3.14 million followers in 3 days, overwhelming traffic hits "grassroots internet celebrity" Guo Youcai

Recently, Guo Youcai has become popular in Heze, Shandong with his song "Promise", attracting people to check in at Heze South Station. Why did Guo Youcai become an Internet celebrity?

The song "Promise" swept the entire Internet, and Guo Youcai became an instant hit.

He had a slicked-back hairstyle popular in the 1990s, wore a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, a wide retro suit, a red and white striped tie, and black leather gloves. He sang this old song at the top of his lungs in the live studio: I don’t understand eternity, so I have to wait with so much loneliness. It’s you who makes my heart ache, deeper day by day. I can’t help but drift in the wind, in the rain, in the years of love. You and I can’t start over, can’t stay, can’t resist the fate…

Behind Guo Youcai is the Heze South Railway Station, which has been out of operation for many years. The yellow low-rise building exudes a sense of age. He also added a retro yellow filter to the live broadcast room, which made the atmosphere full of nostalgia. Even though his singing skills are not professional, Guo Youcai injected rich emotions into his singing, and his slightly vicissitudes of life voice brought many viewers back to the 70s and 80s, recalling their youthful years.

In early May this year, a clip of Guo Youcai singing "Promise" on live broadcast went viral, with multiple clips or reposted videos being forwarded hundreds of thousands of times on platforms such as Douyin and Video Accounts. More and more netizens flocked to his live broadcast room to listen to the performance. According to the Douyin data tool XinDou under Xinbang, Guo Youcai's live broadcast room had about 100,000 to 200,000 viewers at the end of April. After May 3, the number of viewers for each live broadcast remained above one million. On May 16, the number of viewers for a single live broadcast exceeded 27.74 million, with over 100 million likes.

Screenshot from Xindou

Guo Youcai's number of fans has skyrocketed. According to new Douyin data, the account "Guo Youcai (Heze Shuge)" began to increase its fans rapidly from May 9, gaining 3.14 million fans in 3 days, and 1.13 million fans on May 15 alone. As of now, the number of Douyin fans has reached 6 million, more than half of whom are between 31 and 50 years old.

Heze, a small city in Shandong, also became famous overnight. The Heze South Station, which had not had passenger trains stop there for a long time, was crowded with people, and the daily passenger flow reached nearly one million. The local government repaired roads and expanded the South Station Square overnight to provide tourist services in order to catch this wave of traffic. What many netizens don’t know is that this is actually the third time Guo Youcai has become popular on the Internet. The first time was the "Heze Step" in 2017, the second time was the live broadcast of "Really Love You" in 2022, and the third time was this song "Promise", which really went viral.

Guo Youcai's three rises to fame

How to describe the feeling of going viral? Guo Youcai said in the video: "I thought I would be satisfied if I could just have a ray of spring breeze, but I didn't expect to receive a whole spring from everyone."

1. 3.14 million followers in 3 days: No one knew about BBQ for five years, but the song "Promise" became famous all over the world

Guo Youcai is popular because he can sing, but he is not that good at it. The original singer of "Promise" is Taiwanese singer Li Yijun, and the song was released in 1995. Li Yijun's singing is soft and graceful, full of sadness, while Guo Youcai's interpretation is another style, bold and direct, heartbreaking. Many netizens commented that his singing "has no skills, but is full of emotions", and they can hear "the feeling of ordinary people who do not succumb to fate and struggle hard".

Soon, netizens discovered that Guo Youcai's personal experience was a true portrayal of "an ordinary person who does not succumb to fate", and his singing without professional skills was an inspirational proof of his struggle against fate. This story of an ordinary person's counterattack not only took over the traffic of "The Promise", but also pushed Guo Youcai's image to the forefront, raising his popularity to a new level.

Guo Youcai shared his personal story on his previous account. This young man who looks retro and vicissitudes of life is actually a young man born in 1999 and is only 25 years old this year. His real name is Guo Zhuang. Because he likes Chinese studies, he gave himself the name "Youcai" and the nickname "Zhongdao".

According to Guo Youcai, he was born in a rural family in Heze, Shandong. His mother died when he was 10, and his father formed a new family, leaving him "wandering". Due to financial difficulties, he dropped out of school at the age of 13 to work, doing odd jobs such as repairing trams. He once earned 2,000 yuan a month, but he slowly saved up some money. In 2017, he started a restaurant, which eventually closed down; in 2019, he started another business with his fiancée Su Chang, running a barbecue stall, and has been doing it for five years until now.

