Iron Bull: The "Brother Jie" from an Anti-Sexual Assault PSA Became His Ten-Year Life

30-Second Overview: Born in 1988, Wu Chia-wei was an amateur before playing "Brother Jie." He worked as a guest actor for the influencer group "This Group of People" and, through a resume selection notice from Chan Jung-chen, took on a Ministry of Education short PSA with only three days of shooting time, playing the role of the "perpetrator" ¹. Uploaded on June 16, 2013, If I Had Known Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted Too went viral, reaching nearly 800,000 views in July and setting a record for Taiwanese government PSA videos ². He was so frequently stopped by passersby shouting "Brother Jie, no!" that he wanted to flee; he once rejected the role, but ten years later, he turned "Brother Jie" into the protagonist of Taiwan's first meme musical ³.
In an anti-sexual assault PSA, the most popular figure was not the victim, but the perpetrator.

In 2012, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China commissioned the National Academy for Educational Research to produce a 17-minute and 31-second gender equality education PSA, If I Had Known Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted Too, based on a true case ⁴. The plot follows Ah-Wei, a boy from an intergenerational household who runs away from home, meets a middle-aged man calling himself "Brother Jie" at an internet café, is lured home with food and beer, and is ultimately sexually assaulted ⁴. The video aimed to remind society that boys can also be victims of sexual assault.

The result was that what people actually remembered was Brother Jie’s line: "Ah-Wei, let Brother Jie take a look."

When Wu Chia-wei played that role, he was not yet the YouTuber "Iron Bull." He later went viral across the straits thanks to the "Brother Jie" meme, with cumulative meme views exceeding 300 million ³, but it took nearly ten years for him to accept that he was Brother Jie.

Three Days, A Perpetrator’s Role

In 2012, Wu Chia-wei’s life goals had little to do with the PSA. He first worked in a haunted house, did stage play back-stage work, and his last full-time job was in the publishing industry for two years ¹. At that time, his only acting experience was as a guest actor for the influencer group "This Group of People." Chan Jung-chen said the Ministry of Education was casting for a PSA; the whole group submitted resumes, and Iron Bull was selected to play Brother Jie ⁵.

The casting process itself was full of surprises. He originally received the role of "Teacher," but the script was taken away at the last minute. The director asked if he wanted to challenge the educational theme of "boys can also be sexually assaulted," leaving him only three days to prepare ¹. Upon hearing he was to play the "perpetrator," he agreed without hesitation. No one at the time foresaw what this video would spark.

The shooting location was in Keelung, filmed at Nuannan High School, Xinfeng Street, and Dingnei No. 15 Park ⁶. Wu Chia-wei portrayed the middle-aged man who pretended to be enthusiastic but had ulterior motives in a chilling manner, especially with the line: "Ah-Wei, let Brother Jie take a look, come, come, let Brother Jie take a look" ².

Photo: HualinXMN / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

📝 Curator’s Note: Ah-Wei, the victim in the PSA, was played by amateur Huang Yao-wei. Yet the most "memorable" figure was the perpetrator—a gender equality education film primarily from the victim’s perspective, which ten years later saw the perpetrator’s lines become the most popular internet slang in Taiwan. This was likely not the outcome any gender equality education expert had expected.

Ten Years of Being Called "Brother Jie, No!"

The video was uploaded to YouTube on June 16, 2013, and within a month, views approached 800,000, setting a historical record for Taiwanese government PSA videos ². The Ministry of Education probably didn’t expect that a video reminding people "boys can also be sexually assaulted" would become the hottest meme material in all of Taiwan.

"Brother Jie, no!", "Be good, let me look", "You’re so brave", "I see you completely don’t understand", "This Binbin is so lame"—line by line, these lines were screenshotted, adapted, and turned into memes, spreading from Taiwan to mainland China. In 2017, the video sparked a new wave of热潮 on Bilibili; the trend intensified in 2019, with a single Bilibili video reaching a peak of 27 million views ³. Big data statistics show that from November 2022 to October 2023 alone, the "Brother Jie, no!" series memes generated 17,048 units of online buzz ⁷. As of June 2023, YouTube views had accumulated to over 3 million ².

For Wu Chia-wei, this was not glory, but a nuisance.

"Wherever I went, everyone called me Brother Jie." He said in a later interview that being shouted "Brother Jie, no!" on the street left him at a loss; he even encountered motorcyclists pulling over just to shout it ⁵. More absurdly, some viewers dialed the threatening SMS phone number Brother Jie sent to Ah-Wei in the video, calling directly to his personal mobile phone; others found his home, inviting him to "play Brother Jie again" ⁶.

