By Julia Zhu

May 7, 2021

GUANGZHOU, China—When the spotlight shed the first beam on the well-decorated stage, bearing all the fans’ expectations, the final performance of Produce Camp 2021, a Chinese Internet-based boy group survival show, was on air among cheers and claps on April 24, 2021.

Meanwhile, behind the stage, a silent battle for debut broke out. “The enthusiastic fans keep boosting up their picks for a higher ranking by repetitively switching Tencent Video accounts, scanning QR codes for more votes. “ said Abcde Hwen, 21, who claims himself as a keen observer over the annual craze.

In China, the public dubs these fans “vote labor” illustratively. Ruby Zhao, 20, with 3-year watching experience of the same type, thought, “Vote labors do make good use of rules, but the downside is their presence would get all fans involved in cut-throat competition.”

The three women below–Vivian Liu, Big Carrot called online, and Suki Liang– all belong to this group.

For Vivian Liu, 21, this night destined for the hustle and bustle. As a fan of Oscar Wang, who ranked 13^th before the finals, Liu felt anxious and uncertain. While only the top 11 of 25 finalists were qualified to form a boy group, every vote mattered. Liu had to combine watching and vote awkwardly.

Seemingly, the first-tier trainees’ fan groups stay away from the intense competition for the existing overwhelming votes have locked their idols in debut ahead of time. However, Big Carrot, 22, could not drop her guard. For Big Carrot’s pick Yu Liu, the top 1 before the finals, he needed to maintain the lead position when competing with the following two promising competitors Santa and Rikimaru.

“The process to protect Mr. Liu’s fruit of victory is far more energy-consuming and costly,” Hwen pointed out, “his vote labors have to buy most available video accounts and manually conduct voting at the largest scale.”

By contrast, Suki Liang, 20, chose to “luxuriously, peacefully” enjoy the show by having a pricy takeout simultaneously. The only reason saving Liang from the fierce competition was that her pick, Amu Haniuda, a Japanese trainee in 24^th place, practically had no chance to debut. Liang had voted hard to qualify him for the finals.

The fact that Oscar Wang did not make it upset hard-working Vivian Liu. Meanwhile, Big Carrot felt tired though she finally helped Yu Liu stand in the center. Liang got a sense of pure happiness from watching fabulous live shows without “annoying vote.”

One outsider Hammes Huang, away from the fad, shared his idea, “Though it is unwise,  being vote labors shows their affection for their idols and their bravery, which I appreciate a lot,” with which Zhao and Hwen agreed. 

One Chinese state media, Xinhuanet, argues that the emergence of vote labor worths public attention. Plus, appropriate guidance for vote labors is necessary since most of them remain young, who are vulnerable to tempting, misleading ideas like “If one does not show effort in the vote, he or she is not the true fan.”