260711 NongJian's livestream rough translation (not chronologically, subbed cuts will come later): 🧵
Q: Is Obsession the second collaboration?
NJ: Yes. When time allows, we'll share more with everyone.
We really want to bring you more new content. Hopefully, we can have new updates every week, or if possible, even new material every single day so we can stay connected with you guys.
We will always stand by all four of them and we hope everyone will continue to support them too. We hope we can all lift each other up so we can keep growing together. I also want to clear up the timeline of events for everyone. Since we are the ones who lived through all of this, the fact that the same old drama keeps getting recycled makes us feel like we shouldn't have to keep explaining ourselves over and over. However, for fans who just recently joined the fandom halfway through, it’s very easy to start believing those rumors are true. Every time our fandom gets something that other fandoms don't have, a wave of smear campaigns, personal attacks and doomposting inevitably follows. Does doing that really benefit the artists? At its core, this is a battle to control the public narrative. While the vast majority of big fan accounts and fansites are wonderful, there are always a few bad actors slipping in to intentionally steer public opinion in a toxic direction.
Let me explain the business logic behind magazines. Initially, it was just a relatively small publication (Schon!). But after talking with them, we felt they truly understood the content and values we wanted to convey, so we chose to collaborate with them. Magazines hold two very critical commercial values: first, they help you get noticed by the fashion industry. Second, they directly influence your pricing power in commercial contracts. Brands look at your magazine sales to evaluate your commercial worth, which determines your performance fee and your overall selling power. They want to see exactly how much product you can help them move. Our commercial team said that someone once posed as a potential brand partner just to fish for D4's collab rates. Moving forward, we'll share more of these insider experiences with you.
Fans can generally be divided into two groups. One group consists of the big fan accounts, the people who manage fandom operations almost full-time, which is incredibly hard work. We’ve actually analyzed where their motivation comes from. Part of it is simply getting to witness their idol achieve greater success and we are truly grateful for that. Another part comes from creating and selling fan merchandise. Some treat making money as their primary goal, since running these accounts long-term requires a profit margin to be sustainable. So to some extent, they organize events and create massive hype to keep the fans happy and invested. On the flip side, there’s a group that is actively against us. They use tactics that are sadly all too common in the Chinese entertainment industry, like instigating fan wars, creating a victim mentality among the fandom, fracturing fan organizations, mass-reporting out of malice, submitting large-scale complaints, and generating negative press. Their ultimate goal is to squeeze out the other group's living space both online and in real life.
In the beginning, someone fabricated a rumor about me and Ah Xing, which made my older sister so angry she was kicking the cabinets every day. I never imagined someone would make up rumors like that. It just felt like the person who started it was completely clueless. What's surprising is that some people actually believed those stories. At first, they even claimed we were bullying QiuQiu and called Ah Xing the "crown prince," deliberately trying to spark a war between the two fanbases. Fortunately, the artists themselves get along too well so that plan completely backfired. Usually, a company has two separate teams managing different artists and when the two fanbases argue, someone will try to stir the pot by telling an artist, "Look at what the other side is saying about you." That can easily damage relationships between artists. But in our house, if anything comes up, everyone talks to each other immediately. We understand perfectly well that those haters don't represent either side. If the company does something that makes people unhappy, we welcome constructive feedback. Once we get it the company will fix it and make adjustments within a few days. We focus entirely on the artists themselves, and we truly do not participate in or manage any fandom disputes.
Jul, Aug and Sep are the off-season for commercial events. Our songs have actually been prepared for quite some time now. Many plans were locked in well in advance. We are now mapping out our commercial campaigns for 11.11 while prepping our next year's commercial strategy.
We have thoroughly checked the work logs of all our teams, including the directing crew and other staff units. We have always enforced incredibly strict requirements regarding color palettes. People might look at it and just see one shade of blue, but that is short-sighted. That specific shade of blue didn't represent Ah Xing or Pei En. It was simply adjusted by the directing team to achieve a better lighting effect in the front. They showed us their work logs and promised to pay much closer attention to this issue moving forward. Support colors shouldn't be an absolute restriction imposed on the artists.
Someone asked "Why is it that only your concerts seem to run into so many issues?"
From the very beginning, we have always insisted on selling tickets strictly at face value. Yet, some people sarcastically claimed, "They're only selling them at face value because they can't sell out." But as you’ve all seen by now, the concert at the AsiaWorld-Expo was completely packed. What our team is doing right now is exactly what most others either can't do or don't want to do. The most important thing is getting to watch all four of them grow and improve while being able to meet like-minded people in the fandom and make a lot of great friends along the way.
For the foreseeable future, we still have plenty of opportunities to meet you all. That being said, I'm sure you can feel that the overall industry environment is tightening up. Everyone is pushing boundaries a bit too far in many aspects right now. But we still firmly believe that a diverse community where everyone gets to thrive is the most wonderful thing, we are not each other's enemies. Our perspective and mindset have never changed. While many might feel that the current competition is getting cutthroat, what our team truly wants is to see more fans who feel free. Real life already comes with way too much pressure, so when you watch our content, you should enjoy our little games, watch our fun videos and have a good laugh. Please believe that sincerity and kindness still exist in this world.
