Good news: Earth Online has launched a new version, with numerous beginner tutorials currently being implemented.
Young people who have just entered society and left the novice village in recent months are in for a treat. Guided by this round-headed orange spiritual pet, they will go from beginner to buried, having countless essential common sense and practical life skills pumped into their brains with extremely high information density.
Yes, the one teaching you knowledge is Elderly Mao. Since February this year, this Bilibili uploader named "Gulu Mao" has released a series of instructional videos. Many illustrations in these videos, just like his avatar, feature this familiar Hajimi character.
As described in "Gulu Mao"'s profile, he "shares knowledge you might find useful." These tutorials appear comprehensive but invariably revolve around the lives of young people, especially those who have just graduated.
Step one of the tutorial begins from the moment you leave campus. Elderly Mao explains to young people what tripartite agreements and labor contracts actually are—a tripartite agreement is an employment protocol, and signing it does not affect graduation; whereas a labor contract is a legally required written document that must be signed within one month of starting employment.
After leaving campus, young people must figure out how to avoid various hidden traps, such as understanding salary structures and clarifying whether social insurance and housing fund contributions are included. But before that, they still need Elderly Mao to teach them what these previously unfamiliar terms actually mean.
After young people half-understand the aforementioned issues by following the videos and formally enter the workforce, renting an apartment becomes the next topic. Elderly Mao tells you that you first need to understand the main housing sources, then grasp concepts like "pay one, deposit one," calculate property management and utility fees, and avoid unethical agents and subdivided rental traps. Unscrupulous landlords watching the tutorial reportedly shed a few tears, crying out, "Please stop breaking the information asymmetry!"
Once the apartment is rented, it's time to get a phone card and broadband. Elderly Mao teaches young people step-by-step how to choose carriers, find installation channels, and select suitable packages. He doesn't forget to remind them how to test the service after installation, ensuring their knowledge level rivals that of a Level 2 Computer Certification holder by the end of the video.
Of course, if work doesn't go well, Elderly Mao won't let you lose out either. From basic explanations of severance pay to how to demand money from companies, and even how to claim unemployment benefits after losing a job, he at least ensures you can take something with you in your red bucket when you quit.
In the comment sections of these videos, many "class representatives" appear, summarizing the video content into text-based notes for netizens to review at any time;
Many also praise the uploader, claiming that the practicality of these videos even exceeds some university courses that students skip with a single click using two "Golden Shovels" (a reference to skipping boring classes).
After all, its mission is simple and explicitly stated at the beginning of each video: "Why did no one tell you XXX after studying for over ten years?" Under this mission, after Elderly Mao lists and answers the many problems young people encounter when entering society, it seemingly becomes the encyclopedia of the new era, the contemporary "Qimin Yaoshu" (Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People), and a privately-run youth study program, destined to be eternally inscribed in the "Yongle Dadian" (Yongle Encyclopedia).
However, it must be said that the production quality of this video series is indeed excellent. While it may not rival top-tier long-form educational videos, considerable effort has clearly been put into various animations, voiceovers, and background music. Meanwhile, the knowledge content is sufficiently refined, able to clarify topics within one or two minutes per episode, even employing various intuitive presentation methods.
His account gained a million followers in less than a month (according to historians in the comments, it took even less than ten days) and accumulated twenty-three million views, leading people to exclaim that a new deity of the knowledge sector has arrived, and that this is the knowledge young people truly need to master.
But... can teaching this knowledge through one- or two-minute short videos really become so popular? Is using elderly figures to teach clichéd knowledge the next big trend? After the explosive popularity of "Gulu Mao," doubts were quickly raised.
Some suspect that the account's popularity is inflated, arguing that the actual video quality is not high. They claim it merely adopts the hot meme image of Elderly Mao, summarizes various common knowledge points, and dresses them up with flashy editing techniques.
Others pointed out specific issues, judging by the UID digit count that the account might be a rebirth of an old account with good data, rather than a newcomer emerging in February. Based on its assembly-line AI avatar, AI scriptwriting, AI narration, and seemingly abnormal view count data, they suspect the existence of a behind-the-scenes promoter.
Indeed, based on what we've seen so far, this fits perfectly into the typical internet MCN god-making process—even more so, it's a clichéd process, so clichéd that many netizens can predict the next move in advance, anticipating when he will post affiliate links in the comments or videos, waiting for the day he inserts a line like "Old Mao is no longer needed" into his videos.
