About Wanderer's drama: a glimpse into Chinese toxic community

edit:

Today is my work day (yeah I know it's Saturday in China), so I didn't pay much attention to social media.

However, minutes ago I logged into one of my social media, and some people told me I had been doxed by 和裕茶馆（里）(a subforum in NGA).

I know this may happen, but not so quickly.

Sorry, I don't dare to click on that link. I'm not that strong person and I need to protect my mental health.

To people coming from NGA and Tieba:

If you have found my Twitter account, don't humiliate that Asian woman in my avatar. It's a fake photo generated by AI. Years ago I guessed this kind of thing would happen, so I never put my real photos on the Internet.

To Scara fans in China:

I'm sorry this post may cause more hurt for you. I know they will be agitated by this article and try to attack you on cn community. I just want to say that atmosphere is so toxic, it's not worth it to stay anymore. I hope you can be happy.

To people outside China:

You can watch videos on Bilibili about what happened in the last 8 months, however, it's all in Chinese. You can also try to search 散兵 节奏 on bilibili.

videos: （I'm not the content creator of these videos and articles)

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV168411S7hV/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0&vd_source=ae7d214172e00c39cb88aa44e089ce4b

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19P411q7ST/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Mj411S7eh/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0

channel:

https://space.bilibili.com/17735648

article:

https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv23560885?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0

(there are much more on Bilibili. Once you watch some the algorithm will push them for you)

I know writing this drama on an English site is meanless. It won't solve anything. Maybe even worse, they will call me a traitor.

Anyway, I just want to write down my thoughts.

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The original post:

English is not my first language. Sorry for the mistakes.

This article is quite long and boring.

Some of you may have heard that Scaramouche's rerun banner flops in China, just slightly better than Eula & Klee's banner. It may be one of the lowest sales in CN Genshin's history, while his first banner is one of the best sales, so it looks very strange. Considering Scara's unique play style and crazy dps in C6, it looks even stranger.

People from outside may attribute to that bad weapon banner or "Fountain is coming!", but these factors are not very important.

The truth is very twisted: lots of Chinese players tried their best to destroy this banner, hoping HoYoverse can delete Scara from the game or don't give him screentime.

For 8 months, haters have recklessly harassed, doxed, and humiliated Scara fans and HoYoverse employees. They kidnapped the CN community, spreading hatred on every social platform, making it impossible to have reasonable conversations.

The environment in the CN community deteriorated rapidly, and so did the banner revenues.

1, CN community: like a K-pop fandom

Before Genshin, I'm not familiar with the Chinese game community, even though I'm Chinese. I came across this game on YouTube, so I played in the EN community in the first few months.

After a while, I noticed that the CN community had very different (negative) opinions on many issues, and I thought it was interesting, so I moved to the CN community.

After I joined, I witnessed lots of fan wars over trivial things. Every little thing can start a war, like Ayaka having a second PV, Vinte kneeling Ei in a scene, Alhaitham having Kaveh's keys, Charlotte not knowing Ei's identity...literally everything can cause collisions.

People treat these fictional characters like real idols, and HoYoverse is an entertainment agency. They worry their idols won't get good treatment from HoYoverse, or other idols will take their benefits away, so they prove their power by attacking others. It's common to see thousands of vicious comments attacking one character and their fans, and cursing HoYoverse to go broke is many people's daily ritual.

So, the atmosphere in the CN community is very sensitive and irritable. However, most attacks won't last for one month, which means the hatred toward Scara is on another level.

2, Why Scara?

1. for many, his personality is too strong

Scaramouche is popular among female players, and he is hated the most by male players. Since he first appeared in version 1.1, many Chinese male players see him as a real enemy, not a fictional enemy. They feel offended by his arrogant attitude. His talking style pisses them off. These people get used to being flattered in a game world, so they cannot tolerate a haughty brat (btw, his real personality is much more complex than this).

Self-centered people usually have fragile esteem. Before version 3.3, lots of players on NGA (a game forum) and Tieba (a trolling forum) claimed they wouldn't do Scara's story, or they would pay someone to do it. They refused to hear a single word from his mouth.

2）fan wars, again

Ei fans (due to abandonment), Xiao fans (due to Faruzan), Childe fans (due to a voice line), and Nahida fans (due to jealousy) all have wars with Scara fans, so it makes sense he has the most haters.

About jealousy:

Under Nahida's official videos, you can see comments like "I want to lick her feet" or "Nahida my wife" with thousands of likes. I don't believe there are so many pedophiles in China, so I guess they were joking. But, after versions 3.3 and 3.6, many Nahida fans cried they were cheated. They said Nahida used to love them but Scara took her away. They even wrote short dirty novels between these two.

3) gender conflicts

Not all CN female players like Scara (some extremely hate him, due to fan wars), but he becomes a symbol in the battle between men and women.

Before Genshin Impact, HoYoverse is most famous for Honkai Impact. Honkai is an action game filled with beautiful female warriors who wear little. This kind of game is called the "men-oriented type". While Genshin is a "for-everyone type", it provides both female and male characters. Many male players feel they are betrayed. After five 5-star male characters came out in Sumeru, exceeding the number of 5-star female characters, their anger exploded, and started to expel female players and gay players.

NGA and Tieba are the two most popular (and also the most toxic) forums in the CN Genshin community. You can see tons of slurs in every post, like XXN (an insulting word for women) and Gayshit (a parody of Genshin). These people blame everything on women, from bad scripts to controversial character designs to the unbalanced gender ratio. They believe Hoyoverse is dominated by so-called "XXN employees", who have nothing to do but destroy male players' wonderland. And they believe Scara, an Anemo boy who has impressive screentime in the main story, is XXN employees' favorite boy. I guess the real reason they pick him out is because he has the most haters and it's easier to stir the gender war.