✦ "I actually regretted it at the time. I once rejected the 'Brother Jie' role because I was still an actor; I feared being typecast and having my acting career limited." ¹

He once heard people shouting "Brother Jie, no!" on the street but wasn’t sure if they were calling him. "Being laughed at requires courage; I didn’t have the strength to withstand everyone’s gaze at the time" ⁵. In 2018, he married Tingting, a flight attendant, and continued to operate the channel "Iron Bull Tingting IronbullTingTing" after marriage ⁴.

The turning point came with a sentence. Master Huang Li-cheng once said to "Master Huang Di-di" (Zhou Jun-wei) on a program: "How others see you doesn’t matter. This is your past; you must accept it to become better" ⁵. Iron Bull later recounted this, saying he decided to calmly accept that he was Brother Jie: "Later I found that through this role, I could bridge the distance with my audience, and only then did I calmly accept it" ⁸.

In 2021, he and Huang Yao-wei were invited by game company Garena to shoot a promotional ad for the mobile game Free Fire, recreating the classic scene. "I didn’t expect this meme could be commercialized so effectively" ⁸.

WánGAME: Stubbornly Playing

Another history of the stage name Iron Bull is written in the map of Taiwan’s early game streaming circle.

In 2013, Wu Chia-wei and Hua Sen (Huang Chi-sen) co-founded the game streaming group "WánGAME," with Iron Bull naming the channel. They originally wanted to call it "Game King" or "Play GAME," but fearing it sounded like plagiarism, changed it to "WánGAME," taking the meaning of "stubbornly playing" ⁹. The channel officially launched in 2014, with early members including Iron Bull, Hua Sen, Sheng Jie-shi (Saint Stone), and Nick. They went viral with the "Things Even Little Brats Do" series ⁹. At that time, Taiwan’s game streaming circle was just starting. The four used a simple method—one person, one phone, one account—to摸索 out a distinctly Taiwanese comedic style between live streams and walkthrough videos.

Iron Bull has a deep memory of his first brand deal. Around 2014, the three collaborated on a video promoting shell coins, with total remuneration of 5,000 NTD. After deducting prop costs, each person got less than 1,000 NTD. "When we got the money, we thought, let’s be bold. This time, let’s take a taxi to shoot!" ¹

Sheng Jie-shi and Nick gradually left the group for personal planning and differing filming philosophies. In 2019, the four reunited for a video, breaking rumors of internal discord ¹⁰. On February 9, 2021, Iron Bull unexpectedly announced the dissolution of WánGAME. At the time, the channel had 712,000 subscribers and 153 million cumulative views ⁹.

Source: Wikipedia, Wikidata, ETtoday

That year of dissolution, Iron Bull considered leaving the internet circle. He considered returning to a stable workplace, even thinking of taking the exam to become an excavator operator, "thinking driving big vehicles is cool" ¹. Finally, he discussed with Tingting, giving himself two more years to operate his personal channel; if it failed, he would find a job. The audience still bought in, so he stayed ¹. His advice to new creators is now pragmatic: have a main job to stabilize your life first, operate YouTube as a hobby, and don’t invest large amounts of money in equipment from the start ¹.

Source: Wikipedia, Mirror Media, ETtoday

WánGAME and His Ten Years as a Game Streamer

After the short video went viral, Wu Chia-wei did not immediately become a full-time creator. What truly made him treat "content creator" as his livelihood was the game streaming channel "WánGAME" established with Hua Sen and others in late 2014. The channel name was named by Iron Bull. They originally wanted to call it "Game King" or "Play GAME," but finally chose a name with a strong Taiwanese flavor ¹. WánGAME was famous for game walkthroughs and comedic streams, and with Saint Stone, Nick, and others, became an early representative face of Taiwan’s game streaming circle. At its peak, the channel’s subscribers reached 712,000 ¹.

On September 1, 2020, WánGAME unexpectedly announced its dissolution. At the time, the channel already had 712,000 subscribers and over a thousand videos ¹. Behind the dissolution was no dramatic fallout, but for Wu Chia-wei, this loss was more tangible than "Brother Jie": at least the meme gave him work to do; after the channel scattered, he had to figure out how to survive.

In those years, he tried many jobs. In an interview, he revealed he once considered taking the exam to become an excavator operator, "thinking driving big vehicles is cool" ¹. In 2021, he co-founded the channel "Sheng Wán" with Saint Stone; in 2023, he reorganized "WánGAME 2" with Jun Chen, A Shen, and Hua Sen, but the collaboration lasted only a year before closing. Hua Sen later continued the brand in a new form, which outsiders called "Wángame 2.0" ¹⁰. For someone once trapped by a meme, these years actually illustrated one thing: outside of Brother Jie, Wu Chia-wei has always been struggling in ordinary ways.

