发疯文学fā fēng wén xué

Going-crazy literature

wǒ yào fā fēng le!我要发疯了！I’m losing it!

发疯文学, “going-crazy literature”, is writing that pretends you have completely lost it: long, dramatic, repetitive rants, often with stage directions. People use it to vent, to joke, or to answer a dull reply.

Took off: 2022
Started in: Douban
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

The style copies someone who has snapped. Typical moves are repeated questions, lines that trail off and actions in brackets, such as (阴暗爬行), “(crawls in the dark)”.

Being dramatic on purpose about a small annoyance lets people vent without a real fight.

How people use it

It is still common. 发疯 alone is used for any dramatic venting: 我要发疯了 means “I’m going to lose it”.

琦琦

你还在加班？
nǐ hái zài jiā bān?
Still working late?
方案改到第八版了
fāng àn gǎi dào dì bā bǎn le
The plan is on version eight.
我没事，我很好，我非常好（阴暗爬行）
wǒ méi shì, wǒ hěn hǎo, wǒ fēi cháng hǎo (yīn àn pá xíng)
I’m fine. I’m good. I’m GREAT. (crawls in the dark)
哈哈，发疯文学都出来了
hā hā, fā fēng wén xué dōu chū lai le
Haha, the unhinged rants have started.

More examples

老板又改需求了，我真的要发疯了。
lǎo bǎn yòu gǎi xū qiú le, wǒ zhēn de yào fā fēng le.
The boss changed the brief again. I’m really going to lose it.
我今天太累了，来一段发疯文学吧。
wǒ jīn tiān tài lèi le, lái yí duàn fā fēng wén xué ba.
I’m so tired today. Time for an unhinged rant.

Where it came from

No single post started it. One common account traces it to a Douban group in which a post opened with a line like “if I don’t go crazy, what else can I say?”, and members copied the tone. In March 2022, tags such as #林黛玉发疯文学#, which mixed the style with the heroine of Dream of the Red Chamber, trended on Weibo.

The business site Huxiu links the style to the KFC Crazy Thursday posts, which started a little earlier, as part of the same habit of dramatic writing.

The original. There is no single image; it is a style of text. Huxiu’s explainer quotes typical examples. Huxiu (in Chinese)