I Can I BB (formerly known as You Can You BB from the first to the fourth season; Qipashuo 奇葩说) was a Chinese online debate variety show, produced by IQIYI and MEWE. It aired from 2014 to 2021, spanning seven seasons, and was hosted by Ma Dong. I Can I BB was one of the most popular online shows in China, with its fourth season reached 780 million viewers.
Contents
Meaning of “BB”
“BB” is in Beijing and Northeastern dialect, originally coming with the Internet slang “You can you up, No can no BB” (“你行你上，不行就别BB"), meaning that “if you are better than who you criticize, you go and do it; if not, then shut up”. “BB” means “to talk nonsense”.
Topics and contestants
The show became culturally significant in China, where it produced 1,179 trending phrases on the internet in China and developed a large viewership.
Topics
Topics and resolutions are collected from online platforms such as Weibo and in IQIYI PaoPao. The resolutions in the show are from day to day topics, including relationships, family, ideology, trends, careers, friendship, etc. Everyone can come up resolutions and hashtag a specific hashtag requested by IQIYI. Then IQIYI and MEWE sort the suggestions and open public poll to finalize the resolution list.
Contestants
Contestants' background are diverse. Candidates are selected from the people who are fluent in Chinese all over world. Many of them are not even Chinese. Some of them are from Singapore and United States. In the early seasons, many candidates are professional debaters from top universities such as Yale University, Peking University, but most of the contestants originally major in non-debate areas. There are fashion hosts, actors, college professors, politicians, students, writers, etc.
Seasons and episodes
The first season
In this season, Ma Dong is the program host. Kevin Tsai, Xiaosong Gao are the instructors. In each episode, one famous female is invited to the show. They joke around and decide which debater is kept and which is knocked out at the end of the episode.
1st place: Weiwei Ma
2nd place: Rujing Yan
3rd place: Xiao Xiao
The following table is a summary of the resolutions discussed and their corresponding show date of Season 1.
The second season
Instructors: Kevin Tsai and Jin Xing
1st place: Chen Qiu
2nd place: Xiao Xiao
3rd place: Ming Chen and Rujing Yan
The following table is a summary of the resolutions discussed and their corresponding show date of Season 2.
The Seventh Season
In the seventh season of I Can I BB, the show heritage the rules from previous season. The hoster Dong Ma invited four famous instructors who are expert from their area:
Kevin Tsai, a Taiwanese writer, television host. film director and screenwriter.
Dan Li, a Chinese stand-up comedian, scriptwriter, planner, and writer.
Zhaofeng Xue, an internet economics scholar and former co-director of Peking University's Law and Economics Research Center.
Qing Liu, professor of East China Normal University, director of the Center for World Politics at East China Normal University.
In this season, the show's criteria for selecting debate topics are more relevant to the present, with priority given to topics that "can only be discussed in 2020".
The final BBKing（Champion）: ShouEr Fu.
What's new?
There is a new competition for the comeback spots called “That's Nonsense” in which debaters have been asked some random nonsense sentences from online. Then debater needs to react quickly and argue back.
Platforms that I Can I BB is on shown
Type “奇葩说” into the search bar.
