In a middle school classroom, a boy in a black hoodie and a black mask was DJing at thin air. The video hit the internet and he was given the name “Jiahao”. Nobody knows his real name, and nobody cares. What matters is that he had a hat, and the hat would soon no longer fit
At first, becoming Jiahao had a threshold: you had to wear a black hoodie, a black mask, and do certain “chuunibyou” moves in public to even qualify for the name Jiahao. But a hat, as these things go, grows as you wear it
Soon someone developed a “Jiahao-ness score” system: ordinary Jiahao, Delta Force Jiahao, Dream of the Red Chamber Jiahao… from gaming newbies to literature lovers, from gym check-in posters to fine-dining check-in posters, everyone was brought into the rating. The hat’s size expanded from small to large, until everyone could wear it
And so a strange spectacle appeared: you think someone is a Jiahao; you criticize the word Jiahao for being overused — you’re a Jiahao too. The president gives a speech: super Jiahao. Researchers make a new discovery: ultimate Jiahao. alan walker himself: the founding father of Jiahao
A word that can be fitted onto everyone says essentially nothing. And this isn’t the first time such a word has appeared
Jiahao has a clear family tree: showing off, humblebragging, attention-seeker, Jiahao — all the same medicine in a new bottle. You did something I didn’t do, so I give you an ugly name. Every so often the old word gets worn blunt, a new one takes its place, and the same mission is fulfilled
Even the word “showing off” has lost its bite now. Many people call themselves that, even with a bit of pride. The word gets worn out, its meaning erodes, and in the end it’s tamed into a neutral term. Jiahao is currently in its most aggressive phase; in a few years it will probably follow the same fate
The soil hasn’t changed; only the crop has rotated
Look closely and you’ll find this logic has a big flaw: one question is enough to puncture it. If the person standing there were you, would you still call yourself Jiahao?
Someone eats at a fancy restaurant, and you call them a show-off. If that someone were you, what would you call yourself? You’d call it “quality of life”, call it “the reward for hard work”. Same table, same meal; change the subject and the nature changes
Jiahao was never a word that evaluates behavior. It is a word that evaluates distance — the distance between you and that person, and your inability to accept that distance
This is one of humanity’s most fundamental lines of code, double standards: when I can do it, it’s called ability. When you can do it, it’s called showing off
Lu Xun wrote Ah Q, who, after being beaten, silently told himself “the son hit the father” and completed a psychological self-rescue. A hundred years later, the mechanism has been upgraded and made more convenient: you don’t need to be beaten. You only need to see someone living with more effort than you, type a few words, hit send, and victory is yours
So the more frequently you call someone Jiahao, the more precisely you expose one thing: that person makes you feel pressure. This hat is two-sided — you put it on someone else’s head, and it reflects yourself
As for the word Jiahao, it will eventually disappear, just like showing off — sooner or later it’ll be worn blunt and replaced by a new word. By then, nobody will remember the boy DJing in that classroom, and nobody will remember the original shape of this hat
But as long as the psychology of “stick out and you should be pushed down” remains, the next Jiahao is already on the way
It won’t be called Jiahao, but you’ll recognize it at a glance
Because the shape of that hat has never changed
