The Chinese entertainment industry has recently been plagued by waves of so-called anti-fans who deliberately defame celebrities, with some hired by other celebrities and others who do it just for the thrill of attacking a famous person.
Shortly after the marriage of two celebrities from Taiwan, Ruby Lin Xinru and Wallace Huo Jianhua, in July, the Internet was awash with rumors that their marriage was just a commercial stunt. Rumors saying that Huo forced Lin to marry him were also widely circulated. The couple have emphatically denied these rumors.
When film star Wang Baoqiang announced his divorce with Ma Rong and wrote about Ma's alleged infidelity on Weibo this August, over a million netizens left vicious comments on Ma's Weibo page, with some committed mud-slingers even writing insulting comments every day since August.
Profitable business
Three types of anti-fans are common on the Internet. Some of them are driven to fury by news reports or rumors and simply want to express their emotions in a vulgar way.
These people are therefore quite changeable in their opinions. For example, a friend of Taiwan singer and actress Joe Chen Chiao-en passed away on September 16, and anti-fans condemned her harshly for a week as they believed she failed to send timely condolences.
But when they found out that they had misunderstood her, many then became real fans of the celebrity.
However, there are also more committed anti-fans. They are organized to defame celebrities on a voluntary basis, and they often dig deeply into the celebrities' history and distort facts to mislead other netizens. In Lin and Huo's case, anti-fans manipulated images of the two to attempt to "prove" that Huo does not actually love Lin.
The third group are those who profit from attacking celebrities. They can easily earn thousands of yuan every month from celebrities out to smear their rivals.
A man surnamed Wang who is an anti-fan said that he earns 0.2 yuan ($0.03) for each comment or repost, and 0.5 yuan if he adds some rhetoric or opinions.
Some professional anti-fans hire students when they need extra manpower. Anti-fans write copy and then allocate students to post the screeds on different online forums. Students usually receive payment on a daily basis.
"Some students have hundreds of accounts on online forums, they can earn hundreds of yuan each day," Wang said.
A net user named Xiao D, who is a senior member of several fan forums, said that a "good" anti-fan must love the Internet and entertainment.
"Anti-fans with humor and valid points that use Internet slang can attract lots of normal fans' attention, thus they can get twice the result with half the effort," Xiao D said.
He said that most anti-fans are college students or from wealthy backgrounds.
"They spend day and night on the Internet to collect materials. They do it not so much out of a desire to make money, more out of their passion," Xiao D said.
Hired by celebrities
Hiring anti-fans who are not loyal to their employer is inherently risky, so the fact that many celebrities hire their own fans to form their own personal anti-fan army is an open secret in the entertainment industry.
Hiring one's own fans is also a cost-saving measure. Xiao D claims that almost all the A-list stars do this.
These fans clearly divide their work. Some lurk inside the fan forums of their employer's competitors to spy on them, and others organize fans to defame the competitors.
"We usually have special people who collect their dirty deeds, then write long articles to disclose the competitors' secrets in order to mislead netizens," Xiao D said.
He also claimed that hiring anti-fans is a necessity.
"Hiring anti-fans can help celebrities react quickly in terms of crisis management. Also when their competitors are caught up in scandals, anti-fans could help to raise the image of their employers and thus help them to win opportunities to shoot advertisements and films," he said.
Meanwhile, the higher the celebrity's profile, the more inclined they are to spend money on this kind of negative publicity, Xiao D explained.
"One popular celebrity spends nearly a million yuan each year on fan operations, and at least one-fifth goes to training anti-fans," Xiao D said.
However, hiring anti-fans harms the sound development of the entertainment industry.
According to an opinion piece posted on the Henan-based news portal dahe.cn, celebrities should hold the moral bottom line rather than using anti-fans to raise their image.
Meanwhile, public opinion should be purified in the entertainment industry, and those anti-fans who conduct malicious speculation or even break the law should be punished, the piece argued. It added that the related government departments should deal with the employers of anti-fans.
