Forefront reminder: In order for the popcorn masses who do not understand this event to understand, this article will try to be as detailed as possible. If you don't like long articles, please go elsewhere, and don't argue in the comments.
To understand how the term "Wang Yi Yun" came about, we first need to understand the origin of this meme: NetEase Cloud Music. I believe everyone here has heard of NetEase Cloud Music, this software was launched at a time when QQ Music, Kugou Music, and other software were competing for the domestic market. Suddenly, NetEase entered as a competitor, and the final result was either being suppressed by joint efforts or being mediocre, being listed as "Others" by major statistical organizations.
However, NetEase Cloud Music relied on an advantage that other software did not have: music socialization, and it managed to carve out a path, capturing a large portion of the domestic market. At that time, the operating ideas of major music software were similar to those of Europe and the United States today, they were all similar to online players, and the entire software had no functions other than listening to music, and there was no interaction between users. NetEase Cloud Music fully integrated the advantages of social media, launching features such as music comments, custom playlists, and user dynamics, fully satisfying the expressive desires of young people today. By allowing independent musicians to join, it also lowered the threshold for exposure of independent musicians, attracting a large number of excellent musicians and music libraries to NetEase Cloud Music (even now, I admire NetEase Cloud Music's library expansion method).
However, with socialization comes both success and failure. The direct cause of the emergence of the "Wang Yi Yun" meme is music comments. With the popularity of the "sang culture" among young people, more and more young people started to like to hang "sang" sentences on their lips to highlight their "trendiness" and "non-mainstream" attitude. In NetEase Cloud Music, this group is not a minority (compared to QQ Music, QQ Music was actually the gathering place for non-mainstream culture at that time). It is this group of people who often copy and paste representative "sang culture" sentences online, and label them with universal "hot comment passwords" such as failing the college entrance examination, breaking up, depression, and the death of a loved one, using this method to deceive likes and sympathy from netizens, in order to satisfy their vanity and the satisfaction of being "awake while everyone else is drunk". Over time, other normal users will no longer believe in these false comments, just like the villagers in "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", they will no longer be willing to believe in these false comments. When the sympathy of normal users is exhausted, it will eventually erupt and cause a nationwide anti-"Wang Yi Yun" trend.
Looking at it this way, the real culprit that caused NetEase Cloud to become "Wang Yi Yun" is actually these NetEase Cloud Music users who create new words to express their sorrows-these are the fundamental reasons. However, there is another reason, which is the invasion of other platforms. What platform is it? You may not believe it, it's Bilibili-Bilibili, to be precise, some extremely irrational users on Bilibili: the "pxj" (instead of using the full name, "pxj" is used to refer to most situations on the Internet). These people are called "extremely irrational" because due to brainwashing or self-brainwashing, they regard Bilibili as their spiritual home and treat Bilibili with the attitude of "xfx" towards "xz" (it is recommended to Baidu these two abbreviations), and cannot tolerate any insults to Bilibili by others, and they elevate others' insults to themselves as Bilibili users to insults to Bilibili itself (this is not very clear, let's give an example, for example, pxjA says that Bilibili is the best on a certain platform, and user C on that platform disagrees and says that users like A insult the atmosphere of Bilibili, A understands it as C saying that all users of Bilibili are not good, and directly escalates it to the platform level).
After explaining "pxj", now we need to know how NetEase Cloud Music and Bilibili are connected. As we all know, one of Bilibili's major features is the "ghostly area", and there are very few original works in the "ghostly area", so many works are adaptations of existing music. Some users may feel unsatisfied after watching a work and want to listen to the original song, and because both NetEase Cloud Music and Bilibili focus on Japanese ACG content, Bilibili users naturally choose to listen to the original songs on NetEase Cloud Music. At the beginning, NetEase Cloud users welcomed Bilibili users, after all, they were all fans of the two-dimensional world, and it was easy for them to communicate with each other. But with the influx of NetEase Cloud users who copy and paste catchphrases, the direction of most comment sections also changed. In some sad music comment sections, the top comments are always the same set of hot comment passwords, and serious discussions about the music itself are mostly buried at the bottom. As it developed, even some cheerful songs began to receive these comments, greatly affecting the image of NetEase Cloud in the eyes of netizens, and also affecting the atmosphere of the comment section.
