news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

author｜zhang yizhi,editor:hu zhanjia

on september 17, three sheep’s live broadcast of selling “hong kong meicheng mooncakes” was suspected of “misleading consumers” and was filed by the hefei high-tech zone market supervision administration.

this is not the first time that three sheep has been accused of quality issues with its live streaming products. it was previously accused of selling "bottom-of-the-barrel meat", false power ratings for hair dryers, fake moutai liquor, and other product quality issues that have emerged during live streaming, which have continuously touched the bottom line of consumers.

the backlash of traffic is fierce. "crazy xiao yang ge" has lost more than 2.18 million followers in the past 30 days, and more than 230,000 followers in a single day on september 16.

however, in the wave of the internet celebrity economy, a crisis of trust has gradually emerged. the people in the wave are scrambling to climb to the top of the traffic flow, and then being abandoned by the traffic. now, becoming a "good young man" in the mainstream context seems to be the only way to keep the "big prize", and this trick has been tried and tested.

1 ordinary people with dreams

"crazy little brother yang" is a mountain that cannot be avoided in the internet celebrity economy. open his douyin homepage, and you will see more than 99.99 million fans. he has also become a typical representative of the internet celebrity master-apprentice system - by recruiting apprentices and guiding them to sell goods through live broadcasts, he has formed a powerful live broadcast sales matrix.

the wealth myth of xiao yangge seems to have become a replicable template under the operation of capital, and the "god of traffic" of the internet will occasionally descend upon some ordinary lucky person, such as guo youcai.

the platform and the city will not let go of any "guo youcai".

when he became popular, cameras and media came to heze. from renovating the south station to stopping live broadcasting, the tide rose and fell. the almost crazy rise in popularity made a young man who live broadcasted at heze south station during the day and sold kidneys at night realize that traffic is a winning lottery ticket, and he kept talking about "encouragement", "dreams", "precipitation" and "improving knowledge".

this has a similar social resonance to the time when brother yang and brother yang became popular through funny videos, and then became brothers and apprentices, grassroots narratives, and the "myth" of ordinary people.

the popularity of internet celebrities seems to be moving towards a rhythmic surge. internet celebrities and cities are updated regularly, just like commodity shelves, filled with entertainment and pastimes of modern life. "commodities" are updated from time to time to activate modern people's consumption behavior for people to choose and discuss.

research shows that since 1994, the first year of the internet, the development of domestic internet celebrities has tended to leap every seven years, from the one-dimensional era represented by online writers such as nanpai sanshu, to the two-dimensional era promoted by exaggerated gimmicks represented by feng jie and xili ge, to the 2.5 era with e-commerce models and internet celebrities as the mainstream, and the three-dimensional era with online anchors and video bloggers in the short video era.

as traffic is gradually being firmly occupied by various mcns and top bloggers, the random emergence of amateurs and grassroots people has given everyone more surprises. under the underlying social logic of "not worrying about the lack of wealth but about the inequality of wealth", everyone having a microphone is like everyone having a chance, which can inject a few spoonfuls of fluffy yeast into the social cake so that those who are willing to join the game can smell the scent of a good harvest.

in 2022, there will be ding zhen from litang, zhang tongxue, the "rough version of liziqi", and lao chen, the anti-fraud police officer; in 2023, there will be ma baoguo and wanyan huide, the "middle-aged and elderly harvesters" xiucai and yixiao qingcheng, the "ordinary person" yu wenliang, and mr. huang, who "digs and digs", and by 2024 there will be wang po from kaifeng and guo youcai from heze... the speed of creating amateur internet celebrities seems to be accelerating, and the "urban cultural tourism + internet celebrity" model can always bring tangible benefits.

▲photo: wang po of kaifeng

after being captured by mainstream media and bloggers who are keen on secondary creation, amateur internet celebrities who were originally active in a small circle have broken out of their circles and dimensions, and have flooded the entertainment "carnival" of more people in society.

what followed was active or passive "recruitment", with some people holding high the banner of bringing joy to everyone, others talking about dreams and hopes, and others excitedly shouting "welcome everyone to my city". the dizziness and trance brought by traffic and explosions are irresistible pleasures.

if we look into the reasons why amateurs are chosen by traffic, the popular celebrities may have touched upon hot social issues.

