How did a Criminal Law Professor Attract over 20M Subscribers on Bilibili?
Luo Xiang, criminal law professor, became the most popular content creator on Chinese YouTube (Bilibili). He got 3.7 million subscribers with ten videos in his first month and now has more than 20 million subscribers on his channel. This generation of young Chinese people started to learn criminal law in their free time, regardless of their profession. Isn’t this surprising?
Is his popularity a coincidence or skill? Here are some factors accelerating his popularity. Let’s take a look!
Solid Knowledge and Experience:
One important factor is his professionalism. As a Ph.D. graduate from Peking University and a professor at China University of Political Science and Law. He is one of the most popular professors in the University and appeared on Legal TV shows. Luo Xiang is extremely knowledgeable in legal professionalism, making his content scarce in the current content-creating market.
Mr. Luo's professional advantage also lies in the fact that his field of expertise is criminal law, in which there are usually many unbelievably strange cases, showing novelty points to ordinary netizens who are not legal professionals.
The most open-minded professor:
Professor Luo is very open-minded and spreads knowledge over new media platforms in a fun way, building the bridge between scholars and non-professionals.
From the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, as teachers started to teach online, professor Luo's teaching stood out and his influence was largely amplified by social media platforms. He uses the plainest words to explain academics to people’s lives, perfectly combining the legal knowledge and entertaining factors. Luo also uses very logical, knowledgeable, and humorous explanations in his videos.
His videos are very much in line with Chinese social media trends. Most Chinese young people have a higher demand for knowledge, especially with their anxiety about skills and future development. People increasingly spend time on social networking sites at the same time. Professor Luo’s videos can be a perfect mix of their interests.
Exaggerated stories are added to his videos, making legal knowledge fun and accessible to everyone. For example, in his videos he tells the cases such as “Is raping oneself a crime?”; “Who is responsible for the injuries of thieves”; “Is it illegal to push a rapist into a cesspit”
Luo Xiang and his usual video backdrop, recreated in Animal Crossing: New Horizons by Bilibili user 振金直男奉日天.
Great fan community and special memes:
Luo Xiang uses the character “Zhang San” frequently as the lawbreaker when explaining cases. Zhang San sometimes fights with people, sells fake drugs, threatens the mayor, sometimes prostitutes, robbery, and fraud.
People make memes and parodies with his videos and spread it all over social media platforms. He got nicknames from fans, such as “the legal prince”, “Zhang San Killer”, “Law Comedy Maker”.
Luo himself is also authentic, thoughtful, and modest in his media channel, sharing his life stories. He shared thoughts about current hot issues with philosophical opinions, which makes his character more accessible to netizens.
All in all, Luo Xiang’s video is very beneficial to the popularization of the law. The contents attract people of all ages and majors. More non-legal professional Internet users understand a certain amount of legal knowledge. General education is no less important than professional education.
