Doubao Debunks "Boiling Slippers" Rumor: Blogger Deliberately Guided Replies, Meme Video Lacked Fictional Disclaimer

IT Home, August 31 — Liu Xing, PR head of Doubao, posted on Weibo today to address the recent internet rumor claiming "Doubao advised boiling slippers."

According to IT Home, recently several bloggers across multiple platforms claimed that after their slippers deformed from sun exposure, they asked Doubao for a restoration method. They stated that Doubao advised them to boil the slippers in a pot with boiling water, which ended up ruining both the slippers and the pot.

Liu Xing stated that Doubao would not actually provide such a reply. Anyone can ask Doubao themselves and find out that regarding the issue of "how to handle sun-damaged slippers," Doubao explicitly warns against believing in folk remedies involving scalding or boiling.

Upon official verification, these videos were adapted from a video joke about "who said sun-shrunken shoes can be boiled back." The official team also contacted the original blogger who posted the "Doubao advises boiling slippers" video. The blogger admitted to deliberately guiding Doubao to reply with the requested incorrect content, staging it as a meme video for circulation.

Because the traffic was good, many subsequent accounts produced similar staged videos.

These videos were not labeled as fictional staged memes, causing some media and institutional accounts to believe them to be true and repost the rumor. A rumor thus turned into "news."