internet Li Ziwei". In the video, he is gentle and delicate, and used the camera to record several warm moments of his love:

When he was having supper, he encountered a dog that the aunt at the barbecue stall had a difficult birth. He not only helped contact the pet hospital, but also took the dog to the hospital with the aunt and paid for the three-day hospitalization fee.

When he sees an old man repairing a sewer on the roadside late at night, he will pack a barbecue for them and ask the waiter at the restaurant to deliver it for him;

At the airport, he met an aunt who didn't know how to pick up her luggage. He not only led the aunt all the way to her destination, but also patiently explained the process to her so that she could complete it independently during her subsequent journey.

@精灵球收七龙珠TikTok video screenshot

In the video, @精灵球收七龙珠 always seems to be trying to release kindness and beauty in his own way. In addition, his voice is gentle and his actions are measured. Therefore, the video has healed and touched many users. He himself has also gained a lot of sincere love because of this positive and perfect personality. The number of fans has reached 345.8W.

But in early July, a post shattered fans' filter of "Internet Li Ziwei".

In this post, a user who claimed to be @精灵球收七龙珠's ex-girlfriend described in detail their love experience and the other party's bad behavior of cheating on her. Once the post was published, it instantly caused an uproar among fans. Many fans were shocked and disappointed.

Although @精灵球收七龙珠 later apologized in the comments and videos, the undeniable fact is that the perfect persona he once created has collapsed in an instant. In addition, his real-life photos and live broadcast remarks were dug up by netizens, causing his persona to collapse further. Even the authenticity of the video he released earlier was questioned, and some people questioned the behavior of focusing the camera on vulnerable groups. As of now, his account has lost nearly 700,000 followers.

2. Various collapses, a large number of talents fell in 2024

In addition to @空空日记 and @精灵球收七龙珠 whose personalities have collapsed, since @Thurman猫杯 was banned for fabricating facts, several well-known experts have also fallen from grace one after another, and the reasons are different.

Some influencers were dismissed because the content of their accounts touched the platform’s regulatory red line.

In May this year, the influencer @王红权星 was banned from all major social platforms. Currently, there is no such person. Previously, this “rich man” who “owns 7 apartments in a residential area in Beijing and never goes out without wearing clothes worth 8 figures” had grabbed a lot of traffic by showing the rich life that ordinary people could not touch in his videos. Other influencers with similar content and considerable traffic, such as @鲍鱼家姐 and @柏公子, were also banned from the platforms.

According to relevant media reports, these accounts were banned because they violated laws and regulations and platform regulations. Specifically, since May, Tencent, Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu and other platforms have issued special announcements on the management of content with bad value orientation. In response to the recent problems of "extravagance and waste" and "showing off wealth and worshipping money" on the Internet, all platforms have stated that they will severely crack down on them to advocate rational and civilized consumption and values. The group of Internet celebrities who show off their wealth represented by @王红权星 has undoubtedly become the focus of supervision this time.

Some talents have an emotional collapse because their off-screen personality is inconsistent with the personality they created.

In March this year, the plot creator @七颗猩猩 launched the series "Reborn as Wang Ma in the Overbearing CEO Short Drama". The protagonist Wang Zhixing transformed into the nanny "Wang Ma" who is often "persecuted" in the "bloody" short drama, and complained about the old routines that "reduce intelligence" for everyone, giving the audience enough emotional value. Thanks to this series of content, @七颗猩猩's cumulative online followers increased by more than 3 million in 30 days.

In May, the MCN company behind Wang Zhixin, who plays Wang Ma, was exposed for having a long and short work week schedule, no social security during the probation period, and a salary of less than 6,000 yuan for core positions. Since Wang Ma was previously seen as a "mouthpiece for workers" in the skit, the sense of disconnection between the plot and reality turned into accusations that Wang Ma "backstabbed workers." As public opinion fermented, Wilderness Culture issued an emergency notice, and Seven Orangutans also responded with a live broadcast, saying that it would cancel the long and short work week schedule, increase employees' salaries to 6,000 yuan, and equip staff with Apple computers. Only then was the incident settled.

Some influencers are criticized for their content being too inflammatory and prone to stirring up extreme ethnic confrontations.

The expert @一个人的的沙士巴尔 was banned by multiple platforms in early July for "posting content that incites extreme nationalism." The account is good at using social hot topics as topics and outputting highly inflammatory views. Because it can easily mobilize users' emotions, it has attracted more than 10 million fans across the entire network.

@A Person's Shakespeare Tik Tok video screenshot

According to Kas, as early as 2022, @一个的沙士巴尔 was temporarily banned for inflammatory remarks. In July this year, his remarks in a video were obviously contradictory to his previous views. This behavior of changing the content direction at any time to harvest traffic has attracted criticism from officials and the public. In addition, much of the "knowledge" he output in the video was revealed to come from Zhihu Q&A, which further weakened his credibility.

Some influencers have caused a serious crisis of trust because of the failure of their product promotion.

On July 12, @罗王宇, the former Douyin beauty influencer, released a video nearly five months later, apologizing for the olive essence brand CSS, which he had promoted, saying it “did not contain olive oil” and promising to refund nearly 150 million yuan in product money to fans. At the same time, he also said that he found himself no longer needed and “decided to quit the Internet and leave for a while.”

