韭菜

Bilibili — affectionately called 'B站' — is China's premier video platform beloved by Gen-Z and millennials, built on anime, gaming, and fan culture. Think YouTube meets Twitch meets a high-school cafeteria where everyone quotes the same niche memes. Its signature 'danmu' bullet comments scroll across the screen in real time, turning every video into a communal roast. By 2016 it had exploded beyond niche otaku territory into mainstream youth culture.

Imagine taking a clip of a politician, celebrity, or anime character and chopping it into a seizure-inducing loop of their most dramatic facial expressions, synchronized to a pounding electronic beat. That's 鬼畜 — China's answer to YouTube Poop and MLG meme edits. It's absurdist, hypnotic, and deliberately overwhelming. The weirder and more repetitive, the better. By 2016, Bilibili had become its spiritual home, with creators competing to make the most chaotically catchy remixes imaginable.

When Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui told a reporter at the 2016 Rio Olympics that she had used her 'primordial force' to win bronze, she accidentally launched a meme for the ages. The phrase, borrowed from ancient mythology to describe the raw energy at the dawn of creation, became the go-to hyperbole for anyone who has ever given absolutely everything — at the gym, at work, or just getting out of bed on a Monday morning.

Born from a viral Weibo post in 2016, '蓝瘦香菇' (lán shòu xiānggū) is a phonetic pun on '难受想哭' (nán shòu xiǎng kū), meaning 'feeling awful and want to cry.' A heartbroken guy accidentally typed the homophones — literally 'blue thin mushroom' — and the internet lost its mind. The phrase became the go-to way to express misery with a comic twist, because nothing says 'I'm devastated' quite like a sad little mushroom.