Source: China Youth Daily, China Youth Network
Silent death
Things aren't good. On June 2, Huang Zhongyuan's wife woke up in the early hours of the morning to find her husband lying on the ground in another room, his body was already cold, the ground was full of cigarette butts and melon seed skins, and there were beer bottles piled up in the corner. 1 hour ago, Huang Zhongyuan was still drinking live broadcast, and his face on the screen turned red due to drunkenness, and the gift special effects and barrage flew to the screen.
Huang Zhongyuan's live broadcast room. Jiao Jingxian/photo
On the way to Huang Zhongyuan's funeral, anchor Wu Li felt that things were too weird. This is the second anchor's funeral he has attended in the past 1 month. Huang Zhongyuan also participated in the last game. No one thought that something would happen to Huang Zhongyuan.
They all rely on live broadcast drinking to make money, and some anchors drink more than 10 catties of liquor in one night, compared with them, Huang Zhongyuan doesn't drink much. Wu Li recalled that Huang Zhongyuan spent most of his time "chatting with fans".
Huang Zhongyuan's wife told reporters that Huang Zhongyuan died of vomit suffocation.
Every night, she would go to her husband's live broadcast room to take a look, afraid that something would happen to him. Huang Zhongyuan's daily work is to swallow liquor, raw eggs, tadpoles, and even cigarette butts in front of the camera. Drinking live at night, drinking until two or three o'clock in the morning before going off the air.
At the end of May, Huang Zhongyuan's wife had been taking care of her sick child in the hospital and could only "monitor" her husband through phone calls and text messages. The day before the accident was Children's Day, and Huang Zhongyuan picked up his wife and children from the hospital.
Next to the hospital, Huang Zhongyuan Xi bought a lottery ticket by habit. He likes to buy lottery tickets, and when he was young, he invested tens of thousands of yuan in the "Fast Three" lottery and never won the prize. But he still expects to get rich, "money is more important than life", he wrote this sentence in chalk on the wall of the live broadcast room.
When he went home in the evening, Huang Zhongyuan only drank some millet porridge and went upstairs to prepare for the live broadcast. Because of long-term drinking, Huang Zhongyuan's stomach is not good, so he can only eat some soft things, he is getting thinner and thinner, 174 cm tall, only 102 pounds.
On the night of June 1, my 4-year-old son told his father before going to bed, "Dad, drink less, I'll go to bed first, and I'll see you by my side tomorrow morning."
They live in a small two-story building, which was newly built by Huang Zhongyuan with a loan of more than 300,000 yuan last year. The first floor is exquisitely decorated, the wooden swing at the door is handmade by him, and the Chinese painting hanging on the wall is painted by him, which depicts a child leisurely riding on the back of a cow. At 12 o'clock in the night, Huang Zhongyuan's wife and children had fallen asleep.
Upstairs is an unrenovated rough house, and Huang Zhongyuan is broadcasting live in one of the rooms. There is only one bed, a set of tables and chairs, and two live broadcast lights.
When the farmland and woods are hidden in the middle of the night, the lights of Huang Zhongyuan's house are still on.
Huang Zhongyuan's neighbor, an old man in his 60s, is still asleep. He once watched Huang Zhongyuan's live broadcast in the middle of the night, and when he saw Huang Zhongyuan pouring beer, he turned it off without looking at it twice, "This thing has no value." I don't want to die to make money." Huang Zhongyuan has a bad reputation in the village, and even the old man who doesn't watch the live broadcast knows that he eats mice.
At around 4 a.m., the neighbor's uncle was suddenly woken up by a call from Huang Zhongyuan's family and asked him to help find a doctor at the village clinic.
"The Central Plains is no longer good," he said on the phone.
No one can tell how much wine Huang Zhongyuan drank that night. Screenshots or videos of the live broadcast can no longer be found on the platform. Some fans later told Huang Zhongyuan's wife that after Huang Zhongyuan drank two or three bottles of liquor, he had "more than 10 minutes of yelling", and then the live broadcast ended. One fan said that someone in the barrage said, "Let's hit 120." But in the end, no one made the call.
It was raining heavily on the day of Huang Zhongyuan's funeral, and fans and friends carried his coffin up the mountain.
A painting by Huang Zhongyuan. Jiao Jingxian/photo
The cycle of death
15 days ago, Wu Li and Huang Zhongyuan attended the funeral of "Three Thousand Brothers" Wang Zhaofeng, the anchor came to several tables, and some people tried to broadcast live.
Compared with Huang Zhongyuan, Wang Zhaofeng was more excited during the live broadcast, and he had many friends in the circle. Wang Zhaofeng often gets drunk during live broadcasts, and he also makes getting drunk as part of his performance. Once, when he drank too much, he lay on the ground sprinkled with colored paper, waddling and dancing. Fans chanted "666" and "two hits" on the screen. Sister Wang Li called him to go off the air, but he blocked her instead.
