"People don't watch the anchor, PK or talent. They like to watch us brush money." A live broadcast user with a Tiktok rating of 54 who has occupied the throne of "the first brother of the list" all the year round revealed to the reporter of the south wind window that in addition to laughing for fighting beauty, another driving force for the "big brothers" to throw their money is a mentality similar to "hero worship": "everyone holds you up as a big brother, like making a movie".
Author Lu Chi
Brother Bangyi is often called "Shenhao", far above the "local tyrant". According to the Tiktok honor rating system, about 40.9 million "shuoyin" is required for grade 54, which is equivalent to about 4.09 million yuan.
In ancient times, there was king Youwang of Zhou who praised the princes of Si's beacon fire drama. Now there is "brother Bangyi", who spent a lot of money to win beauty's laughter. The money burned by brothers for female anchors is as much as ten million.
It is easy to consume and cheer in the virtual world. The so-called "suona rings, ten thousand liang of gold", move your fingers and laugh. The "big brother" is thousands of dollars, and the money is gone and will never come back.
These cheers and desires boiling in the live studio have come to an end.
On May 7, the four ministries and commissions jointly issued the opinions on standardizing online live broadcast reward and strengthening the protection of minors (hereinafter referred to as the opinions), which stipulates that the online platform shall cancel the reward list within one month after the issuance of the opinions, prohibit ranking, drainage and recommendation of online anchors based solely on the reward amount, and prohibit ranking users based on the reward amount.
On May 7, the four ministries and commissions jointly issued the opinions on standardizing webcast reward and strengthening the protection of minors
This means that there will be no "list one" in the webcast room.
Only a day ago, on May 6, in Linyi, Shandong Province, a 34 year old female anchor "Shan Mei" was stabbed 13 times by her eldest brother Guo when she "ran to the present" in her live room. Guo then committed suicide.
A tragedy, a rectification, is only one day away, and Rome was built three feet in a day.
The live broadcast reward based on the hierarchical ranking mechanism has already distorted the traditional "support" and made the undercurrent surging under the surface of the mutual praise and Carnival between brother Bangyi and female anchor for many years.
Cruel story in the live studio
"Shan Mei" was a talented female anchor with 250000 fans. She has a melon seed face, white skin and loves singing. According to the fans in his live studio, Guo, the "big brother of Bangyi", spent a total of 1.3 million on selling houses and trucks in order to brush gifts for Shan Mei.
"Big brother" Guo and anchor Shan Mei
However, when Shanmei finally agreed to run with Guo, the latter found that Shanmei was not only married, but also the mother of two children, which was very different from the situation she claimed to be single in the live studio.
Angry with shame, Guo, the "big brother of Bangyi", moved his heart to kill.
A similar plot occurred in Huixian, Henan province six months ago. According to media reports, in November 2021, a female anchor "female security guard in Northern Henan" exposed the fact that he was married and had children when she met with his brother Bangyi, who had brushed more than 100000. After the brother Bangyi failed to find love and ask for repayment, she stabbed the female anchor several times in anger, and the latter died.
Almost in the same period, in Guangyuan, Sichuan, a 24-year-old female anchor's video of dating "brother Bangyi" was found by her husband. After killing her wife, the husband hid her body in the refrigerator at home for 20 days.
Killed female anchor
LAN Ao, a national second-class psychological consultant, told nanfengchuang that brother Bangyi's sky high reward and abnormal possessive desire for female anchors are driven by "the need to love and be loved".
"In reality, the need to be loved cannot be met, and the impulse to love is easy to be ignored. It is also difficult to have specific objects, sustained and stable emotional relationships and good emotional interaction. Online virtual emotion has become the best and almost the only option." She said.
With the increase of investment cost, this false connection of "love and being loved" is more likely to make people fall into paranoid emotion. "Once paranoid people feel that they are 'betrayed' and 'deceived', they often lose control and turn over, and love begets hate."
Before "hate", Bangyi brothers usually expressed their love in only one way: unlimited reward.
It is not hard to imagine that other paranoid behaviors derived from this are likely to be the prelude to further tragedies.
