Back when I still had Weibo, “I don’t understand” was everywhere.
You would see it flood the comments under breaking events, under stories with that absurd, surreal edge reality sometimes has, or under the handling of incidents that was so warped and so detached from ordinary expectations that people could only respond with the same line: I don’t understand.
At first, the phrase came from a meme: a primary school student, in crooked handwriting, answering an exam question with a simple “I don’t understand.” Later it turned into something else—a way for crowds to express dissatisfaction with an event or with how it was dealt with, while also feeling completely powerless. People assumed these were decisions made by those above them, beyond their reach, so “I don’t understand” became a form of verbal irony and emotional release.
And yet, in essence, it still has a lot in common with that child’s original answer.
Because it really is, in a very real sense, the behavior of a child.
Of course, you can elevate it into something much larger. Unlike the line “This is our last generation,” which hit with the force of a final cry, “I don’t understand” feels more like a collective chorus—a mournful sound made by young people confronting social control and the management of public opinion, a shared expression of helplessness and incapacity.
But even when you frame it that way, it still does not carry the same shock. “This is our last generation” was tied to an actual act. “I don’t understand” has no action in it. It is only a muted statement. I have tried very hard not to fall back on crude bodily metaphors, but the difference really is that obvious: “I don’t understand” is like a fart with no sound and no smell. It barely even registers.
That is not me trying to score points by putting it down. It does not do anything meaningful in the first place, so there is hardly any point in “beating” it. But yes, calling it childish is meant as criticism.
I know that because I used to be one of those people who said it.
It did not take long to realize that after I let out my own “I don’t understand,” nothing changed. That brief satisfaction of having voiced it changed none of the unfairness, none of the imbalance, none of the actual outcome.
When I was younger, this led to repeated conflict with my mother. I would voice that same kind of frustration at things I found unjust; she would say the right response was to keep quiet. If you are incapable of changing anything, then speaking up like that has no meaning either. In her view, the people making what they believe to be the “right” decisions are not shaken when more and more people say “I don’t understand.” If anything, they may feel more certain they chose correctly, because no one is truly stopping them—only resisting in a way that costs nothing and changes nothing.
If you cannot change it, then accept it.
When I was young, there was no way I could agree with that kind of parental wisdom. I even thought her generation, precisely because it was so used to swallowing what it was given, had allowed society to slide into something increasingly unmanageable—and was now trying to pass the same logic on to the next generation.
But if you sit with it long enough, another question appears: what exactly can all these “I don’t understands” really change?
In the past two days, a news story about a man assaulting a woman exploded online. From there, a whole cluster of issues surfaced at once: how women should protect themselves, why the burden is always placed on women to protect themselves, why men do not step up to protect women, and so on.
Naturally, the usual “I don’t understand” arguments appeared too: statements like “all men are too afraid to step in when a woman is in danger” or “why is it that whenever something happens to a woman, people blame her for not protecting herself.”
Honestly, these arguments are not that different from the phrase itself, because the discussion quickly detaches from reality. It leaves the actual situation and starts floating in abstraction.
And with topics like this, it is almost inevitable that someone eventually throws out the moral test: “If it were your girlfriend being beaten, as a man, would you step in?”
At that point, “I don’t understand” is no longer accepted as an answer. They want certainty. They want a clean answer. And whatever answer you give, they will use it to derive some ugly truth about human nature.
To distinguish themselves from those “I don’t understand” people, they occupy the moral high ground and judge someone else’s hypothetical choice. Then they turn around and say “I don’t understand” about the real, decisive choices made by people they cannot affect. And after that, they toss an unrelated person a hypothetical human-nature exam—one in which nobody is allowed to answer the way they themselves once did.
From another angle, not understanding the people who keep saying “I don’t understand” is also part of the internet’s original sin. Because if you are unwilling to put yourself in the place of those making that cry, then of course you will not hear what is actually in it. They say “I don’t understand” because they want more people to understand their lack of understanding—and then, together, to refuse to understand the rules and order that have cornered them.
That is all it is.
I have always felt that “I don’t understand” and “I don’t want to grow up” are basically two branches of the same thing. If so, then the solution offered to both is the same.
I don’t want to grow up.
Then go die.
I don’t understand.
Then go die.