The traffic ＂business＂ behind Hu Xinyu’s incident： anchors gather in counties and concoct rumors.
Zhiyuan Middle School in Yanshan County, with Jinji Mountain in the south. The pictures in this article were all taken by The Paper reporter He Peiyun and Wang Xuanhui.
Rubbing heat, eyeballing, and earning traffic … … For a time, network anchors from all over the world flocked to lead mountain county in Jiangxi province. If Hu Xinyu’s incident hadn’t caused concern, many people might not know that lead mountain county should be pronounced as lead (yán) mountain county.
In the past three months, residents living near Zhiyuan High School in Lead Mountain County remember that some people often came to the school gate with their mobile phones or took pictures in the back hill on the south side of the school. Woods, fences and abandoned houses can all be used as shooting backgrounds.
On October 14th, 2022, Hu Xinyu, a senior one student in Zhiyuan Middle School, Qianshan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province, disappeared on campus. With the voice of family members, more and more people noticed this incident of losing contact with teenagers.
Subsequently, this incident continued to ferment. Some voices associate Hu Xinyu’s disappearance with false information such as organ trading, bald teachers in Zhiyuan Middle School, replacement of school monitoring, mysterious autopsy room in the school, and create a topic to spread again.
For a long time, lead mountain county with a population of less than 500,000 has become the focus of some network anchors.
More anchors found that in the online world, as long as the words "Hu Xinyu", "Zhiyuan High School" and "Lead Mountain County" are mentioned, fans and traffic will be gained. People came to this small town at the junction of the two provinces. Under the catalysis of live webcasts and short videos, the loss of teenagers became an event that was almost discussed by the whole people.
On January 28, 2023, Hu Xinyu’s body was found in the forest of Jinjishan area. At the press conference five days later, the police informed Hu Xinyu that he had hanged himself and the body was found at the first scene.
On February 2, the police introduced at the press conference that after Hu Xinyu’s disappearance, some netizens and anchors made a profit for their eyeballs and enthusiasm, maliciously fabricated and disseminated false information, and spliced and fabricated false videos. The public security organs have sorted out more than 120 kinds of false information in five categories: fabricating false facts, making false scenes, concocting false recordings, splicing surveillance videos, and counterfeiting parties.
Street view near Zhiyuan Middle School in Yanshan County.
The anchors who got together in the lead mountain
In mid-November, 2022, Sun Yang, a man from Jiangsu Province, came to lead mountain county for the first time.
Through the network channel, he knew that there was a high school student missing here. At first, he thought that the child was just sneaking out of school to go online, ready to do something good and help find someone. "I’m fine anyway … … I felt curious when I came over. " He also wants to help Hu relatives.
Sun Yang posted a local video on the short video platform, but the number of fans rose rapidly. At first, he sent a video recording him going up the mountain to find a child, and the broadcast volume suddenly rose to several million. "People are selfish, so I’ve been here for two or three days." Sun Yang said.
In the past two months, Sun Yang came to lead mountain county many times, and stayed for a day or two each time in order to shoot a video.
Sun Yang recorded his actions with video. In the middle of the night a few days before the Chinese New Year, he "sneaked" to the school gate to post searching for you. He also went to Jinji Mountain at two or three o’clock in the morning, and the mountain was covered with burial graves.
His legs trembled with fear, and he walked while opening the live broadcast, so that the fans in the live broadcast room could chat with him. He said that when he started a live broadcast, there were about 10,000 real-time online people, and a live broadcast could reach hundreds of thousands of people to watch.
In the comment area, some netizens called Sun Yang "the anchor of positive energy" and expressed their support. Among the videos he released in the past two months, a video of him eating at the same table with Hu Xinyu’s parents received about 16,000 praises, which was a video that was praised more.
On weekdays, Sun Yang does business in Nanjing. On January 31, 2023, he went to lead mountain county for the eighth time, this time because Hu Xinyu’s body was found.
Sun Yang released a video of himself at Shangrao Station. In the video, he wore a headscarf and sunglasses and said that he was going to look for it in the Woods. This video has received nearly 90,000 likes and more than 10,000 comments.
At the gate of Zhiyuan High School, Sun Yang had seen dozens of online celebrity, patting the gate with their mobile phones. An online car driver also remembers that when driving by the school, he saw the scene of "online celebrity clustered together". People crowded at the school gate and pushed open the iron gates.
