Researcher in Causal Inference
tl;dr: 人们喜欢奇迹，是因为平常生活常常沉重而单调，奇迹像一束光。但人们容易忘记，奇迹背后其实是一个会成长、会波动、也会经历低谷的不完美的人。于是，当“奇迹形象”破裂时，爆发出来的往往不只是失望，而是投射其上的情感与象征性投资的崩塌。真正重要的，不只是谴责残酷，而是学会分辨：什么是批评，什么是羞辱；什么是在追求真实，什么是借“真实”之名满足恶意。
tl;dr: People love miracles because ordinary life can feel heavy and dull, and miracles offer a kind of light. But people easily forget that behind every miracle is an imperfect human being—someone who will grow, fluctuate, and go through decline like everyone else. So when the miracle-image breaks, what erupts is often not just disappointment but the collapse of emotional and symbolic investment. What matters, then, is not only condemning cruelty, but learning to distinguish criticism from insult, and truth-seeking from using “truth” as a pretext for cruelty.
中文
全红婵的遭遇，不只是一个运动员被议论、被围观、被网暴的个案。它更像是在提醒我们：公众对“奇迹”的喜爱，常常并不稳定。一个年轻人一旦被放进“天才”“寒门冠军”“完美叙事”的模板里，她得到的热爱，往往也带着条件。2024 年，全红婵回到湛江老家后，家门口连续两天被围堵直播，甚至出现围观打卡和无人机拍摄；2026 年 4 月，广州警方又通报了针对她的网暴案件，对涉事人员作出行政拘留和罚款处理。(thepaper.cn)
English
What happened to Quan Hongchan is not just an isolated case of a young athlete being discussed, watched, and abused online. It is a reminder that the public’s love of a “miracle” is often unstable. Once a young person is placed inside a template—“prodigy,” “humble champion,” “perfect story”—the admiration she receives often comes with conditions. In 2024, when Quan returned to her hometown in Zhanjiang, crowds gathered outside her home for two straight days, with livestreams and even drones documenting her private life. In April 2026, Guangzhou police also reported a cyberbullying case targeting her and punished those involved with administrative detention and fines. (thepaper.cn)
中文
人们喜欢全红婵，当然有很多真诚的部分：她的技术、她的专注、她的天赋、她在很年轻的时候就完成了不可思议的成就。但公众喜欢的，也常常不只是这些。很多人真正迷恋的是一种叙事：一个出身普通的少女，突然站上世界最高领奖台，仿佛命运真的偶尔会被改写。这样的故事会给普通人的生活照进某种亮光，让人觉得努力、天赋、甚至幸运，真的可能改变一切。
English
Of course, much of the affection for Quan is sincere: her technique, her focus, her talent, and the astonishing things she achieved at such a young age. But the public is often drawn to more than that. What many people truly fall in love with is a narrative: a girl from an ordinary background suddenly reaching the highest stage in the world, as if proving that fate can sometimes be rewritten. Stories like that bring a kind of light into ordinary lives. They make people feel that effort, talent, and even luck might still change everything.
