8 years of distortion, 2016-2024 sports fan circle chaos survey

Beijing News

2024-05-29 18:32Posted on the official account of Beijing News

On September 25, 2023, in the semifinals of the Hangzhou Asian Games table tennis women's team, the audience cheered for Wang Manyu, Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and other main players. Photo by Beijing News reporter Wang Fei

Since April 23, a number of Internet platforms have launched a three-month special action on "Ecological Governance of Sports Rice Circles". On May 15, the General Administration of Sports of China publicly stated that it would resolutely resist the erosion of the sports field by the deformed fan circle culture (an extreme form of fan culture). Previously, the Chinese Olympic Committee had continuously issued documents calling on all sectors of society to respect the individual rights and interests of athletes, rationally chase stars, avoid inappropriate words and deeds, and resolutely put an end to the spread of chaos in the fan circle to the sports field.

All kinds of chaos in the fan circle have infringed on the sports field, and the table tennis project has become a "hard-hit area", and the main players of the national table tennis team, Fan Zhendong and Wang Chuqin, are unbearable to be harassed and followed by extreme fans, and have repeatedly voiced on social media - "The Internet is not a place outside the law" and "I hope everyone can respect each other's privacy".

If we go back to around the time of the 2016 Rio Olympics, the sports field is still distancing itself from the deformed fan circle culture. When did the sports fan circle become uncontrollable? In what areas do they have a serious impact on athletes' competitions, training and even daily lives? The reasons and details are complex, but they are not untraceable.

traceability

Before 2016, sports kept a distance from the fan circle

"I'm a fan of ××." In an interview with a reporter from the Beijing News, most people are more accustomed to introducing themselves in this way. In their opinion, athletes correspond to sports fans (fans, swimming fans, diving fans, ice fans, etc.), which is different from the fan circle.

As a fan of Ding Ning, Lu Yuze still remembers the situation when he watched the Table Tennis Super League live in 2015, and the number of spectators was small, but the experience was very good.

Lu Yuze fell in love with Ding Ning at the 2012 London Olympics, Ding Ning lost in the final, she was still in junior high school at the time, she was very impressed, and became a "Ding Dong" (Ding Ning's nickname for fans). At that time, there were not many domestic competitions, and there were few opportunities to meet athletes, Lu Yuze first met Ding Ning in the 2015 Table Tennis Super League, and she went to watch the game accompanied by her mother.

Lu Yuze recalled that "Ding Dong" may be one of the earliest fan groups in the table tennis circle, and everyone communicates through the post bar and QQ group, and since 2013, it has successively launched fan uniforms, desk calendars and other peripherals, mostly for the person in charge of the fan club to pay out of his own pocket and generate electricity for love.

At that time, the attendance of the table tennis league was not high, and the home stadium would even give away free tickets to fans. Even if you sell tickets, the price is very cheap, so you can not only watch the athletes train in the morning, but also ask the athletes for autographs and group photos after the games. The "Ding Dong" fan club once held a birthday party for Ding Ning, and Ding Ning took the initiative to propose that every fan could take a group photo and get an autographed photo.

Engaged in sports news reporting for many years, the Beijing News reporter has the impression that before 2016, the distance and interaction between athletes and sports fans were kept "just right". Whenever the national team goes out and returns with honors, there will be some sports fans outside the athletes' apartments of the General Administration of Sports of the People's Republic of China and the Capital International Airport, but the way to support is limited to saying cheers or congratulations, at most sending a bouquet of flowers, and there are very few people who ask for photos and autographs.

Why did the boundary between sports fans and fans become more and more blurred and even classified into the fan circle? The main reason was the athlete's lap break, and the turning point was the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

On August 20, 2016, national table tennis team members Xu Xin and Fan Zhendong arrived in Beijing from the Rio Olympics. Photo/IC photo

Break the circle

Thousands of people picked up the Rio Olympics, and many events were popular

On August 20, 2016, the Chinese table tennis team, which won 4 golds and 2 silvers at the Rio Olympics, returned with honors, and nearly 1,000 fans gathered at the international arrival gate of the T3 terminal of the capital airport. In order to maintain order at the scene, the airport arranged dozens of security personnel, and even blocked some escalators to ensure that the national table tennis team members arrived at the pick-up vehicle smoothly. When the players appeared at the international arrivals, many fans rushed up, and many players trotted away under the escort of coaches and security personnel.

In the Rio Olympics, Zhang Jike, Ma Long, Ding Ning, Li Xiaoxia and other team members, as well as Liu Guoliang, a "fat man who doesn't know how to play", have countless fans, and this is a rare opportunity for thousands of people to receive the airport. In that Olympic Games, Lang Ping, Zhu Ting, Wu Minxia, Fu Yuanhui, Lin Dan, Su Bingtian and others were all star generals in their respective events, and they were popular with the outside world for a while.

