Chaotou overturned, and the situation at Station B changed

Recently, @花少北, a top UP host with 6 million fans, was caught in a whirlpool of public opinion due to public controversy over his private affairs, which subsequently led to a massive loss of over 410,000 fans. This storm not only made Hua Shaobei himself the target of public criticism, but also affected many UP hosts.

Since his ex-girlfriend accused him of "double standards" in early May, Hua Shaobei has been caught in a huge controversy. Although emotional issues belong to the category of UP host's personal morality, his identity as a "semi-idol" has undoubtedly put him in an awkward situation.

On May 16, #花少北道歉 became a hot search on Weibo. In a long response, he apologized for hiding his relationship status and clarified the details of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, saying that both of them really wanted to be together at the time. However, this response did not convince netizens, and accusations such as "avoiding the main issue and focusing on the public relations article", "having someone else write the apology letter", and "being insincere" remained the mainstream voice.

Amid the public outrage, Hua Shaobei lost more than 400,000 followers, surpassing @某幻君 who also suffered a fallout due to the public disclosure of his relationship. Kas observed that @某幻君's homepage stopped updating on April 5, and the birthday party live broadcast previously announced to fans did not take place as scheduled.

At the same time, the "fall" of the super-head UP host also implicated various melon-eating events: @KB呆又呆's shocked face when he learned about Hua Shaobei's love affair was made into an emoticon package and widely circulated, and was implicated in the grievances with Director Yang; Lex unexpectedly played a resurrection match, and the divorce literature with his ex-wife was dug out from the old papers; Liudao's sharp comment "The UP host circle is the real audience" became a hot search because of Hua Shaobei's voice; @龙女塔罗 may become the biggest winner of the Hua Shaobei incident, and tarot bloggers shine...

In addition to the feast of melons, it is not difficult to see that the creator ecosystem of Bilibili is also undergoing a reshuffle. The once popular traffic darlings have quietly withdrawn and transformed due to content exhaustion or controversial words and deeds.

Previously, Hua Shaobei and Mou Huanjun were both mainstays in the gaming community, and were considered as golden brands by Bilibili. Mou Huanjun was also one of the few UP hosts who won the Bilibili Top 100 honor for six consecutive years. However, in the long river of content, the two gradually became separated: Hua Shaobei's video quality was frequently criticized, and Mou Huanjun turned his focus to hosting music festivals.

The top stars are iterating, and Bilibili is also changing.

1. A turmoil caused by the “failure” of a super-head UP host

To some extent, the downfall of Hua Shaobei and Mou Huan is also related to their fan circleization. In addition to being super head UP hosts, another common label for the two is that they are members of the "Yin Yang Weird Boys Group".

Users familiar with the content ecosystem of Bilibili may be familiar with the "Yin Yang Weird Boys Group". This group brought together the five most influential UP hosts of Bilibili at that time, including "Bilibili No. 1" @老西红柿, former animation area "No. 1" @LexBurner, and @中国boy超级大刚. Although the source of the group lies in the visits and linkages between UP hosts, its formation is also inseparable from the promotion of Bilibili officials.

At that time, Bilibili, which was in urgent need of breaking out of its circle, consciously operated and built the identity of UP masters as IP to form the golden signboard of the platform. In order to expand the influence of UP masters, Bilibili also launched many self-made variety shows to bring the top UP masters to the public's attention.

In 2019, the show "Let's Go! Transformers" was launched, with guests including @啊吗团 and @力元君; in 2020's "Question Mark Face in the Animal Circle", @中国boy超级大猿 was the main UP host; in the same year, Bilibili launched its own variety show "Happy Brothers", a light variety show featuring UP hosts' reality shows, and invited the most popular "Yin Yang Wei Qi" boy group on the site. The five UP hosts laughed, scolded, and had a happy team building. This limited summer memory was repeatedly reviewed by many fans.

This official promotion and "manufacturing" of top streamers to create a proud UP master ecological culture has achieved remarkable results, but Bilibili was once accused of "fan circleization" by old users. Since then, UP masters have jointly broadcast live and appeared on variety shows, injecting new vitality into each other's accounts on the creative side, and further opening up the user surface on the traffic side through the form of fan exchange. Top UP masters are getting closer and closer to celebrities.