Previously, because Hu Xinyu’s search had not progressed for a long time, various speculations about the incident followed on the Internet.
Another anchor, Chen Chen, told The Paper that after a period of not finding children, some anchors used the emotions of netizens to create various rumors.
Shangrao City Public Security Bureau once wrote in "A Letter to Friends of Netizens": "At work, it was found that a few people maliciously fabricated and disseminated false information, spliced and fabricated false videos, which had a bad influence and disrupted social order."
In chenchen’s view, in Hu Xinyu’s disappearance, some rumors are sensational, while others are just eye-catching. For example, the bald teacher and the principal secretly deleted the monitoring. In fact, the people in the picture were not bald teachers and principals at all, but grid workers in other places conducted online inspections; Hu Xinyu’s hometown was monitored by bad guys, and the monitoring was actually installed by the police to get more clues; "Bald teacher" has been taken compulsory measures; Zhiyuan Middle School is run by foreigners or has false information such as foreign capital background.
In addition, there are rumors that bloody clothes and sheets were found in the back of the school; Hu Xinyu was cremated after being killed; Rumors such as broken bones found in septic tanks in schools are everywhere.
Among many rumors, the false news that Hu Xinyu’s organs were transplanted is the most sensational. On February 2, the police introduced at the press conference that according to the autopsy results, all organs of Hu Xinyu’s body were in place, which completely broke the most widely spread rumor.
On February 2nd, Sina Weibo also said that after the inspection, many kinds of rumor information such as "Blood quilt found in Houshan", "Hu Xinyu was killed by a bald teacher" and "Hu Xinyu was sterilized by a chemistry teacher" were transferred from the station to Weibo, and the station cleared up more than 3,500 illegal contents of spreading related rumors, and banned 138 illegal accounts for 7 days until they were closed.
Hu Xinyu was found in Jinjishan regional grain depot.
Short video traffic logic
"Hu Xinyu" has also become a traffic "business" in the short video world, bringing huge traffic to network anchors. Sun Yang bluntly said that in recent months, his Aauto Quicker account fans have increased from several hundred to more than 300,000.
In Sun Yang’s eyes, many anchors come here to attract fans. They play PK to get money. As far as he knows, some anchors open live broadcasts to reward and bring some goods. "It is normal to mix thousands of dollars." He denied that he came to make money. "I have never played PK… … I don’t want to earn much money. " But he also said bluntly, "Just come up with a name and show your face."
Chenchen also said that among the nearly 100 "Hu Xinyu" videos he posted, many of them reached millions of likes and tens of thousands of comments. He said that among the anchors he knows, the most one has earned a reward income of "six figures" in the past three or four months. "It is normal for a small anchor to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a day."
Chenchen analyzed that this fermentation in Weibo, Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker and other platforms in advance is mainly due to the personalized push mechanism of these platforms. If you stay in a short video related to "Hu Xinyu" for a period of time, the platform will continuously push all the information related to "Hu Xinyu" for you. Some netizens also have the feeling of "detective" and "solving the case" and are deeply involved.
After Hu Xinyu’s video was released, some people found Sun Yang and asked him for help. He said that there are people who are in arrears with the demolition payment and parents who are looking for children.
On February 1, when meeting with reporters, Sun Yang brought two mobile phones. "I have three, but I lost one." He said that he is not a literate person, he didn’t graduate from junior high school, and he didn’t learn to make videos. In business, he learned that connections are very important, and in the online world, connections sometimes work. "In the live broadcast room, mention each other’s names and connections, and increase each other’s powder."
For the reasons behind the incident of Hu Xinyu, Sun Yang firmly believes in a clear logic: If it is not suicide, it must involve interests, but what are the interests of a 15-year-old child? Trafficking is also unlikely. Teenagers of this age are not the targets of traffickers. It is even more ridiculous to associate schools with Japanese, Americans and organ trafficking.
He doesn’t like the statements of some anchors and doesn’t agree with some practices. He said that an anchor dug a hole and dug a shoe from the hole. Hundreds of thousands of people watched it online and analyzed the size of the shoe and who wore it, but the shoe was actually buried by the anchor himself.
A lot of information also troubled Hu Xinyu’s relatives. One relative said that some recordings were not their voices, but they were widely circulated on the Internet.
