Friends who frequently browse Bilibili couldn't have missed this mysterious woman with glasses.
CC, the phone-buying mascot, always appears in short ads across various videos with the line, "What do you do with your old one after buying a new one?" She's in the gaming section, the lifestyle section, and even the science popularization section... It seems like the entire Bilibili platform has fallen into an Infinite Tsukuyomi, completely dominated by special-grade cursed spirits like Zhuanzhuan.
Although this kind of brainwashing advertising has been criticized by netizens, it's not enough to verbally attack the ads and the client behind them, Zhuanzhuan. Many netizens simply skip the ads by dragging the progress bar. As for the specific content? Most people don't care. At most, they get a simple understanding that Zhuanzhuan is a second-hand trading platform and know a few memes.
But just in these past few days, this second-hand platform, Zhuanzhuan, was suddenly pushed to the forefront of public controversy. Netizens' understanding of it has deepened, and many dubious black materials have been dug up. It seems to have undergone an unprecedented reckoning.
The incident originated from an offline second-hand recycling event. As the face of Zhuanzhuan, the mysterious woman with glasses known as "CC who buys phones" personally visited the home of Delta Force streamer "Wang Haoyu Whys" to recycle his computer. This is exactly what Zhuanzhuan often promotes in its ads—specialists coming to your door for inspection. Of course, if you place an order on Zhuanzhuan yourself, the person who shows up is nine out of ten times not going to be CC. After all, everyone can see that this kind of influencer IP building is comparable to the braised beef noodles that only exist in promotional images; you can only see it in collaborations between major influencers and top streamers.
In fact, the entire video can basically be considered a large-scale advertisement. The dialogue between the two feels deliberately staged, harmonizing to mention all of Zhuanzhuan's selling points like "we buy anything." It reminds me of the old Chinese doctor advertisements on TV back in the day—all efficacy when asked, all fake medicine when seen.
Actually, the entire recycling process can be summarized briefly. The most noteworthy scene is when Whys takes out the Colorful iGame RTX 5090 D V2 Advanced OC 24G graphics card, and CC immediately offers a price of 13,500 yuan, stating that this is the official recycling price on the Zhuanzhuan platform.
You might say you don't understand the market price because you don't often browse second-hand platforms for other items, but... graphics cards are hard currency nowadays. With the recent new wave of AI, electronic products from memory to hard drives, and even to graphics cards and peripherals, have seen price increases to some extent. Even the act of "checking the price of the 5090" has become a meme with a hint of horror. Therefore, netizens quickly realized that the recycling price of 13,500 yuan was somewhat low.
How low is it? The price of second-hand RTX 4090 graphics cards currently for sale on Zhuanzhuan has reached over 20,000 yuan. Although there are currently no 5090 graphics cards for sale on the platform, looking at the price of the previous generation flagship reveals how large the gap is between Zhuanzhuan's recycling price and its selling price.
Of course, you could argue that the "Colorful iGame RTX 5090 D V2 Advanced OC 24G" model is a gaming card with reduced AI computing power specifically for the mainland market... But who are you looking down on? We gamers need graphics cards too. We'll take as many as you have at 13,500 yuan.
Therefore, netizens questioned in bullet comments and comment sections, spreading the incident to other platforms to "expose" Zhuanzhuan's shady recycling prices. Seeing the situation deteriorate, CC quickly clarified after the information spread, stating that there was a time gap between filming and publication, and the recycling price was different from the current one.
Additionally, she replaced the source of the video, adding a small line of text on the screen showing the recycling price: "Video filmed in early July 2026. Latest recycling prices fluctuate upwards. Please check estimates on the Zhuanzhuan app."
Indeed, this explanation aligns with the current trend of rising graphics card prices and sounds somewhat reasonable. However, netizens made another great discovery—in the original sentence "finally can offer 13,500," the numbers sound completely like post-production dubbing. By observing lip movements, it can be seen that CC's actual quote on-site should have been 8,888. This price is not only far below the current market price but also lower than the market price from a month ago—in other words, even with fluctuations, 8,888 yuan is still a bit outrageous.
Perhaps it can be said that Zhuanzhuan has completely lost its credibility. The explanation above will only make netizens feel like they are making excuses. The voice-changing behavior in the original video was also kindly interpreted by netizens as "knowing 8888 was too ridiculous, so they changed it to 13500 when publishing." Unfortunately, the information gap for electronic products isn't as large as imagined; netizens understand the market, and changing it to 13500 doesn't hold water either.
In fact, this incident was just a trigger. Zhuanzhuan was pushed to the forefront because hardware price sensitivity suddenly went viral recently. Before this, there were many attacks on the Zhuanzhuan platform—for example, many people believe this is a backlash caused by Zhuanzhuan's overwhelming brainwashing advertisements.
When you hear someone bought something new, you might subconsciously want to ask, "What about the old one?" When watching videos, hearing related keywords might make you worry about a Zhuanzhuan ad suddenly appearing in the middle. If you really have these symptoms, congratulations, you have successfully developed Zhuanzhuan PTSD.
