The Mystery Man Who Said He Bought and Ate Yu Menglong — The Disgusting Truth Behind It! (NH)

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📰 The Mystery Man Who Said He Bought and Ate Yu Menglong — The Disgusting Truth Behind It!

Published: October 29, 2025

Introduction

At first, it sounded like something torn from a nightmare.
A single post on a Chinese microblogging platform — short, shocking, and absolutely deranged — read:

“I bought Yu Menglong. I ate him. He was delicious.”

The internet froze. Was this madness, satire, or something far darker?
Within hours, the post became the most discussed phrase on Weibo. Fans panicked. News aggregators reposted it without context. The algorithms, hungry for outrage, amplified the absurdity into hysteria.

For those unfamiliar, Yu Menglong is one of China’s most beloved young actors — a soft-spoken, clean-cut figure whose face adorns beauty campaigns and historical dramas alike. The idea that someone could even joke about buying and eating him seemed like a grotesque violation of both reason and decency.

But behind the viral chaos lay something deeper — a mirror reflecting the state of modern digital culture: where rumors mutate faster than facts, where outrage fuels engagement, and where the line between fiction and fear no longer exists.

This is the story of the mysterious man who claimed to have eaten a celebrity — and what his words revealed about the dark appetites of the internet.

1. The Spark of Madness

It was posted at 2:14 a.m. — a time when the internet’s underbelly thrives.
The account name was “The Collector”, a handle previously known for strange, provocative jokes. But this time, something was different. The tone wasn’t playful. It was chillingly direct.

“I bought Yu Menglong. I ate him. He was delicious.”

In under fifteen minutes, thousands of users took screenshots. Some laughed it off. Others panicked. The Chinese social media ecosystem, tightly surveilled and intensely reactive, lit up with alarm.

The post vanished within half an hour. But the screenshots did not. They multiplied, mutated, and metastasized across TikTok, Douyin, and private chat groups. By dawn, the phrase had become a full-blown digital urban legend.

2. The Idol and His Image

To understand the chaos, you must understand Yu Menglong.
He is not a scandalous star. He is, by design, untainted — the embodiment of innocence and politeness. With soft features, kind eyes, and a whispery voice, he built a career on roles that idealize purity and emotional sincerity.

His fanbase — millions strong — worships him not merely as an actor, but as a moral archetype. To them, Yu Menglong is not just famous; he is beloved.

That’s what made the hoax feel so blasphemous. It was not simply a lie. It was an act of digital desecration.

“People don’t just love Yu Menglong,” one fan explained in a later forum post. “They need him to stay pure. He represents something we lost in this world — something gentle.”

That sense of purity, ironically, was what made the rumor so combustible. When perfection meets corruption, audiences can’t look away.

3. The Man Behind the Mask

Days later, internet sleuths traced the source.
“The Collector” was allegedly a 27-year-old man named Zhao Heng, a failed livestreamer and self-styled “conceptual artist” from Guangdong. He’d been banned multiple times for “dark performance” pieces — videos where he mimed acts of violence or absurd confession.

In a later interview (before being detained), Zhao claimed:

“I wanted to test belief. To see how far people will go when confronted with something unthinkable.”

To him, the post was art — a mirror to mass hysteria.
To everyone else, it was repulsive.

Zhao said he never expected the reaction. “It was just words,” he told an independent blogger. “But people wanted to believe. That’s what scared me.”

4. From Post to Pandemonium

Once the rumor broke containment, the machinery of virality took over.
Fan accounts flooded the web with demands for proof of life. Some began tracking Yu Menglong’s social activity — noticing he hadn’t posted for twelve hours. That silence became “evidence.”

Soon, conspiracy theories emerged: that Yu had been kidnapped, silenced, or replaced by a clone. Fan chats turned into investigative war rooms. On Douyin, short videos analyzed his recent photos for “signs of distress.”

A digital ghost story had been born.