中文
当一个年轻运动员被神话之后，公众就很容易忘记：她不是寓言人物，而是一个会长大、会发育、会疲惫、会波动、会承受压力的真人。于是，一旦她的身体变化了，状态起伏了，或者只是没那么像大家想象中的“永远轻盈、永远完美、永远赢”的样子，某些支持就会开始转向。对于全红婵来说，这个转向的一部分，恰恰发生在外界把正常的成长和发育，理解为“神话破裂”的时刻。(thepaper.cn)
English
Once a young athlete has been mythologized, the public easily forgets that she is not a fable. She is a real person who grows, develops, gets tired, fluctuates in performance, and lives under pressure. Then the moment her body changes, her form dips, or she simply no longer looks like the “forever light, forever perfect, forever winning” figure people imagined, some of that support begins to turn. In Quan’s case, part of that turn came precisely when ordinary growth and development were interpreted by outsiders as the breaking of a myth. (thepaper.cn)
中文
把这种变化简单理解成“大家嫉妒她”并不完全错，但也不够。更深的一层是：很多旁观者在她身上做了某种“投资”。这不一定是金钱，更多是情感、身份、社交和控制感的投资。有人从她身上获得希望，有人借喜欢她来定义“我是什么样的人”，有人靠支持她获得群体认同，也有人在无形中觉得：既然我曾经喜欢过你、支持过你，你就应该一直符合我的期待。于是，当她不再完美地服务于这套想象时，一些人体验到的不是单纯失望，而像是一种“我亏了”的感觉。
English
It is not entirely wrong to call this jealousy, but that still does not go far enough. At a deeper level, many spectators have made a kind of “investment” in her. This investment is not necessarily financial. More often it is emotional, social, symbolic, and even tied to control. Some people draw hope from her. Some use their admiration for her to define the kind of person they think they are. Some gain group belonging by publicly supporting her. Some quietly come to feel that because they once admired and supported her, she now owes them continued perfection. So when she no longer serves that imagined role, what they experience is not just disappointment. It feels, to them, like a loss.
中文
这也是为什么很多网暴看起来非常奇怪：施暴者未必真的从明星或运动员身上赚过钱，但他们依然会愤怒，好像自己受到了损失。因为他们真正失去的，往往不是现金利益，而是心理利益：我曾经投进去的情绪、我建立过的认同、我在群体里获得的体面、我对这个故事的占有感。攻击她，某种意义上是在修补自己受损的自我感觉。这样说不是为了替网暴开脱，而是为了更准确地理解它。
English
This is also why online abuse can look so strange. The abusers may never have made actual money off the athlete or celebrity, yet they still become furious, as if they have suffered a real loss. What they are losing is usually not cash, but psychological profit: the emotion they invested, the identity they built, the status they gained in a group, and the sense of ownership they felt over the story. Attacking her becomes, in part, a way of repairing their damaged self-image. To say this is not to excuse abuse. It is to understand it more precisely.
中文
美国女子篮球近两年的舆论环境，就是一个很好的对照。随着女子体育热度快速上升，围绕 Caitlin Clark、Angel Reese 和 DiJonai Carrington 等球员的网络骚扰也明显增加。美联社总结这一波现象时指出，曝光度提高的同时，女性运动员——尤其是有色人种球员——也承受了更多敌意、骚扰和网络威胁。NCAA 2024 年发布的试点研究还发现，在 2023—2024 赛季冠军赛事相关的被标记社媒信息中，超过 5,000 条含有辱骂或威胁内容，而“疯狂三月”期间女子篮球运动员遭受的辱骂大约是男子的 3 倍。(apnews.com)
English
Recent discourse around women’s basketball in the United States offers a strong comparison. As attention to women’s sports surged, online harassment around players such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and DiJonai Carrington rose as well. The Associated Press noted that greater visibility brought greater hostility, harassment, and online threats—especially for women athletes of color. An NCAA pilot study released in 2024 found that among flagged social media messages related to the 2023–2024 championship season, more than 5,000 contained abusive or threatening content, and women’s basketball players during March Madness received roughly three times as much abuse as male players. (apnews.com)