So attacking Scara is not just attacking a fictional character, but a way to declare war on Hoyoverse's female employees and female players. Ironically, most senior leaders in Hoyoverse are men. After NGA and Tieba users found out the leader of screenwriters was a man, they immediately claimed he must be gay.

3, harassment, doxing, and cyberbullying

After version 3.3, moderators on Tieba banned Scara fans to talk, only letting haters express their hate. And moderators on NGA built a special subforum to troll Scara and his fans.

The CN community became more and more extreme, so these things happened:

1. killing cats

Scara is depicted as a cat in version 3.3, so some people used him as an excuse to kill cats. A teenager killed a cat in his living district. He said that cat looked like Scarameow. Another man killed cats with a brick and he shared killing videos in a Telegram group.

2) doxing Hoyoverse employees

People on Tieba and NGA tried to find out the identity of the screenwriter who wrote version 3.3. They said this story whitewashed a "war criminal", so the screenwriter must be morally condemned.

They looked through recruitment sites, checking Hoyoverse employees' job titles and job histories. At one point, they found a female writer with a Scarameow avatar, but before they celebrated, they realized she didn't work in Genshin.

In the end, they didn't find that writer (I guess writing is a teamwork), so they chose to attack the leaders of screenwriters and the IP team. They have shown their face in Livestream events.

Last month, after Hoyoverse was hacked, dozens of character design sheets came out. On some sheets, there were signatures of senior designers, and haters alleged one woman must be Scara's character designer. They humiliated her on Tieba, spitting on her name. Luckily, they only got that name.

3) spamming the community with bullshit

The story in version 3.3 is not the best. It contradicts the story in Husk of Opulent Dreams and the notes found in Tatarasuna. It has no 2d animation. But the storyline is clear: Scara wants to revive his friends, and to do that, he erases himself from Teyvat (i.e. kill himself) but under Teyvat's laws he fails.

Haters intentionally distorted this story. They keep saying Scara is a "war criminal" and the reason he wants to erase himself is to remove his criminal records so he can live happily after that. Everyone who disagrees with them will be called Sanjie (a derogatory term for Scara fans).

This tactic is like brainwashing, and it works. Until now, it's almost impossible to discuss Scara's story wisely.

Haters see themselves as morality police. They break into every post and video involving Scara, leaving meaningless comments like "dip rice" (a homonym of war criminal), "fermented tofu" (prisoner), "tumor" (a derogatory term for Scara), etc. Even under fan-made animations, you can see comments like that.

In 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 Livestreams, haters posted bullet comments like "Scarahida Forever" (they were not shippers, just wanted to disgust others) and 7246 (means "Scara fans to die"). In the future, they will appear again.

4) harass Scara fans and VA

After writing so much above, I think it should not surprise anyone that haters like to harass fans. They send direct messages to insult fans, build fake fan groups to dox them, and post their chat on forums for everyone to humiliate. Sometimes, they join people's worlds who use Scara as avatars, only trying to curse them.

The CN voice actor of Scara, aka Kana, has also been insulted on Livestream.

5) report Scara to the Government

The ultimate goal for haters is to delete Scara from Genshin Impact, however, it's not very possible after his banner came out. So, they tried to convince the Shanghai government to delete him.

They connected Scara with Japanese militarism, crying that Hoyoverse had hurt the feeling of ordinary Chinese people. In their group chats, they admitted it's all bullshit.

Shanghai Press Publish Bureau got their reports. Days later, they replied that the story of Scara had no problem. Haters were very disappointed, and said they would report to Beijing.

4, keep falling

The hatred towards Scara and his fans is uncontrollable in the CN community. Scara is not a REAL person (I hope haters can understand this), so he won't be hurt. But I'm very worried about Scara fans. They have been bullied for so long, and no one stands out to speak for them (except the Xian Army, a group of volunteers who maintain the community environment). People's mental health deteriorate, and some even said they had suicidal thoughts.

The atmosphere in the CN community is so toxic, it eventually influenced the banner revenue. The hatred towards Scara was stirred before version 3.6, and after Nahida & Nilou banner, the following banners all flopped (Kazuha & Alhaitham's banner is just ok).

Haters are very happy with this news. At this point, they are not just anti-Scara, but anti-Hoyoverse as well. They resent Hoyoverse for creating and promoting this man, even a simple official sticker can agitate them. Before Hoyoverse puts its head down, they will keep praying it goes bankrupt.

On Wednesday, after the revenue chart of Scara & Kokomi's banner came out, haters went into ecstasy. "Wander's banner dramatically flops" even became a trend on Tieba. They said they successfully beat Hoyoverse and Scara fans. Looking at that tiny curve, I think they might be right. Under this toxic environment, only a few people want to pull for him. He is labeled by the community as a war criminal, an unwelcome person, and a trouble attractor.

5, how will this end?

I don't know. Maybe Hoyoverse will keep making content like nothing happened. They get used to being in trouble, and the Bunny Girl Drama in Honkai has proved they can be recovered from malicious public opinions.

But I'm not that confident either. Genshin is not Honkai, its operating strategy is more cautious. In order to avoid fan wars, they already designed tons of characters as good people who can't go wrong. They sacrificed the fun of the story in exchange for peace. So, maybe Hoyoverse will quietly reduce Scara's appearance, or even change the main story since Scara is related to so many important stuff.

Sometimes, I feel sad for Hoyoverse's writers. Every little thing can trigger their players. It's almost impossible to write an interesting story. They can only show their talent in World Quests since people give NPCs more tolerance and no fan war.