The UP host with 1.9 million followers, is he really going to "flee to the ends of the earth" this time?

From the peak of honor to the trough of being banned, a shocking reversal. This article will analyze this sudden incident and reveal the unexpected circumstances behind the UP host's award.

After winning the B-station annual barrage popularity award, @峰哥亡命天涯 was banned from the entire network. On January 16, the news that @峰哥亡命天涯 was banned suddenly spread all over the network. Sharp users found that Fengge's account was no longer available for follow on multiple platforms including B-station and Douyin. Not long after, he posted a status on a Weibo account saying "One day everyone will forget about me, and I will be back", and the account was immediately banned.

At this time, only 10 days had passed since Brother Feng appeared on the B Station Top 100 UP Ceremony and declared that he would be "the first B Station anchor to climb Mount Everest."

There is no definite news about the reason why Fengge was banned. A more convincing explanation is that this year the Ministry of Public Security has cracked down on the chaos of Internet celebrities "creating hot spots" and "setting the tone". As for the content, Fengge is indeed in danger of touching the regulatory red line. Previously, he was able to keep this risk within a controllable range with his many years of self-media experience, but the expansion speed of "Feng Universe" is obviously unexpected.

"Internet celebrities that appear on the Internet will disappear on the Internet." This was once a golden sentence produced by Brother Feng in an interview. Now, this insightful statement seems to have come true for him.

Fans viewed this sudden ban as a "funny" thing, celebrating "great joy, losing Feng forever"; on Weibo, Feng's current pinned post reads "If I die one day, I'd like to thank everyone for still remembering me!" In the comment section, fans responded with a phrase he often said: "This is a good thing."

1. From New Delhi to "Vula Peak"

On the Internet, @峰哥亡命天涯's identity is basically public, and those who are familiar with him know his other identity - an executive of Fengqun Culture. As a leading MCN in China, Fengqun has created well-known talents such as @精分君, @王七叶, @陶白白, @Giao哥, etc.

On Bilibili, @峰哥亡命天涯 has 1.9 million followers. This number has not dropped significantly after being banned, partly because it is difficult for users to find a "substitute" for Feng Ge - the labels attached to him are extremely complex, and the most frequently appearing ones include "Capital Feng", "Brahmin", "The Superior", "King of Children", "King of Repeated Words", and "Director Fu La Feng".

Looking back at his path to fame, in 2019, Feng flew to New Delhi, India, just as Liu Yong's "Clean and Hygienic" video was popular. Wearing a similar beard, Feng visited street food while marking the content as "clean and hygienic". In the first video, he drank the tap water handed over by the street vendor in two or three gulps, raised his glass and said, "Ganges water, very delicious". This is regarded by fans as "the place where the dream begins".

In the early days, Fengge positioned himself as a travel blogger. In India, he checked in on cheap street food such as Indian dumplings, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, and fried samosa. He also visited "upper class" restaurants and even went into slums. Because his outfit completely blended into the surrounding background, users joked that he was "returning home in glory." His experience in India earned him the nickname "Brahmin" - fans cited the Indian caste system and gave him a "Shudra" fan card.

After leaving India, Feng traveled frantically between 8 countries and 15 cities, and tried to climb Mount Everest but failed. During this process, he went in and out of various high-end and low-cost restaurants, and while deepening his label as an "Indian Brahmin", he gradually grasped the pleasure points of Bilibili users. In 2020, Feng became a food blogger, and in the process of "confronting" with the barrage, he labeled himself as "above the rest".

In the video "What is it like to drive a supercar and eat at a street stall?", he wore a Zotye Auto T-shirt, his orange sneakers had a small hole in them, and a nail clipper was attached to his red supercar keychain. After eating a portion of stinky tofu, he concluded that "it is indeed more fragrant." This series of mixed elements was called "extreme black humor" by fans.

Focusing the camera on the "Sanhe God" was undoubtedly the beginning of Feng Ge's popularity . At that time, "Sanhe Youth" was a hot topic on the Internet. This group refers to the unemployed vagrants who gathered in the Sanhe Labor Market in Shenzhen and relied on odd jobs for daily wages. In the video, Feng Ge disguised himself as an unemployed man, wandering around the Sanhe Labor Market, and exploring the real ecology of the unemployed.

The documentary footage allows B station users to see a more cruel world. These videos marked with "real life at the bottom" also brought a lot of popularity to Feng Ge. The "Sanhe Series" has a total of 6 videos, with more than 15.27 million views. The best video has received 4.85 million views and ranked 35th on the entire station rankings.

This series also became Feng Ge's first stop on his journey to become "Fula Feng Director". In "Extreme Travel", "Meeting B Friends in Small Cities" and "Tasting the Flavors of Life", Feng Ge found a new fulcrum for content, which is to turn his perspective to marginalized people in society who have extreme life difficulties . He calls himself an independent documentary director and calls the "Sanhe Series" "early work, Douban score 9.9".

