---
title: "Reflections on the Zhong Xue Gao Incident: User Love and Hate in an Instant"
description: "Zhong Xue Gao unexpectedly went viral again, but in a way no one anticipated. On June 16, a clip of its founder saying 'the most expensive Zhong Xue Gao is 66 yuan, take it or leave it' sparked a hot search, leading to public apologies for past false advertising and a massive online backlash, illustrating the double-edged sword of internet-famous brands."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-06-19"
language: "en"
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# Reflections on the Zhong Xue Gao Incident: User Love and Hate in an Instant

> Zhong Xue Gao unexpectedly went viral again, but in a way no one anticipated. On June 16, a clip of its founder saying 'the most expensive Zhong Xue Gao is 66 yuan, take it or leave it' sparked a hot search, leading to public apologies for past false advertising and a massive online backlash, illustrating the double-edged sword of internet-famous brands.

**Zhong Xue Gao's Unexpected Second 'Viral' Moment**
**Zhong Xue Gao is popular again, but in a way no one anticipated.**
On June 16, the internet-famous ice cream brand Zhong Xue Gao quickly shot to the top of hot searches due to a clip from an edited video where the founder said, "The most expensive Zhong Xue Gao is 66 yuan, take it or leave it," becoming a hot topic that continued to expand. The same day, Zhong Xue Gao refuted the claim, stating the video was maliciously edited out of context.
On June 17, Zhong Xue Gao publicly apologized for administrative penalties received about two years ago for false advertising, saying, "The two administrative penalties serve as a wake-up call."
On June 18, the topic of Zhong Xue Gao had been read over 1.3 billion times online, but the incident continued to ferment on the internet.
That's roughly the sequence of events; readers can search for details themselves, so I won't elaborate further here.
In the eyes of media and users, Zhong Xue Gao is sliding from being a "sweetheart" to a "nagging wife," and all this took just two days.
**Love and Hate in an Instant: The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Internet-Famous Brands**
Zhong Xue Gao is not the first innovative brand to face such treatment, nor is it the first this year.
Genki Forest, which has always claimed to be "0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fat," faced criticism from media and users in April this year due to misunderstandings over its use of "sugar substitutes," eventually issuing a public apology.
Do Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao feel wronged? Perhaps they do. But this is the law of the market: the more praise you receive, the more criticism or even slander you will face.
In recent years, innovative brands have sprung up like mushrooms, and many internet-famous brands have become darlings in the eyes of capital. The rise of internet-famous brands has given the industry, including entrepreneurs themselves, the illusion that creating a product and brand is extremely easy.
The essence of the internet is to infinitely accelerate the speed and efficiency of information flow, and this is a double-edged sword. Before the internet, building a brand required a long time of gradual accumulation, but now it can take just a few months.
Conversely, in the past, a piece of bad news might be handled before it spread widely, but today, before you even react, negative news can be read over a billion times.
**User love and hate can switch in an instant; this is a characteristic of the internet era.**
I believe that today you may not be as bad as the negative news suggests, but I also believe that originally you were definitely not as perfect as you claimed to be.
So, for entrepreneurs and innovative brands, there is no need to complain. You cannot enjoy the dividends of the internet without paying a price. You cannot reap praise without facing criticism or injustice.
The world is fair. For every innovative brand, this is almost a required course. **Only by fully experiencing all the undue praise and undue criticism and still surviving can you mature.**
**Eggs Laid by the Internet Often Lack Awe**
A niche market plus a good idea equals a good story. With seed funding, a good story can be transformed into a good project for an internet-famous brand through traffic conversion on internet platforms.
Of course, as the core of the story, the product story must be high-end and grand; only then can it match the imagination-defying price and satisfy users' spiritual value needs. In plain terms, it needs to have enough "coolness."
Never mind how it comes about; as long as there are users, you can raise funds. Don't mention making money; the brand's dreamland hasn't been built yet, so how can you bring up something as vulgar as making money?
Then, a brand that capital crazily chases is born. The question is, can the consumer goods industry be that simple? Obviously not.
There is nothing new under the sun. On the stage, it looks like many people come and go, but it's still the same actors, just in different costumes and makeup.
Isn't the Chinese health product marketing model from over a decade ago just a "fake experts + fake users + all media" scam? Isn't this similar to the so-called high-end of some internet-famous brands today, just in a different guise?
The only change is that back then, those who believed in health product tricks were often elderly people; today, those being harvested by internet-famous brands are young people pursuing fashion and individuality.
In today's internet age, so-called internet thinking has been deified. Using internet thinking to interpret and guide everything seems to have become politically correct. Those who dare to voice different opinions are almost treated as heretics and shouted down.
**Those who truly understand the consumer goods industry will have sufficient awe for the FMCG industry, especially leading brands.**
Uni-President Group manages over 700,000 raw material units on the supply chain side alone. How much rigor is needed to achieve such fine management? Why are leading brands so meticulous, almost rigid and strict, in their publicity? This rigor is often the result of lessons learned from serious mistakes in history.
The founder of Uni-President, Kao Ching-yuen, left the company motto "Three Goods and One Fairness," which still hangs high today; Lee Kum Kee's founder left the product culture of "100-1=0," which has been passed down to the third generation. This sense of awe is almost invisible among internet brand entrepreneurs.
If traditional brands and internet-famous brands were compared to two people, the former often appears **slow-moving but steady and reliable**, while the latter is often **talented but frivolous and impetuous**.
The essence of many internet-famous brands is that they are eggs laid by internet thinking. **When they enter traditional fields, they often carry contempt and disdain, as if they are spokespersons of truth, full of superiority, which can be seen as another form of internet elitism.**
This posture of internet brands, under the banner of advanced productivity, abandons industrial thinking, long-termism, and all other correct values.
Many entrepreneurs with internet backgrounds talk about users or products, claiming to be followers of Jobs. **In reality, they worship Jobs on their lips, shout about user-centricity, but in their hearts, users are just traffic.**
If entrepreneurs still do not reflect on the internet, then the overturning of internet-famous brands will surely repeat in different versions.
Users who are still flipping between love and hate in an instant today, **once they are deeply hurt, will no longer love.**
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