If it were that simple, it would at most become a war among NetEase Cloud users, and it would not spread to the entire Internet. However, with the arrival of some "pxj", everything changed. Due to the immaturity of the "pxj" themselves, their speech is too straightforward and they are not good at expressing their thoughts and disguising themselves. So when they see these comments, they casually say "Wang Yi Yun again", and if they happen to be in a bad mood, they will completely attack the original poster. Some normal NetEase Cloud users also dislike the behavior of these "pxj" and try to advise them, but they end up being insulted, leading to a worsening perception of Bilibili among most NetEase Cloud users. The war gradually escalated and eventually ignited the fuse for the nationwide "anti-Wang Yi Yun" battle.
Looking at it this way, the popularity of "Wang Yi Yun" is actually not caused by mischief from its own users causing trouble in their own backyard, but by the invasion of users from other platforms. However, compared to NetEase Cloud Music's own users, some Bilibili content creators are actually the main catalysts. When "Wang Yi Yun" was still popular, some Bilibili content creators took action and released many works opposing "Wang Yi Yun", including parody dubbing, live confrontations, and even some low-effort works that were just screenshots could become popular, turning the opposition to NetEase Cloud into the correct stance. During the time when "Wang Yi Yun" was just popular, as long as you said something positive about NetEase Cloud, you would be bombarded with "Wang Yi Yun" labels, and the comments section would be filled with "Wang Yi Yun again" or "How much did you get paid to white-wash". It must be said that during this important time of the pandemic, any new meme can instantly capture the interest of netizens, even if the meme is boring or unreasonable.
Now looking back, the reason why "Wang Yi Yun" was able to become popular across the Internet is actually due to several factors: the mentality of the masses being entertained to death, the lack of self-judgment in things, and the incorrect understanding of depression.
First, let's talk about the first point: being entertained to death. It must be said that in the era of short videos, it is extremely easy to cultivate an internet celebrity. When the era of internet celebrities just began, as long as you were good-looking, you could become an internet celebrity. Later on, netizens became increasingly dissatisfied with the stereotypical "internet celebrity face" and began to pursue more exciting internet celebrities, which led to the emergence of people like "Feng Jie" and "Han Meijuan". And then, netizens became unsatisfied with simple acts of acting crazy and silly, and started to pursue more exciting things, which led to the emergence of "Island City Old Eight Eating Shit" and "FLF's Wealth Password". From this, we can see that users actually pursue fresh and exciting things, so only by constantly innovating and lowering the bottom line can they attract more users. In the eyes of internet celebrities, the bottom line has always been meant to be broken. Now that netizens can't go out often due to the pandemic, they can only seek excitement online. When they see a newly popular meme like "Wang Yi Yun", they click on it out of boredom. But when they click on it, they see intellectuals debunking artistic comments, sarcastic comments mocking copy-pasting, how interesting! In this kind of mentality, videos that make fun of "Wang Yi Yun" actually attract more attention, while videos that analyze the whole situation are left behind-few people care about them! Users care about whether they enjoy watching, platforms care about high user retention rates, and investors care about high monthly active user data. Who would listen to those few small content creators trying to clarify the situation? Therefore, under the influence of user aesthetics and intentional platform restrictions, these serious analysis videos are often left with very few viewers. This makes most netizens like frogs in a well, only able to accept the one-sided facts that capital wants them to see, and unable to see the truth, leading to more and more netizens joining the war of insults against "Wang Yi Yun".
Next is the second point, which is also very important: in the era of traffic, it is really easy to change the general direction of public opinion. Netizens receive a large amount of fragmented knowledge every day, and their understanding of a certain thing often stays at a superficial level. They can't even achieve the most basic understanding, let alone have a comprehensive view. It is precisely because of the fragmentation of information that controlling public opinion becomes extremely easy-whoever has more traffic is the truth. This has created a vicious cycle: self-media rides on the popularity to attract traffic, netizens promote these views because they are "correct", these views attract more people to follow, self-media cannot satisfy the tastes of these netizens and can only lower the bottom line. In this way, some unscrupulous self-media will go to great lengths for traffic, buying trending topics, manipulating the popularity rankings, hiring water armies, etc. As long as you have more traffic than the other party, users will receive more information from your side, and at this point, users will give up their basic thinking ability and choose to follow the majority. At this point, a battle of public opinion has already determined the winner. No matter which side wins, the ultimate beneficiaries can only be the self-media that buys traffic, and netizens are just a group of puppets manipulated by public opinion. This logic is the same in any battle of public opinion, because unscrupulous self-media themselves do not care about the truth of the matter, they only care about traffic. Once you realize this, don't easily take sides in a battle of public opinion, then you will have the ability to think, otherwise you will always be used as a tool by capital and traffic, becoming a sacrifice of the internet celebrity economy.
