伤害性不高，侮辱性极强shāng hài xìng bù gāo, wǔ rǔ xìng jí qiáng

It sounds like a damage report in a game: low damage, high insult. The joke is to rate a tiny snub as if it were an attack.

A typical target is a teasing line such as 加油，你差点就追上我了, “keep going, you almost caught up with me”. Some people write 伤害性不大, “the harm is not big”, with the same meaning.

It is still common, always for small things: a message that someone reads and does not answer, a couple who cuddle next to you when you eat alone, a cat that ignores you. Keep it for jokes, not for a real insult.

It started in early 2021 as a comment under a Douyin clip. Two men at a hot pot table pass food to each other with their chopsticks, while the woman sitting with them is left out. Viewers summed up her position with this line, according to The China Project and China News.

In December 2021, China’s national language monitoring center put it on its list of the ten internet phrases of the year.