In the early morning of May 17, after drinking 7 bottles of liquor and 3 bottles of Red Bull in the live broadcast, he kept lying on the table, and then the live broadcast was interrupted. He usually broadcasts live in a house in the countryside alone, and his wife takes the children to school in the county seat. When he was found by the villagers in the afternoon, he was dead.
Wu Li recalled that Wang Zhaofeng had a big personality and was righteous, and he had two dimples when he laughed. He claimed to be "the first person on the Internet to drink", and in order to make an exaggeration, he filled the wine in a giant glass bigger than his face and buried his head in it to drink. But his friends and family said he had only half a pound of alcohol.
In the room where Wang Zhaofeng was live before his death, all the windows were blocked for fear of disturbing the people. The walls are plastered with A4 paper, which reads, "My life is up to me, not to the sky, and you are only being destroyed with a wave of your hand!"
He entered the society after graduating from junior high school, sold dumplings, made pork knuckle rice, and later lost money in business, and in 2020, in order to repay his debts, he did a live broadcast, and many "big brothers" and "big sisters" (financially strong reward fans - reporter's note) rewarded him.
At the beginning of this year, Wang Zhaofeng finally bought a house in his hometown. Wang Li persuaded her younger brother to change careers and open a small shop, "I have to return to real life after all." But Wang Zhaofeng is no longer inseparable from live broadcast. He also held his mobile phone during the New Year's dinner, "broadcasting wherever he went".
After Mr. Wang's death, his family found a stack of phone cards in his safe. Every time he was banned by the platform, he used these new numbers to register for a small account and continue broadcasting.
In September last year, Wang Zhaofeng was admitted to the ICU for excessive drinking during the live broadcast, and the diagnosis results included acute alcoholism, acute gastric mucosal lesions, liver damage, etc., until the accident, he was still drinking traditional Chinese medicine.
Not long after he was discharged from the hospital last year, he began to pour liquor in the live broadcast again. He felt that he was in the ICU because he had drunk fake alcohol. A fan recalled that Wang Zhaofeng once said in the live broadcast, "Be an anchor and glorify your ancestors".
Screenshots of Wang Zhaofeng's last live broadcast before his death circulated on the Internet, he was lying on the table, and someone joked in the barrage, "Live broadcast sleep earns millions a month".
At Wang Zhaofeng's funeral, Wang Li remembered that Huang Zhongyuan had been "stunned", staring at Wang Zhaofeng's photo and not speaking. She pointed at Huang Zhongyuan with her finger and said with tears in her eyes: "Especially you, don't drink anymore." ”
Wang Li also watched Huang Zhongyuan's live broadcast. She knew that Huang Zhongyuan drank "sincerely" like her younger brother, never mixed with water, and even always pressed it without spitting.
He nodded. He said yes to me. Wang Li told reporters.
Fifteen days later, Wang Li learned of Huang Zhongyuan's death. "When I heard this, I was really angry and hated them. Her voice trembled slightly.
Half a year ago, the anchor "Yaozi" who suffered from tuberculosis in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, passed away, which was also related to long-term drinking during the live broadcast. At that time, Wang Zhaofeng also attended his funeral.
No one knows who the first streamer to die from a live stream was.
In November 2017, Wu Yongning, the first person in high-altitude extreme sports and an "Internet celebrity" who performed high-altitude performances on platforms such as Huajiao live broadcast, fell from a building while climbing at Huayuan International Center in Changsha, Hunan.
In June 2020, Mr. Wang, a "big stomach king eating broadcast" in Shenyang, suddenly experienced symptoms such as numbness and dizziness when preparing for the live broadcast, and died after 7 consecutive days of rescue in the hospital.
In March 2021, the eating and broadcasting Internet celebrity "Bubble Dragon" passed away, and his weight before his death reached 320 pounds.
In October 2021, the Internet celebrity "Luo Kitten Maozi" committed suicide by drinking "diquat fast" in the live broadcast, and died after rescue efforts failed. In the live broadcast room, some netizens coaxed her to "drink it".
On May 27 this year, the 312-pound Internet celebrity "Cuihua" passed away in a weight loss training camp. In addition to training during the day, she will also broadcast live at night and practice in front of fans.
According to the financial report of a live broadcast platform, the platform's revenue in the second quarter of 2023 will be 27.744 billion, and the average daily active number will reach 376 million, hitting a record high. Online marketing services and live streaming are the main sources of revenue, accounting for 52% and 36% respectively.
In the face of huge gains, some streamers and traffic race until death.
