Wang Yibo “The Hopeless Illiterate” Scandal Expands as Lenovo Does Not Renew Contract and His Most Vocal Fans Have Been Mass Muted on Weibo After Attacking the CCTV Website’s Legitimacy

I think if I were a Wang Yibo fan the best course of action is to be absolutely silent and just let this scandal die down naturally when the next scandal from someone else comes along. But instead it’s gotten BIGGER and wow it’s like the trending-est thing in C-ent so it’s hard reading about to avoid even if I wanted to. “The Hopeless Illiterate” scandal has taken on yet another turn and for refresher here’s how it started: The phrase “Illiterate” was actually used first to describe the official movie weibo account for the movie Full River Red which was promoting the movie but using incorrect characters and phrases, but it got expanded and moved over to describe Wang Yi Bo as “The Hopeless Illiterate” during his press conference for Hidden Blade when he couldn’t even answer basic and rather subjective questions (what did you learn from playing this character, what would you say to the character if you met him today, etc.), and then the China Central Television (CCTV) website published an article by a journalist lamenting “The Hopeless Illiterate” generation of young actors who don’t make the effort to learn history and culture and improve their knowledge and ended up looking very uneducated when trying to promote projects with specific shading of Wang Yi Bo and Zhao Lu Si among others. It’s been a few days now and Wang Yi Bo’s fans first tried to link Yi Yang Qian Xi (Jackson Yee) to “The Hopeless Illiterate” moniker but no one bought that and next the fandom went on an attack of the CCTV website alleging it was not an official website of CCTV and was in fact a pay to play website promoting another actor by attacking Wang Yi Bo. Suuuuuuure, Jan. That has now led to a large group of Wang Yi Bo’s most vocal fans on Weibo being muted and cannot post anymore. Also on the same day Lenovo announced it’s two year endorsement campaign with Wang Yi Bo has expired and wished him well, with Lenovo also being connected to this scandal when Wang Yi Bo attended a brand event and was asked which was his favorite Lenovo product and answer “iPad”. Sigh.


Comments

Wang Yibo “The Hopeless Illiterate” Scandal Expands as Lenovo Does Not Renew Contract and His Most Vocal Fans Have Been Mass Muted on Weibo After Attacking the CCTV Website’s Legitimacy — 26 Comments

  1. Small correction, the “Hopeless Illiterate” term actually started with Wang Yibo’s press conference first. The incorrect wordings from Full River Red came after that, by then the “illiterate” word had already become a pretty hot/popular word due to Wang Yibo’s scandal, so c-netz just laughed at Full River Bed’s weibo account and saying there’s so many illiterate people in the entertainment industry. Then Wang Yibo’s fans jumped at the opportunity to dump the full “Hopeless Illiterate” term onto that movie and Yiyang Qianxi.

    • Lol, he really doesn’t know that iPad is associated w/ Apple products. That’s gotta hurt Lenovo. I wouldn’t sign him again as well.

      His last biggest news was him become a shareholder of his agency(?) and he was the one bringing in something like 50% of income for that agency(whatever Chinese call it). He better start making more Effort, his fans can only get him so far, because he needs to continue making $.

      • You should check out the stocks of said agency. They are rapidly digging their way towards the other side of the globe.

    • BL dramas were not a hot commodity at the time of filming. I think they filmed Untamed before Guardian aired and only Addicted was a hit (there are a lot of BLs that aired to no fanfare like Gongjun’s first BL in 2016). That’s why 2 unknown idols new to acting got casted. After they got popular everyone wanted to do BLs because people realized that 1. Fujoshis were not choosy about looks, and 2. Acting skill is not too important in BLs as much as marketing gay CPs.

      Chen Feiyu for example deliberately tried to make himself look like a man in love with Luo Yunxi by buying the same accessories,doing skinship behind the scenes and deleting all his follows except LYX. That drove BL fans wild even if the drama didnt air. It’s not surprise BL fans like WYB given how low their stadards are.

    • He didn’t at first, he was turned down. You forget though the most important factor in anything that happens with him. Yue/Hua. His agency and the massive power it wields.

      I am forever said he was Lan WangJi because the book character was so much better and deserved more. Not mention everything that came after, thanks to WYB and his capital backing. It has forever tainted that show for me.