The Meme Became a Common Language

The status of "Brother Jie, no!" in Taiwan’s internet culture has gone beyond just a joke; it is almost a dialect. Netizens use it to respond to almost any context: if a friend recommends a bad movie, you reply "I see you completely don’t understand"; if someone shows off a new car, the comment section automatically floods with "This Binbin is so lame" ¹¹. Analysis from The Republic of Formosa indicates that the 2021 wave of popularity spread from mainland China back to Taiwan. At that time, some Taiwanese netizens began to research the shooting locations in the video, confirming the sites were around Nuannan High School and Dingnei No. 15 Park in Keelung. The research itself into "Brother Jie, no!" became a form of internet subculture ¹¹.

The permeability of this meme even seeped into the daily life of mainstream media. In March 2023, under a news post about a dual-door Mercedes-Benz, a netizen commented "I see you completely don’t understand," pushing the meme’s buzz to a peak that month ⁷. Statistics from LINE TODAY and the big data observation site DailyView both show that whenever social news features a "preachy" or "show-off" protagonist, the comment section automatically awakens Brother Jie, as if he is a character always on standby online ⁷. Big data statistics show that from November 2022 to October 2023 alone, the "Brother Jie, no!" series memes generated 17,048 units of online buzz ⁷. As of June 2023, YouTube views had accumulated to over 3 million ². A PSA produced and commissioned by the government twelve years ago still provides material for Taiwan’s news comment sections today; this long-tail buzz is something no amount of ad buying can exchange for.

Some scholars have raised serious questions about the educational effectiveness of this video. Li Chia-lin of the Institute of Society and Culture at National Chiao Tung University criticized as early as 2013 that this video not only failed to achieve the purpose of gender equality education but instead reinforced the stereotype of "middle-aged male = sexual assault perpetrator," linked AIDS patients with sexual assault victims, and suppressed adolescents’ sexual expression ⁶.

From the perspective of meme studies, the cross-strait transmission path of "Brother Jie, no!" is also textbook-level. Around 2017, the video fermented on Bilibili; Chinese netizens re-edited it with simplified subtitles and covered it, turning the lines into a universal meme library. Starting from 2021, it spread from the mainland back to Taiwan, forming a "export then re-import" meme loop ¹¹. A Taiwanese PSA produced in 2012 and released in 2013 thus completed an unexpected cultural export and return through the relay of cross-strait internet communities. The video also spawned a series of popular phrases in mainland China such as "Let Me Look," "Escaped One Brother," and "In Brother’s Difficulty, No Escape" ¹². The National Academy for Educational Research’s Ai Xue Wang (Love Learning Network) still retains the official page for this video, open for viewing under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license ⁴. The government did not take it down; the internet let it live on as something else.

The Meme Went on Stage

From December 1 to 3, 2023, a musical no one thought would exist was performed at the New Taipei City Arts Center: Hou Yo~ Brother Jie, No!!, promoted as "Taiwan’s First Meme Musical" ⁷. Iron Bull (Wu Chia-wei) and Huang Yao-wei reprised their roles as Brother Jie and Ah-Wei, respectively. Chang Chien-mian, who played Teacher Shu-hui in the original, continued the role, and the screenwriter added new characters ³.

The origin of this play was circuitous. In 2018, Huang Yao-wei, who had become a theater actor, had the idea to adapt it into a musical but was stuck on funding ³. In 2021, YouTuber Xiaowei (Zeng Yu-xiang) and Wu Ji-ru adapted the short video into a 3-minute web musical, inviting Iron Bull and Huang Yao-wei to provide voice; the video went viral again ³. Lin Ta-han, founder of Beaker Magnifier, saw the commercial potential and decided to invest. Huang Yao-wei recommended the theater group "Stitch Creative Workshop," famous for original Chinese musicals, to produce it ³. Director Gao Tian-heng and screenwriter Wang Mu-tian (formerly a member of the Chinese dub script team for The Simpsons) wrote over a hundred meme selections for the first draft ¹³.

Adapting a PSA from a public institution required passing the authorization hurdle first. Gao Tian-heng first obtained authorization from the National Academy for Educational Research: "Public institutions were very happy to let us adapt it, but the premise was that the work could not violate good morals and customs" ¹³. The entire play centered on the concept of "the story behind the meme," using song and dance to connect internet memes and subculture, performing over ten songs ¹³. The musical brought up background characters from the original video who had almost no lines (the convenience store clerk, the passerby in the park) onto the stage, giving those who had been supporting characters in the meme for ten years their own narrative for the first time.