Wu Li used the Red Bull with his head and kept it in the refrigerator. Jiao Jingxian/photo
The Birth of a Wonder
These anchors, who are working more and more desperately for traffic, make the audience's excitement threshold continue to increase.
"Those talents, what singing and dancing are soft, it's not interesting," Li Xiulian, a 54-year-old grocery store owner, told reporters. She likes the excitement of "ruthless PK", the anchor is hoarse and canvassing for votes, and "the words on the screen are flying up". She is usually bored watching the store, so she will click into the live broadcast room.
The anchor will also use words to stimulate the audience, "Is there any family to save me" and "Let's guard the tower".
Li Xiulian likes a handsome male anchor in his early 30s, every time she listens to the opposite anchor scolding ugly, the anchor she supports keeps asking for help, "I can't wait for me to go up and help him canvass for votes." She knows very well that the anchor is different from her friends in reality, "What real friends are there on the Internet? But I was brought in by the atmosphere, I don't care if he is a real friend or a fake friend, and I support him if I have money."
Seeing that the opposite anchor lost as a punishment, Li Xiulian never relented. Once the anchor supported by Annette Lee won a female anchor, and the punishment was to drink 6 bottles of water, and then tie herself to a tree and not be able to move for two hours. Finally, the female anchor peed her pants.
A trace of guilt flashed in Annette Li's heart. She knew that the female anchor was a single mother, and at that time "I also felt a little distressed". But she was immediately distracted by the "Big Sister Mighty" subtitles on the screen, "I was surrounded by that atmosphere, and I forgot everything".
Among the "ruthless" viewers interviewed by reporters, some people said that swiping gifts was like "buying a zoo ticket", and some people regarded watching punishment as a "finale show".
They said that the most exciting part of the PK process is when the "big brother" and "big sister" make a move. The huge special effects occupy most of the screen, and the barrage is full of "Thank you big brother/big sister" and "Big brother/big sister mighty", which brings the atmosphere of the live broadcast room to the peak. Everyone shares the thrill of "crushing" and "reversing".
The more generous the "big brother" and "big sister", the higher the level number displayed on the platform. Throwing money is the fastest way to upgrade, it is not difficult to upgrade at the beginning, from level 1 to level 10 only costs more than 20 yuan. From level 40 to level 50, the amount required has reached more than 1 million yuan. There are only a handful of people who have risen to level 60, because they need to spend 20 million yuan. They are called "Shenhao".
Although Annette Li doesn't spend much on gifts, she watches the anchor almost every day. It took two years for the anchor to pull her into the "family crowd" of fans, and she felt that "she had face".
Fans in the group all regard "guarding the anchor" as a common mission, and some people say that they will only pay their salaries at the end of the month, and ask others to "protect them well". Someone opened a farm and said, "When my batch of pigs comes out, I will stick to it." In order to express his gratitude, the anchor will send some small gifts to the fans in the group, such as agricultural products from his hometown.
Sometimes swiping gifts is also a kind of venting. A 26-year-old young "eldest sister" brushed 1.2 million yuan in half a year. She told reporters that her usual work intensity is not high, and she usually wears headphones to listen to live broadcasts during the day and accompany her family at night.
When she is in a bad mood, she sees that a certain anchor is "unpleasant" and "has such a cheap mouth", so she will deliberately vote for the anchor's opponent and punish him for losing. There was a live broadcast punishment of 1,000 votes for eating an egg, and she hated one of the anchors, so she gave 100,000 votes to the opposite anchor.
"I definitely wouldn't have been on the ticket without PK," she admitted, "Once you watch it, the atmosphere is like a drug, it's addictive." She feels that watching live broadcasts is like shopping, "Some people don't get tickets just because they don't have the ability to spend, not because they are rational."
The room where Wu Li livestreamed. Jiao Jingxian/photo
The fate of the gambler
Wu Li is very grateful to those "big brothers" and "big sisters". They decide their fate in the "gambling game".
The PK countdown of each live broadcast begins, the screen is split into two, and the number of votes of the anchor is quantified into a light bar, which the anchor also calls "blood bar". In the deafening music, Wu Li roared and canvassed, and the inferior microphone "Zilazila" rang straight.
When the PK ended, his own votes exceeded that of his opponent, and the word "champion" jumped on the screen, Wu Li would raise his hands above his head and shout "Thank you, big brother!
Every time he loses PK, after the punishment, some people admire, "You are also a ruthless person, pay attention to you". Someone scoffed, "Haha, it's fried." Someone was not satisfied with the punishment, "not ruthless enough, add 20 more".
