【Legendary Investigator #01】qdd-china: The "Power Strip" War
Case Summary
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Behavior Type | ”External attribution + waiting for a safety net” game mode in public collaboration scenarios |
| Setting | A graduate-level final exam in “Experimental Design and Optimization in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering” (4-hour open-book design) at a university |
| Impact | The “scattered elite” group was forced to “transfer” their own resources; the investigator faced real-world backlash and ultimately deleted their account and left the platform |
The Incident
In the bitter cold of January this year, a university teacher with the online handle qdd-china left a classic field observation record on Zhihu.
He taught a course called “Experimental Design and Optimization in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering”—a hardcore subject that forcibly stitches abstract mathematics with chemistry experiments. On the last day of class, he gave his 71 graduate students two options:
- A: Go to the main campus, which has a computer lab, for the exam.
- B: Stay at the local campus, but bring your own laptop and power strip, plugging into wall outlets for the 4-hour exam.
Without a second’s hesitation, the entire class chose B.
For practical reasons regarding exam hall capacity, he divided the 71 students into two separate “temples” based on gender: 31 “scattered elite” (male students), 40 “sisters” (female students).
This seemingly random grouping inadvertently sealed a sociological black box.
Parallel Universes in Two Temples
On exam day, the two exam halls displayed completely different ecosystems.
The “Scattered Elite” Temple: A High-Entropy Thunder Hive. The floor quickly became a tangled web of temporary power grids—from 2-outlet to 8-outlet, even 10-outlet power strips proliferated like a giant spider web. Amid the noise, the scattered elite collectively secured public resources. Every laptop was connected to the hive, with ample current flowing to each person.
This was a fully functioning public collaboration system: bring your own tools, actively build, share collectively. No one gave orders; it just happened naturally.
The “Sisters” Temple: A Dead Silent Archipelago of Isolation.
The floor here was clean to the point of being sterile.
Except for the lucky few who had secured wall outlets, everyone else was running dry. What followed was even more suffocating:
- Fortress Islands: Those who had wall outlets refused to share any power path. When a classmate next to them, running out of battery, repeatedly opened and closed their laptop screen in a desperate struggle, both sides maintained a nearly dead silence—no asking, no giving, just enduring on their internal batteries.
- Private Lifelines: Only among a few “close girlfriends” with deep bonds would a tiny two-outlet power strip be shyly produced for a secret, minimal share. Public collaboration didn’t exist here, but private micro-circulation still happened.
- The Cthulhu’s Voice: When the investigator, unable to bear it any longer, forcibly brought 5 power strips from the scattered elite temple to try and set up a public grid, they were met with a fierce backlash of mental pollution from those who had occupied the wall outlets—“Why should I give up my wall outlet!” Their logic was perfectly circular: I got lucky and followed the rules to get this outlet, so why should I give it up? As for the person next to me about to hand in a blank paper due to no power—that’s the teacher’s problem, not mine.
- Hidden Residue: Only after the public grid was forcibly established by an external force did a few trembling hands emerge from bags, pulling out the small power strips they had all along, connecting to the energy system donated and built by the scattered elite group.
Scattered Elite Temple: The floor is a crisscrossing spider web of power strips, with everyone connected to abundant energy.
Sisters Temple: A floor so clean it’s almost barren; no electricity grows beyond the wall.
Behavioral Analysis: It’s Not “Can’t,” It’s “Don’t Have To”
On the surface, this is a story about a “gap in public collaboration skills.” But stopping there would miss the most crucial observation.
When a commenter pointed out that “women are naturally bad at public collaboration,” a user named momo offered a sharper deconstruction:
It’s not that they can’t, and it’s not that they don’t want to. They know very well: if they ask another woman for help, it probably won’t work. They’re actually waiting for you, the teacher, to step in and make the request to the other girls on their behalf. This way, they avoid owing anyone a favor and avoid direct conflict with other women—everything can be blamed on “the teacher arranged it,” absolving them of any responsibility.
The underlying structure of this behavioral logic is far more sophisticated than “can they collaborate or not”:
Step 1: Default Supply. The power strips should be provided by the teacher/school. You didn’t provide them? That’s your problem, not mine.
Step 2: Wait for the Rabbit. Don’t actively build a public grid. Don’t actively ask for help. Don’t actively give up a scarce resource you’ve already claimed. Wait for an external force to intervene—wait for the teacher to provide a safety net, wait for the rules to tilt, wait for someone else to give in first.