In the earlier days, bullet comments during Zhuanzhuan ad segments were often neutral, such as "Thanks to the sponsor for urging updates" or "Mysterious woman with glasses." Later, there were more teasing comments like "I'd choose the old one" or "I'd just throw it away." If you watched this year's Spring Festival Gala, you might have noticed a sketch playing on this meme. Nowadays, in new videos containing ads, there is nothing but resistance to the Zhuanzhuan platform, even using terms like "Zhuan 8fq."
This overwhelming advertising campaign is often referred to as "buying out Bilibiti." Although the reality isn't that extreme, it shows the intensity of Zhuanzhuan's promotional efforts. Therefore, Everythinggj became clear—where did the profit from buying low and selling high go? It all went into advertising! As for what's left after advertising, Zhuanzhuan's people enjoy it and pocket it.
However, while excessive advertising is one aspect, the more fundamental reason is determined by Zhuanzhuan's business model.
According to Huang Wei, founder and CEO of Zhuanzhuan Group, the current focus of Zhuanzhuan's business development is on C2B2C. Although it started with a C2C model competing with Xianyu, since 2019, Zhuanzhuan's operational strategy has gradually shifted from an internet company to a new consumption enterprise, becoming more asset-heavy. By September 2025, the platform directly shut down the C2C free market to meet the needs of users who have high requirements for security and certainty.
Of course, "users with high requirements for security and certainty" is just official jargon. In simpler terms, it targets those who don't want to deal much with second-hand buyers and sellers and are too lazy to hassle. In those Zhuanzhuan ads that everyone dislikes watching, you can hear many promotional phrases like "quality inspection," "worry-free," and "door-to-door service," used to precisely target the audience.
As the ads say, on the neighboring dark web Xianyu, there are normal second-hand buyers and sellers, there are weirdos whose brain signals are connected to outer planets, and there are countless scalpers pretending to be ordinary people. Ruthless tactics like slashing prices upon receipt are indeed detestable. Therefore, if a relatively authoritative, asset-heavy platform acts as a middleman, it can indeed meet the needs of some people. Even if the middleman's quality inspection and various service fees are ultimately reflected in the price, as long as it's reasonable, it's beyond reproach.
As a result... the middleman (referring to the 'B' in C2B2C, no other meaning) had issues, and specifically with something as obvious as hard currency like graphics cards, which inevitably sparked consumer dissatisfaction. The middleman should resolve issues like information asymmetry, difficulty in establishing trust, and lack of after-sales channels. However, Zhuanzhuan created obvious flaws. Consumers pay for service, but it turned into purely giving money to the middleman, which no one can accept.
Moreover, under the intense scrutiny and evidence provided by netizens, one would assume Zhuanzhuan would tone it down a bit, right? But in the latest video, Zhuanzhuan's acquisition price is still outrageous—a 5080 graphics card worth 6,000 makes the 5090 graphics card at 8,888 look quite fair by comparison.
An ancient philosopher once said that second-hand buyers and sellers might not be sensitive to price, but it's unlikely that they aren't. If the price difference is small, it's understandable for Zhuanzhuan to earn some hard-earned money. Everyone can understand the costs associated with keywords like "quality inspection," "worry-free," and "door-to-door service." But if the price difference is large, to the point of treating consumers like suckers, it will inevitably trigger a backlash in public opinion, making people suspect where the money actually went.
On the other hand, even these services that people are willing to pay extra for have faced numerous doubts, which were brought up again in this public opinion storm. In some official press releases, Zhuanzhuan's services are usually described as "reliable second-hand goods and certain recycling services brought by official verification," which is also the confidence behind Zhuanzhuan's low-buy-high-sell strategy. Nowadays, you can already see various derogatory nicknames like "wire-cutting experts" and "flat-ground wire-slashing kings" being pinned on Zhuanzhuan, reflecting suspicions about the platform's internal processes such as quality inspection and after-sales service.
However, due to the difficulty in distinguishing truth from falsehood, perhaps further observation and follow-up are needed. But in this public opinion storm, Zhuanzhuan has already fallen into the Tacitus Trap—being condemned by the entire internet, it is indeed difficult for it to clear its name through self-proof.
The reason Zhuanzhuan fell into the trap actually returns to Zhuanzhuan's advertising itself—the overwhelming ads have shaped its public image as a entity that spends all its money on promotion. So how is the true "reliable service" demonstrated? Of course, we cannot irresponsibly speculate on where Zhuanzhuan actually spent its budget in its specific operations—but at least from the current results, the most eye-catching aspect remains the brainwashing-style advertisements.
Born from advertising, exploding due to advertising, Zhuanzhuan ultimately became a spinning top, spinning back around. This is the fate of the red logo.
Thinking carefully, this public opinion storm widely advertised Zhuanzhuan's practice of buying low and selling high. Isn't that another form of advertising? The purification was successful.
Of course, I actually hope that second-hand platforms like Zhuanzhuan can honestly provide services instead of harvesting leeks through advertisements. I also hope that bubbles built on advertising and information gaps will become fewer and fewer.
After all, having an area that eliminates mixed quality, reduces consumer choice costs, and prevents profiteers from taking advantage is a good thing. Such demand always exists, and middlemen satisfying this demand will always emerge.
As long as—the middleman itself doesn't act like a profiteer.