An ordinary college student who gained more than 3 million followers on Douyin was regarded as an enemy by netizens

Recently, Douyin blogger Yu Wenliang has become popular. "We are watching Yu Wenliang, but we are not watching Yu Wenliang." His videos are simple and daily, without cool transitions and camera movements, and no professional post-editing. How did he become a "phenomenal existence" on Douyin? What new thoughts can we have through this incident? Let's communicate together.

“This year’s TikTok belongs to ordinary people and has begun to move towards a free style”

Such a simple comment received 840,000 likes and more than 15,000 replies on Douyin.

It seemed as if he had spoken out everyone's inner thoughts and explained the profound truth in just a few sentences.

This sentiment came from the comment section of a video posted by blogger @张嘉晨.

Corresponding to the high praise of the comments, this video has 3.628 million likes and 567,000 reposts, which is definitely a hot hit. But to be honest, the content of the video itself is actually a bit shabby.

There are no funny jokes, hot topics, handsome men and beautiful women, and the golden 3s principle of short videos is completely ignored, not to mention the script and well-produced post-production special effects.

Yes, it was just two ordinary boys singing a song "Say I Love You" while riding an electric bike, and then manually moving the camera in slow motion.

The entire video is barely 10 seconds long, and is actually not much different from our daily casual shots.

It's an ordinary video shot by an ordinary person, but its playback data far surpasses many professional videos of professional teams. It's like a random punch defeating a master. No wonder everyone has expressed their opinions in the comment section.

However, everyone who was discussing this was basically talking about the same thing -

One Yu Wenliang breaks the secular world, and millions of Yu Wenliangs stand up.

Huh? What's the matter with this Yu Wenliang who suddenly appeared?

1. Did Yu Wenliang usher in the era of ordinary people on Douyin?

In fact, Yu Wenliang is an “ordinary” blogger who has recently made this type of “ordinary people’s videos” popular.

It has also attracted much attention in the past two days and is the protagonist we are going to talk about today.

To describe this blogger's (Yu Wenliang) video style elegantly, it basically belongs to the genre of "shooting a video for buddies in the group to show off a little bit."

To put it bluntly, it's just some casual daily shots with some editing added.

For example, the short clip below has over 400,000 likes and is 7 seconds long.

The opening shot turns from the shadow of the feet to the seagulls in the sky, implying the author's yearning for the vast and free sky. Then the character briefly leaves the scene and overlaps with the sea horizon in the background. At this moment, the picture stops abruptly, which arouses endless reverie and leaves only an open ending.

Sorry, I can’t continue, this part is really nothing special.

Even Yu Wenliang’s most highly-praised videos do not actually have any sophisticated video skills or ideas.

It usually starts with a simple opening, followed by a transition, and finally a slow-motion cool shot.

His video editing has some of his own ideas and the music is quite good, but that's all.

Even the filming equipment was just a second-hand iPhone 11, and Wen Liang didn't even have time to buy himself a phone holder.

All you can see is a silly, optimistic, cheerful and somewhat sentimental athlete boy.

He likes to share his daily life, play with friends, enjoy life, and have a sense of unfettered freedom.

A fruit platter. If TikTok only allows 99 pictures, he would probably take 200 pictures.

As a result, no one could have imagined that Yu Wenliang would become so popular.

From August 30th to now, his followers have increased by more than 3 million, making him the most popular blogger on Tik Tok in this period.

Yu Wenliang updates his videos quite frequently, with more than 70 updates in less than two months, and nearly 10 of them have received over one million likes.

His presence can always be seen on major websites and in news reports.

There was even a new topic about Yu Wenliang on the Douyin hot list : "Be bolder, you don't have that many viewers."

Ordinary people who never dared to post their own videos began to pick up their phones and post their own videos through the Yu Wenliang incident, and gained confidence.

Various short videos of ordinary people have quickly gained more attention on Douyin than ever before.

Often a single video would receive tens or even millions of likes, making many ordinary passers-by on the Internet a little famous.

Having said that, I finally retract the comment at the beginning: "This year's TikTok belongs to ordinary people."

But no one can figure out the reason behind this sudden popularity.

Therefore, in Yu Wenliang's comment section, the question "Why is Yu Wenliang so popular" became a Nikkei post.

Some people say that Yu Wenliang's videos are very resonant and allow ordinary people who watch them to gain the same confidence.

Some people also say that this kind of unpackaged and undecorated temperament is already too scarce on Douyin. It makes people feel like seeing the simple Douyin in 2016, which truly corresponds to the slogan - record a beautiful life .

Most importantly, Yu Wenliang seemed to have proved one thing, "It turns out that ordinary people can post their own videos on Douyin and be seen by others." This is the source of confidence for many people.