Step 3: External Attribution. If no one provides a safety net and a large number of people fail? The blame falls entirely on the teacher—“It’s your poor planning.” Complaints, reports, going to the academic affairs office—they know every step by heart.
Step 4: Reap the Rewards. Didn’t spend a cent. Didn’t owe anyone a favor. Didn’t ask anyone for help. The exam is successfully completed. All costs—whether the physical cost of the power strips or the social cost of forcibly “transferring” resources from the scattered elite group—are borne by the system and others.
None of these four steps require “public collaboration skills.” What they require is a fully functioning “External Attribution Game Protocol”: Don’t participate in public construction. Don’t participate in resource competition. Wait for others to divide the cake—and if you don’t get a piece, question the rules of the cake-cutting itself.
The Cthulhu Moment
Among all the observations, the most unsettling wasn’t the “sisters” who didn’t bring power strips. It was the Cthulhu-like sister who, after occupying a wall outlet, said to the investigator, “Why should I give up my wall outlet!”
Her logic was flawless: The rules didn’t require her to give it up. She was just lucky enough to sit by the wall. Why should she share her windfall?
This is precisely the problem: In a system completely backed by rules and external authority, “I” don’t need to be responsible for “us”—because, in the end, some greater force will always come to clean up the mess. And if that force doesn’t come, I’ll make a fuss until it does.
Extension: The Tragic Role of the “Rule Hand”
Investigator qdd-china is the most tragic actor in this story.
He could have insisted on “fairness”—consistent rules, self-managed resources, bear your own consequences. But he knew perfectly well: if a large number of “sisters” failed, he wouldn’t face an academic discussion; he would face a torrent of complaints and reports. He admitted in his original post:
If someone fails because of the power issue, they’ll definitely report me to the academic affairs office and the graduate school! You people are talking without considering the consequences! If something goes wrong, the blame flies to me!
So he used the “higher-dimensional hand”: He took 5 power strips from the scattered elite temple and forcibly set up a public grid for the sisters’ temple.
He himself called it “the court’s cross-province grain transfer”—Province B burned its granaries, so the court transferred reserve grain from Province A. Fair? No. But reasonable? At the time, there was no other choice.
Investigator qdd-china ultimately completed the final piece of this experiment by deleting his account: Those who dare to reveal this hidden survival logic will be consumed by that very logic.
Why Did He Have to Delete His Account?
Because he crossed three red lines:
- The Anger of the Scattered Elite: Why should the public resources we worked hard to build be forcibly taken away? This tells everyone who prepared seriously: your efforts only provide a larger safety net for those who didn’t prepare.
- The Backlash from the Sisters: This overly detailed record essentially exposed the sisters in his class. Even though he stitched a quote from Simone de Beauvoir at the end as a “disclaimer,” it couldn’t hide their behavior during the collaboration—they felt not “insight” but “offense.”
- The Amplifying Effect of the Internet: With a school-verified real identity, he posted a field report that allowed the entire class to identify themselves. The comments section became a battlefield, and the person at the center of that battlefield was defenseless.
The Meaning of the Record
qdd-china ultimately deleted his account.
His answer might still be on Zhihu (if he didn’t manually delete it before deactivating), but his voice is gone. Misinterpretation is the fate of the speaker, and deleting an account is the only cold comfort an ostrich can find when burying its head in the sand.
But regardless, this fire has already burned. It illuminated a hard-to-face truth:
Every benevolent tilt of the “rule hand” makes the strategy of “not participating in the game but reaping the benefits” more effective. And anyone who dares to make this game logic public will bear the risk of being crushed by that very logic.
This isn’t about a battle of the sexes. It’s about a fully functioning, hidden survival strategy—one that doesn’t discriminate by gender, education, or class. It can spontaneously sprout and reproduce in any environment where the “external attribution + make a fuss until someone provides a safety net” game mechanism exists.
Recording it isn’t about witch-hunting. It’s about enabling more people to recognize this logic—whether others use it against you, or you unconsciously follow it yourself.
Recording Principles
- Record behavior, don’t judge individuals. Every individual is complex and multifaceted.
- One person’s behavior does not equal a group trait. But a recurring game pattern deserves to be named.
- Focus on establishing identifiable risk patterns, not witch-hunting.