Baotong Junior High School Cloud Network / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

The ambition of the stage version went beyond mere restoration. The play’s tracklist included up to fifteen tracks, including the overture and finale. The stage design used simple props and projection screens to recreate the original scenes. The program booklet was deliberately laid out in the style of social media pages, giving the audience a sense of "logging into a webpage" before entering the theater. The play also added new characters symbolizing influencers, such as "Yan Zhi Nan" (Spicy Juice Man) and "Lin Qin Qin Zi," using plots like live streaming, hacker intrusions, cyberbullying, and诱导 fraud to extend the meme’s ten years into an overall observation of internet ecology ¹⁴.

Christopher Sherlock / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Illustrative Photo)

In March 2024, commentator Qiu Yi-feng published a review on Commentary, the journal of the National Center for the Arts. He noted that the chorus actors’ bodies were fluid and their singing skills were perfect; the overall performance was steady and ample. Unfortunately, the lyrics were "cutting the feet to fit the shoes" to accommodate the plot, and there was even no credited lyricist ¹⁴. Director Gao Tian-heng made a joke at the curtain call in Taichung’s Zhongshan Hall that made the audience laugh: "If you understand 60%, it means your internet addiction is already severe; if you understand 90%, wow! That’s really hopeless!" ¹⁴

Screenwriter Wang Mu-tian said that most stories behind memes have a sad component, but becoming a meme allows others to gain happiness—this contrast is the entry point of the entire play ¹³. From February 24 to 25, 2024, the troupe moved to Taichung’s Zhongshan Hall for additional performances, with ticket prices ranging from 300 to 2,300 NTD ¹⁵. The Taichung Zhongshan Hall official website positioned this play precisely: "Taiwan’s first meme musical, an artistic crystallization co-created by the internet generation"—memes are the internet’s new poetry for the jaded generation, and the theater turns it back into live poetry ¹⁵. Director Gao Tian-heng was previously known for works like Bitter Life and Surprise Little Bar; this was his expansion into the musical field ¹⁵. In 2025, the troupe brought an upgraded version to the Sphere Theater at the Taipei Performing Arts Center, inviting comedian He Long (He Long Night Show) to assist. The OPENTIX official program page listed the production team, including composers Xiaowei and Chang Ching-yen, choreographers Chang Ching-chia and Ku Hung-shan, and others, noting "Subsidizing Agency | Ministry of Culture" ¹⁶. Huang Yao-wei, who played the victimized boy in the play, is now a theater actor and also participated in the Public Television Service (PTS) new film Not Losing His Temper ⁶.

For Wu Chia-wei, this performance held special significance. Ten years ago, he was an amateur, stepping into the role for a PSA at the last minute, not knowing how the audience would see him. Ten years later, he stood under the theater’s spotlight, with the audience sitting below, having grown up with the memes that watched him. The meme carved his name into Taiwan’s internet history; the musical returned that name to the theater—for an actor who feared being typecast for over ten years, this was the most dignified way to reconcile.

The Meme Grew into a Universe

Ten years of derivative works pushed "Brother Jie" into a self-contained derivative universe. Game companies used it to shoot ads; Garena’s Free Fire once invited Iron Bull and Huang Yao-wei to shoot a promotional short, writing the meme lines directly into the promotion ⁸. YouTubers cut it into a 3-minute web musical, getting the original cast to provide voice and exploding again ³. The theater brought it to the stage, becoming "Taiwan’s First Meme Musical" ³. In March 2026, the mainland Chinese game team Loser Studio released the first-person horror game In Brother’s Difficulty, No Escape on Steam, priced at 66 NTD. Players are invited by Brother Jie into his house, only to discover it’s a scam; they must constantly explore and hide from his pursuit inside, finding safety only by hiding in the closet ¹².

Ads, web music, theater, horror games—the meme material from the same PSA grew into four completely different media forms over ten years. For cultural researchers, this is a rare sample: a character evolving from a perpetrator in a Ministry of Education planning document, to a common internet language, to a cultural asset that can be consumed, invested in, and performed. Wu Chia-wei is the only "place of origin" in this universe—the starting point of all derivative works cannot bypass his amateur audition from over a decade ago.