Gradually, Wu Li thought that "ruthlessness" could help him win respect. "My psyche is like that of those who challenge the iceberg, hike. What I challenge, no one can do. When I finished, I felt a sense of accomplishment. ”
The fan's response made him even more convinced. There is a "big brother" who often brushes gifts, claiming to be the boss of a group, and praising Wu Li in a private message, "I feel that you are the same as when I was young, you have a tenacity when you work hard, and you don't admit defeat if you lose."
If he didn't laugh, Wu Li looked very difficult to mess with. There was a thumb-sized area on the top of his head, just tender meat, and he had used it to smash beer bottles and smash Red Bull cans. The irregularly shaped scar on the stomach was blown by firecrackers. There are densely bulging, burned, cigarette butt scars on his arms.
He had chewed glass ballast, had a firecracker, and had a blade cut through his tongue, which made him lose his sense of taste for more than half a month. In June last year, he felt pain in his ear for two days because he had put a firecracker on his ear, and went to the hospital to be diagnosed with a perforated eardrum.
He lives on the upper floor of a car repair shop on the side of the national highway, and the roar of trucks and the noise of car repair are the best cover for his live broadcast.
After returning from Huang Zhongyuan's funeral, the second daughter's homeroom teacher sent a message, urging him to pay 4,900 yuan for tuition. He pulls his three daughters alone and has to repay more than 10,000 yuan of online loans every month. Even on the thirtieth day of the Chinese New Year's Eve and the birthdays of his daughters, Wu Li has not stopped broadcasting. After two friends passed away due to live broadcast, Wu Li still started the broadcast on time at 8 o'clock every night.
The last time the three of them got together was in February this year, when Wu Li and Wang Zhaofeng went to play with Huang Zhongyuan. On the Gaoyang Mountain in Sanmenxia, the wind is still cold. Wu Li looked at the two friends who were left behind. They were out of breath. "The body is ××× drunk and wasted", Wu Li made a joke about them.
At the top of the mountain, they took a group photo. In the photo, Huang Zhongyuan stood in the middle and hugged them, and Wu Li and Wang Zhaofeng gave a thumbs up next to them.
After Wang Zhaofeng and Huang Zhongyuan passed away one after another, a group photo of the three of them was widely circulated. Someone in the anchor group sent a voice "@" Wu Li, "(You) can you die? There are also fans in the live broadcast room who reminded him, "Just that you are alive, you have to pay attention."
Wu Li often mentions "probability", he doesn't accept the punishment of drinking now, and he doesn't play "ordering" (fans directly pay to designate the anchor to do the task, and the difficulty of the task is linked to the value of the gift - reporter's note), he thinks that the "chance" of such an accident will be much smaller. The punishment he is playing now is all trauma, "the trauma is bleeding at most, just go to the hospital and bandage it", he convinced himself.
He used his body to gamble on "the right time, place and people" - the punishment was exciting enough, and it happened that the "big brother" and "big sister" came, and his performance made the "big brother" and "big sister" happy. The money is there.
Wang Zhaofeng entered the industry because he lost money in business, Huang Zhongyuan owed an online loan when he was in college, and Wu Li owed more than 700,000 yuan because of online gambling.
Live streaming was a lifesaver for them, and they wanted to gamble again. Wu Li told reporters, "It feels like even if I only graduated from junior high school, I can earn my first pot of gold here."
In 2016, as the "first year of live broadcasting", there were more than 200 enterprises in Chinese mainland providing Internet live streaming platform services. According to official data from a platform, in 2018, more than 16 million people in China earned income from the platform.
Compared with talented and funny anchors, the threshold for "ruthless PK" to enter the industry is very low, and you only need to have a mobile phone and a body that can tolerate pain. They call themselves "people who ask for food on the Internet."
According to the "China Online Performance (Live Broadcast and Short Video) Industry Development Report (2022-2023)", among the anchors who use live broadcast as their main source of income, 95.2% have a monthly income of less than 5,000 yuan, and only 0.4% of the anchors have a monthly income of more than 100,000 yuan.
In order to study the characteristics of online labor of short/live broadcast anchors, Lu Peng, a researcher at the Institute of Journalism of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, has been following "grassroots" anchors since 2015 and has interviewed more than 70 of them.
He found that the invisible mechanism behind the platform will allow new anchors to continue to taste the sweetness, but the success of the vast majority of "grassroots" streamers is only "short-lived", and they cannot continue to produce high-quality content due to the lack of cultural and social capital. Some of the "grassroots" anchors he interviewed had a live broadcast life cycle of only a few months.
Falling from the clouds
Wu Li has never experienced the feeling of being a "big anchor". But his friend Huang Zhongyuan fell hard from the clouds of traffic.
