Xiao Yangge, who made a comeback just five days ago, has been left badly battered and bruised after hitting a wall.

The era of Xiao Yangge is, by all accounts, truly over.

On October 16, Xiao Yangge officially announced his return to Douyin: he deactivated his old account with over 100 million followers, and opened a new account each for himself and his elder brother.

Right after the news broke, batches of counterfeit accounts popped up rapidly on Douyin, copying the avatars and nicknames completely. The platform's backend immediately launched a special cleanup operation, and processed more than 500 such accounts in batches.

After "disappearing" for two years, the influence of the top grassroots internet celebrity Xiao Yangge still lingers.

Xiao Yangge stated that they have reflected deeply, and "will focus more on content creation and self-operated brand operation", but many netizens obviously do not buy it.

On the night of the 16th, Xiao Yangge and his elder brother appeared together in the "Xiao Yang Select" Douyin live stream. The live broadcast lasted only a few minutes, with less than 2,000 viewers, which is a far cry from the popularity in his peak period. The number of followers of the newly opened account "Qing Yang" grew slowly, only increasing to more than 60,000 so far, and it was even reset to zero for a period of time.

In the comment section, boycotts, taunts and indifferent attitudes are far more common than expectations.

In his heyday, Xiao Yangge achieved an annual GMV of 16 billion yuan, and paid several "small targets" (hundreds of millions of yuan) in taxes every year. To keep a low profile, after discussing with Douyin, the number of followers was only displayed as 99.99 million+. He spent 30 million yuan to hold a concert, did not charge for a single ticket, did not bring goods or accept rewards, purely "giving back to fans".

Compared with the glory of the past, the current situation is almost starting from scratch.

Xiao Yangge, who was hit hard, can no longer act recklessly.

With followers reset to zero, what can he rely on to stage a comeback?

In 2018, veteran short-video creator Sanda Ge predicted that Xiao Yangge would one day "break through 20 million followers". Xiao Yangge responded: "If I have 10 million followers, I will eat shit."

In 2022, he became the first amateur on Douyin to have more than 100 million followers. When he started broadcasting, 1 million people could flood into the live room in just 10 minutes.

It only took him a few short years to rise from a rural teenager to a top internet celebrity.

The reasons for this are, first, his grassroots identity, and second, the outstanding program effect. In particular, with the "Desperate Weekend" series in 2019, he gained more than 30 million followers in one year.

Even when bringing goods, his style is very unique.

In 2019, Xiao Yangge registered and established Lu'an Daxiaoyangge E-Commerce Co., Ltd., which closed down less than a year later. Later, during a co-host live stream with internet celebrity Annie, the latter suggested that they try reverse goods promotion, which gave him a sudden flash of inspiration.

In order to retain users, the style of his usual videos is crazy, and it escalates to total absurdity when doing reverse goods promotion, which led to live stream scenes of biting slippers, pouring water into garbage bags, and torture-style hair washing. In 2022, he earned 187 million yuan only from the live stream clip business.

But all these killer tricks that made him famous collapsed completely when encountering some bottom-line issues.

From being exposed for selling preserved pork with plum vegetables made from pork neck meat, counterfeit Moutai, and fake beef rolls, to the counterfeit mooncakes that stunned Eric Tsang and caused a nationwide uproar, every incident made his fans and passersby unable to tolerate him anymore.

Funny videos and reverse goods promotion cannot justify his lax product selection and deliberate wrongdoing. After "family members" realized that they had become "leeks" being harvested, Xiao Yangge's subsequent path became twice the result with half the effort.

After being banned, he was not reconciled, but many of his attempts could only stay at the experimental stage.

For example, in January 2025, Three Sheep MCN moved its New Year goods special live stream to WeChat Channels, but most of the bullet comments were negative, and the live stream was withdrawn after only four days. In September 2025, Xiao Yangge's "disciples" such as Zui Ge, Qiao Mei and Lao K started their own live streams on Douyin, and the transaction scale of each single live stream was basically about 500,000 yuan. On January 12 this year, the official account of Three Sheep MCN resumed broadcasting, but the sales volume was only 250,000 yuan, and the data was even worse the next day.

