According to Tianyancha, on July 4, the lawsuit between Li Ziqi and the MCN organization behind it, Wei Nian, opened in Sichuan. The story of
, an Internet celebrity with more than 120 million fans on the Internet, came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2021. Li Ziqi’s most recent lifestyle video "Fire, Rice, Oil, Salt, Sauce, Vinegar Tea" stayed on July 14 last year.
Where did the traffic go during the time she disappeared?
Twelve months since the top internet celebrity disappeared
In the year since Li Ziqi disappeared, her news has never stopped. It's just that unlike the leisurely and comfortable pastoral life she conveyed during the fire, the news related to her this year always has a farce color.
On the one hand, the media counted the number of days she stopped reporting and took stock of her entanglements with capital. Public information shows that the cooperation between Weinian and Li Ziqi began in 2016, and they jointly incubated the "Li Ziqi" IP in the form of MCN Company. Li Ziqi's Sichuan Ziqi Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. was established in July 2017. Wei Nian and Li Ziqi hold 51% and 49% of the shares respectively. The legal entity is Li Jiajia (Li Ziqi's real name).
On August 30 last year, photos of Li Ziqi reporting the crime were circulated on the Internet. Her instantly deleted comment "Capital is indeed a good means" also implicated her and the MCN organization behind her grudges. In October last year, Li Ziqi sued Weinian, as well as Weinian's major shareholder and her former boss Liu Tongming. On April 30 this year, Li Ziqi commissioned a lawyer to issue a statement, refuting "false information" such as saying that she would be forced to change her name.
Internet
In addition to the latest lawyer's statement, Li Ziqi's video stayed on July 14 last year
On the other hand, many people who imitated her, with the title of "xx Li Ziqi", also briefly caused a stir on the Internet. aroused heated discussions among netizens.
Last year, two months after Li Ziqi stopped updating, Li Yapeng posted a series of videos of farm life on the Douyin platform. In the video, he went to visit his friends in the mountains on the outskirts of Beijing, growing vegetables, drinking tea, and cooking by himself. Occasionally I read a poem, "One coop, one hat, one flat boat, one foot of silk and one inch of hook", and I mistakenly read "pian boat" as "bian boat". When it coincides with the twelve solar terms, he will shout out the name of the solar term in a long voice as the beginning of the video.
However, netizens did not buy it. Even though Li Yapeng wears cloth shoes and dresses simply, some of his sweat-wiping actions while doing farm work seem a bit deliberate. Some netizens thought the videos looked embarrassing and even questioned whether he had poached Li Ziqi's team.
seems to have grasped the mentality of netizens who are looking forward to Li Ziqi's return. "Male version of Li Ziqi", "Hainan Li Ziqi" and "Yunnan Li Ziqi" are emerging one after another in the country circuit. Among them, the Douyin blogger "Ajun who can't rest" repositioned his account as a rural life style after Li Ziqi stopped updating. The net increase in followers of the Douyin account in a single month exceeded 3.52 million.
According to financial media statistics, from July to September 2021, rural life accounts will be updated more frequently. The probability of some bloggers with only specific fan groups breaking out of the circle is also significantly increased, making it easier for them to come into the public eye and increase their followers. The highest account gained 5.33 million followers in three months.
Douyin blogger @不了的阿君
Not to mention " Vietnam Li Ziqi" who got out of the industry by imitating Li Ziqi as early as 2020. Also, although he posted videos earlier than Li Ziqi, his style is also slow. The rhythm of jungle life, and the "Nordic Plum Qi" that has attracted the attention of netizens.
While waiting for Li Ziqi, netizens' attention was diverted a lot by these people, and her followers also dropped slightly on various platforms.
Exquisite Chinese rural life, whose utopian imagination satisfies?
Although rural life videos are now very popular on the Internet, many people have forgotten that in the beginning, the fast-paced short videos on Douyin and Kuaishou were not enough to attract fans for these slow-paced pastoral styles. It was not what made Li Ziqi popular. It is not a domestic platform.
Li Ziqi registered on the YouTube platform in 2018. In just over two years, she had more than 10 million followers on the platform, becoming the first Chinese creator on YouTube to have over 10 million fans. In February 2021, Li Ziqi set a record for the most subscriptions of YouTube's Chinese channel with 14.1 million subscriptions, and also won the Guinness record. She was called China's rural princess by foreign netizens.
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When Li Ziqi’s external fans were soaring, there were still criticisms in China. Some people say that she is deliberately beautifying the Chinese countryside. The fake sophistication in these performances is just a cover-up of real rural life, in order to cater to foreigners' unrealistic imagination of pastoral songs. During the time when the storm was at its peak, Li Ziqi kept a low profile and refused many media interviews.
Today, under Li Ziqi’s last video on YouTube, foreign fans leave messages under her video every day urging updates. Foreign fans who follow her know that she has fallen out with the organization behind her and is going to file a lawsuit. They are still praying that she will win the case and continue to come back for daily updates.
"I came across her videos during the dark days of quarantine. Watching her videos is like a kind of healing. I hope she comes back soon."; "I really miss you. I hope you and your family are all well. I wish you the best." Can win the case"; "Thank you, we are all here waiting for you."
