Chinese social media users are turning to a Korean American action star for help in their daily lives, with a growing trend of swapping out their online avatar for Ma Dong-seok’s photo to get better responses from landlords and customer service agents.
In recent weeks a growing number of Chinese people have changed their profile photos to shots of Ma, who also goes by the name Don Lee and has starred in horror-action film Train to Busan and Marvel’s The Eternals, saying “it makes life easier”.
People said using images of 52-year-old Ma, which appear to be mostly taken from his Instagram account, helped them solve tedious disputes and life administration tasks.
“When I used a girl’s avatar, the customer service ignored me,” said one person. “After changing to the avatar of Ma Dong-seok, the customer service attitude was much more polite, and they even took the initiative to make up the price difference.”
The trend appears to have begun on Xiaohongshu, a recommendation app, where a user said her property manager was ignoring her requests until she changed her avatar from a picture of actor Liu Yifei to one of Ma. “I just sent two sentences and the property management solved the problem for me in minutes haha,” she wrote, according to a viral TikTok video describing the phenomenon.
The trend then spread to Weibo and WeChat, two of China’s most ubiquitous social media platforms. On Weibo, related discussions had been read and commented on more than 250m times, with much of the focus on Chinese celebrity Li Xian also having changed his gaming avatar to a picture of Ma.
One user described changing his WeChat avatar to Ma’s picture after his scooter was stolen from the yard.
“I took out my mobile phone and yelled at the apartment group chat with Ma Dong-seok’s avatar. After half an hour, the scooter was sent back to the original place.”
Some bemoaned the difference using Ma’s photo made to their troubles, which they wish could be solved by just asking politely.
“It’s fun and useful, but it makes me sad that it shows a form of discrimination.”
Ma’s representatives have been contacted for comment.