During this difficult period of entrepreneurship, Guo Youcai was also exploring short videos and live broadcasts. In 2017, his account was still called "Guo Youcai (Developing the Heze Step)", and he played the "Heze Step" on Kuaishou, which is a step of running with feet in an outward-facing position, with a bowl-cut haircut and tight pants, which made him look like a spirited young man.

In 2022, Guo Youcai changed his account and live-streamed his singing. He has always had a dream of music, and while working hard to make a living, he taught himself to sing. Without money to go to a professional music school, he bought a tutorial online for 6 yuan, and gritted his teeth and bought a guitar for 300 yuan.

At that time, not many people watched his live broadcast. The turning point occurred in September 2022, when he and the million-fan anchor "Dayuan Ge" sang "Really Love You" on the live broadcast. The number of people online in the live broadcast room exceeded 10,000 for the first time, and there was a small wave of traffic and popularity.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. Guo Youcai, who did not know how to use traffic at the time, caused controversy because of bringing goods, and his account did not continue to operate. It was not until November 2023 that he registered the Douyin account of "Guo Youcai (Heze Shuge)" and tried to live broadcast singing again, taking the nostalgic route. Guo Youcai got up at 7 o'clock every morning and rushed to Heze South Station at 9 o'clock to live broadcast. This was where he often played when he was a child. He felt that he could feel the simplicity of the predecessors and the precipitation of stories here, "as soon as he got there, he felt like he was traveling through time."

In this way, the popularity of his live broadcast room slowly grew from zero to hundreds, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and then to millions, and all kinds of gifts were constantly swiped in the live broadcast room. With a grassroots background, a simple image, an inspirational dream-chasing story, and an emotional singing voice, Guo Youcai has taken a path of counterattack for an ordinary person.

Guo Youcai's live broadcast room has become more popular

Screenshot from Xindou

2. A song brought a city to fame, and millions of tourists flocked to Heze South Station

After becoming famous, Guo Youcai still lives a life of singing during the day and selling barbecue at night. Perhaps he learned from the experience of selling goods after becoming famous last time, so he did not immediately use the traffic to monetize, but only used the account to live broadcast singing, and he also said that "live broadcasting to sell goods is not in the plan."

After the broadcast, he took a short break and started to skewer skewers to prepare for the evening barbecue business. For him, "singing during the day is a dream, and barbecue at night is life." However, both the dream and life have millions more onlookers than before. The barbecue stall was crowded with netizens and anchors who came to visit. It was crowded before it opened. When Guo Youcai appeared, the whole audience cheered, as if it was a fan meeting.

It is not certain how many people really came to eat barbecue, but it is certain that most people came to film or live broadcast Guo Youcai selling barbecue. Mobile phones were placed in a circle at the scene, and there were thousands of online viewers just in the live broadcast room of him making barbecue. There were too many people filming Guo Youcai, and some people pointed the camera at his fiancée Su Chang. In recent days, along with Guo Youcai's counterattack story, the story of his and Su Chang's mutual support has also become popular. The sentence "My virtuous wife helped me to rise to the top, and I will repay my virtuous wife with ten thousand taels of gold" has touched many netizens.

The place with more people than the barbecue stall is Heze South Station. This station, which has been out of service for many years, is now surrounded by three layers of traffic inside and outside. Locals are amazed that the South Station is so jammed with cars that no one can get through. Even Guo Youcai said that he has to go to the live broadcast site earlier now, "If you go too late, you can't squeeze in." It is reported that the daily passenger flow of Heze South Station in recent days is nearly one million.

The background of Guo Youcai's live broadcast is no longer just a yellow station building, but also a dense crowd of people. He is broadcasting live here, and a group of people are broadcasting over there. Some of them changed the name of their Douyin account to something related to "Guo Youcai Live Broadcast" in order to get a share of the traffic.

The overwhelming traffic came from the sky, and the local people in Heze tried their best to catch it. With one sentence "the live broadcast network is stuck", operators such as China Mobile drove communication vehicles to the scene and added base stations to ensure smooth network. In order to give foreign tourists a better travel experience, the local people in Heze repaired roads overnight, expanded the square, arranged toilets, added volunteers, and provided free water and big pot dishes.

At 8 o'clock in the evening on May 15, the lights of "Heze South Station" were turned on again, making many Heze people cry with emotion: this is the light in the hearts of those born in the 80s and 90s.