But the gift of fate has already been secretly marked with a price. After gaining huge traffic and super high attention, the videos, words and deeds published by UP hosts are faced with more scrutiny and questioning.

@lexburner, who was eliminated first, once ranked among the top streamers in the animation area with the "New Anime Guide" series. In 2021, the "Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World" incident pushed him to the forefront of public opinion. Lex was banned by Bilibili for his radical remarks and was not unblocked until ten months later. He was ordered to pay the platform 20 million yuan in compensation.

Compared to @Lexburner who was "punished for his words", Mou Huanjun and Hua Shaobei were caught in a situation of verbal criticism more because of the fall of their "idols". During the long period of public opinion fermentation, the core of the problem often evolved from relationship issues to "character debate".

Undoubtedly, a false persona is a kind of harm to the audience. Fans of a certain Huanjun were disappointed with his evasive approach of not daring to defend his girlfriend or respond positively. They accused him of hiding his relationship and deceiving his fans in order to take advantage of his girlfriend's popularity, and mocked him as the "Pure Love God of War";

On Hua Shaobei's side, the first thing he was criticized for was that he set up a single persona and used cold violence against his ex-girlfriend of seven years. In the few days that the incident fermented, Hua Shaobei's "cold and ruthless treatment of his ex-girlfriend of seven years and double standards for fawning on his current girlfriend" were dug out one by one, and discussions about his character and love affairs have not stopped. Third-party data shows that from the beginning of May to now, Hua Shaobei has lost 410,000 fans.

The once popular "Yin Yang Weird Boys Group" ended up with only Lao Fanqie and China Boy as the "survivors". The former Yin Yang Weird Boys Group said they would meet at the top, and some netizens stitched together a picture of them that topped the Weibo trending searches due to their respective relationships, and joked, "Why not meet at the top?"

2. The Whirlpool of Public Opinion

The whirlpool of public opinion caused by Hua Shaobei's "crash" is continuing to involve more and more UP hosts.

The first UP host to be implicated was @龙女塔罗.

Longnv is a tarot fortune-telling UP host. In a future love prediction, she made an accurate prediction of Hua Shaobei's emotional state, pointing out the existence of the "red and white roses" and Hua Shaobei's choice. Because the prediction is very consistent with reality, this video almost made Longnv "a god outside the circle". In the past week, Longnv's fans increased by more than 150,000, and the highest increase in a single day was 75,000. Since then, tarot bloggers have emerged on major platforms. On Xiaohongshu, a common type of note is to lay out a few tarot cards in the main picture to answer questions such as "What does xxx UP host think of Hua Shaobei?" "What is Hua Shaobei's current thinking?"

Perhaps out of contrast with his peers, @Lexburner, who gave his ex-wife 30 million before the divorce, unexpectedly started a resurrection match. "One would rather be in debt to 30 million to get a divorce, and the other would rather not get the money than get a divorce." The love story between Lex and his ex-wife, who tortured each other, was dug out from the archives for netizens to appreciate repeatedly. On Weibo, someone compiled his live broadcast screen recording into a document of more than 30,000 words, interspersed with many dramatic clips. Users followed Lex's abstract marriage life overnight, and sighed, "Healthy love is precious, but abnormal love is really wonderful."

Another person accidentally affected by the Hua Shaobei incident was the UP host @KB呆又呆.

After learning about Hua Shao Bei's relationship news from the hot searches on Weibo, @KB呆又呆 showed a textbook-level shocked expression during the live broadcast. This scene was quickly intercepted by fans and made into an emoticon package that circulated on the platform.

After that, @Itchy Bureau Chief, who has over 2.5 million fans, posted a message saying, "The up master cannot fail. Once you fail, there will always be a 'good brother' who will stab you in the back under the banner of concern and wait to eat your traffic. This is a cycle." Users interpreted this as an allusion to KB. That night, @Itchy Bureau Chief went live to talk about the contract incident that caused the two to break up. As a result, he was accused by users of the unfair terms in the contract. The dispute between K and Itchy was cleared.

In addition, there are six complaints that "UP hosts are always the last to know the news", and the next day he spoke up for Hua Shaobei and became a hot search; some users are worried that Hua Shaobei's failure will affect @Bao Jiansao's content updates. Not long ago, Bao Jiansao launched a new "City Rampage" series, with excellent data performance, and Hua Shaobei is one of the guests...

