七年之痒 (qī nián zhī yǎng)

ETYMOLOGY

The term's cyber renaissance began on Douban's 'Anti-Chicken Soup Alliance' forum circa 2015, where a user metaphorically compared career plateaus to marital stagnation, garnering 120K likes. Critical mass came in 2018 when Bilibili creator 'Reliable Lao Jiang' humorously applied it to film fandom during a Ready Player One analysis video, generating 5M views.

A pivotal 2021 leak from Xiaomi's internal forum showed CEO Lei Jianguing discussing 'the seven-year itch with Android OS', triggering widespread tech media coverage. This catalyzed the term's crossover into business/tech discourse, with Zhihu's 'How to Handle Career Seven-Year Itch' thread accumulating 3.7K+ responses.

Notable contemporary usage:

"Five years into being a influencer, I got depression before the seven-year itch even hit" (Weibo top comment)"Chinese soccer's eternal itch - 21 years of World Cup longing since 2002" (Hupu trending post)