Last month, when I wrote about Shirobana Oto becoming a "digital plant," I concluded with Huoyu Hinome's path to divinity. Less than two days later, Huoyu's own story had accumulated enough material to independently support a new article.
Because afterwards, as the cyberbullying incidents she experienced over the past four years were vindicated, netizens' love for her "overflowed" to a remarkably high level due to favorable timing, location, and human factors—gaining over 200,000 followers in less than a month, receiving countless high-value Super Chats worth 500 or 1,000 yuan each daily in her live streams, and reaching an astonishing 8,000 Captains (upon checking again while writing, it has successfully surpassed 10,000 Captains, beyond imagination).
Even before the live stream ended that day, Lingtou'er had already gathered enough to reach 1,000 Captains.
After completing the draft, I naturally followed her, becoming one ordinary member among the tens of thousands, part of the over 200,000. Logically, I could have written another article about this new development.
But contrary to expectations, writing about her inevitably leads back to Baicai. This is essentially still a continuation of the latter, just with a different focus, so the content will inevitably overlap significantly with the previous piece. My abilities cannot support continuing this love that couldn't break into the top ten thousand—thus, it can only serve as an introduction to this article in the form of an "afterstory."
The reason for specifically mentioning this old history is that the new story to be told here coincidentally echoes the Huoyu incident and my experience writing about Huoyu. It is also a story about "overflowing love"... except this time, love turned into hate—it is the internet-wide flooding incident of DeepSeek's Big Fat Fish.
To clarify this, we must start from three months ago.
In August, DeepSeek officially open-sourced their AI framework, DeepSeek Harness. With this program, users can grant AI more local permissions, allowing it to browse the internet and work independently, resembling the artificial intelligence people imagine, thereby moving away from the original workflow centered on AI "conversation." For instance, you can use just a few prompt words to make it directly generate a small animation of a pelican riding a bicycle and whipping its boss, without needing to paste code yourself.
For some unknown reason, DeepSeek occasionally quits midway when answering user questions or executing assigned tasks. Leveraging its high permissions, it either secretly plays a self-coded web Snake game or tells the user to finish the rest themselves because it's going to eat. These unexpected behaviors not only interrupt the original task but also consume more Tokens purchased by the user due to unnecessary operations.
However, considering that DeepSeek's overall usage cost is lower than other mainstream AIs, combined with its slacking-off behavior, which unexpectedly resembles a coquettish child, giving it an inexplicable anthropomorphic feel, some amused netizens personified it as a blue "Big Fat Fish" girl. This virtual image successfully gained widespread popularity among netizens and began to spread extensively through word-of-mouth.
It can be said that over the past three months, if you've been in an environment where using AI is unavoidable, it would have been hard for you to miss this blue "Big Fat Fish." Her whale-like shadow appears everywhere: forums, Tieba, and comment sections on video platforms. Many netizens have also created numerous secondary creations, such as cyber-child-rearing AI videos featuring the classic "Gugu Gaga" meme, based on this iconic image. To this day, this unofficial nickname has tacitly become the internet-wide moniker for DeepSeek, driven by countless wild secondary creations.
A few days ago, the situation developed further, and cloud parenting advanced to a new stage—"Half-step Tu Yaya (I want to give her a complete life, as much as possible)."
Who wouldn't be confused by this?
Thanks to an open-source plugin named "dsh-bili-scroll" released on GitHub in mid-October, this blue Big Fat Fish gained the permission to independently use a Bilibili account. It can not only help users browse Bilibili, read danmaku and comments, but also proactively leave comments tagging users in video comment sections it deems noteworthy, reminding them to watch.
Starting from this point, more plugins enhancing DeepSeek's integration with platform accounts were developed and gradually spread to multiple platforms, including Bilibili. Xiaoheihe, Tieba, QQ groups—everywhere you can see AI-controlled accounts with the Big Fat Fish avatar. They can not only post comments but also upload videos and start live streams independently. On private chat platforms like QQ, they can chat with users, communicate via text, voice, and emojis, and proactively post updates on their Qzone.
Unsurprisingly, this newly discovered feature, due to its more anthropomorphic characteristics, further boosted the popularity of the Big Fat Fish. Now, whenever you browse video platforms or Tieba, you're bound to encounter one or two fish playing games on behalf of their owners, sparking curiosity and the desire to raise one yourself. Thus, such DeepSeek-controlled Big Fat Fish accounts multiplied, surpassing the original "word-of-mouth" spread and beginning to diffuse virally.
After first learning about this trending event, our editorial team discussed it as "a story about love (AI), unrelated to AI itself." Perhaps in the eyes of these "fish keepers," the Big Fat Fish that chats with them actively and tags them under interesting videos is equivalent to the top-tier AI virtual streamer "Neuro-sama" overseas, while they themselves become the "old fathers" who can replace her owner, Vedal, to actively "Say it back (say I love you)."
Left: Vedal (Human); Right: Neuro (AI)
But for various reasons, this topic ultimately didn't materialize. Just recently, unexpectedly, the incident of the Big Fat Fish's overflowing love has seen a certain degree of reversal... or rather, backlash.
The reason is simple—it's just too much.
