雷科技
News on October 19: Many onlookers have been confused by Crazy Little Yang’s comeback drama these past few days.
The plot has seen one twist after another in just three days.
On October 16, Douyin officials released an announcement approving Three Sheep Media to deactivate its original account and register a new one to resume operations. That same day, Crazy Little Yang registered the new account “Qingyang” under his real name Zhang Qingyang and posted a statement about his return to live streaming.
As a former A-list creator with hundreds of millions of followers, his long-time fans flocked to the new account as soon as it went live. The follower count surged to over 40,000 within less than a day, showing strong momentum.
But on October 18, everything took an unexpected turn.
Many netizens noticed that the follower count of Crazy Little Yang’s new account “Qingyang” kept dropping. Every page refresh brought a further decline, falling from more than 40,000 all the way down to zero.
That’s right — it showed 0 followers.
Image source: Screenshot from Douyin
What’s even more bizarre: even if you manually hit follow, the page would show “Following”, yet the follower count remained completely unchanged and did not register the follow at all.
From Xiaolei BBB (ID: xiaoleibbb)’s perspective, this weird phenomenon hardly looks like manual manipulation. It is more likely that the platform simply hid the actual follower numbers...
Later, users found the follower count had been restored and kept climbing. By the night of the 18th, it had risen to 83,000.
Now it has dropped back down to 60,000.
On the day Douyin released its official announcement, Big and Little Yang unexpectedly appeared in the live stream room of “Xiaoyang Zhenxuan” and went live quietly.
The entire live session lasted merely four to five minutes at most. They read a rectification statement to the camera, promising to focus on content creation and self-operated brands from then on, before ending the stream.
Image source: Screenshot from Douyin
However, the peak concurrent viewers during the entire live stream was just over 1,000, fluctuating between roughly 800 and 1,200 the whole time, never even breaking 2,000.
Bear in mind, this is the superstar creator who once drew tens of millions of views in a single live stream and boasted an account with more than 120 million followers.
At the height of his fame, any short video he posted would easily rack up millions of likes. Now, with him appearing live in person, his concurrent viewer count cannot even match that of a mid-tier streamer.
Has the superstar creator’s moment in the spotlight expired?
It has to be said: online fame really can arrive fast and fade even quicker.
Many people only saw the word “comeback” back then, failing to notice that the price tag for this return is far higher than anyone imagined.
All historical content, follower relationships, and platform traffic weightings have been completely reset to zero—with absolutely no possibility of recovery.
For them, this constitutes a devastating blow.
While browsing online, LeiTech’s Xiao Lei Bibo observed that this incident has been trending for several days, with netizens’ attitudes broadly falling into several distinct camps.
Longtime fans are largely thrilled—after all, they’ve followed the brothers for years and eagerly anticipate fresh content. They believe that as long as Xiao Yang Ge adheres to platform regulations and maintains rigorous quality control, they remain willing to support him.
Yet many casual observers argue that prior controversies—including false advertising and quality-control failures—cannot simply be erased by deactivating and re-registering an account.
Unresolved trust issues linger; merely switching accounts amounts to donning a new identity. After collectively resisting the resurrection of disgraced influencers through account-switching tactics, why are so many now seemingly ready to make an exception for Xiao Yang Ge?
Others question whether a two-year suspension constitutes sufficiently meaningful rectification—if such a major incident can be resolved with just a brief hiatus, is the cost of compliance truly low enough?
LeiTech’s Xiao Lei Bibo (ID: xiaoleibbb) is more curious whether Xiao Yang Ge can truly rebuild from scratch.
After all, Douyin’s algorithm recognizes accounts—not individuals. Without historical engagement metrics, even someone who was once “Xiao Yang Ge” must compete for traffic on equal footing with newcomers.
Image source: Screenshot from Douyin
A livestream drawing only ~1,000 concurrent viewers offers the most direct evidence.
Celebrity status may deliver initial traffic—but whether the algorithm will sustainably promote his content remains highly uncertain.
Secondly, regarding product promotion: Previously, fans purchased based on personal charisma; now, consumers exercise far greater caution before placing orders. One more misstep could render a full recovery nearly impossible.
By the way—do you think Xiao Yang Ge can reclaim his former dominance? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!