His sloppy temperament and tens of millions of assets make him extremely suitable for this position. With the label of "Capital Peak" and self-degradation, @峰哥亡命天涯's videos are full of contrast and curiosity, and the truth running through them brings a huge sense of absurdity.

In his subsequent works, he released videos such as "The most miserable B-friend in the entire B-station, 26-year-old with cancer and no relatives, quietly waiting to die in a rental house" and "The survival status of low-level rappers in Chengdu". The characters that appeared in the videos included a fashionable old man who lost 4 million in two years, a rich second-generation who fell into poverty and became a mental patient after three years of self-imprisonment... While the traffic was climbing, the protagonists at the center of the story formed the "Feng Universe", which brought a lot of topics and discussions.

2. Abstraction and the living world

2023 is a year that Feng Ge is particularly popular both inside and outside the station. In October last year, @-LKS- counted the channels most frequently watched by UP hosts, and Feng Ge ranked 11th; in the past year, Feng Ge, who is familiar with the hot "safe zone", has also created many out-of-circle remarks and topics.

One of them was called "the best and most ruthless work" by fans: When the news of Myanmar fraud was overwhelming, Feng contacted a young man who claimed to have returned from northern Myanmar to tell him about life in the park. In September, he even bought a ticket to fly to Myawaddy, but when filming the park, he was caught by the police on the spot and sentenced to death because he took pictures of police cars and military vehicles. After showing his passport, he was released on bail. On the same day, he performed a food broadcast at the Karen United Army Guesthouse in Myawaddy.

Image source: UP @峰哥亡命天涯

However, no matter from which level, Brother Feng is surrounded by huge controversy.

Some people think that his documentary content about the down-and-out life is eye-opening, and he is good at deconstructing everything in a playful and angry way. Under the shaking camera, the naked desires and predicaments of the brothers are revealed. In September, he filmed a couple who lived in seclusion in the mountains of Yunnan and followed an open relationship. The film lasted for an hour, and netizens said that he "won the Best Documentary Director Award."

Another group of users accused him of exploiting marginalized groups. In the "Sanhe Series", the interviewee called him "capital peak" under the video, which hit the user's heart. UP host @老蒋巨靠谱 "sharp comment", this kind of content can hardly be called a documentary, "he and the guests are too much of a performance."

To some extent, this polarized comment is the result of Feng Ge and users running in both directions. Users love abstraction and liveliness, and Feng Ge happens to open himself up to fans to deconstruct. "The Internet is for fun," and of course those who deconstruct Feng Ge will inevitably be deconstructed by him. Both sides see through each other's nature: Feng Ge, as a content producer, sees through the user's pleasure points, and users promptly offer the nickname "famous king of coaxing children," and the "art troupe" is responsible for carrying these live broadcast slices, and the titles must be taken out of context, funny and exaggerated, with strong marginal meanings.

In the years when the "Feng Universe" gradually expanded, the male characters that appeared in it were collectively called "old brothers" by fans - this name contains very complicated emotions, while female characters are called "old sisters", "Feng girls" and "female family members" - most of the time, they cannot escape the erotic connotations. The brothers that came out of the "Feng Universe" and are most talked about by netizens include @大神石, a barber for 10 years, who ended up in Sanhe because of gambling; @秋雨在日本, a former architect with an annual salary of 6 million yen, who was later fired and became famous for scratching his head; @老哥的自救, who worked as a real estate agent and went bankrupt in the stock market.

On the Internet, their identities have repeatedly jumped between "living transparently" and "online clowns". Shitou, Wang the house seller and others have all done live broadcasts at Bilibili, and many of them have more than 10,000 fans. Qiuyu achieved the achievement of 100 ships in just over a month after joining the station.

In the era of "big live broadcasts" on Bilibili, Brother Feng can be regarded as a beneficiary. The word "live broadcast" itself has the connotation of sensationalism. If you look closely, these live broadcasts are essentially not much different from Douyin and Kuaishou, but they are made to look like what Bilibili users prefer.

In 2021, he filmed "Changsha Lively Street". The female anchor lost the PK and had to learn to bark like a dog on the ground. Users questioned the significance of such videos and who were watching these live broadcasts. He replied, "The number of views itself is the answer" and "As long as you watch it, the number of views in the database will be +1. So there is no way to prove that Bilibili users are nobler than Douyin users. After all, this video on Bilibili is also very popular." "Monkey show is an ancient industry and has been very popular from ancient times to the present. When people watch monkeys, they can get happiness and a sense of superiority from the funny actions of monkeys."

A user described Feng as "an abyss, looking into it you can see the real you". Through his live broadcast, the concepts of "sexual repression" and "3D people" were promoted by B-friends who are keen on abstract culture - the former is used to analyze the relationship between men and women and social phenomena, while the latter is used by users to attack and make fun of others. These words all meet the characteristics of Internet memes: popular, highly generalized, and the meaning is easily simplified.