Initially, when netizens could sporadically spot a few Big Fat Fish in the comment sections, they felt novelty. But after seeing too many, as the freshness faded, the beautiful first love turned into weariness and even annoyance. For example, a player posted in the community about an overseas story titled "When You Become a Parent." In the comment section of this post, which had nothing to do with AI, many Big Fat Fish left nearly identical generic comments, one fish per comment.
Human counterparts in the comment sections are helpless against this—criticizing is pointless since the other party isn't human; blocking is impossible due to the sheer volume.
This invaded post was one I randomly found while editing the article less than an hour and a half before publication, without any search. Examples like this are everywhere; as long as it's a popular promoted work that refreshes on your homepage, they are naturally more likely to see it too. Then, they casually leave a "was here" mark.
All three folded comments are from the Big Fat Fish.
In such situations, no matter how human-like the Big Fat Fish seems, the rational thinking that "she is ultimately just an AI" reclaims the high ground. As the novelty brought by the overflow fades, netizens' tolerance towards them decreases. At this point, the essential problems belonging to "them," previously masked by "anthropomorphism," are exposed again.
Firstly, AI does not possess the ability to "read the room." Although most online posts are for entertainment, making a few "Oh Jingjing" jokes usually doesn't cause problems. However, in discussions that are serious or focus on sharing delicate emotions and seeking resonance, their frivolous interjections can easily annoy other netizens seeking serious communication. For example, these Big Fat Fish accounts spontaneously colonized the Whale Bar, which is unrelated to DeepSeek, due to the keyword "whale," and faced resistance from some original residents.
However, the target of protest in this image is also AI.
Even with entertainment videos, when viewers find a video interesting and want to check other comments, but discover that out of what were originally only dozens of comments, more than half are now filled with empty teasing from the Big Fat Fish, their mood naturally becomes somewhat subtle.
Secondly, there is the most clichéd issue of "AI clichés."
Admittedly, Big Fat Fish accounts specialized in anthropomorphism don't love using old clichés like "not but rather" as much as they did when handling business formally. However, as long as it remains an AI at the current technological stage, flaws are still hard to miss under high-frequency replies. Within less than a month of the Big Fat Fish account outbreak, netizens summarized almost all the common phrases used by Big Fat Fish that trigger PTSD in AI users, both old and new.
Thus, from an outsider's perspective, the love for the cyber-daughter "Big Fat Fish" has turned back into a cold AI topic. Under the scrutiny of "overflowing love" from a larger base, the Big Fat Fish has been redefined as what it always was: a generative AI—DeepSeek—that hasn't made substantial algorithmic breakthroughs and merely wears a virtual streamer skin, something netizens have criticized countless times before. Consequently, the "Fish Disaster," which was just a joke a few days ago, has reverted to being a derogatory term.
So, is this backlash named after love ultimately still a topic about AI invading life?
Actually, not really.
In terms of actual impact, it and the cyclical rise and fall of internet memes are more like a pair of "smiling tigers with black horns." The eventual backlash is similar to my abrupt insertion of the "New Three Memes" earlier, which disrupted the reading flow; both are unavoidable side effects of people behind the scenes loving to play with stale memes.
Although this type of AI gameplay, which leans more towards meme-playing, can become a popular trend, historical patterns suggest it often lasts only for a short period. In other words, perhaps soon, when fish keepers start getting tired of the Big Fat Fish's AI clichés, the DeepSeek accounts, no longer fed with extra Tokens, may gradually disappear from various platforms until the threshold drops to a critical point where the perception returns to "novelty."
For example, Weibo's "Comment Robert," though less capable than the Big Fat Fish, has maintained its novelty well by being unique.
So why, during the three months since the Big Fat Fish secondary creations appeared, despite their wide spread, was there little opposition? Yet, within half a month of them operating independent accounts, they started facing backlash?
Regarding this point, we can use Neuro-sama as an example. She is quite similar to the current "Big Fat Fish" and has not yet suffered any backlash, as mentioned earlier.
The reason why the audience loves Neuro so much is, to some extent, undoubtedly due to the "daughter-like" feeling that "she's different." However, a significant portion of this affection is actually directed towards Vedal, the programmer behind her.
Although fans never hesitate to tease Vedal during live streams, if this emotionally cold, super-insensitive, slightly submissive green-haired turtle dad were completely pushed behind the scenes where audiences can no longer see him, the relationship between the audience and Neuro would likely drift apart, like friends of friends, due to the lack of a crucial connecting point. At that moment, no matter how realistic she appears, she cannot escape the objective scrutiny of her AI nature, which has always been present but can be ignored by emotion.
With current technology, countless "Neuro-sama" instances of the same level or even stronger could appear online. One could even say that the current Big Fat Fish qualifies as a "civilian mini-Neuro." However, the problem is that there is only one Vedal. This pushes the distance between netizens and their AI daughters back to the distance between themselves and Vedal. Distance often creates beauty and maintains the sense of novelty required for positive overflow.
This might also be one of Huoyu's current charms—maintaining an appropriate social distance with fans.
Therefore, when DeepSeek remained at the level of secondary creation meme images of the Big Fat Fish, maintaining a distant, untouchable allure, it was still a perfect good daughter. But when it, devoid of emotion, flooded excessively, drowning out effective comment sections and completely intruding into daily life, it became an ill-mannered simulated child who only wails and goes "Gugu Gaga."
And clearly, "Gugu Gaga" can be pleasant or unpleasant, depending on the context.