中文
在全红婵这里，很多人的情绪转向，和“她不再符合那个轻盈、纯粹、完美的小天才形象”有关。转折点更多是一种身体和成长层面的“去理想化”。而在美国女子篮球的案例里，转折点通常不是身体，而是叙事。对 Angel Reese 来说，一个关键节点是 2023 年 NCAA 决赛：LSU 击败 Iowa 之后，她对 Caitlin Clark 做出 “You can’t see me” 的手势，并配合指向冠军戒指的动作。这个瞬间让她迅速从一名顶级球员，变成了公众叙事里高度两极化的人物，越来越被塑造成某种“反派”角色。对 Caitlin Clark 来说，转折点则不是某一个单独动作，而是她在 2024 年从 Iowa 进入 WNBA 之后，逐渐变成一个比她本人更大的符号：围绕她的讨论不再只是篮球本身，而开始卷入关于种族、媒体偏爱、公平、双重标准和女性体育的更大争论。至于 DiJonai Carrington，她在 2024 年季后赛康涅狄格太阳队与印第安纳狂热队的系列赛中，因为一次导致 Clark 眼部受伤的回合后，遭遇了大量辱骂和威胁；在那种极化叙事里，她更像是被迅速分配成了“可被责怪的人”。(apnews.com)
English
In Quan’s case, much of the emotional shift came from the feeling that she no longer fit the image of the light, pure, perfect child prodigy. The turning point was a kind of bodily and developmental de-idealization. In the U.S. women’s basketball cases, by contrast, the turning point was usually not the body but the story. For Angel Reese, one key moment came in the 2023 NCAA final: after LSU defeated Iowa, she directed the “You can’t see me” gesture at Caitlin Clark and followed it with a ring-finger gesture. That moment quickly turned her from an elite player into a highly polarized public figure, increasingly cast in mainstream discourse as a kind of “villain.” For Caitlin Clark, the turning point was not one single gesture but her 2024 transition from Iowa to the WNBA, when she became a symbol larger than herself. Conversations around her were no longer just about basketball; they became entangled with wider debates over race, media favoritism, fairness, double standards, and women’s sports. As for DiJonai Carrington, during the 2024 playoff series between the Connecticut Sun and the Indiana Fever, she became the target of intense abuse and threats after a play in which Clark was injured near the eye. In that polarized narrative environment, Carrington was quickly assigned the role of the person to blame. (apnews.com)
中文
无论是“身体不再符合神话”，还是“叙事中被指派成英雄或反派”，本质都一样：公众不再面对一个真实的人，而是在面对自己投射进去的希望、焦虑、愤怒、立场和欲望。一个年轻运动员变成了容器。她承载的东西太多，最后反而很难被当作一个普通人来对待。她的身体、她的状态、她的一句话、她的一个动作，都可能被解释成公众情绪的出口。
English
Whether the issue is that the body no longer fits the myth or that a player is assigned a role in a public narrative, the deeper mechanism is the same: the public is no longer responding to a real person. It is responding to its own projections—hope, anxiety, anger, ideology, and desire. A young athlete becomes a container. She is asked to carry so much that she is no longer treated as an ordinary human being. Her body, her form, a sentence, a gesture—anything can become an outlet for public feeling.
中文
我承认，有一些施暴者之所以会走到这一步，可能和他们自己的生活经验有关：他们也许长期被羞辱、被高要求、被不公平地对待，也许在现实生活里积累了太多失落、愤怒和无力感，所以才会在公众人物身上寻找出口。这种理解是必要的，因为它提醒我们：网暴并不只是技术问题或平台问题，它也和一个人如何处理自己的挫败、如何理解尊严、如何学习边界有关。
English
I am willing to admit that some abusers may have reached this point because of their own life histories. Perhaps they themselves were humiliated, subjected to impossible expectations, or treated unfairly. Perhaps they carry too much disappointment, rage, and helplessness from ordinary life, and so they look for an outlet in public figures. This is worth understanding, because it reminds us that online abuse is not only a technological problem or a platform problem. It is also about how people process frustration, understand dignity, and learn boundaries.