In November 2021, in Hechi, Guangxi, a female cashier of a real estate development company was infatuated with the male anchor and rewarded the anchor 2.9 million yuan by embezzling 1.4433 million yuan of public funds and overdrawing credit cards. When questioned by the public security personnel, she said bluntly: "at that time, I thought he (anchor) was brilliant and infatuated with his talent";
On the afternoon of November 22, 2021, the people's Court of Jinchengjiang District, Hechi City held a public hearing to hear the case of job occupation
In March 2022, in Jinan, Shandong Province, a post-90s cashier, Li Mou, in order to reward the network anchor and consolidate his position as the "big brother of the list", misappropriated 10 million public funds from 2018 to 2020, then admitted that he was unable to repay, simply abandoned himself, and continued to misappropriate 38 million, with a total reward of about 20 million to the anchor;
Brother Bangyi may also hunt as a prey.
Similarly, in May this year, in Linshui, Guang'an, a man named Zhou became a "big brother of the list" by brushing gifts for female anchors in the live broadcasting room. After gaining trust, he "borrowed money" from beautiful anchors and cheated three female anchors for nearly 200000 yuan in less than three months.
Some records of the anchor's payment to Zhou
Evil grows to the side of courage. It is puzzling that this "evil" initially grew in the name of "love". Courage often grows with one's strength and experience in the world.
Including the new regulation issued this time, the regulation and regulation of the chaos of webcast in recent years are mostly aimed at minors whose economic strength and independent civil capacity are not perfect.
With "live broadcast" and "reward" as the key words, up to 1605 relevant documents can be retrieved from the Chinese referee documents online. It seems that the men and women most vulnerable to emotional fraud and money fraud in the world are concentrated in the webcast room.
Fragile steel wire
Today's show live broadcast (different from "bring goods" and "game" live broadcast) reward is derived from the talent market transaction of "some people hold the show, but the money holds the front stage". However, one fundamental difference between the former and the latter is "data thinking".
The so-called "data thinking" is a core thinking that continues to run through the Internet era.
For example, in today's film and television industry, the popularity of an actor depends on the number of fans, and the commercial value of a star depends on the ranking data and topic heat. The participants in the carnival show with backward strength, traffic first and fame and profit are well aware of it.
In contrast, "brother Bangyi" is the obsession with data by the live broadcast platform.
Most platforms will set up a ranking reward mechanism to constantly stimulate the vanity and comparison of those on the list and induce them to compete to be "big brother".
Ranking reward mechanism of live broadcast platform
Russell said that human nature has four desires: possessiveness, competition, vanity and power. Among them, "one of the troubles of vanity is that the more things you feed it, the more it expands. The more you are talked about, the more you want to be talked about."
Most of the rewards obtained by the anchor need to be shared with the platform. This year's "March 15" party disclosed the proportion of the live broadcasting industry: 50% of the money earned from fans belongs to the live broadcasting platform, 25% is taken away by MCN institutions, and finally only 25% is left for the anchor and operation.
"Insight into the situation of China's live broadcasting industry in 2020" shows that among the main income channels of Pan entertainment live broadcasting platform focusing on games and talents, the proportion of live broadcasting reward accounts for more than 90%, while the proportion of advertising income, member income, game promotion and commission income is even less than 10%.
The more the reward amount, the more opportunities for the anchor to appear and drain. In order to maintain their status and even their jobs, some anchors have to continue to stimulate the audience to reward consumption through verbal induction.
At the same time, the "jobillo" lies continue to be staged in various ways. Also at this year's "March 15 party", CCTV exposed that wechat, the female anchor of Juxiang mutual entertainment media company, was operating as a male employee and cheated the big brother of fans to obtain income.
Anchor Qiao Biluo who accidentally overturned and showed his face during Zhibo pK (right)
In the 1960s, British sociologist Stephenson put forward the "game theory": "the best point of mass communication is to allow people to actively immerse themselves in the game, that is, it makes people happy".
Less than 20 years later, entertainment to death was born. It is still used by people to alert themselves or warn others that excessive entertainment will kill people.
The gap between the virtual emotional feedback harvested in the live broadcast room and the economic strength in real life is becoming larger and larger. There are more and more comparisons between the "salary of 3000 a month and reward of 30000". It is like a fragile steel wire, which is more and more tight. When it breaks, it may be bankrupt, anger and shame into anger, or both.
From the active and spontaneous pursuit of "happiness" to the passive to the abyss, this road is like a steel wire, carrying a large number of unnecessary emotions, desires and numbness in the process of the rapid development of the information society.
Big brother's myth
However, what kind of person will be the "big brother"?
Or ask another way: "who is brother Bangyi"?
They may be "spiritual capitalists" with a monthly salary of 3000 yuan and a reward of 30000 yuan. They may be the rich generation and the rich second generation who treat money as dung. They may also be businessmen with goods and draw powder back from each other. They may even be just robots.
