Conquer’s Melon-Buying AI Meme Edits Flood Bilibili and Spark Debate

On Bilibili, the old Conquest clip commonly known as "Huaqiang Buys Melons" has surged back into the platform’s YTP-style remix scene because of AI-generated fan edits, with the source article describing related uploads as taking up nearly one-third of what you see on the page. That comeback has reopened a familiar argument: not whether the meme still works, but how much AI is now reshaping the way this entire scene creates.

The original scene, performed by Sun Honglei, was always built for reuse. Its appeal came from intense line delivery, obvious conflict, and a clean reversal, which is exactly why internet users spent years dissecting it and turning it into a classic source for remix videos. For a long time, though, it had faded from the front line and mostly survived through brief appearances in compilation edits. What changed is simple: AI tools now handle the parts that used to bottleneck this kind of work, including face swaps, dubbing, and lip-sync, effectively giving an old meme format a full rebuild.

What stands out in this new wave is not just volume, but how much technology has expanded the format’s range. The source article broadly splits current "melon-buying" videos into three categories. First, there are basic rewrites that keep the original script structure while swapping out characters and dialogue. Second, there are more ambitious story reworks that keep the core trio of Huaqiang, Brother Hao, and Brother Hao’s underling, but completely rearrange the plot. These are rarer, but their ceiling is much higher. Third, there are the long-running autotuned singing versions, which now sound more natural and come with AI-generated music video visuals that fit the song better.

Examples in the article include Xu Xian Buys Melons, Is There Something Wrong With Your Wand?, A Titanic Came to Buy Melons, and So You’re Forming a Band, Right? Together they make the point clearly: the "Buys Melons" framework is extremely flexible, and in theory almost any subject can be dropped into it. That was always true to a degree, but AI has compressed the labor that used to go into manual editing, pitch correction, and frame-by-frame lip-sync. Creators can now spend more of their effort on the joke itself and on story construction.

The technical stack behind this boom is also the reason it is spreading so fast. Advances in text-to-video and image-to-video have made generation easier at the macro level. AI face swapping and facial repainting make it much easier to replace Huaqiang with almost anyone else while preserving exaggerated performances. Voice cloning and AI dubbing let new dialogue come through in something close to the original character’s voice, or the voice of whatever replacement character is being used. AI lip-sync then pulls those altered parts together into something that feels much more natural on screen.

That matters beyond this single meme. The article argues that these tools do not just apply to Huaqiang Buys Melons, but to almost any remix source material, and that the YTP-style section on Bilibili has already been visibly changed by AI as a result. Before this wave, older staples like Cat Meme and Lao Da had already stayed active there for a long time through AI-assisted videos. Lao Da, in particular, is described as one of the early popular AI-video subjects, with creators putting him into short dramas and shorts, having him appear on If You Are the One and Swap Life, and even turning him into ASMR sleep-aid material. The article also notes that Saving a Fox in the Snowy Mountains previously sparked its own AI creation surge in the same scene.

Some users have responded with the complaint that the remix scene "doesn’t have that same flavor anymore." The article’s reading of that complaint is persuasive: what people really feel they are losing is less the old style than the old human touch. That concern is understandable, but dismissing AI work as automatically low-quality or uncreative no longer really holds. After watching a large number of these videos, the author says the overall standard is generally not low, and ties that directly to the growing maturity of AI video tools.

The same shift is now visible in other creative fields too. The article points to music, short-form drama, anime-style fan works, and even meme creation as areas where AI traces are becoming harder to ignore. In music, there are already works made entirely with AI-written lyrics and composition, and this path has become especially popular in rap. In short-form drama, AI is described as one of the industry’s frontier tools, to the point that related job postings on recruitment platforms now almost all require applicants to be proficient in using AI for creation. In game-adjacent fan communities, the article names the Administrator Penguin from Endfield, Phoebe from Wuthering Waves, and DORO from NIKKE as examples of images that spread widely online through AI-assisted creation.

Seen through a games lens, this feels a lot like what happens when powerful modding or editing tools suddenly become easier to use. Lower barriers inevitably produce a flood of templated work, but they also make room for a smaller number of genuinely strong creations. The article repeatedly singles out Brother Hao Is Not Here and Incompetent Brother Hao as standout examples in the story-rework category, arguing that their reach comes from everyday absurdity and cross-textual blending. One viewer is even cited as saying they had watched a single work 15 times. That gets at the real point: the videos that endure still win on pacing and narrative, not merely because they wear an AI skin.

The final takeaway is neither panic nor blind celebration. The changes in Bilibili’s remix scene are presented as a reflection of broader technological change. AI creation is getting better, and it should be judged alongside human-made work rather than dismissed on sight, while creators who continue to work fully by hand still deserve respect. After Lao Da, Saving a Fox in the Snowy Mountains, and now Huaqiang Buys Melons, the author ends on a different question: which ancient remix source will AI revive next?