Recently, there have been countless rumors flying around regarding our upcoming projects and endorsement deals. The most outrageous one claimed that we're about to collaborate with Coca-Cola. If Coca-Cola or any brand with that level of massive global recognition were genuinely willing to grant us a proper title and collaborate, we would gladly pay them out of our own pockets just to make that partnership happen!
Now there are even rumors starting up between Pei En and me (JZ), and honestly, I am sick of it. Rumours like this are incredibly frustrating. Pei En is also incredibly unlucky to get dragged into this nonsense and the sole purpose of it is just to scare away his fans. That's why we need to communicate and express ourselves more openly. When we first saw these rumors, whether it was about Ah Xing and JZ or Pei En and JZ, we all just found it hilarious. We never thought these kinds of things would ever require us to stand up and give a formal explanation. We don't want to let down our fans' sincerity. Right now, we still have several hundred kilograms of fan support gifts that we are trying to find storage for. We truly see everyone's heart and we can deeply feel the warmth and support you give us.
A lot of you don't have enough time to sit through our entire livestreams, so you only catch short clips or scattered edits, making it very easy to be misled by others. Because of this, we will be interacting and communicating with you much more frequently in the future to clear up any misunderstandings. My personal way of comforting myself is rewatching content of the four of them, rewatching the series and just watching their stage performances until 6 a.m. It genuinely makes me so, so happy.
When the four of them first entered the entertainment industry, they witnessed a lot of its dark sides so they always encouraged each other for encouragement.
Recently, there’s been non-stop talk about big fan accounts turning their backs or fans jumping ship, but we suddenly had an epiphany. As it turns out, our choice to never get involved in manipulating fandom dynamics was absolutely the right call. We've even seen people who used to be massive fans of a certain artist suddenly turn around and attack them. For instance, just yesterday, I saw someone claiming that the four of them went to audition for another production team but got rejected. This type of rhetoric is a textbook attempt to put us down just to lift someone else up.
Someone was saying: "You guys just want to be a boy group idol." If that's what we actually wanted, we would have debuted as a boy group from the start. Then someone said we only care about making money. If it were solely about the money, we would have just focused entirely on promoting CPs. But the absolute strongest competitive edge of D4 is the four of them together.
Some people accuse me of playing favorites with Pei En, while simultaneously complaining that LangTu's storyline felt rushed and incomplete. Before that, people claimed I was biased toward Ah Xing because his birthday was the first one we celebrated. Then they said we only accept support from XQ fans but reject it from JL fans. The internet can be such a terrifyingly hostile place, and the malice directed at us is massive. A single person online can operate up to a hundred alternate accounts, yet irl every one who meets us is friendly.
We have never once viewed LangTu as background characters.
Recently, so many fan creators in our fandom were being attacked. And now it's obvious why. People wanted to stop our fandom from creating content because it is actually the hardest thing to do. Making clickbait or stirring up drama is easy. But consistently editing videos, writing fanfiction, making graphics, retouching photos, that takes real effort. Those creators are exactly the ones who get targeted. So we really hope all our creators can keep their spirits up. Please pick up your pots and spatulas and keep cooking.
People constantly mocked our little games or behind-the-scenes videos. They'd ask, "Why are you making this stuff?" But that's exactly the point.
They're trying to discourage everyone: fan creators, our staff, the four members until they start wondering whether people enjoy this kind of content.
And if we stop making it, then the people attacking us have achieved exactly what they wanted. Some of our competitors simply don't have this kind of content. So they criticise ours until we stop producing it. We're not going to let that happen. From the very beginning, when the drama first aired, we were already producing group vlogs, variety content, travel videos, training camp footage, all kinds of extra material. People mocked it, called it amateurish, said we were just trying to squeeze money out of fans. But all of that takes a huge amount of work. When people call it cheap or unprofessional, it discourages the entire team. That's why we emphasize communicating with our staff. Their motivation and enthusiasm matter. We want them to enjoy making it so everyone can enjoy watching it.
The other day, my sister and I were discussing why people say that "a youthful heart can never truly be recreated." I think it's because, as people grow older and experience more they realize what they're lacking often isn't money or even opportunities but vitality. That spark of life. After enough setbacks, after life gradually wears away your edges, many people lose that vibrant life force. But if supporting idols or drawing inspiration from them helps you regain that vitality, gives you something you want to do again, someone you want to meet and the courage to overcome challenges that you had nearly given up on then I think that's an incredible gift. And for us, it would also make us genuinely happy.
Q: "Did Pei En really audition for a drama where he'd be in a CP with someone outside your company?"
NJ: "No, absolutely not. We don't have enough time for our projects, let alone outside projects."
"Where's the duo content?"
NJ: From last year until now, we've released a huge amount of duo content. Please go back and review it. If people are still saying we don't have duo content after all that, then there's really nothing more we can do.
"Happy birthday. XingQiu 99, JiangLi 99, D4 99."
NJ: That's right that's right. Thank you!