According to the observation of a reporter from the Beijing News, in the first few years of the Rio Olympics, whether it was table tennis, women's volleyball, diving, swimming and other national teams, the number of fans who picked up the airport was only a few dozen at most, and there were no more players and reporters when there were few people.

It is from the Rio Olympics that athletes in many sports have attracted more and more supporters, and it is no longer just sports fans who like athletes, but fans who originally knew little about sports have emerged in large numbers, and the scale has become larger and larger, and more support organizations have also emerged.

Liu Min became a fan of Ning Zetao because of the Rio Olympics, she just thought that Ning Zetao's temperament, appearance conditions were good, and her results were relatively good. After joining the support club, Liu Min soon became one of the leaders and ushered in the most important support activity: the 2017 Tianjin National Games.

At that time, Liu Min was mainly responsible for liaising with the ticketing company, buying tickets for the fans of the support club, and gathering all the fans together as much as possible. As long as you buy a ticket to watch the game, regardless of whether you are a member of the support club, you can receive a basic gift package (stickers, fans, etc.), and the fans of the support club will receive more generous gift bags, and some fans with good economic conditions will also take the initiative to sponsor the support club.

On September 3, 2017, at the Tianjin National Games, Ning Zetao's fans lined up to enter. Photo/IC photo

In Liu Min's impression, the cheering atmosphere at that time was still very harmonious, with older fans setting the general direction and younger fans also abiding by the order. In order to express the sincerity of the support club, they also presented some souvenirs and handwritten letters of thanks to Ning Zetao's teammates, event staff and reporters.

Until that time, most fans were still rational about the support of the athletes, and the order on different occasions had not yet gotten out of control.

Rice balls

The "big fan" control and evaluation caused a scolding war, and the outrageous operation of CP fans affected the viewing experience

There have been pioneers in sports to break the circle. In Athens in 2004, Liu Xiang broke the Olympic record and won the gold medal in the men's 110-meter hurdles, and the whole country was boiling. After getting off the plane at the Capital International Airport, Liu Xiang, who was 21 years old at the time, was surrounded by the media's "long guns and short guns". At that time, after a brief interview, he looked at the gap and trotted, easily crossed the low guardrail of the parking lot, and disappeared from the field of vision of the pick-up reporter.

More than a decade has passed from Athens to Beijing, from London to Rio, and Liu Xiang can evade outside interference with his trademark leapfrogging moves. But later athletes were not so lucky. As the fan base and scale of athletes grow, effective management becomes more difficult to achieve. When malicious remarks get out of control, the sense of tearing on social media is becoming more and more uncontrollable, and the fan circle culture that invades the sports field has become an "iron railing" that athletes cannot cross.

Initially, Tieba was the main gathering place for sports fans, who shared their bits and pieces about the athletes through posts and comments, and joined different QQ groups to form their own circles. As more and more fans gathered, the form of QQ groups was retained, but the main position of voice gradually shifted to Weibo, and major fan groups began to compete for the dominance of discourse.

An athlete generally does not have only one support club, and on Weibo, different support clubs will initially argue over "who is the most authoritative official support club", and similar disputes have since developed offline. For example, when athletes participate in commercial activities, from the number of fans and roll-up banners to the variety of the surrounding area and the momentum of support, different supporters will hold back their energy.

If the different support clubs of the same athlete are only internal contradictions, then the fans of different athletes are no longer a conflict of will.

When an athlete supported by a fan group "suffers unfair treatment", big fans (fans with appeal and influence) will take the lead in controlling comments on social media (using unified copywriting to control the content and direction of comments), swipe the number of retweets, and even attack other athletes, referees, clubs, national teams and even the competent authorities, which will then evolve into mutual abuse between different fanstuan.

The topic of CP fans on the Internet has given many national table tennis players a headache. Screenshot of Weibo

There are also fans who "do the opposite", because they like two athletes at the same time, various CP fan (CP is the abbreviation of English couple, which means a couple or a pair) organizations came into being, not only creating special accounts on social media, sharing relevant photos and videos, but also publishing "brainwashing" remarks in major comment areas, and there are also fans who create fandom (referring to secondary creations containing CP elements) widely disseminated.

Lin Gaoyuan's senior fan Dorami's gameplay of CP has undergone a change, "I used to knock on a successful CP, but then I knocked myself." ”

Mengmeng used to be a professional table tennis player, and in 2013, he paid attention to Fan Zhendong for the first time at the World Table Tennis Championships in Paris, becoming a fan of "Little Fat", and has watched the game offline many times in the past ten years. At the ITTF Singles World Cup held in Macau in April this year, Mengmeng went to watch the game again, and the chaos in some of the rice circles inside and outside the court made her can't help complaining.