What they have in common is that they are willing to spend money whether they have money or not.
People respectfully call the eldest brother "Shenhao", which is different from the slightly derogatory "local tyrant". The sweet smile of the female anchor and the sensational applause around make the eldest brothers become the second to none king in the live broadcast chain.
The netizen "oak" shared his psychology of being a "big brother in the list": "people (girls) who want me to look good can live better under my influence". He admitted that at the beginning of the reward, the mentality was peaceful and kind, "there is no comparison".
The most expensive gift on the platform amounted to about 5000 yuan. Oak once couldn't understand, "Psycho, how can someone spend 5000 yuan just to see her joking?"
But at that time, he had an unprecedented desire to "compete for the first place": "if others brush more gifts than me, my eldest brother in the list will be squeezed into the list of second and third?"
The oak tree filled 5000 yuan in one breath and "hands are really shaking" before pressing the key points. But the trembling made him feel "distressed and exciting".
After he finally brushed it out, he suddenly felt "fully transparent". A huge banner was pulled out of the live studio to announce who brushed how many gifts in which live studio, "it felt great".
"The first time, the second time," he said.
Later, the oak tree was painted five or six times, and people came to him every day. Half of them were anchors. Some anchors from the same city began to come to him for dinner and drink. He just needed to pick a meal every day, meet new people, meet in the high-level club and drink thousands of wine. Life changed dramatically in an instant.
It is not uncommon for the anchor to meet offline with "brother Bangyi"
Freud said: "a person's motivation to do things is nothing more than two points, sexual impulse and desire for greatness." Winning or losing heart makes reward no longer just a means of expressing love and worship, but an arms race that leaps above 10000 people.
Of course, perhaps every big brother on the list has a "Simba" dream: turning a female anchor into his girlfriend or even wife.
Chu Ruixue, a female anchor with 1.8 million fans in Kwai, made her fortune through wechat. When Chu Ruixue just started the live broadcast, another young anchor Simba went to Chu Ruixue's live broadcast room to reward him 2million dollars a day. The two slowly came together, fell in love and got married.
Simba also has a "big brother Bangyi" in his live studio. People call him lord Jiang. He has also painted more than 2 million for Simba and attracted more than 5 million fans for Simba. These fans also followed Jiang ye to participate in an "investment and financial management" group, and invested more than 1 billion yuan in total.
On December 9, 2020, Jiang ye (real name Jiang Zihua), the "big brother of Bangyi", was officially arrested by the public security organ on suspicion of opening a casino
However, most of the "big brother" may end up as "brother Hua": a 59 year old migrant worker in Zhejiang, who is single all year round and lives a lonely life. His only hobby is watching live broadcast.
In 2016, brother Hua accidentally broke into the live studio of "Xiaomei", just like suddenly entering Taohuayuan and reporting in the live studio on time every day.
With Xiaomei's "meimoda", brother Hua was greatly encouraged and gradually hollowed out his life. He beat Xiaomei for more than 1.4 million. First, he sold off the real estate left at home, borrowed hundreds of thousands of loans and ate instant noodles every day.
After the family was abandoned, brother Hua was heavily in debt and desperate. He finally asked Xiaomei to borrow 100000, and was immediately blackmailed by Xiaomei. Finally, brother Hua's nephew had to seek help from the column of sister fan help of Zhejiang satellite TV.
Hua Ge, who is heavily in debt for reward
In fact, people may not really care about the people behind the "big brother" account. These four words have become different codes in different people's eyes. They are the ATM in the eyes of female anchor and the fool or madman in the eyes of onlookers.
When the amount of money on the list reaches a level that normal people can't surpass, the first brother of the list forms a curious landscape together with the online popular anchor. Their interaction itself has also become a phenomenal entertainment project in the live broadcasting room.
The carnival will always go away. In December 2020, Mr. Jiang, the eldest brother of Simba's No. 1 list, was found to be involved in a capital fraud with a total amount of 1 billion. The little fans who were attracted by the reputation of "Shenhao" were badly hit.
Those who withdrew from the live studio with "brother Bangyi" included warm applause, beautiful love fantasies and free lunch.
Self cultivation of anchor
Or you can think about a mirror image question: who will be the female anchor of the show?
In the common impression of most people, they should be young women who have no serious job, low education, are somewhat beautiful, and are willing to exchange beauty for money. More or less, with a little social meaning of "immorality" and "soft pornography".
However, brother Bangyi, who has repeatedly "become angry from shame" and led to homicide, told us that this is not always the case.
