梗 (Geng): Meme Culture on Bilibili 梗

梗 (pronounced “gung”) is the all-purpose Chinese word for meme — but closer in spirit to “bit” or “running gag” than to an image macro. A 梗 is any shareable reference: a catchphrase from a video, a misheard lyric, a funny mistranslation, a creator’s habitual gesture, a single absurd frame everyone screenshots.

Where you meet geng

Everywhere, but especially:

• Danmaku streams, where one viewer’s joke becomes thirty viewers’ spam the moment something triggers it
• Creator lore — long-running channels accumulate private mythologies; fans of 老番茄 reference twelve years of accumulated bits mid-sentence
• Cross-community migration — a guichu remix spawns a phrase, which escapes into general internet speech, which your Chinese friends eventually use without knowing its origin

The lifecycle of a 梗

1. Birth — an offhand line or accident in some video
2. Adoption — the community repeats it in matching contexts
3. Saturation — it appears everywhere, including official marketing
4. Decay — overuse turns it cringe; using a dead geng marks you as out of touch

This lifecycle matters practically: memes on Bilibili are seasonal. A reference that charmed people last year can read as trying-too-hard today.

Advice for international viewers

• Don’t force it. Dropping borrowed memes into danmaku before understanding context reads awkwardly in any language. Watch first, learn what the community does with a geng, then decide if it fits.
• Ask, don’t assume. Comment sections under older videos often explain origin stories; so does our danmaku guide.
• Enjoy not getting everything. Even native users can’t track every niche geng. Missing jokes is normal; the platform stays fun anyway.

English equivalents

“Bit,” “meme,” “in-joke,” “copypasta energy.” The comedy-term ancestry makes “bit” the closest feel — a geng is something performed and repeated, not just an image passed around.