5. Anatomy of a Hoax

Why did people believe something so clearly impossible?
Experts point to a mixture of digital illiteracy, emotional investment, and algorithmic exploitation.

“The internet doesn’t reward truth,” says Dr. Li Xue, a professor of media psychology in Shanghai. “It rewards emotion — especially disgust. Disgust spreads faster than joy, faster than sadness. It’s a primal trigger.”

Zhao’s post, intentionally or not, exploited that trigger. It offered a shocking, repulsive image that the mind couldn’t easily forget — and therefore couldn’t resist sharing.

The algorithms noticed the engagement. And once the system detects momentum, it feeds it — endlessly.

6. The Fan War Erupts

The reaction from Yu Menglong’s fans was swift and brutal.
They tracked Zhao’s IP address, doxxed his family, and launched a campaign titled #ProtectMenglong. Some claimed moral duty; others sought revenge.

The online war drew thousands into its orbit. Fake screenshots of police reports circulated. Some users even photoshopped “statements” from Yu’s management.

By the time the truth emerged — that the post was a hoax — the damage was already irreversible.
Yu’s fanbase had turned into a digital militia.
And Zhao had become the most hated man on Chinese social media.

7. The State Strikes Back

On the third day, Chinese authorities intervened.
Police confirmed that Zhao had been detained for “spreading false information and disturbing public order.” State media issued a stern editorial calling the case “a warning about the dangers of online rumor.”

Ironically, the state’s involvement only deepened fascination.
Memes compared Zhao to mythic tricksters. Some netizens half-jokingly called him “The Cannibal Prophet.”

The man had become both villain and folk antihero — proof that in the modern internet, even infamy is a form of immortality.

8. Experts Dissect the Phenomenon

Media theorists called it a collective hallucination.
Psychologists described it as a “moral panic in real time.”

Dr. Huang Min, a cognitive scientist at Peking University, offered a darker perspective:

“Disgust is not just emotional. It’s social. When we share disgust, we bond — we form tribes. That’s why revolting stories go viral. They make strangers feel united against something ‘other.’”

The Yu Menglong hoax, in that sense, wasn’t just about belief — it was about belonging.
People didn’t spread the rumor because they thought it was true. They spread it because sharing it made them part of the event.

9. The Dark Side of Digital Desire

In many ways, this story wasn’t about a man eating an actor — it was about a culture consuming its idols.

Social media turns people into products, and products into prey.
Every photo, every live stream, every breath becomes content. The audience’s hunger is endless, and the industry feeds it daily.

“The Collector” simply held up a mirror and asked: What are you really devouring?

The truth was uglier than his joke.
Fans didn’t eat Yu Menglong — but they consumed his image until nothing real was left.

10. What We Learned from the Yu Menglong Incident

The case has since entered digital folklore, cited in academic papers and discussed in media ethics classes.
It showed how fragile public truth has become — and how deeply people crave narrative, even at the cost of reason.

In an interview months later, Yu Menglong himself finally spoke about the incident:

“At first I was angry. Then I realized… this is what fame means now. People will build stories about you, even if you’re silent. Maybe especially if you’re silent.”

That quiet reflection struck many as both heartbreaking and profound.
In the age of virality, silence is no longer safety. It’s an invitation.

Conclusion

The man who said he “bought and ate Yu Menglong” never touched the actor, never met him, never even meant to harm him.
Yet his words, careless or calculated, unleashed a storm that revealed our collective vulnerability — how quickly empathy can turn to hysteria, and how fragile truth has become in a hyperconnected world.

In a sense, the internet really did consume Yu Menglong.
Not his body, but his image. Not his flesh, but his meaning.
And in doing so, it exposed a deeper hunger — for sensation, for belonging, for something real in a world built of screens.

When Fame Turns Ferocious: The Fan Culture Crisis
Viral Monsters: How the Internet Manufactures Fear
The Social Media Myth Factory
The Ethics of Outrage in the Age of Algorithms
From Love to Hate: Inside China’s Fandom Wars