600,000 RMB for a video, post-00s internet celebrity "turns over", gains millions of fans but is exposed for not paying social security for employees

Internet celebrity "Wang Ma" Wang Zhixing has attracted public attention due to his treatment by the MCN company. The article explores the labor rights issues behind the internet celebrity economy and is recommended for readers who are interested in the new media industry, labor law and the internet celebrity ecosystem.

"You have to cure me even if she can't cure you, or everyone will be buried with her!"

A classic "boss quote" appears in the video, but the picture does not show the moved expression of the heroine, but a nanny in cleaning clothes and holding a mop, frowning and whispering: "Huh? Me? Do I have to be (buried) too? None of this has anything to do with me!" The nanny's expression was speechless and a little impatient, and a little outrageous in her impatience. In the next second, she was about to roll her eyes and blurt out the word "divine gold". In the words of fans, "So crazy, so mad, love it".

In the past two months, "Rebirth: I'm a Nanny in a Domineering President's Short Drama" has become a new electronic pickle for young people.

This comedy does not choose the traditional perspective of the male and female protagonists, but takes the identity of a working person - a nanny, as the entry point. Wang Ma in the play is the background board when the protagonist is in love. The protagonist is in love, and only she works diligently. But even so, she still inevitably becomes "a part of the protagonist's love play". Wang Ma, who jumps back and forth between being a punching bag and a scapegoat, "relies on her mouth" and rants wildly in the atmosphere of love, becoming an alternative refreshing article picked by working people.

So far, the series of short plays "Reborn as a Nanny in a Domineering President Short Play" has been played more than 1.8 billion times. According to Xinbang data, the Douyin account of "Seven Orangutans" that released the play gained 1.26 million followers in March, Xiaohongshu gained 420,000 followers, and Bilibili gained 260,000 followers... The total number of followers on the entire network has increased by nearly 3 million. If the secondary account is included, the total number of fans on the entire network of "Wang Ma"'s company has exceeded 50 million.

However, the character of "a resentful worker" who rebels against the president became popular, but "Wang Ma" outside the play did not continue the cool plot. Some users revealed that the MCN Wuhan Wilderness Culture Co., Ltd., to which "Wang Ma" belongs, has terrible treatment: monthly salary is only 4,000 yuan, no social security is paid during the probation period, you have to bring your own computer to work, even extras are not paid, and the company still has a long and short week... As soon as the news came out, netizens who love Wang Ma felt "backstabbed" - I didn't expect that you empathize with workers online, but exploit them fiercely behind the scenes.

On May 26, as public opinion heated up, Wang Ma and Wilderness Culture had to respond and make statements one after another, announcing a number of adjustments, including implementing two-day weekends off, paying social security during the probation period, employees' wages not less than 6,000 yuan, and purchasing company work equipment, in order to appease the "injured workers." However, can the "Wang Ma Universe" built by the "clear-headed" funny woman, whose plot account has gained more than 10 million fans in two years, still win back the hearts of fans and convince the audience of her character in the play?

In fact, putting aside the Wang Ma incident, in the past two years when Internet celebrities have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, the lowest level is still the grassroots employees. Compared with the hundreds of thousands of yuan quoted for a video by Internet celebrities, wage arrears, excessive workload, and outrageous demands are not new in the circle. In reality, there are many "Wang Ma" cases, which is the root cause of this incident.

1. "Mother Wang", born in 2001, earns 700,000 yuan a month

Although she is unkempt and plays the role of a funny girl in the "Rebirth Series", Wang Ma is actually a young girl born in 2001. Her name is Wang Zhixing and she graduated from the Journalism Department of Hubei University. When she was a sophomore, she saw that her classmates became popular by making short videos, so she pulled her roommates to start making short videos. She originally wanted to name the account "Seven Stars", but because she felt it was too ordinary and not interesting enough, she changed it to "Seven Orangutans", which also laid the groundwork for her relaxed and funny video style.

At first, Wang Zhixin's character was a "female college student", and her inspiration came more from things in life. She made funny jokes into short videos and posted them online. In 2021, a short video about checking the results of the CET-4 and CET-6 went viral, and the account gained millions of followers overnight. Invitations for cooperation also came one after another. According to a report in the Hubei Daily in 2021, Wang Zhixin was not only able to pay her own tuition, but also to pay salaries to the seniors in the team. The monthly turnover of the team and the account exceeded 700,000 yuan.

#A sophomore girl born in the 2000s makes 700,000 yuan a month by making jokes# became a hot topic and caused widespread controversy at the time: "Being a student is worse than being an internet celebrity" and "What's the point of studying hard?" In this regard, the young girl was not afraid of public opinion and responded: "700,000 yuan is just cash flow. I have a studio to run, a team to support, and equipment to update." In 2022, Wuhan Wilderness Culture Media Co., Ltd. was established with the support of the "Seven Orangutans" team, but the company's equity structure is not directly linked to Wang Zhixing.

In two years, the money-making ability of Internet celebrities has been fully demonstrated. Content monetization, live streaming, opening stores and building brands, all seven gorillas have not been left behind. In 2023, Wang Zhixing bought a Porsche for his truck-driving father. It is reported that in order to support her and her sister's studies, the father lost 50 kilograms due to work. The 23-year-old daughter bought a luxury car as a gift, which naturally caused a certain amount of discussion.

On March 5 this year, "Seven Chimpanzees" began to simultaneously update "Reborn as a Nanny in a Domineering Short Drama" and "Reborn as a Protagonist in a Short Drama". As of press time, the former has been updated to 20 episodes and the latter has been updated to 16 episodes. Among the 36 episodes that have been updated, 21 videos have brought up topics about different brands, including Huawei, Hansu, Anmuxi, Ulike, Lan's Cat Food, Naraka, Mibeier, Ximuyuan, Juzi Biology, Free Point, Mao Geping and many other well-known brands.