Money is fast and the threshold is low. In addition to young girls who want to be online celebrities, young mothers and housewives who need to make money to support their families may also become one of them.
"Shan Mei" and "female security guard in Northern Henan" killed by wenshou are young mothers. For them, the live broadcast is more like one of the few relatively flexible and capable jobs. They have the desire to make money and the vanity of "being seen", but fundamentally, they are not the perfect goddess in the eyes of some "big brother Bangyi". They are emotional "Qiao Biluo".
Killed anchor "female security guard in Northern Henan"
Nowadays, we randomly find a "anchor" recruitment post on the Internet. The screening criteria are generally not limited to education and experience. Basically, we can do it as long as we want to. Many anchor recruitment advertisements on the boss website indicate: "double weekend, high commission" and "teachers, white-collar workers, Baoma, live broadcast, heavy users are preferred".
Li Lan, 31, accidentally entered the live studio after a year and a half of marriage. At that time, she was a kindergarten teacher of afternoon classes. In the summer vacation of 2021, she was idle at home. Because there was no salary in winter and summer vacation, she was not at ease. With this uneasy and agitated mood, Li Lan opened the Tiktok live studio and output a few complaints to the camera.
Unexpectedly, in just a few minutes, someone gave her 8 yuan. You know, "it's only more than 10 yuan for a normal part-time hour".
When the camera was turned on for the second time, Li Lan also turned on the beauty effect. In the lens, she looked tender and young, no more than 25 years old at most. A few days after the live broadcast, her daily income reached 300 yuan, and then from 300 to 500 or 1000 yuan.
Li Lan once worked as a telephone operator and earned only 120 yuan from morning to night every day.
Li Lan was overjoyed. She quit her job and secretly broadcast the live broadcast when she was at home alone behind her family's back. However, it has been broadcast for about three months. Although there are two or three thousand people every day, there has been no "stable big brother".
"I'm not very good at chatting. I'm basically talking nonsense. I go to PK when I'm free, and I don't know much about maintenance. My eldest brothers come one after another, and few really accompany me."
How important is big brother to the anchor? Li Lan can only be sure: "it's easy to broadcast with a big brother. Without a big brother, you have a crying heart.". She often brushes how good and long her big brother has been to her, and then has self doubt: "what's wrong with me?"
Li Lan's mood became unstable. "I'm lonely and tired. Although I made money, I seem to be more and more dissatisfied. Many things in my life have become less positive. I feel much stronger than before. Money is not the biggest problem."
She temporarily stopped broadcasting until years later, when she entered the studio again, she found that "everything has changed" - only a few hundred people came in, without "big brother" or "even big brother passing by".
Just before May this year, female presenters of shows, large and small, could always be found on the Internet and asked anxiously, "how to keep big brother?" And, "what if big brother wants to meet?"
There are a lot of questions and answers about how to keep big brother on the Internet
For them, these two kinds of anxiety and worry are extremely real. One is to make money and the other is to protect oneself. These are two business ideas that do not seem to conflict but are easy to be misunderstood.
Because of the inequality of emotional expectations, the moral coordinates are not balanced. It is difficult for us to criticize a female anchor's economic demand for making money from live broadcasting, and it is also difficult to criticize a big brother's desire for "love and being loved" behind the information blind spot.
"Reward" is not a bad and evil behavior from the beginning. It is a simple carrier used by people in business society to express their love and praise. Appropriate reward can not only stimulate the performers, but also meet the viewers' own emotional output. Whether it is article, video or live interaction, most new media can adopt this interactive way.
"Live broadcasting" is still a good way to shorten the distance between people in the era of we media, especially when the epidemic situation blocks the opportunity of face-to-face communication, when life becomes lonely and single, and the live broadcasting room with the same voice and frequency can still become a bright, warm and sincere mirror.
On July 29, 2021, the 60 year old Andy Lau opened his own Tiktok account for the first time. That night, more than 100million people watched the live broadcast of the 40th anniversary of Andy Lau's debut. Just a few minutes after the broadcast, he kept pouring in to reward. Andy Lau was shocked and turned off the reward function.
On July 29, 2021, Andy Lau's Tiktok broadcast live
He explained to everyone that he just wanted to "let everyone look at me attentively". Of course, his live studio failed to give birth to "brother Bangyi" in the end.
Later, it was estimated that if the reward function was not turned off, the reward amount of this live broadcast would be at least tens of millions.
A good live studio really doesn't need "brother Bangyi".