Beauty products livestreamer loses 1 million followers after ugly response
Li Jiaqi apologizes again in his livestreaming room on Monday evening.
China's top beauty products livestreamer Li Jiaqi drew wide criticism on Sunday for picking on an audience member who said the eyebrow pencil Li was promoting was too pricey.
Within just one day, more than 1 million people had unfollowed Li on Weibo.com. His follower base plunged from 30.43 to 29.46 million and is projected to keep dropping.
Li's Weibo page count shows his followers dropped from 30.43 million people to 29.46 million in just one day.
While Li was promoting an eyebrow pencil priced at 79 yuan (US$10.84) from Florasis, a Chinese beauty products brand, a viewer left a comment: “it is becoming more and more pricey.”
Li retorted in no time: “Why on earth do you feel it pricey? ... Find the reason (you feel it pricey) somewhere in yourself. Any pay raise over the past years? Have you put your heart into your job?"
The taunting response angered many viewers and the incident quickly made it to the top of trending topics on Weibo.com on Monday.
Li's response to an audience member's question draws wide criticism.
Hours after his retort, Li posted an apology on his Weibo account, saying he was deeply sorry for disappointing his audience. As a livestreamer, he should promote positive energy and learn to control his emotions better, he said.
However, not everyone accepted the apology. "You get paid from the ordinary people and yet you make fun of their poverty," read one comment, which received more than 654,000 likes.
Li's posts an apology on his Weibo account.
"Maybe you should consult a psychotherapist for your emotional issues," another Weibo user commented. "Also, you need to step into the real world to see it as it really is, not just raking in an enormous amount of money behind the camera."
The beauty brand Florasis was founded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in 2017. Li became their brand ambassador in September 2019.
Li became a household name along with shopping site Taobao's all-out promotion of its livestreaming in 2019. In the same year, Florasis' T-mall shop sales reached 10 million yuan in January, then skyrocketed to 250 million yuan in November.
In 2020, over 30 percent of Florasis sales came from Li's livestreaming room and, during Double Eleven and other shopping festivals, that percentage can be over a whopping 60 percent.
With Li's cooperation and his huge popularity, Florasis started its exponential growth and became China's top beauty brand just within four years.
As early as 2017, during a livestreaming session, Li tried 380 lipsticks on himself within six hours. That year, he hosted 389 livestreaming sessions with each one lasting six to seven hours.
Li’s hard work is believed to be one of the reasons that has catapulted him to stardom.
"Maybe Li has forgotten that with the eyebrow pencil priced at 79 yuan, for the same price, the average person can afford a day's meals," one comment read. "He used to give heart-felt purchasing plans on how to make the best deals in his livestreaming room for his audience."
