After the topic "The Days I Don't Have a Job in China" went viral, foreign bloggers who speak "machine-translated Chinese" have encountered public backlash and their carefully maintained personas have collapsed.

The Chinese internet has spawned a new "foreign language".

In the video, a foreign content creator named "KirillDobrachev Colin" carries a vibe of "half-alive half-dead", documenting his daily life of being unemployed in China: waking up, eating, going out.

What used to be the most ordinary life suddenly becomes absurd after being rearranged sentence by sentence with his broken Chinese.

"My day of no job in China, today I leave my home, sit on random subway station, I arrive very far, start open umbrella."

Every character is recognizable, but when put together, it feels like a disjointed machine translation. Coupled with his slightly stiff voiceover as a beginner of Chinese, the sense of contrast is full. A netizen commented under the video: "So sad, I seem to see my own English composition."

Colin's Chinese is so plain, unadorned, and abstract.

For example, when his clothes are not dry, he holds a hair dryer to blow hard at the clothes, explaining "I use hair electric to dry my clothes"; when he finds himself thinner, instead of saying "I lost weight", he says "I scaled"; when he buys something unwanted, he complains "I waste money buy useless garbage".

No one can understand Colin's train of thought when he speaks Chinese, and he thus created a new internet language called "Colin-style Chinese".

According to NewRank data, starting from June this year, Colin's Douyin account has been gaining followers continuously, with the maximum number of followers reaching 1.12 million, and the total number of likes on his works exceeding 18 million.

Soon, Colin-style Chinese spread from person to person on the internet, and even extended to animal characters.

Many netizens use his sentence pattern to shoot life vlogs, and some pet content creators let cats and dogs join in, sharing videos such as "Meow's day of no job in China" and "Woof's day of no job in China", many of which have received hundreds of thousands of likes on Douyin.

Who would have thought that this chaotic word order is actually very suitable for kittens and puppies to shoot videos, giving people the feeling that animals would speak in such a cute way if they haven't learned the human language order.

Originally, this was another story of a foreign content creator becoming popular on the internet with broken Chinese, but a twist emerged later.

Recently, Colin has been embroiled in controversy for previously posting photos involving racial stereotypes such as "slanted eyes". Although Colin later released a statement in response, the related discussions continued to intensify.

From a foreign content creator who became famous with "broken Chinese" to being embroiled in controversy now, what kind of changes has Colin's internet career experienced? How did machine-translation-style Chinese become an internet meme? What new changes in the foreign content creator track are reflected behind this?

Gaining millions of followers in a single month and then "collapsing" rapidly, how did Colin make it happen?

If there were no self-media platforms, Colin's "days of no job" would probably be more numerous.

He is a Russian model. As early as February last year, he frequently updated his daily life on Douyin, but his Chinese was not good at that time, the voiceovers and subtitles were all in English, and he had very few followers.

Judging from the video content, he is indeed often in a state of unemployment. His daily routine is eating, working out, zoning out, and occasionally learning Chinese and watching anime. Both the voiceover and his whole state exude a "half-alive half-dead" vibe.

In one video, he once commented on his state as a content creator like this: "as a tiktoker i lost self respect a long time ago".

At that time, Colin had updated dozens of English vlogs on Douyin, but the popularity of the videos was not very high, and the number of followers had not yet exceeded 10,000. Some enthusiastic netizens gave him suggestions, asking him to add tags such as "half-alive half-dead", "foreigner", and "Vlog" to his videos to increase exposure.

But he replied: "It doesn't work".

The traffic did not improve, and there were not many job opportunities in reality.

So around February this year, Colin moved to Thailand to live, and it was from then on that he started uploading Chinese voiceover videos on Douyin.

At the beginning of the video, it is the familiar line for netizens: "My day of no job in Thailand". A Russian in Thailand, using a "thunderous Chinese" to record his unemployed daily life. The combination of several contrasts stacks all the buffs, which also allows him to gradually accumulate a group of followers on Douyin.

Although there are still not many modeling jobs in Thailand, doing self-media has indeed brought him some opportunities to make money.

Only about a month after releasing the Chinese videos, he received a collaboration from a local medical beauty clinic in Thailand.

On March 11, he went to the clinic to experience the project in the video, and specifically mentioned that the staff can not only speak English, but also fluent Chinese, and recommended this clinic to netizens who are planning to go to Bangkok. After that, he also recommended products such as antiperspirant cream in the video.

Perhaps seeing the opportunity in the Chinese market, in May this year, he left Thailand and came to China to live, and the theme of the video also became "My day of looking for a job in China".

At first, he shared a rental apartment with foreign friends in Guangdong, and the two of them shot some abstract videos from time to time. He even taught his friends his own way of doing self-media: "Should go outside do awkward thing, pretend to be stupid foreigner."

Later, his friend moved away, and Colin came to Shanghai to continue updating the "day of no job" series.

As the videos spread continuously, more and more netizens began to pay attention to this foreign content creator speaking machine-translation-style Chinese. Some commented: "I finally feel what it's like to read a diary-style essay." Others joked: "This is the reply letter from Li Hua in my English composition."

After becoming popular, Colin not only received some job opportunities in modeling, but also received business collaborations from brands such as "Happy Elements' Match 3 Game", and his career began to take off.

Looking back on Colin's road to popularity, his success is not only due to the machine-translation-style Chinese. Behind each vlog, netizens see the real state of a foreign young man living in a foreign country, looking for a job, and trying to learn Chinese. Everyone can not only be amused by his abstract Chinese translation, but also resonate with his down state when he is unemployed.

Even under his birthday video, the birthday wishes from netizens are: "Wish you all days with job in the future."

But obviously, Colin failed to live up to the sincerity of Chinese netizens. Recently, someone dug up the "slanted eyes" photo that Colin previously posted on overseas social platforms, a Western discriminatory image against Asians, believing that he does not respect China and is racist.

On July 19, Colin posted a graphic response on Douyin, explaining that the relevant content was not his real thought, and the slanted eyes photo was taken as a joke with friends many years ago, with no intention of discrimination. However, netizens thought this response evaded the key points, and the comment section is still full of skeptical voices. Now, Colin has enabled the do-not-disturb protection mode for his account.

Under the controversy, Colin's account also lost followers. Up to now, the number of followers of his Douyin account has dropped from 1.12 million to 1.02 million.

From an unnoticed foreign model a few months ago, to a popular content creator gaining millions of followers in a single month, and now to being embroiled in public opinion turmoil, Colin's rise to fame is extremely dramatic.

From Colin to cats and dogs, why did the machine-translation-style Chinese spread from person to person?

However, Colin being embroiled in controversy did not affect the continued spread of this machine-translation-style expression.

To some extent, this is also the wonder of internet meme culture: a person's sudden rise to fame may eventually break away from the person himself and become a public way of expression.

"My day of no job in China" has become a new internet meme, and many creators use this slightly stiff machine-translation-style Chinese to shoot their own life vlogs, spawning more secondary creative content.

For example, the content creator "Xiao Xiao Bai Bai You Bai" used Colin-style Chinese to record his foreign roommate's "day of no job" in Portugal. When applying sunscreen, he said: "Smear sun on body." When playing happily with the dog by the sea, he said: "I and my dog happily jump into sea."

The Chinese expression in this video was evaluated