Finally, the last point, which is easily overlooked, is that most people in China do not have a correct understanding of depression. Human emotions are interconnected, as long as you are still a normal person, you will experience depression and all other human mental illnesses. However, in China, due to long-term influence from marketing accounts and the lack of knowledge among most netizens, whenever depression is mentioned, it is considered to be fake, it is considered to be because one has nothing better to do. In their subconscious, depression is something that is "faked", it is because one is bored. However, human emotions are often not interconnected, when you are enjoying yourself and feeling happy, there may be someone next to you who is crying because they have lost a loved one. Human emotions are very complex, and no one can guess another person's thoughts and feelings, so it is very wrong to judge others' emotions based on your own emotions. In fact, this phenomenon also fits the mentality of the masses being entertained to death, always looking for amusement in everything, even if it is built on the pain of others, they have no feeling. In fact, the academic and employment pressure in China is very high, which has led to a depression rate of 100 million people, with an average of 1 in 10 people suffering from depression-in fact, most people are not aware of this, which is one of the reasons why some people think depression is rare. It is precisely because of the incorrect understanding of depression that people think "depressed people wouldn't go online, those who talk about depression are all faking it", in order to self-anesthetize, they are ruthless when faced with such comments, making the comment section even more toxic.
Looking at the overall situation, who wins and who loses may already have a conclusion. Did those early copy-pasting users lose anything? Maybe they felt a little embarrassed when they were exposed. Did they gain anything? They gained a lot: the vanity of deceiving likes, the intoxication of consuming sympathy, the pleasure of typing insults. Did the popcorn masses who insulted "Wang Yi Yun" lose anything? No. Did they gain anything? The satisfaction of watching content creators insult "Wang Yi Yun" and the pleasure of arguing with others in NetEase Cloud. What did the real instigators, content creators, and self-media gain? They gained a lot: the flow of promoting "zz correctness", the tangible benefits of various commercial collaborations, and the ability to quietly leave without any stigma. Who are the real victims? It is undoubtedly those with depression. Originally, every platform would have people with depression, and the depression sufferers on NetEase Cloud Music only expressed normal opinions, but those who copy and paste for popularity have exhausted all the sympathy, leaving depression sufferers with only the labels of "copy and paste" and "pretending to be sentimental", as well as overwhelming insults. Depression itself belongs to a vulnerable group, and faced with these insults, they can only silently accept them, but their endurance brings a double blow of being treated like a rat crossing the street, and it brings a sense of justice to netizens. But in order to have this sense of justice, netizens put their own thoughts above the endless pain of others, in the end, they are actually sophisticated egoists. In this online society, any stain will be magnified endlessly, and then it will attract the condemnation of so-called "righteous people". As the saying goes: on the Internet, everyone can be God for three minutes. In these three minutes, you can decide anyone's fate.
Things have developed to this point, and I think it is time to put down our weapons. Every insult we make against "Wang Yi Yun" will become a shackle in the hearts of depression sufferers, isolating them from the world. Depression sufferers are innocent, why should they bear such insults for a few copy-pasting users? For netizens, their words are just insignificant data on the internet, and they will be forgotten after a few days. But for those with depression, it is a blade that stabs their hearts, and it may take a lifetime to repair. In my opinion, our attacks and insults against "Wang Yi Yun" are no different from campus violence, just one is offline and the other is online. Netizens have always been selfish, only considering their own satisfaction from insulting others, without considering the trauma they cause to others. For you, it's just a minute, but for others, it's a lifetime.
Those who do not consider the feelings of others will also have their own feelings trampled upon. When public opinion is one-sided, no netizen is innocent.