Therefore, in Yu Wenliang's comment section, apart from some fixed memes, the most common thing is selfies.

The accompanying copy is basically the same paragraph:

I’m embarrassed to post on Moments, so I’ll just post the photos I like here.

2. Backlash: Yu Wenliang and the Abstract Fun Man

Actually, there is nothing special here.

However, as Yu Wenliang's popularity continued to rise, the whole thing escalated uncontrollably in an increasingly weird and abstract direction.

Yu Wenliang seemed to have suffered backlash.

For example, some people started to give instructions, planning the development of Yu Wenliang's account and teaching him how to operate it commercially, even though Yu Wenliang himself said he would not accept advertising. So his profile was simply changed to the following paragraph.

To sum it up simply, at least for now, I have no intention of making money by taking advertisements.

There are also those analysts who are popular on Tik Tok and analyze at length the factors behind Yu Wenliang's popularity.

Do some reading comprehension from various angles including Yu Wenliang's appearance, video rhythm, editing techniques, etc., and analyze why his videos became popular.

Some people even began to question Yu Wenliang, saying that his popularity must be due to capital control and team operations.

At the same time, some people are questioning the "ordinary people" who follow the trend, saying that they have no opinions of their own and only know how to find a sense of existence on the Internet every day.

So much so that up to now, the wind direction has completely changed.

Nowadays, when you open the comment section of Yu Wenliang’s videos, there are almost no people discussing the shining points of ordinary people and encouraging each other.

A large number of people began to question Yu Wenliang's sudden popularity and doubt the fairness of the platform's algorithm.

The addition of the abstract entertainer also allowed the events to fast-forward to the next chapter.

"Chen Ze comments on Yu Wenliang", "Yu Wenliang, our Han people's own Ding Zhen". . .

All kinds of outrageous entries were created for no reason. It no longer matters what videos Yu Wenliang posts every day or what attitude towards life he conveys to everyone.

In short, it was a complete mess.

Yu Wenliang, who has only become popular in the past few days, is probably also confused when faced with this situation.

But looking at his current appearance, it seems that he can still maintain his mentality.

3. The post-Internet era does not trust ordinary people

In the eyes of many people, Yu Wenliang is like the next popular idol chosen by Douyin.

The purpose is to confuse ordinary people with ordinary people's identities in order to increase the user activity of Douyin.

But is it possible that it is not that complicated at all, and this time he is just a positive and sunny boy who casually took some photos of things that everyone likes to see, and then received attention and love?

If you say this, there is a high probability that no one will believe it.

Because the Internet today makes everyone wary of each other, they would rather speculate that capital is using money to support an ordinary 20-year-old boy to "debut" than believe that there are people who simply like the beautiful moments in life.

The main reason why everyone lacks trust is that this place has changed from a place to share a beautiful life to a commercial battlefield . It is no longer the simple Internet environment in 2016.

At present, there seems to be no platform that can truly remain independent after commercialization and win the trust of ordinary users.

In fact, the public opinion situations of all the content creation apps that we can name are not much different.

Like many people who opposed Yu Wenliang this time, they were just opposing the platform's "not the lack of benefits but the uneven distribution of benefits" approach.

"Why should we give the traffic to Yu Wenliang?"

There are obviously many ordinary self-media people who have worked hard and created content, spending much more effort than Yu Wenliang, but now they have been turned into clowns by the platform algorithms."

This situation is completely different from when Yu Wenliang's number of fans just reached 1 million. After all, at that time everyone was still praising ordinary people.

But it seems that after the number of fans exceeded a threshold, Yu Wenliang automatically left the category of ordinary people in everyone's eyes.

Even if he wears ordinary shoes, takes out ordinary headphones, and goes out listening to ordinary disco, in the eyes of others he is a big internet celebrity who transcends class and can earn money in minutes that an ordinary person cannot earn in his entire life.

As a result, the ordinary people's golden ticket of immunity from criticism immediately became invalid, and people began to use the evaluation standards of a blogger with 4 million followers to demand Yu Wenliang to do the same, and verbal abuse followed.

The current Internet environment always makes everyone feel that "there is no other reason why something becomes popular, either it hits the traffic code or it is carefully designed."

After all, most of the popular content is because script masters and shooting experts are innovative and grab your attention with ingenious designs.

Many viewers began to become tired and wary, while others began to deconstruct these emerging winners with abstraction and fun.

As trust on the Internet decreases, ordinary people begin to doubt ordinary people.

Perhaps this is more worthy of lamentation than Yu Wenliang.

Author: Bad Review

WeChat public account: Chaping (ID: chaping321)