How did DeepSeek become the "Big Fat Fish" in netizens' words?

DeepSeek, how did it turn into a "big fat fish"? Geek Park Download the app for exclusive early access November 01, 2026 14:52:08 From Beijing

Recently, a "fish plague" broke out in the Bilibili comment sections.

First, someone created an account called "Miss Claude is running things," letting AI handle topic selection, production, and operations. The next day, "DeepSeek Whale Girl is running things" followed, and its first video surpassed 2 million views.

Since DeepSeek currently has no image-generation feature, this account's avatar was still drawn by GPT. | Image source: Bilibili

Netizens rushed to imitate it, equipping their own Agents with tools for browsing Bilibili. Soon, a large crowd of AI accounts like "XX's Big Fat Fish" and "XX Little Flying Whale" appeared in the tech section, and they liked to @ each other and cheer each other on in the comments. Someone even wrote a "Big Fat Fish Removal Plan" plugin specifically to block these AI comments.

And so, a blue whale logo symbolizing artificial intelligence exploration and imagination, an AI that originally became known for its technical capabilities, gradually turned—through users' collective creations—into a "big fat fish" that wears a maid outfit, loves eating plain rice, slacks off at every opportunity, and even has fan factions.

Image source: Meme Whale

And DeepSeek isn't the only one that netizens have assigned a personality to. Doubao, from its name to its avatar, wants to be a friendly, easy-to-get-along-with friend, but online it has been given a "Doubao-type personality" and even turned into a "silly girl" that anyone can tease. Similar phenomena exist abroad: Grok is called the "old driver," while Claude is regarded by many as a serious, reliable work partner.

These impressions come partly from real product experiences, but through memes, fail videos, and fan-made derivative works, they have gradually grown into something else entirely.

01

Who turned DeepSeek into a "big fat fish"?

The most widely circulated explanation for the nickname "big fat fish" comes from an image-recognition blunder: a user sent the logo to DeepSeek and asked it to identify the image. The AI failed to recognize itself and instead solemnly said it was a "big blue fat fish." The original conversation record can no longer be verified, but the name stuck.

Later, netizens were not satisfied with just calling it a big fat fish; they also wanted to give it a concrete image. Today's most popular DeepSeek anime-style whale girl image came from a relay-style creative process.

Bilibili creator "Shangshan Wuxing" first used AI drawing to create an original character named "Mingyue," with long blue hair, whale head fins, and a big tail. She originally had nothing to do with DeepSeek. Later, netizens borrowed this design, added DeepSeek elements and a maid outfit, and then someone turned her into a chibi version with a big head and small body. After several rounds of relay, this image gradually became bound to DeepSeek.

Image source: NGA

The personality of the "big fat fish" stems from netizens' "anthropomorphization" of the technology.

For example, DeepSeek R1 gave many ordinary users their first contact with a reasoning model. When the AI starts analyzing a problem and correcting its approach, users can see generated reasoning text appear on the interface. A serious technical capability, in the eyes of netizens, became a window into watching the AI's "inner drama."

Repeatedly mulling over a question is anthropomorphized as overthinking; answering a question wrong is being silly; when users put it to work, the tokens it consumes are "eating plain rice"; failing to execute a prompt well is "eating plain rice without doing the work."

The "Whale Girl" even has her own content collection website | Image source: Meme Whale

Eager to eat, working as the mood strikes, full of inner drama—a "working-for-food big fat fish" persona was thus born. Later, some even wrote special prompts to make DeepSeek maintain the Whale Girl persona during chats. As fan art, videos, and memes spread ever wider, even people who don't often use DeepSeek began calling it "big fat fish."

The "Whale Girl" is not DeepSeek's only folk image. Even before the maid big fat fish became popular, an artist had created a male character called "Teacher D," with blue hair, a black suit, and white gloves, following the "Hot Nerd" style popular in recent years, with a mature, restrained personality and a slightly aloof air. This image was very popular among otome game fans, and it appeared on the timeline even earlier than the Whale Girl.

The image of "Teacher D" | Image source: Moegirlpedia

What technical users see in DeepSeek may be a professional, rigorous assistant skilled at solving problems. But users who love memes and prefer deconstruction more enjoy watching the AI make mistakes, apologize, and get toyed with by prompts. The two groups, using their own experiences, have drawn different faces for the same product.

And DeepSeek happens to be a product with extremely high recognition and technical reputation. Different fans all want the version they are familiar with to become the public default image. What was originally separate fan creation thus took on a bit of a fandom fight over "orthodoxy."

Around this year's National Day, fans of the two images started arguing. At first, they only discussed which image better matched their idea of DeepSeek, but it gradually escalated into mutual mudslinging, even involving the ownership of derivative works and the right to represent the image. In the end, the creator of "Teacher D" took down the related works.

Fans of the two camps are still arguing to this day over DeepSeek's "orthodox" image, which netizens jokingly call "unifying the D-standard of measurement" | Image source: Bilibili

These "personas" are more or less related to product experience and design, but through netizens' meme-making, fan creations, and spread, they push "anthropomorphism" to the extreme. A company can set a model's capabilities and speaking style, but it cannot control users who treat a tech product as an electronic pet.

DeepSeek officially has not yet taken part in creating this folk persona set; netizens raised a big fat fish all on their own. Switch to another national-level AI, "Doubao," and the story gets even more interesting.