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But of course there are also Li Ziqi-style spare wheels on foreign platforms. The guy from West Yunnan who became popular around the same time as Li Ziqi now has 9 million fans on YouTube, while she has 3.06 million fans on the Douyin platform and 1.1 million on Station B.
There are also some rural bloggers that you may have never heard of, and they are very popular on the Internet.
Long Meimei, a blogger who records rural life in Tongren, Guizhou, has more than 1.4 million fans on YouTube, while her fans on Station B and Douyin combined are only more than 400,000. Ermi Chuiyan, a rural life blogger in Bazhong, Sichuan, has more than 500,000 fans on Bilibili and Douyin, and 1.15 million followers on YouTube. One of his videos of making watermelon into watermelon sauce is the most popular, with more than Viewed by 24 million people. Ye Xiaomei has 11,000 fans on Bilibili and less than 4,000 fans on Douyin, but has about 760,000 followers on YouTube.
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The style of these videos is similar to Li Ziqi’s. The protagonists are all girls, wearing plain and simple clothes. There are no noisy narrations, and the background sound is healing piano music or ambient sounds. The contents of the videos are also similar: farm work, local food, and warm interactions with relatives. In addition to daily sowing and animal husbandry,
also has some exquisite parts in their videos. Picking tea, picking flowers to make flower cakes , and using fruits to make wine are not only incompatible with the traditional rough and hard-working rural life in the eyes of foreigners, but they even have some elements of middle-class life that they can easily reproduce at home.
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Although some of the videos have exquisite images, rich sceneries, and masterful shooting techniques, and some are just simple recordings from a single camera, what these videos have in common is the reality of the characters. The protagonists in the picture are working seriously in the fields and living a simple life, showing the audience a multi-dimensional rural daily life. Perhaps it is this original ecology that has been beautified a little bit, and
has gradually convinced and attracted audiences at home and abroad. The slow-paced life that is independent of the world is like a contemporary utopia. It is naturally very different from those lifestyle accounts that falsely advertise the spread of traditional culture.
Li Ziqi and Wei Nian mutual success, but also harm each other
There is no doubt that even with many imitators, Li Ziqi is still the most eye-catching one among them all. Perhaps her videos are one of the most successful cultural exports in contemporary China. As she repeatedly mentioned in interviews with the media, she hopes to inherit and promote traditional Chinese culture , and she has indeed done so.
On October 14 last year, Li Ziqi accepted an exclusive interview with CCTV's "Lu Jian Interview" and said that she has done a good job in inheriting and disseminating intangible cultural heritage, and will also be committed to rural revitalization and common prosperity. In November last year, she attended the 2021 Asian Youth Leadership Forum in Nansha, Guangzhou, and also stated that she would continue to love and invest in her own content creation.
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Just like every time a conflict occurs between Internet celebrities and MCN organizations, even top Internet celebrities with tens of millions of fans appear weak in the face of capital. Since Li Ziqi stopped updating, netizens have overwhelmingly supported her, calling Wei Nian an evil capitalist who tried to exploit Li Ziqi by burning bridges.
But Wei Nian and Li Ziqi did achieve mutual success.When the contract was signed in 2016, both parties were unknown. There were no popular bloggers under Weinian, and Li Ziqi was just a transparent person with less than 10,000 followers on Weibo.
After Li Ziqi became popular, Weinian also completed multiple rounds of financing and attracted large investors such as Huaying Capital, Sina Weibo, Mango Fund, and ByteDance affiliates.
In addition, Weinian’s operating philosophy has indeed helped Li Ziqi’s IP a lot. For a long time, although Li Ziqi has become famous, she has been very cautious about accepting advertisements or selling her own products. Even though the promotion fee exceeded tens of millions of yuan, Weinian still chose to give up short-term commercial value and instead strengthen the IP. So much so that when the official announcement of Tmall flagship store was made in mid-2018, netizens' expectations far outweighed the criticism that she was finally going to "just eat".
Facts have proved that to this day, the various products created based on the Li Ziqi brand still have a good reputation. Traditional delicacies such as lotus root starch, flower cakes, snail noodles have also given consumers more recognition of the brand. .
During this protracted legal battle, as both sides remained tight-lipped about the specific reasons for the dispute, netizens could only speculate. Some people think that Li Ziqi’s Sichuan Ziqi has been turned into a shell company, and his personal brand has been squeezed out by capital without restrictions, making him a victim; others say that in the past two years, Wei Nian, which is in a loss-making state, has still allocated a total of 4,000 to Li Ziqi Income of more than 10,000 yuan.
These speculations may have a positive answer in this round of judgments. But no matter what, since this year's disputes, Li Ziqi and Wei Nian's energy has been depleted a lot.
Where is the next Li Ziqi? There is far from an answer.
Reference material: Kaiboluo Finance: Disappeared for 75 days, Li Ziqi is being "carved up" by imitators. Beijing News: Behind Li Ziqi's two-month suspension of updates: "Bare Hands" and Capital Game
Editor: Jiyou
Some pictures are from The rest of Oriental IC
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