@罗王宇TikTok video screenshot

Five months ago, Douyin review blogger @大虎课代表 issued a comparative test report, saying that he had selected six olive essence products to test the content of two active ingredients, oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol. As a result, the products of the brand "CSS" did not detect the above two ingredients at all. As a result, the CSS brand was questioned by users for "false advertising" of its products, and @罗王宇, who promoted the CSS brand, was also in a dilemma. In addition, he had previously been involved in controversy because of other recommended products. Therefore, although @罗王宇 said that he would actively resolve the issue after the incident, public opinion has not subsided. From the time the product was questioned to the release of the compensation video in July, @罗王宇's account has been losing fans. The trust crisis caused by the failure of the promoted product is irreversible.

Some celebrities have been embroiled in controversy for defaming heroes and martyrs due to inappropriate language used during live broadcasts.

@大哥远 is good at telling stories and creating entertainment effects in the live broadcast room. He has attracted more than 7 million fans with his humorous personality.

On July 22, a netizen reported to Beijing 12345 that @大哥远 made fun of the five warriors of Langya Mountain during a live broadcast. The incident caused an uproar in public opinion, and then @大哥远 announced that he would temporarily quit the Internet and his return would be undetermined. On July 24, the official account of Douyin released a message saying that @大哥远 had violated laws and regulations and caused adverse social impacts, and his account was banned indefinitely and his live broadcast privileges were revoked indefinitely.

Image source: TikTok

Some experts have destroyed the reputation of their accounts by using their accounts to deceive others and ignore the truth.

@狂飙兄弟, an anti-counterfeiting expert, once became famous for exposing the ghost scales in Lianyungang. He has always regarded himself as righteous, but in early July, an "anti-counterfeiting" incident made them the unjust party being judged.

The cause of the incident was that a man bought a second-hand car for 180,000 yuan at Shandong Car Playing and Studying Society in August last year. Then, almost a year later, he determined that the car was a major accident vehicle and found two parties to defend his rights. One of the teams was @狂飙兄弟.

Without confirming the truth of the matter, @狂飙兄弟 and his group of seven men stormed into the office of the study group's boss in a menacing manner and said condescendingly, "Do you know me? It doesn't matter if you don't, you will know me after today." Faced with @狂飙兄弟's indiscriminate and aggressive attitude, the study group's boss not only maintained a neither humble nor arrogant attitude, but also spent 180,000 yuan to buy back the second-hand car that had been driven for a year. Later, after inspection by an authoritative third party, the car was confirmed not to be a major accident vehicle.

Faced with such a reversal, @狂飙兄弟 could only bow his head and apologize, which was in sharp contrast to his previous arrogant attitude. The owner of the Yancheshe said with a grievance, "If the car I sold was really an accident car, I apologize to you, can you forgive me?" This made the contrast even more ironic, and his identity as a "counterfeit expert" was questioned.

3. Content creators, it’s time to “hold your tail between your legs”

In Kas's opinion, compared with the past, the probability of content creators stepping on landmines is getting higher and higher. If they are not careful, they may lose everything.

The reason is that, on the one hand, the government and platforms are increasingly strict in their supervision of content.

On May 8, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the launch of a series of special "Clear and Bright" operations, with the aim of cracking down on illegal and irregular issues such as the network environment, water army traffic fraud, algorithm abuse, and fake traffic, in order to create a clean and healthy network environment.

Since its launch, the Qinglang Operation has become a regular and in-depth rectification operation. In April this year, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission issued a document announcing that according to the 2024 "Qinglang" series of special operations plan, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission will carry out a two-month special operation across the country to "Qinglang·Rectify the "self-media" that has no bottom line to gain traffic". The key issues to be rectified include self-directed and self-acted fraud, using any means to hype up social hot spots, setting topics based on partial generalizations, creating personalities in violation of public order and good customs, and indiscriminately publishing "new yellow news".

While the country continues to carry out the Internet environment rectification campaign, various platforms have also actively responded to the policy, continuously launching and improving content supervision policies. Take Douyin as an example. Since this year alone, it has issued a number of new regulations and punished multiple accounts to rectify various content chaos.

On the other hand, from a macro perspective, the Internet itself is a place where public opinion is created, and one can easily be swept into the torrent if one is not careful. Creators in the entertainment field of short videos have long been in a state of "being scrutinized", especially after they have traffic, their every move is subject to rational or irrational scrutiny. And looking at the public opinion environment in the past two years, the public's scrutiny of public figures has undoubtedly become more stringent. Therefore, for short video creators, once the personality does not meet expectations, the content is controversial, the private life is criticized, or other thunder points of the "scrutinizers" are touched, they will inevitably be hit by traffic backlash, and it will be difficult to turn things around later.

There is no doubt that it is time for content creators to "hold their tails between their legs."

In 2024, the frequent collapse of influencers is undoubtedly a loud alarm bell. Starting from this, the creative path of influencers will become more "dangerous". Whether it is within the content or outside the content, only by being cautious can we go further on this road.