In June this year, Da Yangge appeared in an offline e-commerce training camp, which charged 1980 yuan for a 3-day 2-night course. It was soon scolded by netizens until the related videos were deleted and the courses were taken off the shelves.

Netizens proved with their actions that the internet still has memory.

Although his public reputation is still at a very low level, Xiao Yangge actually has some hidden cards for this real comeback.

One is the supply chain and "Xiao Yang Select", which is the most core strategic card of Three Sheep MCN at present. As of April this year, the cumulative sales of self-operated brands exceeded 40 million orders. The other is overseas business: Three Sheep MCN has steadily ranked among the top three cross-border MCNs in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam). In April this year, the anchor "Honglvdeng De Huang" under Three Sheep MCN officially settled in TikTok, earning more than 100,000 US dollars in rewards from a single live stream. Her live stream once topped the daily chart in Vietnam, which also verified that the old traffic routines are still replicable.

But these hidden cards of Xiao Yangge may not have much lethality in the current market.

The live streaming arena in the new era cannot accommodate remnants of the old era

Xiao Yangge left as the "No.1 Brother", but when he came back, everything and everyone had changed.

First of all, the weight of the name "Xiao Yangge" has been diluted by wave after wave of rising stars in the short-video era where metabolism is extremely fast.

For example, on January 30, 2026, Li Yapeng's Pu'er tea special live stream on Douyin achieved a single-session sales of 162 million yuan in 6 hours, with more than 40.28 million cumulative views, topping the platform's total goods sales list. Yu Hui Tongxing relies on knowledge-based content and product selection system to build a sustainable repurchase relationship with "mother-in-law fans", with annual GMV exceeding 21 billion yuan.

There are always endless internet celebrities for people to entertain themselves with, and Xiao Yangge is by no means unique and irreplaceable. If Xiao Yangge is gone today, there will be "Daniel Ge" to take his place tomorrow.

If Xiao Yangge was not once a top internet celebrity, the audience would have long forgotten someone who "disappeared" for two years.

But more worthy of Xiao Yangge's attention than being forgotten is: The rules of the live streaming goods business have been completely different.

In the past, traffic was attracted by personal IP, but now the trend of "de-heading top anchors" is irresistible.

The "2025 White Paper on the Development of the Live E-Commerce Industry" shows that the proportion of GMV driven by top anchors has dropped to 10.66%, that of small and medium anchors has risen to 89.34%, and store live broadcasts account for more than 50%.

In the first half of 2026, in Han Shu's live broadcasts, the overall contribution of influencer promotion was only 7.65%, and the proportion of self-operated transactions reached 68.88%.

Brands, especially large brands, once they are able to do live broadcasts on their own, will no longer need to give profits to anchors. An analyst once told New Weekly: After losing high-quality supply, internet celebrity live rooms are "full of third-tier unknown brands, and product selection decisions are getting worse and worse".

The diminishing utility of personal IP is closely related to another quietly changed rule of the game: the live streaming goods business in the past was trust-driven, but now it is professionalism-driven.

In the past, people believed that the anchors they followed would select good products and seek benefits for them, and those anchors were well aware of this psychology, giving "family members" some small benefits from time to time.

For example, Xiao Yangge required merchants to offer absolutely low prices in his early days. A recruitment staff of an MCN agency revealed that Xiao Yangge usually required breaking the lowest price across the whole network, as well as relevant gift mechanisms. In addition, an e-commerce insider broke the news that brand merchants would give at most a few free samples when looking for others to bring goods, but in Xiao Yangge's live room, they had to give exactly the same full-size products as gifts.

However, after suffering countless losses and gaining a lot of wisdom, people finally understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Therefore, more and more people no longer care about what beautiful words the anchor in the live room says or what his character is like, they only care about whether the products, experience, services and other related things in the live room are reliable.

The best example to illustrate this change is East Buy.

In July 2024, it sold "Yu Hui Tongxing" to Dong Yuhui for 76.58 million yuan. In April this year, the first-generation anchors such as Ming Ming and Tian Quan also resigned one after another.

Without top anchors sitting in, East Buy's performance has risen instead of falling: in the 2026 fiscal year (as of May 31, 2026), the revenue was 5.701 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.8%; the attributable net profit was 544 million yuan, a year-on-year surge of more than 90 times!

The growth momentum mainly comes from