Before entering the competition venue, there was no shortage of CP fans of the national table tennis players outside the venue, and the propaganda slogan of "leading the surrounding area to think that the CP is true" made Mengmeng very uncomfortable. Some of the uncivilized behaviors of fans in the stadium also made Mengmeng very helpless, the players had cheering sounds to interfere with the game when they served, and the flashing lights in fixed positions appeared from time to time and were dissuaded ineffectively many times, and different fans quarreled, abused and even attacked the athletes for the cheering sounds.

Mengmeng was very puzzled by the behavior of "forwarding collective messages on social media and brushing the comment area", she felt that the sports circle had changed. In the face of all kinds of outrageous operations of CP fans, she was even more disgusted, "I have watched the game for many years, and the viewing experience has become worse and worse in the past two years." ”

As a fan of Ma Long, the captain of the national table tennis team, Song Xuening took the initiative to translate articles about Ma Long on the official website of the International Table Tennis Federation for a period of time, shared them on social media, and also went offline to broadcast some Ma Long matches that were not publicly broadcast, and she wanted to support the athletes in a similar way. In the face of today's social media volume control comments, malicious attacks, and mutual abuse, she can only helplessly say, "It's too crazy, I don't know why it has evolved like this?" ”

Over the past year, Fan Zhendong's results have experienced ups and downs, and off-court distractions have somewhat affected his training preparations. Photo/Xinhua News Agency

chain

"Scalpers" sell personal information and infringe on athletes' privacy by auctioning on their behalf

"Departure from ×× and arrival at HB (flight abbreviation)", in the Weibo "Domestic Flight" super talk, it is not uncommon to sell and buy athletes' flight information.

In the "Star Chasing Peripheral Transfer" super talk, "××Pick up and arrive at DP (abbreviation for proxy shooting), but FO (English abbreviation for direct shooting) can video" and other information are not a few, some people will indicate the camera model of the agent, with the gallery of previous shooting, video screenshots, and even specific text descriptions for different video screens.

Before Ding Ning retired, Lu Yuze also participated in the pick-up and drop-off many times, taking pictures of Ding Ning with his own camera, "At that time, someone would send me a private message, asking if the photos were for sale, I thought to myself, what is there to sell, and I didn't care about it." As a fan, Lu Yuze doesn't know and can't figure out the hidden meaning behind this.

In fact, from the beginning of the sale of athletes' flight information, a complete chain of interests has been unfolded.

In previous years, "scalpers" would publicly sell athletes' ID cards and mobile phone numbers, and some software could query booked flights or high-speed trains through the above information. Even if the athlete turns on the "trip protection" function, the "scalper" can also query the specific itinerary through certain channels, and sell flight and high-speed rail information instead. The price of athletes' identities and flight information is tens of yuan, and some are hundreds of yuan, among which there are also "fake scalpers" who fish in troubled waters and disappear directly after collecting money.

As a senior fan in the sports circle, Wu Kexin told the Beijing News reporter that proxy auctions are also a similar "profit model". After obtaining the athlete's itinerary information, whether it is an airport, a hotel, a training venue, or a competition venue, as long as the athlete can be photographed, the agent will first take a photo or video, and then code or blur the footage, and then quickly post it on social media for public sale.

Among the buyers, there are not only fans, but also self-media and marketing accounts, and the photos can be packaged and sold, or they can be selected according to the preview pictures, or even sold exclusively (the proxy auction will no longer be resold to others); Videos are priced based on factors such as length, quality, angle, etc. The overall price of the proxy auction is not fixed, and the photos of a pick-up are sold for about two or three hundred yuan, and if there is a CP in the same frame, the price may be more than doubled.

The agency auction business on the Internet has formed a chain of interests. Screenshot of Weibo

Raw Intention

Athletes' signed photos start at 15 yuan, and the marketing account makes peripheral money privately to earn rewards

As early as October 2021, the Chinese Olympic Committee issued a statement criticizing the excesses of individual fans pulling and pushing athletes in public places such as airports. Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin and other athletes have also posted many times, criticizing the bad habits in the fan circle such as follow-up and proxy shooting, and calling on everyone to respect privacy and keep their distance.

Taking Fan Zhendong's case as an example, his ID number has been maliciously disseminated, his itinerary information has been leaked, his mobile phone number has received harassing and abusive messages, and he has repeatedly encountered serious privacy violations such as following the plane and taking photos on behalf of him, and some people have even illegally invaded his hotel room. Some of the above bad habits and even illegal behaviors in the fan circle are extreme personal behaviors, and some individual self-media and marketing accounts deliberately do it in order to make money.

