Behind the collapse of "Wang Ma": wealth, public opinion and cocoon

Not long after she became popular, Wang Ma, the "strongest mouthpiece for working people" with 3 million followers, unexpectedly collapsed in a "capitalist" posture. Sure enough, working people still can't empathize with capital, right? Behind the increasingly vulnerable collapse of Internet celebrities is the increasingly torn public opinion on the Chinese Internet, the ever-thickening cocoon, and the difficult-to-bridge class relationship.

Wang Ma @七颗猩猩, who was recently known as the "strongest mouth substitute among working people" and gained 3 million fans on the entire network with the series "Rebirth: I'm a Nanny in a Domineering President's Short Drama", unexpectedly collapsed in a "capitalist" posture.

The incident started when a netizen revealed that the company that "Wang Ma" worked for, Wilderness Culture, had a series of unreasonable requirements that "exploited employees", including long and short work weeks, a salary of 4,000 yuan, requiring employees to bring their own computers, and a three-day trial period. Some netizens even revealed that Wilderness Culture was suspected of using interview tricks, saying that they had not received any notification after the interview, but the scripts they prepared for the interview appeared in Wang Ma's videos one after another.

She "speaks up" for workers in short videos, but "backstabs" them in reality. This extreme sense of disconnection immediately aroused dissatisfaction among countless "real Wang Ma" in reality.

On May 26, topics such as #王妈公司治疗# and #王妈公司０人入保# were searched one after another. Netizens questioned, "They are eating the bonuses of workers, but they only give them 4,000 yuan", "Why do they use my suffering to earn my traffic, and then turn around to exploit thousands of me?"

In response to various controversial points, Wilderness Culture has successively responded, denying "0 people participating in the insurance" and "plagiarism", and released a statement on salary and benefits, but it still could not stop the aggressive collapse of its reputation.

In the latest short video of "Rebirth", many netizens even began to question the working-class character of "Wang Ma", believing that "Wang Ma is the most crazy person in the whole play now" and "Wang Ma is like the hostess now."

In fact, @七颗猩猩 has also been at the center of public opinion before. In 2021, Wang Zhixing, a sophomore student, achieved "wealth freedom" by shooting short videos, which triggered a round of discussion. The topic #2000后大二学妹拍段子月赚700,000# was also on the hot search. Although there were some doubts at the time, the overall sentiment was relatively positive, such as "inspirational" and "buying a luxury car for parents in full".

In contrast, the collapse of "Wang Ma" this time came quickly and completely. Even if some people said that "it is too harsh to ask the video character to return to reality", it could not stop the collapse of word of mouth. Strictly speaking, the collapse of Wang Ma this time is not the inconsistency between the Internet character and the real identity in the traditional sense, but the separation between the plot character and reality.

From the early days of internet celebrities being exposed for their personalities not matching reality and their reputations being ruined, to their career and love choices not matching users' expectations and their reputations being ruined, to today's internet celebrities being ruined for their characters not matching reality, behind the increasingly vulnerable internet celebrities are the increasingly divided public opinion on the Chinese Internet, the ever-thickening cocoon and the difficult-to-reconcile classes.

01 Behind the frequent collapse of personal image, are netizens’ demands becoming more and more stringent?

In fact, the reason why "Wang Ma" collapsed is not difficult to understand. "Backstabbing workers" is the collective emotional point of netizens.

Previously, @七颗猩猩 created the image of a working person who dared to resist and complain - "Wang Ma" in "Rebirth: I'm a Nanny in a Domineering President's Short Play". With the popularity of this series of short videos, the image of "Wang Ma" has also been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and has become a "mouth substitute for Internet workers."

Under this, her company was exposed for a series of "exploitation of workers", which naturally led to the split of "Wang Ma"'s personality. In short, she wanted to take advantage of the workers' emotions while exploiting the real workers, which led to the collapse of "Wang Ma"'s personality.

Although everyone jokes that "Wang Ma is collapsing a very new kind of house", it must be mentioned that the collapse of "Wang Ma"-style personality is not an isolated case, and is even very common on the Internet.

Recently, another blogger has also been embroiled in controversy over his persona. A while ago, Wang Xiao, who became known to the public through the show “The Heart-Stirring Offer,” posted a video in which he said, “I got an offer from a New York law firm and will soon go to work on Wall Street to continue doing international arbitration.”

Wang Xiao's strong contrast from a "small town youth to an elite lawyer" has attracted many fans. Therefore, the video received support from fans and netizens as soon as it was released. However, when many people were impressed by Wang Xiao's "staying true to his original aspiration" and "motivated to make progress", doubts also followed. Some netizens began to dig up Wang Xiao's detailed career experience and found many doubts, such as what kind of visa he had and the fact that he could not find his LinkedIn.

The "no such person" in the information search by netizens has triggered doubts about the personality of the "elite lawyer". Although the truth has not yet been further determined, the controversy among netizens also shows that everyone is disenchanting these Internet personalities.

Not only Wang Xiao, but many workplace bloggers with "elite personas", especially those who have become popular through workplace variety shows, have experienced varying degrees of controversy and collapse of their personas. For example, @梅帧, an amateur guest on "The Heart-Stirring Offer Season 1", was also caught up in controversy over the "value of academic qualifications".

This kind of personality collapse not only occurs in career bloggers, but also in couple bloggers.

A while ago, @罗西 and @危机十颖, a couple with millions of fans, were revealed to be having three affairs by their ex-girlfriend. Under pressure from public opinion, @罗西 had to apologize. When the sweet love story on the Internet turned into a complicated real-life ethics drama, and the perfect wife-loving persona collapsed in an instant and turned out to be a scumbag, many fans said, "What is real? They love each other so much on the Internet, but they can only choose one out of three," and called on Luo Xi to "apologize to me."