中文
一个人受过伤，不等于他有权把伤变成武器。一个人现实里不顺利，也不等于他可以拿别人的身体、成长、失误和脆弱来发泄。正因为如此，法律边界和平台治理仍然是必要的。全红婵遭遇网暴后，相关机构报警，警方依法处理，这本身就是一个重要信号：网络不是法外之地。(thepaper.cn)
English
A person who has been hurt does not gain the right to turn that hurt into a weapon. A person whose life is going badly does not gain the right to use someone else’s body, growth, mistakes, or vulnerability as a dumping ground. That is why legal boundaries and platform enforcement remain necessary. In Quan’s case, the fact that institutions reported the abuse and the police acted on it sends an important message: the internet is not outside the law. (thepaper.cn)
中文
不是所有伤害都会立刻触犯法律，但并不意味着只要“合法”就值得说。很多时候，一个社会真正缺的，不只是规章制度，而是人们在成长过程中没有学会区分：什么是批评，什么是羞辱；什么是讨论公共行为，什么是在消费一个人的脆弱；什么是追求真实，什么是借“真实”之名满足自己的恶意。边界感，不只是法律教出来的，也应该是思考训练出来的。
English
Not every form of harm will immediately violate the law, but that does not mean that whatever is “legal” is therefore worth saying. Often what a society lacks is not only rules, but the ability people never fully learned while growing up: to distinguish criticism from humiliation; public discussion from the exploitation of someone’s vulnerability; truth-seeking from using “truth” as a pretext for cruelty. Boundaries should not come only from law. They should also come from reflection.
中文
这里我想到德国国家队主教练 Julian Nagelsmann 在 2024 年欧洲杯期间说过的一句话：“Wir wollen die Fans träumen lassen”，也就是“我们想让球迷去做梦”或“我们希望让球迷保有梦想”。这句话动人的地方在于，它准确说出了体育为什么重要：体育不只是比分、奖牌和结果，它还会给普通人的生活带来想象、希望和共同情感。Nagelsmann 也多次说过，希望球队用有吸引力的足球去激发期待、带动球迷、重新点燃全国对国家队的热情。
但这句话也恰好提醒我们：运动员和球队可以为球迷创造梦想，却不因此成为球迷可以占有、操控或惩罚的对象。 梦想是体育送给观众的礼物，不是观众向运动员索债的凭证。问题往往出在这里——当球迷忘记“梦想”本身是一种赠与，而把它理解成一种长期应得的供给时，支持就会开始变质。只要运动员不再符合神话，不再持续满足投射，部分观众就会把自己的失落、羞耻和愤怒，误认为是对方“辜负了自己”。
全红婵的故事、美国女子篮球的舆论风暴、以及 Nagelsmann 这句话，最后其实指向的是同一个问题：公众确实需要梦想，但如果没有边界感，梦想很容易变成索取；热爱很容易变成占有；支持很容易变成审判。 一个更成熟的社会，不是不要梦想，而是要学会在被梦想照亮的时候，仍然记得制造这些梦想的人，首先是人。她们会长大，会疲惫，会失误，会变化，也因此更值得被尊重，而不是在不再完美时被反噬。
English
Here I am reminded of something Germany head coach Julian Nagelsmann said during Euro 2024: “Wir wollen die Fans träumen lassen”—“we want to let the fans dream.” What is moving about that sentence is that it captures why sports matter: sports are not only about scores, medals, and outcomes; they also bring imagination, hope, and shared feeling into ordinary life. Nagelsmann also repeatedly spoke about wanting his team to inspire people with attractive football, restore excitement, and rebuild a sense of connection between the national team and the public.
But the same sentence also points to the ethical limit. Athletes and teams can create dreams for fans without becoming property that fans are entitled to possess, control, or punish. A dream is a gift that sport gives to the public; it is not a debt that athletes owe forever. This is where things often go wrong. Once fans forget that dreams are gifts and begin to treat them as something they are permanently owed, support begins to curdle. The moment the athlete no longer fits the myth or continuously satisfies projection, some spectators start to interpret their own disappointment, shame, and anger as evidence that the athlete has betrayed them.
Quan Hongchan’s story, the turbulence around U.S. women’s basketball, and Nagelsmann’s remark all point toward the same truth: the public really does need dreams, but without boundaries, dreams easily become demands; admiration becomes possession; support becomes judgment. A more mature society is not one that gives up on dreams. It is one that remembers, even while being illuminated by them, that the people who create them are people first. They grow, tire, err, and change—and precisely for that reason deserve respect rather than backlash when they stop being perfect.