However, Sun Yang is also well aware of the operational logic of online public opinion field: bizarre guesses attract traffic, and people can’t argue on the Internet. "If I say that it is false to be related to * * people, someone will immediately scold me for being bought by * * people. So I can’t say, no way. "
On February 2nd, the special class of joint work of Jiangxi province, city and county held a press conference in Qianshan County, Shangrao City.
The press conference listed the false content that disturbed people’s hearts: Chen Mou Gui pretended to be a "bald" teacher, filmed a video uploading network that threatened his family’s privacy, and decided to arrest him according to law.
Another example is that Li Mouzan and Li Mouchen and his son released a video to fabricate false information that their family members were threatened and their relatives were missing because they voiced for the Hu Xinyu incident. At present, they have been given administrative punishment.
For another example, Chen Mou Red attracted traffic for its marketing account, and forwarded rumors such as "A bloody quilt was found in Houshan" and "Hu Xinyu was killed by a teacher", and has been given administrative punishment according to law.
Some anchors will actively avoid the risk of spreading false information. In almost every short video released, Sun Yang will repeat a sentence, "Don’t believe in rumors."
Chen Chen said that he knew that "Hu Xinyu" was a traffic password, but he also knew that it would be very dangerous if there was no basis to talk nonsense, so he generally made the source of the information clear in his explanation, "making traffic also ensures safety."
County under the flow
This county is famous on the short video platform.
Yanshan County is located at the junction of Jiangxi Province and northern Fujian Province, at the northern foot of Wuyi Mountain. There is no high-speed train in this small town, and even the green leather train has no station. If it weren’t for the concern caused by Hu Xinyu’s incident, many people couldn’t read lead (yan, homophony ‘ Yan ’ ) "word.
On October 22nd, 2022, Hu Xinyu’s mother’s Tik Tok account posted the first searching for you, and then the account posted a total of 57 videos, all of which involved finding her son Hu Xinyu. So far, the account has received more than 5 million praises and more than 1 million fans’ attention.
Although it is in the local area, many residents get the latest information about the incident from the internet, and the channel is usually a short video platform.
Chen Shu, a 64-year-old local villager, has been raising pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens and ducks on the mountainside of Jinji Mountain for 20 years. He said that after the Hu Xinyu case, the wooden house he built has been searched many times, and many vegetation in front of and behind the house has also been cut off for inspection.
Chen Shu said that the local people are particularly concerned about the whereabouts of this child. No matter whether they buy food or feed, they will be discussed. They also brush information about Hu Xinyu on Tik Tok every day.
In a snack bar near Taoyuan Middle School, where Hu Xinyu studied, the proprietress remembers that after seeing searching for you in Tik Tok, she realized that she had seen the child. He came to the store to buy breakfast, and when he received the food, he would politely say "thank you". She also listened to Hu Xinyu’s junior high school class teacher after the incident, saying that the children had good grades in middle school and were very sensible.
In the life of ordinary people in the county, the bizarre speculation in the network leads to people’s guesses. After Hu Xinyu’s body was found, a driver firmly believed that Hu Xinyu had lived in the mountains for three months, but he could not explain how he maintained his daily diet and avoided searching. A middle-aged woman didn’t understand why she didn’t find it for more than a hundred days, but suddenly she found the body on the day of school opening.
Hu Xinyu’s incident has had a practical impact. The proprietress’s daughter is in Grade One of Taoyuan Middle School this year. Her family lives opposite the school and she is not worried about her daughter’s safety. However, she noticed that many parents would come to the school gate after school on weekends to pick up their children in person. In the past, students usually went to and from school by themselves.
A mother whose son is in the first year of Zhiyuan High School said that she was still worried about her son’s safety. After discussing with her husband, she wanted to transfer her child to another school, but the class teacher didn’t agree.
She learned that many senior three students’ parents will accompany them near the school, and she also moved this idea. She thought about this summer vacation, and when the senior three students graduated, they would go to the county to find a house in advance and start to accompany them from the second year of high school. But her son told her that he was not afraid.
Different from the network, there are many curses about the "traffic" of the anchors, and the residents of Lead Mountain County show tolerance for the traffic. Referring to the views of video anchors coming to lead mountain, many residents said that there is nothing wrong with everyone coming to help find children.
(Some interviewees are pseudonyms)