Moreover, in the controversy over the collapse of Luo Xi and Linji Shiying, it is not only the emotional content that collapsed, but also the contrast of the individual characters. The woman @临界十颖 has always presented the image of a self-disciplined and sober heroine in short videos, but netizens also pointed out that "the videos were all borderline" in the early years and "whatever personality has traffic, it caters to whatever style".

Behind the frequent controversies, netizens can’t help but wonder why bloggers with strong personalities are so easily ruined?

Looking back, although the sense of division brought about by the inconsistency of the character setting is indeed the main reason for the collapse, there is also a major public opinion trend behind it: the public is becoming more and more sensitive to "strong characters", especially the changes in characters under the mainstream sentiment of working people, that is, from initially criticizing the contrast between the Internet character and the real identity, to the difference between the plot character and the real character with obvious traces of the script, which will also cause public dissatisfaction.

The reason why these characters became popular is that they attracted the projection of netizens' real emotions. This is why, even though everyone knows that "Wang Ma" is just a plot character, there is still widespread dissatisfaction and feeling of being "backstabbed".

02 Behind the backlash of traffic: public sentiment, short video deification, and information cocoon

The reason for this trend in public opinion is related to the limitations of the blogger's professional identity as well as the current social sentiment.

Although there are many cases of bloggers’ reputation being ruined, there are not many cases of “plot character setting” being ruined in reality. In other words, even in many film and television works, netizens often have disputes about the character setting of a certain character, but the discussion and disputes are often mainly at the character level, and it is rare for the actor’s personal reputation to be ruined due to the controversy over the character.

This is because there is a strong barrier between actors and roles, and actors often rotate through multiple roles, but the boundary between the plot and non-plot personalities of bloggers is weak. For example, although "Wang Ma" only exists in @七颗猩猿's "Rebirth" series of short videos, the blogger himself often communicates with fans as "Wang Ma" and shoots multiple derivative content.

Especially when a setting brings huge dividends to the blogger, the blogger will use various means to strengthen the relationship between himself and the character, causing fans to strongly associate the blogger with the character, even if it is just a plot role. In the minds of fans, the relationship between @七颗猩猩 and "王妈" is like this.

From the perspective of the overall social sentiment, the greater the economic pressure everyone faces, the more class antagonism there becomes, and any emotion-related content and topics are more likely to gain traffic.

"Working people" is the most typical case at present, because this label is associated with thousands of working people who are under great pressure and have strong anxiety. The emergence of "Wang Ma" has provided countless "working people" with an emotional outlet for decompression. After all, the "real Wang Ma" in reality can only silently endure unreasonable demands, and dare not directly hit her boss with a mop.

"She can arouse everyone's indignation mainly because her videos are written from the perspective of ordinary people, or working people, to oppose the high-ranking rich people," Mimi told us. Mimi was also a fan of "Wang Ma" before, but chose to stop being a fan after this "collapse."

The same is true for bloggers with "elite personalities" and couple bloggers with "pure love". The more people cannot obtain their ideal career and emotional state in reality, the easier it is for them to "substitute satisfaction" with distinctive personalities.

However, although this kind of traffic gathering is efficient, it can easily backfire. When everyone finds that the ideal role model is actually vulnerable, they will have a serious sense of being "cheated." Many guests in "workplace variety shows" have also caused dissatisfaction among fans because they later chose to be "full-time bloggers."

The short video’s ability to create idols and wealth is actually an important reason for the emergence of this public opinion trend.

In relation to the recent "Guo Youcai" incident, although the anchor's talent performance, grassroots background, and inspirational story attracted a lot of attention and empathy in the early stage, as the anchor "gained 10 million fans in ten days" and "earned more than one million in a single day of live broadcast", the "grassroots narrative" began to fail, and the public began to disenchant with this kind of rapid rise, rapid accumulation of wealth and traffic. As netizens commented, "Looking at the balance, I still feel sorry for myself."

After all, when the difficult-to-cross classes are quickly connected with the help of the fast lane of short videos and live broadcasts, the instantaneous accumulation of wealth also allows people who were originally on par with or even looked down upon to reach unattainable heights.

When a hard-working victim reaches the heights of wealth and completes the deification, he will inevitably become the target of "witch hunting". Just as everyone can accept that the nanny "Wang Ma" who plays the role of a worker in the "Rebirth" series is rebellious and can go crazy at any time, but cannot accept that when she becomes the "Boss Gu" in reality, she will wave the "mop" at real workers.

In addition, another reason that cannot be ignored is the division of the public opinion field caused by the information cocoon, which also causes a large number of voices to be transmitted in one direction.

In the whirlpool of public opinion, when personal inclinations are marked by big data and all you see are people with the same views, it will inevitably cause opinions and attitudes to shift in a certain direction, leading to an increasingly divided extreme.

Just like the Wang Ma incident this time, opponents want much more than an explanation or response. Driven by collective emotions, they dig deep into all of Wang Ma's past and deny her abilities as a creator, entrepreneur, and even "partner", just like Zhou Xun who was subjected to a 360-degree comprehensive trial due to the controversy over "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace". Only in this way can a thorough "witch hunt" be completed.

Overall, the collapse of many bloggers with strong personalities is exactly the angle of the current Internet public opinion moving towards division and opposition. The collapse of "Wang Ma"'s personal image has brought a certain warning to bloggers' content creation: the more blurred the boundaries are, the more they need to handle the relationship between Internet personalities, plot personalities, and real identities and fans. But at the same time, isn't it also a bell of the times for every Internet surfer?