Seven years ago, Huang Zhongyuan was still a junior college student in Zhengzhou, 19 years old, majoring in fine arts, and liked to tinker with paintbrushes and play with literature. He still has a certificate in his house that he won the first prize in sketching in the school's teacher-student skills competition.
Huang Zhongyuan's first "small fire" video was in the school supermarket, where he picked up a bottle of liquor in front of the camera, poured it down in one go, and then put the bottle back. That video got him thousands of followers.
Since then, Huang Zhongyuan has found the direction of his efforts. Li Fei is Huang Zhongyuan's classmate and his "photographer and agent". Li Fei felt that the "Roast Chicken" incident was a turning point in Huang Zhongyuan's life.
It was a video shot in 2016 in which Huang Zhongyuan lit the wine in his glass, then dipped it in the burning wine and lit a cigarette. "Drink a glass of fire wine", he picked up the wine with fire and sent it to his mouth, his hand crooked, and the wine with the flame was sprinkled on the crotch of his pants, and the flames instantly went up. Huang Zhongyuan screamed in pain, "Come and fight! Come and help me!" he screamed and ran off the screen.
This video has been viewed more than 10 million times, with 500,000 or 600,000 likes, which has made Huang Zhongyuan rise by hundreds of thousands of fans.
Li Fei said that this was actually an expected "accident".
The fire was planned, and the first time I shot it, the flame was extinguished as soon as it was struck, "I didn't want this effect". On the second shot, the fire began to get out of control due to two spills of alcohol on his pants. Huang Zhongyuan's leg was fine due to the protective pants he had worn beforehand, but the flames burned a large part of his stomach, and he lay in the hospital for two days.
But this made Huang Zhongyuan feel "very worthwhile". After the "Roast Chicken" incident, he became famous, and he could earn up to 50,000 yuan a month.
He became more and more ruthless to himself, Li Fei said: "He told me that as soon as the camera is turned on, he will eat whatever he is given." Huang Zhongyuan has eaten raw ostrich eggs, live scorpions, tadpoles, and mice in front of the camera.
Once, he ate all the burning cigarette butts. "If it's an iron fan, double-click, double-click, double-click, double-click. He said with a pained expression in front of the camera.
In less than half a year, because of the violation of the live broadcast content, Huang Zhongyuan was banned by the platform many times.
For a few years, Huang Zhongyuan did not save any money. Sometimes the money earned in one night is not enough to buy alcohol.
Li Fei recalled that Huang Zhongyuan has never had any concept of money, "I don't know exactly how to spend it, that is, to repay the online loan, and then eat, drink, and play slot machines." When he was in college, Huang Zhongyuan bought an iPhone, invited friends to dinner, and borrowed a lot of online loans.
When building a house last year, Huang Zhongyuan only scraped together more than 10,000 yuan and borrowed a loan of 300,000 yuan.
Lu Peng found that most of the "grassroots anchors" he came into contact with would fall into a cycle of "making money and squandering". Some of them have just graduated from middle and high school, and they are exposed to short videos very early, and they have no concept of money. "Some people say that he has more than a dozen 'W's in one month), but most of them are squandered. Money comes and goes fast. ”
Lu Peng realized a cruel truth: the low-level temperament makes these anchors popular, but it will eventually restrict their development.
In fact, Huang Zhongyuan doesn't like to drink. Sometimes he would spend most of the day lying on his drawing paper. He has also made videos of not drinking. He has photographed himself stir-frying home-cooked food, made a collection of travel photos, and photographed the Journey to the West characters he drew on toilet paper. He also made funny jokes, sitting on a bus, wearing a durian skin on his head, stepping on a brick, and looking like he was at home. Huang Zhongyuan's wife recalled, "He felt that there was no traffic and no one appreciated it."
Under the video of him cooking, someone commented, "I paid attention to you because I drank alcohol, and the food blogger took it off", "You are definitely preparing for pregnancy", "There are not as many likes as before, don't you reflect on it", "Let's make porridge with wine".
Later, the cover of his video changed back to low-quality liquor with different degrees and bright packaging.
Become a "ruthless person"
Dong Chenyu, a communication scholar at Renmin University of Chinese, likened the live broadcast industry to a "black hole", and for anchors, "constantly attract them, manage them, and discipline them".
He once conducted a one-year observation and research on a number of female anchors on a platform, and he believes that the "immoral economy" behind live broadcasts hurts the values of practitioners. This damage is invisible and masked by short-term profits.
When he first started live broadcasting 3 years ago, Wu Li would still stutter because of nervousness. At that time, he didn't know much about the Internet, and he drove a truck on the Gobi Desert in Xinjiang all the year round, his eyes were full of black hills and sand, there was no grass, and there was no signal. They ran with the construction site, fought the landlord in their free time, or stuffed the caps of mineral water bottles with pieces of paper and made chess. Once, he was injured on the construction site, and while recuperating from his hospital bed, he came into contact with online gambling and owed 7.8 million yuan in online loans.