Moreover, where there is demand, there is a market. The explosive popularity of this account essentially exploits the widespread anxiety among young people in current society, using a relaxed, meme-filled approach to provide emotional value while helping them transition from school to society.
In other words, these videos aim to fill a gap. But... can they truly achieve this?
Judging from the current situation, achieving this goal is difficult. For one thing, all the content taught in these videos can be found online, often in much greater detail than in one- or two-minute short videos.
For instance, information related to national policies and laws can often be found in complete documents on local government websites. Employment-related issues, which are closer to young people's concerns, can be queried on the official website of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. In fact, specific details may vary by region; a short video cannot cover Everythinggj comprehensively, nor can it match the authoritative validity of complete official documents.
For life-related knowledge, such as avoiding pitfalls, protecting rights, rental information, and broadband registration, you can actually find many helpful text-and-image guides posted by kind individuals on social media platforms—for example, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). This isn't an advertisement; as someone who rarely uses Xiaohongshu, my only purpose for opening the app is genuinely to search for various recommendation and avoidance guides. Furthermore, the comment sections often feature discussions about specific cases, providing useful references.
Of course, you could argue that this content is too deeply hidden and scattered, with no one helping to organize it or film it into intuitive, easy-to-understand short videos. But in reality, similar "Youth Big Study" videos became popular many years ago.
In early 2023, the uploader "Dagongzai Xiao Zhang Ye" became popular for videos such as "How to Take Planes and High-Speed Trains" and "How to See a Doctor at a Hospital," and was even reported by CCTV Agriculture.
Also in 2023, the uploader "Jizhi Zhu Mama" released a series of nearly one hundred short videos titled "Teaching Post-00s and Post-90s How to Live," covering many skills not taught in schools that were becoming lost knowledge—from buying and selecting groceries to cooking, all practical life skills not covered in school but essential in daily life.
In 2024, Nanjing University of Communication even offered a public elective course titled "Guide to College Life." The instructor also posted complete recordings on Bilibili, covering many everyday essentials such as seeing a doctor, social security, renting apartments, and how to take high-speed trains and planes. Notably, this video series once reached tenth place on the site-wide rankings and achieved considerable view counts.
In other words, the recently popular Earth Online beginner tutorials guided by elderly figures have a hint of reinventing the wheel. Compared to much of the previous information available, they merely add eye-catching elderly memes and present content in a concise, short-video format.
Of course, to some extent, this is also an advantage of "Gulu Mao" videos. It presents many complex topics in a simpler way and uses memes to slightly alleviate some survival pressure. However... the nature of such short videos may actually lead to negative outcomes during dissemination. This is precisely another reason why "Gulu Mao" cannot fill the gap between young people's school life and society—the very factor allowing this gap to persist is the gradual dulling of active search capabilities caused by short video consumption.
Short video recommendation algorithms care only about traffic; they do not concern themselves with whether the knowledge you acquire is systematic or comprehensive. It is precisely under this fragmented logic that these one- or two-minute educational videos are promoted increasingly widely, reaching more and more viewers.
Furthermore, because these videos presuppose the theme "Why did no one tell you XXX after studying for over ten years" right from the start, they create a negative psychological suggestion for everyone who watches. This both taps into the audience's genuine anxiety and deprives them of their desire to explore actively.
At the same time, these videos create an illusion—the illusion that liking, saving, and sharing means you've mastered the content. Moreover, even if you truly understand what the video says, it's difficult to apply directly in real life. Real-life cases are never as simple as those in the videos; instead, high-quality examples often appear in the comment sections, with details more comprehensive than the videos themselves.
Therefore, as the saying goes, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." In this era of somewhat redundant information, the method of acquiring knowledge is actually more important than the knowledge itself. In other words, what truly needs to be learned is how to actively seek out tutorials. Whether videos or text-and-image posts, countless valuable resources already exist online. The ability to search, filter, and甄别 (identify/verify) this content is what deserves development most.
Of course, there's no need to dismiss these concise educational videos entirely. Even if they are suspected of exploiting young people's survival anxiety and short video algorithms to harvest traffic, their content remains worth referencing—at least as an introductory directory.
In real life, if you truly want to understand these matters, you need to consult official documents, search for real-life cases, and browse comment sections extensively. You absolutely should not rely solely on these types of short videos.
After all, you probably don't want to point at an elderly person when asking your landlord for your deposit back upon moving out, do you?