Star Chart data shows that the "Seven Chimpanzees" account quotes 450,000 yuan for videos under 20 seconds, 500,000 yuan for videos under 60 seconds, and 600,000 yuan for videos over 60 seconds. Compared with the 80,000 yuan for videos under 60 seconds and 100,000 yuan for videos over 60 seconds when Wilderness Culture was first established in 2022, the cooperation price has increased by about 6-7 times. If calculated based on the current 600,000 yuan per video and 21 videos, the "Rebirth Series" may have brought "Seven Chimpanzees" more than 10 million yuan in revenue since its release in March.

On Douyin, "Seven Orangutans" has opened a product showcase, which currently shows that more than 55,000 people have followed her and sales have exceeded 60,000 pieces, but the frequency of live broadcasts is low. According to Chanmama data, she has only held three live broadcasts in the past 90 days, and none of them brought goods; however, on the Xiaohongshu account of the same name with more than 7.7 million followers, it can be seen that she has started to bring goods. She held live broadcasts on March 11, 15, 19, and 23, and she used the characters in her drama to bring goods, such as "Wang Ma" and "Wang Maid".

At the same time, according to the official WeChat account of the Wuhan East Lake Ecological Tourism Scenic Area Management Committee, last year "Seven Orangutans" opened a coffee shop by the East Lake. On Taobao, "Seven Orangutans' Store" was opened in 2022, selling the same clothing as the video. In addition to "Seven Orangutans", Wilderness Culture has also signed 17 talents, with a total of more than 23 million Douyin fans. For example, the rumored boyfriend "Zhao Guanjia Buguan" who Wang Ma fell in love with in the play, the quotation for the cooperative video is also between 25,000 and 40,000 yuan.

It can be said that Wang Zhixing, who plays various supporting roles in the drama, is already regarded as a "winner in life" by many people in real life.

3. College students flock to the short video track

But failures always come unexpectedly . Wang Zhixing is not the only one who starts making short videos in college. College students are quietly becoming the main force of video bloggers.

During the 2023 employment season, Weibo released a questionnaire on "What contemporary young people are paying attention to in employment": Among the nearly 10,000 recent graduates interviewed, 61.6% would consider emerging professions such as internet celebrity live streaming when looking for a job, and only 38.4% would not consider it at all.

In the past two years, many of the short video bloggers who have become popular on Douyin are college students, and their content is inspired by recording college life. For example, "Shen 301" has 96,000 followers and records the daily life of dormitory 301. "Liong Meng", who was forced to start making short videos because of an elective course at Zhejiang Media College, started from college life and began to share the daily life of female college students.

However, while traffic brings wealth, it also often brings pressure, especially for bloggers with strong personalities.

After Wang Zhixing himself released a statement on Weibo, some fans chose to forgive, while others chose to leave in disappointment.

And the tug-of-war over public opinion has not stopped yet - on the evening of May 26, Wilderness Culture issued a statement saying that the information previously released by Tianyancha about "zero insured persons" was untrue, and that it had issued a legal warning and sent a formal lawyer's letter to Tianyancha. At the same time, Wang Zhixing himself said that "the 4,000 yuan salary for all employees is a rumor, and different positions have different salary standards."

However, since Wang Zhixing did not appear in the equity structure of Wilderness Culture, "Mother Wang" was exempted to a certain extent.

In comparison, the internet celebrities and bloggers who were previously exposed for having low salaries and high demands suffered a more complete downfall.

Just last month, the former internet celebrity with a million fans, "狗头萝莉", released a recruitment announcement, offering a salary of 3,000-4,000 yuan, with only one day off a week, and accommodation but no food. Because she has to cooperate with her nationwide pancake stall tour, she will basically not have basic benefits such as five insurances and one housing fund. "The disadvantage of this job is that the work intensity is high and the salary is low, but the advantages are also quite obvious, you can travel all over the country." However, netizens are not buying it, "Traveling all over the country = basically on business trips", "You can find a random milk tea shop and the salary is twice as much."

In addition to low salaries, workers who join internet celebrity teams may also face the confusion of "mismatch between workload and income".

Previously, the blogger "Mr. He" in the digital area of ​​​​B station had offered a salary of 10,000 yuan to recruit a full-time assistant, but the requirements for assistants were very high: they were required to be able to read English technical materials, have programming skills, be able to independently complete welding and wiring in circuit development, be familiar with the principles and use of FDM 3D printers, have experience in production and production assistant, etc. At least one of them must be met. At the same time, they must be responsible for a wide variety of tasks such as prop purchase and assembly, equipment rental, site layout, shooting and post-production, daily administrative affairs, etc.

Some netizens complained that “it’s a nice idea to hire one person to do all the work”, while others believed that working with a big internet celebrity could quickly improve personal skills and gain more connections and resources, which in a sense justifies the low salary.

For workers, low wages and heavy workloads are at least visible "mines", but the worst is the delayed payment of wages. Previously, blogger "Old Girl A Ke" with millions of fans and fashion blogger "Meimei Xia Xia" were reported to have been owed wages.

In the drama, "Wang Ma" who fights against the annoying CEO actually reflects the desire of workers to be respected and treated fairly. But in reality, it is difficult for "Wang Ma" to live like the protagonists of the cool drama. Guaranteeing two days off a week, social security and reasonable income treatment should not be just a joke in the short drama. Before it becomes a means of gathering traffic, it should be the responsibility and obligation of the company.

Author: Wang Yaqi; Editor: Si Wen; Source public account: E-commerce Online (ID: 1089127)