He asked around for ways to make quick money, and his friend asked him to try live streaming.
Wu Li began to post a short video of drinking every day, mixed with eggs, mixed with cooking wine and oil, or ran to the door of Foxconn, drank in the flow of people after work, "think of various ways to gain traffic".
In less than one year, the number of raw eggs that Wu Li can drink at a time has risen from 20 to 250.
followed by learning Xi "pulling hatred", the more fierce the two anchors scolded during PK, the more "big brother" and "big sister" had the desire to vote.
He also smashed air-conditioning fans, chandeliers, and newly bought fortune trees. He didn't want to smash either, but he didn't have a say. The punishment is set by the "big brother".
There are still dozens of Red Bulls in his refrigerator, and he is reluctant to throw them, "6 yuan a can." In addition to drinking it himself, he put the broken hole up, put it back in a box, and gave it to relatives and friends. He was embarrassed to say that he smashed it himself, and when others asked, he prevaricated and said, "That's how I bought it."
In real life, Wu Li was afraid of acquaintances asking him what he was doing.
He asked his daughter to write "farmer" in the column of her father's occupation. Once he went to the credit union to handle the loan business, the salesman recognized him and asked him if he was the "Internet celebrity" who could drink very well, and he quickly denied it.
He severed almost all social ties. He sleeps during the day, broadcasts live at night, and rarely goes out.
The feeling of driving a truck on the Gobi Desert and "derailing" from the world is back. Wu Li hasn't been home for a long time, and for 3 consecutive years, he has been making dumplings live in the rental house alone during the Chinese New Year.
After indebtedness due to online gambling, Wu Li borrowed money everywhere, but his relatives avoided him, and his wife divorced him. So he left home and rented a house in the county seat to concentrate on live broadcasting. Before leaving, he kowtowed heavily in front of his parents, "If you don't earn money, you won't go home."
He hid in the live broadcast, which also made him farther and farther away from the real world. Wu Li sometimes goes to the homestead he bought before. It was the place where he was going to build his house, and now it is used to grow vegetables, and cucumbers, amaranth, and baby greens are roasted in the sun.
He knew he couldn't go back.
He hopes that the live broadcast will take him out of the shadow of gambling. As it turned out, the live stream did help him pay off some of his debts, but it also cast a new shadow on his life.
Now Wu Li is afraid to go home, afraid of the inquiring eyes of his relatives and the gossip of neighbors. At one point he drove away and saw his neighbor pointing at him in the rearview mirror. The nephew once reported him in the live broadcast room, and the children in the village used his online name to make up a smooth mouth, "Follow the ××, and starve nine meals in three days".
Wu Li's parents are farmers, and the two old men manage 15 acres of land, and after harvesting watermelons, they will push a tricycle to the village entrance at 3 o'clock in the morning to sell. I can't rest for a few days, and I have to harvest carrots again.
Wu Li's mother, who is in her 60s, always came back with an injury, and sometimes had to borrow the ID cards of her parents and relatives to register for a small number. Even so, she still thinks that Wu Li is a "good son" and believes that he "will turn back sooner or later".
The daughters also think that Wu Li is a "good father", although Wu Li is usually sloppy and sloppy, and his eyes are always sleepy during the day. Wu Li takes his daughter to the restaurant on weekends. He never cursed in front of his daughter. He would sit next to his daughters, supervise their homework, and fall asleep after a while.
The live broadcast took away Wu Li's sleep and most of his energy, and he was powerless to change many things. His youngest daughter is only 4 years old and is usually brought by her grandparents. The second daughter is in the fourth grade of primary school.
The eldest daughter is in the second year of junior high school, and she is the most sensible and most worried about his body. Sometimes Wu Li's account is blocked and suspended, she will be very happy, "at least she doesn't have to get hurt anymore and can rest well."
The eldest daughter slept lightly, and she knew that as soon as she was short of money, her father's live broadcast time would be extended. For a while last year, it was difficult for her to pay for her tuition, and her father didn't get off the air until 5 a.m. Her goal is to work hard to get a scholarship, even if it's only a few hundred dollars.
Wu Li is most afraid that his daughters will see his live broadcast. At the beginning, Wu Li would tell in the live broadcast room, "It doesn't matter if you're watching Nannan or Tiantian, go to bed early." Later, the "work" became more and more ruthless, and he specifically checked the attention list of his daughters to prevent them from seeing him.
Usually Wu Li broadcasts live in the living room, and he will close the bedroom door of his daughters and tell them not to come out. If they came out to go to the toilet, Wu Li immediately stopped the live broadcast.