Song Xuening said that when she saw athletes offline, she was able to keep her distance calmly, but it is true that many crazy fans can't do this, and they have also seen many behaviors such as following cars and chasing cars.

In fact, it is not all fans who engage in aggressive behaviors such as pulling and pushing athletes in public places such as airports. Wu Kexin revealed that if it is said that the follow-up, pulling and pushing athletes are for a good shooting angle, and some people are asking for autographs regardless of it, no matter where the sign is, they can take it out and sell it.

The Beijing News reporter searched for the keywords of some athletes on a second-hand trading platform, and most of the goods sold were signed items, the price of autographed photos ranged from 15 yuan to more than 100 yuan, the price of signed rackets was mostly 200 yuan to 1,000 yuan, and the sky-high price of signed rackets was as high as tens of thousands of yuan. Some merchants specially indicated: "All the sales are signed by the celebrity himself, and the official handwriting can be compared at will, and the handwriting can be wiped with alcohol." The merchant also made a "fidelity" commitment: "I work in an entertainment media company, and often participate in celebrity meetings, commercial endorsements and other activities. ”

In addition, the money-making models of some self-media and marketing accounts are even more diverse. Buying photos through proxy auctions, and buying Q version portraits through artists (the deformed and exaggerated form of comics, characterized by big heads and big eyes), can not only attract traffic and increase fans on social media and short video platforms, but also make them into keychains, desk calendars and other peripheral sales, with prices mostly ranging from tens of yuan to nearly 100 yuan. Some self-media will also broadcast live and accept rewards on occasions such as pick-up and competition sites, and the windows of live broadcast accounts are basically self-made peripherals, and the number of sales of some peripherals can reach thousands.

Many sports fans expressed concern that "saying no" to the chaos of the fan circle is their common attitude. Photo by Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing

Advice

For vulnerable athletes, it is advisable to "customize" the protection mechanism

As more and more athletes break the lap, the attention of many sports has increased significantly. From a certain point of view, this is indeed conducive to the overall development of the project, but the erosion of the deformed fan circle culture cannot be ignored.

Song Xuening remembers that when she watched the table tennis championship offline, she saw that many players of the national second team and even the provincial team had fan organizations, and even distributed free cheering banners and other peripherals to the audience, the purpose was very simple, that is, to hope that more viewers would support their favorite athletes, which was a good side.

As for the increasingly fierce chaos in the rice circle, Song Xuening believes that it is very important to give the voice of the athletes to the guidance of the media, and if conditions permit, the establishment and operation of the support club should also be standardized and managed, "Fans are fans, and I hope to give athletes free space and focus on the field." ”

With Ning Zetao's retirement, Liu Min is no longer the person in charge of the support club. In her opinion, although there were irrational online support behaviors in the sports fan circle in previous years, at least everyone was more disciplined when watching the games offline. Liu Min believes that the identity of athletes is relatively special, and it is unlikely that they will use the brokerage team and security personnel to maintain the safety of the trip and stop the excesses. She suggested that according to the size of the athlete's fandom, the national team could come forward to provide the athlete with a team or staff to provide a minimum of protection when the athlete travels.

"Although it is difficult to put an end to extreme behaviors such as fans following and chasing cars, this kind of 'private customization' to protect athletes can at least play a large part of the isolation effect and deterrence, so as not to make them more disturbed and harmed, after all, athletes are the core assets of sports." Liu Min added.

For the "hardest-hit areas" of sports such as table tennis, athletes should be given a minimum of protection when traveling. Photo by Beijing News reporter Guo Yanbing

Lu Yuze was still a middle school student when he first became a fan of Ding Ning, and now he has gone to work, and watching the game collectively and holding birthday parties are all very good memories, and he has also met a lot of friends in the support club, and there are countless positive feedbacks. Regarding the current behavior of tearing and insulting each other, "big fans" taking the lead in attacking, and spending a lot of money to chase stars, Lu Yuze bluntly said that it is a "black miasma", "It is not excluded that some fans are young and misguided due to factors such as young age and misguidance, I hope that they can rationally chase stars with the growth of age and experience, and they must give athletes enough space." ”

Mengmeng hopes that the atmosphere of offline viewing will return to the pure essence of competitive sports, "Everyone likes a project and an athlete, and the main purpose should be to add fun and positive energy to life, rather than affecting the performance of athletes when watching the games, and deliberately playing right and wrong to ferment public opinion." We should give athletes a cleaner, more comfortable and safer environment to play. ”

Beijing News reporter Xu Bangyin

Edited by Wang Chunqiu

Proofread by Diyan Chen

(Except for Lu Yuze, the names of the interviewees in this article have been changed)

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