Tingting, Children, and Iron Bull Tingting

On January 1, 2018, Wu Chia-wei married Tingting, a flight attendant. After marriage, the two co-operated the "Iron Bull Tingting IronbullTingTing" channel, recording their daily lives and parenting ⁴. As of December 2025, the channel had approximately 262,000 subscribers, 22.51 million cumulative views, and 254 works ¹⁷. Channel content ranged from couple’s daily life to taking kids out, allowing the audience to see the family appearance of "Brother Jie" after shedding the role. Between 2025 and 2026, the channel’s focus clearly shifted to family: the "Flying with Flight Attendant Tingting" series paused after its tenth episode due to Tingting’s pregnancy. In an August 2025 video, he publicly revealed his "rich second generation" identity: his grandmother had a plot of land in Kaohsiung, and the entire row of houses belonged to the family ¹⁸. In July 2026, the two filmed a special episode "Opening Love Letters from Ten Years Ago," reliving their love story from when they met in the flight attendant group ¹⁸. Additionally, he opened the "Iron Bull Brother Jie Official Channel" on Bilibili, actively operating the source of this meme ¹⁷.

After his son was born, Wu Chia-wei’s life task advanced from "accepting Brother Jie" to "protecting the child." In an interview, he frankly said his biggest worry was that his three-year-old son would be teased by peers with "Your dad is Brother Jie," "This is my biggest current task" ⁵. This sentence actually echoed his situation ten years ago: a character, when it is yours, is a burden; when it is given to you by the audience, it is traffic. What he wants to do now is not let the same gaze fall on his child. From rejection, to acceptance, to setting up defenses—this is the third lesson Brother Jie taught him, and also the lesson this PSA never intended to teach.

The Lesson the PSA Didn’t Finish, the Meme Took Over

Honestly speaking, the effectiveness of If I Had Known Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted Too as a gender equality education video is controversial. Li Chia-lin of the Institute of Society and Culture at National Chiao Tung University criticized in writing as early as 2013: this video not only failed to achieve the purpose of gender equality education but instead reinforced the stereotype of "middle-aged male = sexual assault perpetrator," linked AIDS patients with sexual assault victims, and suppressed adolescents’ sexual expression ⁶.

The video survived, in a way completely not in the planning document. It became a common language: Taiwan’s internet generation uses it for memes, young people on the mainland create derivatives on Bilibili ⁶, game companies use it for ads ⁸, the theater brings it to the stage ³, and even the game platform released an original horror game for it ¹². For Wu Chia-wei and Huang Yao-wei, this batch of "people in the play," the ten-year popularity of the meme represents more than just traffic—Huang Yao-wei said: "People discuss it because they like the character; I actually enjoy it now. The 'Brother Jie, no!' meme has become part of my life" ⁸.

And Wu Chia-wei’s ten-year timeline is written clearly: from rejection, to acceptance, to setting up defenses. After becoming a father, his biggest fear is not the meme going out of style, but it being too vital—so vital that he has to worry that when his son grows up, classmates will first call his dad "Brother Jie."

The vitality of a meme often outlasts its original intent. The lesson the Ministry of Education wanted to teach, students didn’t fully absorb, but the moment Brother Jie said "let Brother Jie look," over ten years later, countless people still remember, and it even grew into the "Brother Jie Universe" spanning ads, games, theater, and horror games ¹². This perhaps reminds us: in Taiwan, a character’s vitality depends not only on who he wants to become, but more on who the audience decides he should become—and Wu Chia-wei spent ten years learning to coexist with the audience’s decision.

Further Reading

• Ah Han — Another Taiwanese YouTuber path of "internet character backlash and reconciliation": imitating all the aunts in the alley, only to be asked by people in the alley, "Who has the right to act?"
• WánGAME — From Iron Bull and Hua Sen’s game streaming group, to the map of Taiwan’s game creator community after Saint Stone and Nick went solo.
• Meme, Puzzle, Decadent Musical? Variations from Original Tone to Re-creation — A full review of Hou Yo~ Brother Jie, No!! by the National Center for the Arts’ Commentary, seeing how the meme is translated by the theater.
• Let Me Look! Taiwan Meme "Brother Jie, no!" Adapted into Horror Game — In Brother’s Difficulty, No Escape went on Steam in 2026; see how the Brother Jie meme went from Taiwan to become a transnational derivative work.

References

Image Sources

All images in this article are free copyright (CC License), allowing direct remixing and reposting:

• Iron Bull (Wu Chia-wei) at Xiamen Golden Dolphin Anime & Game Expo — Photo: HualinXMN / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
• 2012 Taiwan Gender Equality Education Worksheet — Baotong Junior High School Cloud Network / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
• Musical Audience Seats (Illustrative Photo) — Christopher Sherlock / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0