It's just a psychological comfort, and the sound of roars and firecrackers still coming into the bedroom. One, two, three, four, five. The second daughter covered her ears and grinned, predicting the number of firecrackers. It's a game she's played many times.
But in front of their father, they pretended not to care, because they didn't want to put pressure on their father. Once, Wu Li came to see them after the broadcast, and his arm was wrapped in a tissue, which was already soaked with blood. After Wu Li left, the youngest daughter cried out.
The youngest daughter couldn't help it once, and cried and said to Wu Li, "Dad, don't drink it." Wu Li's tears fell instantly.
The family's pleas tore at the anchor's heart. Among the anchors interviewed by Dong Chenyu, many are single mothers. An anchor told Dong Chenyu that she usually set up her mobile phone in the living room to dance live after her son was asleep. In less than half a year, she left the industry because her son said to her, "When I sleep, can you not jump outside, can you sleep with me?"
"When she said this, I burst into tears, because I also have children. Dong Chenyu said.
Balancing life between two worlds is not an easy task for streamers. Dong Chenyu believes that even if anchors use financial income as the original motivation for pursuing this profession, when the boundaries between work and private life become blurred, it is difficult for them to dispel and balance the immorality caused by this imbalance.
Cat and mouse game
After Wang Zhaofeng's death, Wu Li was blocked 6 accounts on a certain platform. After Huang Zhongyuan's death, Wu Li was "permanently banned" by a certain platform, commonly known as "sealing his face". This platform conducts face black database recognition for high-frequency drinking anchors to prevent behaviors such as size and number replacement after banning.
Wu Li can only broadcast on another platform. However, now that the drinking behavior is centrally controlled by the platform, no matter which platform it is, as long as there is a wine bottle, or someone says words related to "wine", the live broadcast will soon be terminated.
Lin Jian, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Hong Kong Chinese and a scholar who studies the platform economy and Internet celebrity culture, found that the current common content supervision model of short video/live broadcast platforms is that when a vicious incident occurs, the government issues a document, and the platform actively implements it.
Due to the business logic of "data is currency", some platforms will initially follow the "side-kicking strategy" and adopt a tacit attitude towards some emerging content that brings a certain amount of traffic and has not yet "thundered" despite potential problems. Once the problem is exposed, the government issues a ban, and the pressure of public opinion increases, the platform will turn around and suppress such content.
Wu Li also felt the subtle changes in the environment from the changing length of account bans: three years ago, the violation was only a one-month ban, then it was extended to one year or two years, and now it is a "permanent ban".
During the interview with the anchors, Lu Peng found that almost all the anchors called the platform "official", which very obviously regarded the platform as an "official" and regarded himself as a "citizen".
However, this kind of management is not mandatory, and the two sides are constantly playing around their own interests. Before registering as an anchor, users must read the "Code of Conduct for Live Broadcasting", and Wu Li has also read it, and he knows that he "touches these things every day" and "often violates them".
As a result, the "cat and mouse game" between anchors and platforms has become the norm, and anchors have various ways to escape supervision, such as spending money to buy a business license to register a "media account" and "enterprise account", and you can use someone else's ID card to register an account. Some anchors who have been "face-covered" will also choose to continue the live broadcast wearing masks and masks. Someone has been blocked more than 30 accounts in 1 year, but they are still live broadcasting.
There are also people who give up live broadcasts because of the ban. In 2020, Wu Li's master Gu Wu had a record number of fans, but he was permanently banned, and "his mentality collapsed directly". Gu Wu went to other platforms to shoot "positive energy videos", delivering rice and oil door-to-door, and hanging a small yellow car under the video to sell goods, but "I don't make money, and the expenses are too great." After working for 1 year, the account was unblocked, and he continued to come back to play "ruthless PK".
In fact, the platform has never stopped exploring the optimal solution for content moderation, a number of experts said in interviews. On a certain platform, a video with more than 2 million views has undergone at least four layers of moderation.
Government regulators are also constantly improving policy documents related to the live streaming industry. According to incomplete statistics, from 2016 to 2022, in the past 7 years, the state has issued nearly 20 policy documents involving anchors, delineating access thresholds, establishing blacklists, and building a solid bottom line for compliance, and the rules have been continuously increased.
Lin Jian believes that at present, the "problem-solving" mode of handling is still continuing, and the supervision is lagging behind. Platform companies are often forced by public pressure to introduce temporary governance measures, and platforms become passive implementers of government policies, and government documents cannot be exhaustive and include all management rules.