For example, if the flapping of a butterfly's wings in South America can cause a storm in Texas, the "fall" of the top UP master shook the entire B station's melon circle.

3. The exit and transformation of the veterans of Bilibili

In fact, it is not uncommon for UP hosts to fall out of favor due to emotional problems. On Bilibili, there is @吃素的狮子. In October 2021, the private emotional relationship between 吃素的狮子 and anchor Xiong Ka and his ex-girlfriend caused heated discussions. Although the whistleblower has deleted the Weibo post and apologized, netizens still denounced his suspected cheating behavior.

After nearly three months of not updating, @吃素的狮子 posted a video on Bilibili to clarify and apologize, but the damage had already been done. Later, he gradually turned offline, and his updates on Bilibili became intermittent, and he gradually faded out of the UP main circle. The former "Four Kings of Debt" group has since become the focus of the times.

Just as people repeatedly miss the millennium, many users may miss Bilibili before it broke out of the circle. Looking back, after being favored by traffic or shining as the mainstay of the platform, some UP hosts disappeared in the long river of content creation, such as @机智的党妹 and @吴织亚切大骗悠.

More "veteran" UP hosts have quietly faded out of the center stage. The reasons include exhaustion of inspiration, declining traffic, poor monetization, etc.; some UP hosts are exploring new areas and undergoing difficult transformation.

When an account reaches a certain size, losing fans seems to be an inevitable dilemma. @敖厂长, who holds the record for the fastest loss of fans on Bilibili, previously created the "Ao厂长's reign" with the "囧的呼唤" series, but after two rounds of failures, his reputation and number of fans are both declining. Even Bilibili's "number one" Laofanqie has experienced a period of losing fans in the past six months, once losing 10,000 fans in a week.

If the UP stays in the content comfort zone for too long, it is easy to fall into a creative bottleneck due to lack of inspiration, or hit the traffic ceiling of this content section. The solution for some UPs is transformation. For example, @中国boy超级大猿 gradually separated itself from the game area and turned to the life area with a larger traffic plate, causing the game area to lose another veteran. However, before this, China boy had tried the "one gorilla period" of life content on a small account, and his account had a strong fan stickiness, so the pain of transformation was not very obvious to him.

But not everyone has such an "exempt circle". For @凉风kaze, the road to transformation to the living area is undoubtedly difficult. In 2021, Liangfeng's videos showed signs of "leaving" the animation area. In early 2023, Liangfeng updated the last "Read Countless Movies", announcing the end of this series of videos and shifting the focus of creation to recording daily life, but it also ushered in a loss of fans and a decline in traffic. Due to unsatisfactory data, Liangfeng was forced to perform a "sit-up" transformation, and the "Read Countless Movies" series was reopened. But for various reasons, his account continues to lose fans. In the past 30 days, more than 40,000 users have unfollowed him.

Of course, this loss of fans is also based on the great changes in the content ecology of Bilibili, and the traffic has begun to flow from veterans to newcomers. The animation area and the game area were the strong divisions of Bilibili in the early days, but in 2024, the game area no longer has absolute dominance, accounting for only 14 seats in the list of the top 100 UP masters, and many newcomers have poured in to form their own areas of expertise. Unfortunately, after the failure of A Certain Fantasy and Flower Boy North, the "veteran content" of the top 100 of Bilibili may be reduced by a few points.

Not only the "veterans", but also the "new generation" are worried about traffic. In early May, the UP host in the technology area @老师好我叫何同学 posted on Weibo that 350,000 new viewers followed his channel in the past 90 days, while 200,000 old viewers unfollowed the channel. Although the overall number of followers has remained high, the unfollowing of 200,000 old viewers is enough to sound the alarm for the UP host. When Mr. He asked the reason for the unfollowing, the most common answer he got was, "The videos nowadays are not that interesting."

How can we make content production conform to the current aesthetic trends of the audience? This may be an eternal problem faced by creators. No one can always master the password of traffic. When it is already very difficult to maintain high-quality content creation, creators should cherish their reputation, be cautious in their words and deeds, and reduce the probability of failure.

Author: Chu Cheng;

Source: Kas Data (ID: 736105)