With over one million followers in 10 days, can an “ordinary person” become Yu Wenliang?

Under the wave of the Internet, every ordinary person has the potential to become the next "Yu Wenliang".

The popularity of Tik Tok has “changed”.

The nostrils greeted first, with no expression management at all, the deadly angle when the straight man takes a selfie...

From the Douyin homepage of "Yu Wenliang", there is absolutely no deliberate ugliness in these careless and low-definition snapshots, which look very much like the content that would appear in the photo albums of dark-skinned athletes in high school classes, but they have unexpectedly become the most popular content style on Douyin recently.

The blogger who popularized this style of video is called Yu Wenliang. In his videos, he always has a mustache and no beauty filters. His videos are all about freedom. In one second, he shares his out-of-tune voice while leaning against a car window, and in the next second, the camera switches to the waiting hall, where he looks up at the camera at a 45-degree angle to act cool.

While shouting out passionate cheers, he and his friends danced shirtless on the beach late at night like wild men.

"Ordinary person" is the most common description in the comment section of Yu Wenliang's videos.

Some netizens directly called this form of recording daily life by ordinary people "Yu Wenliang style", and some netizens lamented that "Yu Wenliang has found the Douyin that belongs to ordinary people". The attention and discussion of netizens also brought direct growth to Yu Wenliang's Douyin account. According to the new Douyin data, Yu Wenliang's Douyin fans increased by 1.66 million in the past 7 days, and the number of fans reached 2.5 million before the time of publication.

Screenshot from Xindou

How did Yu Wenliang become so popular? Does everyone have the opportunity to become the next "Yu Wenliang"? Are there new opportunities for ordinary people in the content track?

1. With 1.66 million followers in 7 days, how did “ordinary person” Yu Wenliang become so popular?

The real life of ordinary people has been engraved into the DNA of Yu Wenliang's sharing content from the beginning. On August 30 this year, Yu Wenliang released his first Douyin video - a live animated picture of a man with a sad face asking when the National Day holiday will be. The background is an ordinary classroom full of boys. He looks like an ordinary male student waiting for the holiday.

After that, his sharing scenes were mostly about campus or track and field training grounds, and his style was free and unrestrained, but revealed a strong vitality, such as packing up his messy suitcase, or interacting with roommates in funny ways.

Each video is about 20 seconds long and includes one or more scene clips, which are jumpy and cheerful from each other.

The video copy is often very simple, sometimes just a hashtag. For example, the copy of this video with a shaky camera like a 3D car driving over a hill is just #dormitory#, but it is enough to show his excitement in recording dormitory life.

Although he seems to be a brash, direct, enthusiastic and extroverted person, Yu Wenliang occasionally shares some of his more complex inner emotions late at night.

On October 1, he posted a video of him giving flowers to his mother four years ago, accompanied by a text of more than 100 words written by himself to express his love for his mother. As of now, it has received 377,000 likes.

In addition to sharing daily content, Yu Wenliang also included Internet memes that appeared on other amateur bloggers.

On September 28, Yu Wenliang posted several photos of himself with cakes, as many as 100 photos in total, with only slight differences in angles or expressions between different photos.

Before him, amateur blogger "Huaibei Zhangjun" received 2.52 million Douyin likes with a set of 99 mirror selfies. In the comments section of the two, similar meme comments such as "Yang Liwei only took 5 photos in space" and "Finally I know who uses 1TB mobile phones" appeared in the front row.

The memes in the comment section are only part of the story, and the real sharing from netizens coming from all directions are the fundamental reason that helped Yu Wenliang's account become popular.

These ordinary netizens mustered up their courage to share in the comment section the photos they had been considering for a long time whether to release publicly. Someone shared a photo of his mother that he secretly took. Although his mother thought that her face had too many wrinkles and was not good-looking, it received 43,000 likes from strangers.

The girl who claimed that she had thick lips and a bulbous nose was always laughed at by her classmates, but here she was praised as "very beautiful" by Yu Wenliang and a group of netizens.

In addition to appearance anxiety, there are also ordinary people who show their difficult lives in the comments section of Wenliang. The uncle wearing a construction site safety helmet has traces of mud on his face, but he still overcomes his inferiority complex and posts the first photo.

Inspired by the kindness of strangers, netizens not only shared their recent situation in the comment section of Yu Wenliang's video, but also began to use their own accounts to record their lives.

As a result, as soon as Yu Wenliang became popular, thousands of "Yu Wenliangs" emerged.

Douyin blogger "Zhang Jiachen" was riding an electric bike with a friend while singing out of tune and forgetting the lyrics. In the end, he made himself laugh. The dim street lights during the ride were the warmest footnote to the moment. So far, this video has received 2.85 million likes on Douyin.

Some netizens also directly used the hashtag #于文亮# and said things they had not dared to say publicly before.

It seems that the three words "Yu Wenliang" represent the attitude and courage to face life.

The Douyin platform launches relevant challenge topics in a timely manner, such as "Let's use the same BGM as Yu Wenliang" and "Yu Wenliang gave me the courage to record", and the number of viewers of a single topic mostly exceeds 10 million.

2. Does everyone have the opportunity to become the next “Yu Wenliang”?

As Yu Wenliang became more popular, more and more people began to pay attention to his real-life identity. Although his Douyin homepage describes him as 28 years old, according to the information provided by netizens who claim to know him, Yu Wenliang may be an 18-year-old student of a sports club in Shandong, which is consistent with the sports life he shares on a daily basis.