On the other hand, when the platform grows into a small society, the oversized body makes cleaning without dead ends a fantasy. According to the "China Online Performance (Live Broadcast and Short Video) Industry Development Report (2022-2023)", as of 2022, more than 150 million anchor accounts have been opened in mainland China, and the number of online live broadcast users in mainland China has reached 751 million, accounting for 70.3% of the total Internet users. Some reports estimate that more than 400 million short videos are uploaded globally every day.
A foreign paper on the intelligence of content censorship pointed out that the current dilemma of content censorship faced by major platforms is the inevitable consequence of the development mentality of "growth at all costs" of platforms.
"Some platforms are really too big", the authors emphasize in the paper.
Life ideals
Entering the new platform, Wu Li spent 1 month, and he did not return to the original number of fans.
In order to attract traffic, he can only make the punishment look more ruthless. It turned out that it took seventy or eighty knocks to knock the Red Bull can to be broken, but now he can knock it five times at the earliest. However, his head is becoming more and more unruly, it used to take 8 cans to bleed, but now 1 can will bleed.
Wu Li recalled that he once changed platforms because of the ban, and in order to quickly accumulate popularity, he fought a "life and death game" that "no one has ever fought": he drank 5 catties of liquor and 250 eggs at a time.
At that time, the opponent was an anchor named Ni Xiaotian, and 1 year later, Wu Li heard the news of his death.
Once Ni Xiaoyanxia met the "big brother" who often rewarded him in the live broadcast room, had a meal, and was taken to the bar again, took the order offline, and set the task of drinking. After drinking, he lay down on the card seat and slept, and the apprentice broadcast live next to him. After a while, when the apprentice touched it, the person was already out of breath.
That was the first time Wu Li heard that someone in the anchor circle had drunk to death, although he was shocked, he didn't think there was anything wrong with the "big brother", "Now (doing this) for a long time, there is nothing that I can't understand." Everyone vents differently. It's just that I don't have any money."
As soon as Wu Li opens his eyes every day, what he thinks about is making money through live broadcasting. His two major goals in life are to buy a suite, and then buy a Mercedes-Benz, "must be big".
His cell phone rings "not living the way he wants". The old car he drove was bought 10 years ago, and in the deafening DJ music on the car, the Internet celebrity shouted, "If you can't afford to lose, don't lose, if you can't die, you will stand up!"
He believes that only when you become famous and make money can you "stand up".
In the month after the death of his two friends, he earned four or five hundred yuan a night, two or three hundred yuan less, but he could have three or four thousand yuan on a good month last month. He thinks that as long as he continues to broadcast, he can replicate the moment when he made thousands of dollars. He never thought of going back to drive a truck, "live broadcast to make quick money and make Xi".
Dong Chenyu analyzes that this kind of psychology is like "drawing a lottery", and the "vision" brought about by unstable income is the reason why many people are attracted to this industry. For streamers, the flip side of "instability" is "hopeful". Many streamers don't transform or Xi learn new skills, but just want to gamble like this, waiting for the next opportunity to be hit by traffic.
Wu Li once worked as the charge d'affaires of the vegetable producing area in his hometown, helping the villagers to contact foreign merchants, and he also wanted to be an anchor to help farmers, but he never dared to take the first step. There are many reasons for this, including "the water is very deep", "I have no channels", and "the risk is too high".
In his opinion, the technical content of "ruthless PK" is not so high.
According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, there are live broadcast guilds, MCN institutions or anchor incubators that provide training courses such as "PK program effect" and "how to play PK in 10 minutes", and some also teach "exciting" gameplay. There are also people who post experience posts such as "How to get a big ticket through PK" and "PK game punishment collection in the live broadcast room", and teach the anchor to maintain the relationship with "big brother" and "big sister".
Lin Jian believes that as an ecological collection, multiple subjects such as users, creators, and MCN institutions are not actively involved in the governance of the platform. He hopes that platforms and social forces can provide resources to "grassroots" streamers to help them monetize and express themselves in a more positive and healthy way.
Wu Li pinned his hopes on his daughters and planned to take them to Beijing for a tour of the university next year.
"Your father's life is a waste, you have to study hard", he often told his daughters. Now his most simple wish is to get a good night's sleep, "When I finish paying off my debts, I will sleep for 3 days! No live broadcast, no looking at my phone, eat when I wake up, and sleep after eating."
"The industry is terrible, but these people are just ordinary people," Dong Chenyu summed up after the survey.
Recently, a group of young new anchors also came to the platform to find Wu Li as an opponent to play "PK". Like Wu Li back then, they were stunned, couldn't understand the rules, and were ambitious.
In the face of their provocation, Wu Li just smiled tolerantly and asked his fans to help them like and follow.
He knew what they were going to encounter. He hopes their path will not be so difficult to walk anymore.
(Wang Li, Wu Li, Gu Wu, and Li Fei are pseudonyms in the article)