On December 6th, the iQiyi “Scream Night” awards ceremony took place in Macau. However, during the presentation of the “Favorite Female Character of the Year” award, there appeared to be a last-minute change in the voting result. The award that was originally intended for actress Liu Shishi was suddenly given to Bai Lu. Even though iQiyi, as one of the organizers, issued an apology afterwards, their explanation for the award switch angered netizens.
According to reports from mainland media, the popular vote award for “Favorite Female Character of the Year” was based on online voting by fans who paid for the votes. The top three finalists announced at the end of last month were Li Qin from “A Smile as Song”, Yang Mi from “All Is Well”, and Liu Shishi from “Love Like White Jade”.
Unexpectedly, there was a sudden shift in rankings right before the official award ceremony. Not only did Yang Mi drop from second place to third place without warning, but Liu Shishi, who played the character of “Dongfang Huai Zhu” in “Love Like White Jade”, was suddenly pushed out of the top three. The award that was supposed to be given to her was then handed to Bai Lu without any prior notice, leaving everyone in the audience surprised.
It was reported that iQiyi had promised the top three winners of the award the opportunity for free promotion. Due to Liu Shishi being unexpectedly pushed out of the top three by Bai Lu, she lost the chance for free public promotion, leading many fans to express discontent and questioning the suspicion of internal manipulation within the iQiyi platform.
On the evening of December 6th, iQiyi, as one of the organizers, issued a correction statement via their official Weibo account “梨厂上线了”, admitting that a mistake in the award rankings occurred due to negligence in their work. They clarified that the correct results should be based on the rankings published on November 21st, meaning that Liu Shishi was indeed one of the winners.
Despite issuing an apology statement, iQiyi’s explanation of “technical changes” immediately ignited the anger of netizens. Many criticized, “Now even award presentations can have ‘technical changes’?”, “This reason is too perfunctory and shows disrespect towards actors and viewers”, and “Last-minute award switches seem to have become a common practice at some entertainment award ceremonies in mainland China, repeatedly consuming the already diminishing credibility of such events.”
Since the popular vote in this case required payment, iQiyi did not propose any compensation plans. Netizens angrily demanded, “Refund”, “No bottom line”, “This is not a mistake, it is blatant fraud.”