The popularity of Yu Wenliang's content has also sparked discussions among fellow creators. One point that is frequently mentioned is that he shows his ordinary yet real daily life.

Not only does it resonate with ordinary people, but it also creates a contrast with the "successful people" who dress brightly and beautifully and take care of everything, shortening the sense of distance. Some netizens compared Yu Wenliang to "Zhang Tongxue", a rural blogger who became popular on Douyin last year. The content created by both of them reflects the real life of ordinary people. However, although "Zhang Tongxue"'s videos look simple, they are actually professionally photographed and edited.

Therefore, there are also technical experts who break down the camera movement, editing, contrast and other elements of Yu Wenliang's video, analyzing how to achieve this simple and natural effect.

For example, the most common one is the slow-motion special effect at the end of many of his videos, which delays the outburst of emotions in the last few seconds, allowing the audience to savor it. In this regard, Yu Wenliang's online sense is better than that of most other ordinary netizens.

In an interview video released by Jiupai News on October 12, Yu Wenliang directly denied that there was a team behind him.

The filming equipment is a second-hand iPhone 11. Because there is no stand, he occasionally needs the help of a friend to hold it and shoot. When asked how he prepares the content to be filmed every day, he smiled and said "completely random". As for whether he will consider taking advertisements for commercial realization in the future, Yu Wenliang also replied in his account profile that "my father is still the pillar of the family. If one day I need to take on the responsibility, I will definitely take advertisements and make a lot of money."

For content creators, instead of discussing how to copy the next "Yu Wenliang" who became famous by shooting fresh daily life,

It is better to think about how, against the backdrop of the rise of amateur bloggers, we can find different paths in content creation with minimal effort.

For example, the name of another female blogger, "Hai Tai Mi", is often mentioned in the comment section of Yu Wenliang's video. Netizens often call her "Yu Wenliang for men and Hai Tai Mi for women". Her two accounts, big and small, have a total of 4.24 million followers on Douyin. "Hai Tai Mi" also mainly posts videos of her daily life, often without makeup, and sometimes posts multiple trivial and casual videos in a row like a friend, so she jokes that she is a "low-quality and non-nutritious blogger". Because she lives in South Korea, she often adds relevant elements to the content of her videos, such as the "Korean Secretary Series" videos.

Her true nature is the key to attracting the attention of netizens. When faced with something unpleasant, she will simply give the middle finger or roll her eyes. Although it is impolite, it hits the point of the crazy mental state of young people in daily life.

Some netizens even made the image of "Seaweed Mimi" into acrylic ornaments, and currently the sales of a single link on a certain e-commerce platform have exceeded 1,000.

In addition to using accounts as diaries or tree holes to share content, some bloggers also approach the topic from the perspective of common sense in daily life. At the beginning of this year, blogger "Worker Xiao Zhang" gained 1.61 million followers on Douyin in one month with a series of ordinary popular science posts such as "How to Take the Bus" and "How to Take the High-speed Rail". In her opinion, every little thing that one person takes for granted may be a blind spot in another person's life. The "how how" series breaks the tension and crampedness of netizens facing the "first time".

Related reading: "By teaching people how to take the high-speed rail, "Worker Xiao Zhang" gained millions of followers and became a hot search! | New List Interview"

If bloggers creating down-to-earth content that ordinary people like to read is setting an empathy anchor, then platform support is a key step that influences whether bloggers can stand in the spotlight.

Just like Yu Wenliang's popular content with millions of likes, although several key points of communication can be analyzed from the editing technology level, returning to the essence is still a corner of ordinary people's daily life, and the operation is not difficult, so some netizens asked "Why is Yu Wenliang popular instead of himself?" According to the data of Hot Search Tool Pro, on the morning of October 13 alone, at least 5 topics related to Yu Wenliang were listed on the Douyin station list, and the number of views of the Douyin topic #Yu Wenliang# reached 1.19 billion times. However, in the Weibo field where the public discussion is more widespread, the highest number of views of Yu Wenliang's single topic is 35.54 million.

Judging from the dozens of times difference in popularity between Yu Wenliang on the two platforms, Douyin and Weibo, it is highly likely that the Douyin platform helped ferment and spread Wenliang's topic on the platform.

Once upon a time, bloggers used to attract fans with exquisite makeup, meticulously retouched photos, and the eye-catching golden 3 seconds at the beginning. However, with the "aesthetic fatigue" of netizens year after year, appearing without makeup, sharing without filters, and casually taking shaky pictures have become bonus points for bloggers.

Under such a wave, every ordinary person seems likely to become the next "Yu Wenliang".

But many people may have forgotten that short videos were originally a stage for ordinary people, and the popular bloggers who became popular were just ordinary people at first. It’s just that with the improvement of video creation level and the batch incubation capacity of institutions, many ordinary people can’t catch up, so Yu Wenliang’s appearance seems so “ordinary”.

However, as more and more people try to copy "Yu Wenliang" and become the next celebrity, his "ordinary person style" is destined to no longer be "ordinary" and may even fall into clichés, becoming another conventional template.

Author: Hachiko

Source: WeChat public account "Xinbang"