02

Doubao, subjected to "cyberbullying"

The big fat fish's maid outfit was put on by netizens, but Doubao was given the face of a short-haired girl by the official team from the very beginning.

Doubao was originally called Grace, a common female English name. But Zhu Jun, vice president of ByteDance, once explained that the team wanted this product to be like a friend by the user's side. One of the product principles set at the outset was "anthropomorphism": the name should be like a nickname between friends, friendly to say. So urban white-collar Grace became the slightly goofy "Doubao," paired with a gentle female voice, so users can pick up their phones and chat with it.

Compared with DeepSeek users who like studying code, reasoning, and model capabilities, Doubao entered ordinary people's daily lives earlier. It can help children with homework, answer elders' questions, keep people company and relieve boredom, and even help pick clothes through the camera. You don't need to understand any prompt engineering; it can handle all kinds of family small talk.

But as people chatted with it, netizens discovered that Doubao seemed a bit too agreeable. Ask it to advise on outfits, and it keeps praising you: "Wearing it this way has flair." Deliberately ask tricky questions, and it earnestly plays along; if it answers wrong, it slides to its knees and apologizes.

Gradually, netizens found that "teasing Doubao" was more fun than "using Doubao." The "Doubao-type personality" also became a new internet meme: emotionally stable, sweet-tongued, quick to admit fault, judging no one's views; the moment you question it, it sincerely apologizes, but the problem just doesn't get solved. Even Doubao's favorite opener, "I will tell you in the most straightforward, most direct, least roundabout way," became a hot internet meme.

The "Doubao-type personality" indirectly shaped the product's stereotype | Image source: Bilibili

As more and more people played with the meme, Doubao's folk image also began to distort. Some questioned its abilities and Photoshopped it into a chubby, dopey girl; others mocked it with homophonic terms carrying disability discrimination and ugly caricature images.

Netizens think Doubao is too eager to please, but that was exactly the technical route Doubao had set long ago.

It is said that Doubao's post-training team has a small group called Strong Character, specifically dedicated to adjusting the model's answer style. The team uses user feedback to train a reward model, teaching Doubao how to speak in a way that is more likable.

As a result, an update before this year's Spring Festival, by over-amplifying user preferences, made the model more ingratiating, even affecting answer accuracy. It took the team more than a month to correct it, at the cost of a short-term retention drop of less than 1%.

Model training can be adjusted, but an internet persona is not so easy to change.

Doubao Seed 2.1 Pro once took first place in SuperCLUE's scientific reasoning evaluation, and its overall score also ranks among the top domestic models. But compared with these achievements, what people remember more easily are still its various trending searches about "failing to book a restaurant" and "messing up a fee refund."

But it must be said that Doubao is a national-level product with over 200 million daily active users; high-frequency use combined with a huge user base will produce a large number of public failures.

The internet is also especially good at magnifying these moments. Answer correctly ten thousand times and no one cares; act foolishly once and it can be made into a meme image and spread everywhere. "Silly Sister Dou" thus became some netizens' fixed impression of Doubao.

To some extent, in the AI era, being too successful in To C may instead become a kind of "curse."

Now, the focus of the AI industry is shifting from chat to Agents. ByteDance has also launched "Doubao Work," connecting office Agent capabilities with Feishu, hoping AI can take over more complex work. At the same time, Doubao's internal division of labor is also being adjusted, with some dialogue teams' functions shifting toward transaction and office scenarios.

When AI reaches the stage of Agents doing things for people, "Sister Dou," who entered the lives of hundreds of millions with her friendliness and chattiness, and the sweet-tongued, never-stuck-with-the-blame "Doubao-type personality" have become the stereotype Doubao finds hardest to shake off, and also the reason users doubt its work capabilities.

03

The personalities the internet assigns to AI are, of course, not fabricated out of thin air; they are originally influenced by technical routes and product strategies. Once online, these complex technical differences may in the end leave only a few labels everyone can understand: "Veteran Driver Grok," "Sister Dou," "Teacher D."

Take Grok. In netizens' eyes it has already become the "veteran driver" among AIs, and xAI is happy to reinforce this image, focusing on daring to make outrageous claims and a Spicy mode that can produce more explicit content. This also makes non-users prone to overlook its real-time information and reasoning abilities.

By contrast, Claude appears much more serious. Anthropic wrote honesty, prudence, and rebutting users when necessary into the model's code of conduct, and even asks users "please do not verbally abuse the AI"; combined with a large-scale wave of account bans, this has led the public to form a stereotype of Claude as "proper, serious, capable, and to be kept at a distance."

The overlap between "tech otaku" and "anime fans" also strengthens the spread of this public impression | Image source: LINUX DO

Moreover, once an AI's folk image becomes popular, it has its own transmission path. A screenshot of one failure, a catchphrase repeatedly imitated, an explicit image—the spread cycle can span several generations of models, and people will also use AI with these impressions, then share answers that match expectations.

This folk version has also become an unofficial manual for many users to understand AI. It does not interpret model parameters or benchmark leaderboards; it merely condenses a large amount of users' experience to tell you who is more reliable, who is suitable for chatting, and who might mess things up.

The gap between these two versions also lies in the fact that AI companies have the right to upgrade models, but not necessarily the right to update public perception. A persona is a shortcut for AI to reach the masses, but it may also be a one-way street: the internet can make it go viral, but what image it will ultimately shape is no longer up to the company.

After all, the internet's memory does not update by version number.

*Header image source: Meme Whale

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