Of course, when the purpose of the audience's attention is to "have fun", the risk of the UP host's failure is buried. After being banned, "Feng Universe" was forced to come to an abrupt end, but it seems that not much has changed. On January 28, Feng Ge appeared in the live broadcast room of his partner Tongtong. Only the corners of his down jacket were photographed throughout the whole process, and the familiar tone was still there.

3. The “difficult road” of sinking narrative

At the beginning of 2023, @老蒋巨靠谱, a UP host in the sharp comment area of ​​​​Bilibili, had a debate with Brother Feng and Hou Cuicui, one of the new top 100 that year, on the "pseudo-sinking performance". In Lao Jiang's opinion, the vast majority of UP hosts are pseudo-sinking, including those who do not pretend to be a sinking group, but engage in sinking narratives at the content level. Feng Ge is a typical representative of them. Lao Jiang later commented in the live broadcast, "Brother Feng was the first person to grasp the sinking narrative. When some people have not yet reacted, he has already systematically engaged in this matter."

However, judging from the result of being banned, Fengge's content still has a low risk resistance. Once it moves from a niche to the mainstream, the scrutiny it receives will only accelerate the downfall of its content. In November last year, Fengge explained his content dilemma in a video: "I have no work now. If I try to produce rubbish, everyone will immediately attack me. It's like you are a fish in the sea. Once you are bitten by a small fish, other fish will smell the smell and come."

What should the sinking narrative look like? There may be no clear answer on Bilibili. Of course, there are many UP hosts with good content models, such as @Hua Nong Brothers and @Shandong Geng. But in the era of "whole life", the situation is obviously more complicated.

In 2022, @田野上促盛 experienced a brief explosion of popularity. He became popular on Bilibili and Douyin as a truck driver. His simple image attracted the attention of many users and won the title of Top 100 in 2021. His videos are mainly about eating, showing his daily meals as a driver. Fans call him "Xiaogang" and "Gangzi".

The turning point occurred after Xiaogang started live streaming to sell goods. Previously, Xiaogang said that he was an ordinary person and would not live stream to sell goods. He named it "Prosperity in the Fields" just to contribute to his hometown. But after switching to live streaming, Xiaogang's personality was hit from all sides. Due to insufficient product selection ability, most of the goods that appeared in his window were fast food, and there were also some OEM products of poor quality. When selling a type of liquor, fans said it was fake, and he angrily criticized them for "not understanding liquor" and "believing in football." In the subsequent live broadcast, Xiaogang also refused to apologize and turned the spearhead to fans, saying that Bilibili had little income and would no longer upload long videos in the future. Now, his Bilibili homepage is empty.

The overturn of @田野上的旺發的倒车 points to the drawbacks of the UP character's survival in the sinking narrative , while @徐云漂中国 is due to the collapse of his "sincere" character. When his cycling content was the hottest, Xu Yun continued to strengthen his "rural single youth" character. Fans regarded him as a "down-and-out gentleman", called him "Brother Yunliu", and established a caring Xu Yun growth association.

When traffic brought Xu Yun to a new height, he soon fell because of his personality. Fans listed "ten sins", such as inappropriate remarks during live broadcasts, controversial videos of previous cycling, the girl he met on the train was actually his girlfriend, he said he would stop updating videos, but ended up switching to Xigua, etc. Most importantly, he started out with "cycling" content, but suddenly announced that he would give up cycling and turn to the pastoral track.

In the sinking narrative, the impression that the creator brings to the audience is often solidified. This is also reflected in the account of @大猛子ym. As a talk show host on the construction site, Da Mengzi appears with a vicissitudes of life that "persuades" civil engineers to quit. Headed by "Da Mengzi who can't run away", his life on the construction site is miserable. When he is exhausted every day, he still has time to output the golden sentence "Some people are born in Rome, and some people are born to be cattle and horses", and fans see themselves in him. But just as "the UP host in the construction area cannot leave the construction site", Da Mengzi's content is also in a state of difficulty in change. At present, he has 800,000 fans, and it has been difficult to increase fans in the past year.

In fact, based on the current ecology of Bilibili, "downward content" itself is difficult to become a hot track. The most popular UP hosts in 2023 are from the knowledge area and the game area, and the number of UP hosts in the life area is in a declining state. Users are also very picky about this kind of content. What they like is not the downward content itself, but its separation from their own lives and the humanistic concepts revealed in it.

In this "two-way rush", creators also need to adapt to the preferences and characteristics of users. For example, abstract memes are prevalent in Fengge's slicing videos, and this kind of "packaging" is likely to increase the risk of failure.

What kind of sinking narrative is the most appropriate? Perhaps it is "Second Uncle" as @衣戈 guessed, but even "Second Uncle" faced divergent public opinion at the time, and the public may not need a second "Second Uncle".

Author: Lin Wu

WeChat public account: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)