Today, a post on the phenomenon of fake fans. Becoming a celebrity is worth it anywhere, but particularly in China where the top celebrities are paid millions of RMB to carry the weight of endorsements to this huge nation. Louis Yu, host of the Sound Unlimited podcast on the Wooozy blog (and cultural maven) writes this guest post.
The phenomenon of the “fake fan” has been around for a while now, but until recently it’s been relatively low key. A couple of months ago, some Taiwanese and Hong Kong media started picking it up and profiling in entertainment news and newspapers.
There is, surprise surprise, a booming industry of the so called “hired fan”. This is due to the birth of too many “celebrities” in China, and not enough fans to support them or to cause a scene. Especially with the raise of reality singing competitions like Happy girls and Happy boys, there is more and more need for management companies to hire crowds of “fans” to support these “celebrities”. After all, “face” plays a big part in this as well. If the “celebrity” is seen with few fans supporting them, it’s going to look bad for the celebrity and the management company.
The attached video is from Hong Kong’s Apple Action news (a site known for its celebrity gossip), entitled ” mainland fake fans, monthly income over ten-thousand”. The transcript is as follows:
A new trend in mainland is the hiring of fake fans. Usually when fans see their idol, they’ll scream, that’s not strange. The strange part is that these “fans” seem to scream at the top of their lungs and make a huge scene. It’s all just an act, A lot of these fans are hired by the artist’s management company. For the past few years mainland’s reality singing competitions gave birth to “professional fans”. The rumor is that their price are
1) if you see your idol, cry and faint – 200 yuan
2) if you see your idol, cry till your face is stained with tears, 100 yuan
3) holding a sign for the idol is 20 yuan
Now the “professional fans” even have levels, gold collar, white collar and blue collar.
1) Gold collar fans have to help promote and sell artists’ products, and be the leading person at the artists event, it’s said that they make more than 10,000 a month.
2) white collar fans will get on the net, publishing comments supporting the idol, while bad mouthing the competition, it’s said that they make around 3200 yuan for this
3) blue collar are usually students, hired during their days off from school to hold up signs and scream at the top of their lungs, and to give flowers to their idols.
Taiwanese variety shows had similar reports in their entertainment news. They further elaborated that these “fans” are picked based on their looks as well, they have to be a certain height and have to look good and dress well.
If you go on youku and type in some keywords, you can find some videos that people took of suspect “fake fans”. Such as in this video:
The supporters of Chris Lee (Li Yu Chun) seem to all be wearing a red
uniform with a catchphrase at the back.
It also seems that the “fans” seem to be extra crazy whenever the camera is on them. This video features hundreds of fans of a contestant from Happy Girls. It is said that the leading fan dressed in pink in this video is hired to lead
a group sing-along, and to make statements about how much they love the happy girl contestant, and to go on stage and give her stuffed animal etc. Notice at the begining of the video, the fan in pink looked at his hand, supposedly for words he wrote down of the happy girl contestant’s song, in order to lead the sing-along.