Including Guo Youcai, every Heze citizen is working hard to promote their hometown. Every interview video and every live broadcast that Guo Youcai became famous for invites netizens to come to Heze to watch; Dashuo, the Internet celebrity who made Cao County in Heze popular, also came to promote Heze and shouted the familiar phrase "Shandong Heze, Heze South Station 666".

Guo Youcai's rise to fame is not just a pure way for an internet celebrity to become popular, but also makes "one song makes a city popular" a collective carnival.

3. Guo Youcai, another ordinary person “chosen” by traffic?

More and more people are imitating Guo Youcai. If you search for "Youcai" related account names on Douyin, you can find a bunch of Li Youcai, Wu Youcai, Liu Youcai, etc. Most people also add a bracket suffix like Guo Youcai. If you are called "Heze Shu Ge", then I will be called "Huaihua Shu Ge" or "Cangnan Shu Ge". Guo Youcai is called "Shu Ge" because he likes the movie "Hello! Mr. Tree". Most of those who follow the trend may not have seen the movie, but it's right to call him that anyway.

A wave of nostalgia swept through the live broadcast room. Old train stations, retro filters, and nostalgic makeup became popular combinations. The anchors stood in the local station square, showing the big words "Yantai West Station", "Lanzhou West Station", and "Chengdu East Station", and sang classic old songs. An anchor named "Li Youcai (Chengdu Shuge)" had a popularity of more than 100,000 in almost every live broadcast.

"Isn't this just plagiarizing Guo Youcai?" one netizen questioned in the live broadcast room. The anchor "Qianqianqianer" who was broadcasting live responded with a tough tone: "I am just trying to get traffic, but if you know something is good but don't learn it, it is actually a kind of staying where you are."

She wore a retro white wedding dress from the 1990s, stood in front of Lanzhou West Station, and added a nostalgic filter to the live broadcast room, singing other old songs of Li Yijun, the original singer of "Promise". Some anchors not only imitated the live broadcast venue and style, but also imitated Guo Youcai's appearance. At Heze South Station, an anchor who looked similar to Guo Youcai at first glance and had the same appearance as Guo Youcai appeared, and was mistaken by many fans as Guo Youcai himself.

This is a stage that every popular person will go through, being imitated, copied, and used to gain popularity. For many people, becoming popular is something that can only be encountered by chance, and imitating a successful case may give them more opportunities. Some people are puzzled: With so many hardworking people, why is Guo Youcai the only one who is popular?

He is not the only one who is nostalgic, he is not the only one who supports his lover to get through the difficult times, and he is not the only one who can sing old songs, but now Guo Youcai is popular. Some comments say that this is another person who is chosen by the traffic algorithm. Whoever the algorithm promotes will become popular. "The Internet has no memory. Today he is popular, and tomorrow it may be Li Youcai or Zhang Youcai."

However, the algorithm may be one of the factors, but one of the logical foundations of the algorithm is to see whether the person can be loved by the public. The amateurs or grassroots who can become popular have basically similar paths: first attract attention with works or topics, and then impress netizens with the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. From Zhu Zhiwen, the former big-coat brother, to Nomi who made "Chengdu Disney" popular, to Guo Youcai, the counterattack stories of small people are never boring.

Not everyone can understand what "Promise" is about, but many people can resonate with it through a story of chasing dreams. Guo Youcai seems to understand people's pursuit and imitation of him after he became famous. He said he doesn't mind: "Maybe everyone sees their own shadow in me."

Guo Youcai meets Li Youcai, who imitates him, and wishes each other well. However, Internet traffic is always difficult to last. Heze can retain more tourists with the hospitality of a city, but for Guo Youcai, the popularity will fade one day. After all, Douyin is unchanging, but the top streamers are changing. He and his family are also mentally prepared for this. His fiancée Su Chang believes that "the Internet is just a passing cloud, so it is better to do some work down to earth."

In their plans, the songs will continue to be sung and the barbecue stalls will continue to be opened. But the story will not end here. After becoming famous, will the grassroots still be the ordinary people chasing their dreams? After being worshipped as a "goddess" and having wealth and resources, will they really not forget their original intentions or will the dragon slayer eventually become a dragon? No one dares to give a definite answer.

But the Internet seems to have no shortage of "Guo Youcai". No matter what the outcome, more "Guo Youcai" will still make a comeback with their dream-chasing stories. This is a proven and tried-and-tested "traffic routine".