    • exactly. and the way his fans behave atrociously on weibo, other Chinese sns sites,
      and even international sites earned them the moniker toilet fd.

    • oh come on. he was good in the untamed. neither xiao zhan nor yibo was fantastic or anything. they were both beginners, and like somebody said, bl wasnt a hot commodity yet at the time for them to bring in professional actors. and not just yibo, xiao zhan was also turned down at the beginning. i liked yibo’s lan zhan a lot but i just watched hidden blade yesterday and he is actually fantastic at acting now. and i love xiao zhan. i swear he really is the best but the oath of love wasnt good. he is good but yibo is better at acting now. xiao zhan is still the most likeable human ever so i wont hold anything against him.
      yibo went for idol training when he was 13. why be so harsh on a man just because he is not very good at speaking. he does so much stuff and is good at a crazy amount of things as far as i can tell let him be bad at some other things.

    • You can’t sell this narrative at this point in time anymore. It’s CCTV, the government owned media. The weibo hot search titled it a CCTV article (are you saying weibo was willing to piss off their government by falsely naming them as the source of the article?). The article was picked up later by other government media entities. If it isn’t CCTV, they should have come out now to refute it. Your big toilet fan weibo account was banned from weibo for slandering those who are related to the release of article, remember?

      I mean, the hopeless illiterate tag exploded even before the article was released, and it came from the interview your fave participated in. The source was himself, wang yibo, not CCTV or YYQX or other artists your fandom attempted to pass the blame on.

      Really the best thing to do to protect your favorite is to let this end quietly until the public forgets it, or until the next wang yibo interview slip, or the next iPad saga. Wish hard that it doesn’t happen again, or that he actually does something to improve himself.

      • Thank you! Am only invested in this drama by this whole CCTV- fake or real question cause i was wondering how can anyone get away with impersonating CCTV which from my understanding is pretty much the media branch of the CCP. But I can’t read Chinese so I didn’t know which sources are legit so I appreciate the clarification

    • WYB fans are such liars. That same website had posted somewhat positive news of WYB prior to this scandal, and back then WYB fans went on a rampage bragging that WYB is so famous that even CCTV acknowledges him. Now they claim that it’s an imposter site while bringing out some dubious screenshots that don’t seem legitimate, LULZ!

    • Did you not….read? Are you just see the word wang yibo and go to comment section without bothering read the rest of world? Not even in the article but in title already told you about CCTV website’s legitimacy. Should I call you a hopeless illiterate too?

    • It’s not an imposter site, a few other new sites like 人民日报 and 解放日报 have also posted articles about it https://m.douban.com/group/topic/283489779/ it’s clearly a government approved angle since all the major news agencies are taking about “hopeless illiterates” but frankly its not new. After the Kris Wu rapes and YWY3 scandal led to the Qinglang campaign it was clear that CCP wanted to calm down the excessive fandom behaviour of idols and liuliangs. Liuliangs and idols are not invited to CCTV events like CNY or Midautumn because they are seen as too crass, and the government has been discouraging idol culture due to the deterioration of Korean Chinese relations.

      • wow I didn’t know that… so that’s the reason why I can’t see lot of liuliang on gala like back on the days when the four liuliang started

  2. C ent having way too much drama , I understand fans wants to stand up for their idols but the best choice is to just remain quiet… fandom should know by now that idols are literally judge by their fans behavior lol…

  3. Are Chinese netizens so proud of rote learning and memorizing textbooks with zero end product of any significance or artistic creativity nor contribution to society? Just look at the final product and stop slandering like some brainless copycat

    • But your illiterate Wang Yibo can’t even generate a sensible answer to simple interview questions about his movie. He’s worse than a “copycat”.

    • The only brainless people here are you and your idol.

      He is incapable of writing his own name ffs. There is nothing more embarrassing than toilets lying and trying to defend someone who can’t string together a simple answer to a basic question. This isn’t even higher education. It’s primary school stuff.

      We get that you don’t understand Chinese valuing education, since you obviously don’t have any, but tough luck.

    • It’s his works to be honest. They didn’t asks him these questions cause they’re bored. He acted the character, then asked to elaborate. nothing wrong. He is asked to endorse something, and if he know nothing about the product then he is irresponsible of his work. The ipad one is really hopeless case for me. It’s not like he is 40 year old who don’t grow up with gadget, just what’s inside his head if he don’t know basic info like that?

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