元芳，你怎么看

What does 元芳，你怎么看 mean?

The formula is simple. Post a piece of news, a photo, a scandal, then append 元芳，你怎么看 and watch the replies fill with people impersonating a Tang dynasty bodyguard. The joke is the delegation itself: nobody wants to offer an opinion first, so the opinion is outsourced to a character who exists only to nod along. It peaked in October 2012, when it colonized 微博 comment sections within days, and it survives as shorthand for making someone else react first. Fans of 《神探狄仁杰》 had the last laugh. Later retrospectives noted that the quoted line never appears verbatim in the show, only the character's habit of asking.

Where does 元芳，你怎么看 come from?

October 2012: 元芳体 swept Chinese social media, driven by 微博 users attaching the question to breaking news and by 网易 news comment threads where it became a running gag. Media treated it as the internet's way of joining every conversation while promising nothing. By December it was a fixture of the annual language roundups, filed under the year's defining phrases.

How to use 元芳，你怎么看

• 公司突然宣布提前一小时上班，元芳，你怎么看？
  Gōngsī tūrán xuānbù tíqián yī xiǎoshí shàngbān, yuán fāng, nǐ zěnme kàn?
  The company just moved the start time an hour earlier. Yuan Fang, thoughts?
• 我把新发型照片发到家庭群，配文：元芳，你怎么看。
  Wǒ bǎ xīn fàxíng zhàopiàn fā dào jiātíng qún, pèiwén: yuán fāng, nǐ zěnme kàn.
  I posted the new haircut in the family group with one line: Yuan Fang, what do you make of this.