Who says that a variety show is only all about fun and games? Now on its eighth season, Keep Running 奔跑吧 touched on a very relevant and rampant societal issue nowadays – cyber-bullying.
In the latest episode, the production team of the hit variety show set up a social experiment where Li Chen had to be the “bully” and Sha Yi (A Little Reunion) played the “victim”. Being the “victim”, Sha Yi was already feeling helpless and could not find any more words to explain himself when people were accusing him of lying about not having a mission left.
Li Chen could not help but feel emotional about it because the viewers were also made to believe that Sha Yi was the bad guy. The director then explained that they used a photo, a video clip, and an interview to manipulate the viewers’ thinking of what the truth really was.
“We have all been hurt by this before, I had to play the person hurting others this time. I was so sad” as shared by Li Chen who was still expressing his feelings about the experiment before the episode ended.
Although I have not caught up with the latest seasons of Keep Running, it was a really job well done for the show to have enlightened the viewers on how cyber-bullying works and how it can have many negative consequences in a person’s life. Sadly, cyber-bullying is one problematic issue that is difficult to stop because it can be very easy for anyone to hide behind their screens and write offensive remarks towards other people. Celebrities are often the target of this issue, almost having every move of theirs watched and scrutinized by the public. This is what made Li Chen emotional as it hit closely to home.
While we don’t see the act of cyber-bullying disappear anytime soon, I’m just glad that a show like Keep Running is using its advantage of high viewership as a platform to address such a serious and even a life-threatening issue. If we could have a main takeaway from this episode, it would definitely be: always remember to be kind to others.
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