anti-fraud lao chen became well-known against the backdrop of the popularization of anti-fraud apps. liziqi and zhang tongxue attracted attention during the period when the national policy of rural revitalization, slow pace and nostalgia were frequently mentioned. yu wenliang hit the mark of everyone's desire to regain the interest in life. xiucai and guo youcai caught up with the growth of the silver economy, hitting the mark of confusion, scars and nostalgia, recreating the retro wave.

in the traffic carnival, there is nothing new and no freedom.

internet celebrities provide emotional value and entertainment, and the audience contributes traffic, time and tears. opinion leaders in the traditional sense have transformed into some kind of "spiritual guides", and grassroots are waiting for an opportunity to counterattack, and ordinary people also have their spring.

this may be the era of popular culture that everyone fantasized about before the large-scale popularization of the internet. traffic will tell cultural producers what the audience really likes to watch. traffic is vote. however, it is also mixed with a lot of trust-style platform capital. but most people can always find themselves or their own imagination in the popular individuals.

2 internet celebrity effect, urban "psychedelic drug"

perhaps heze is no stranger to the phenomenon of internet explosions. as early as 2021, an internet celebrity named sun shuo posted a funny video on a short video platform, and he would shout at the beginning and end "cao county, heze, shandong, cowhide, 666, my baby", and the saying "beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, cao" became popular.

the mayor of cao county called on netizens to come and take a look. the more direct impact is that everyone began to understand cao county's e-commerce economy, hanfu manufacturing, wood products processing and other characteristic industrial clusters, and the county economy is also vibrant.

guo youcai's rise to fame is like a short-lived firework in the city sky, bringing crowds and noise to the city, while "three sheep" has built a building in hefei as its company headquarters, with the ambition of sharing the e-commerce city with hangzhou.

but no one will turn a blind eye to traffic, and no one can predict whether traffic can grow big trees. heze city took the opportunity to hire guo youcai as a cultural tourism recommendation officer, coordinated the three major operators to add network base stations at heze south station, and established a volunteer service team to absorb the environmental and logistical pressures of the arrival of a large number of internet celebrities and tourists.

changsha, the "originator" of internet celebrity cities, has actually provided samples long ago. in 2021, changsha warned and banned the accounts of anchors involved in vulgar live broadcasts of outdoor gatherings. performance booths were set up in huangxing square and may day square, where tourists gather, for unified management, and strict control measures were taken for outdoor live broadcast groups under the overpass.

some scholars have matched the internet search index of 328 prefecture-level cities in china from 2011 to 2018 with urban tourism development data, and found that online attention will significantly increase the flow of offline tourists in the city. however, the traffic concentration brought by online attention does not always translate into consumption growth. for cities whose economic development is highly dependent on tourism, the surging traffic will increase the cost of urban public management and restrict the growth of per capita consumption.

for harbin, a long-established tourist city known for its ice and snow landscapes, even in 2022, harbin's total tourism revenue accounted for 9.1% of its total gdp. in 2019, changsha's tourism and related industries' added value accounted for only 5.5% of its total gdp.

in the winter of 2023, during the northeastern revival, harbin received 135 million tourists, a 41.4% increase over 2019, and total tourism revenue reached 169.245 billion yuan, a 7.4% increase over 2019. while the overall growth is evident, it can also be seen that the growth rate of the number of tourists is not in sync with the actual revenue growth rate.

by comparing the gdp growth rates of northeast china in the first quarter of 2024, it was found that harbin, which dominated the hot search rankings for the entire winter, had a total gdp in the first quarter that increased by 3.7% month-on-month compared with the same period last year, but it still ranked last among the four major cities in northeast china.

harbin is a city with strong throughput capacity and a well-known city. zibo and tianshui are also popular. faced with the surging traffic, they may be unable to cope with it first, and then it is easy to receive but difficult to defend. the same is true for heze. before the city has felt the expansion brought by the traffic, the exaggerated performances of bloggers at heze south station have already overwhelmed the city managers and citizens.

the internet celebrity effect gives everyone a hallucinogenic blind imagination, but the actual economic benefits may not be "huge wealth". if hefei only relies on the ups and downs of the "three sheep", it is obviously impossible to continue to use e-commerce as its foundation. how to continuously create new stimuli and convert traffic into long-term and sustainable investment and industrial development is a common issue faced by internet celebrities.

3 internet celebrity consumption never sleeps

internet celebrities often fail, but the internet celebrity economy continues. mcn companies are industrializing the creation of "guo youcai" and the market is waiting for the growth of the new "three sheep", even if they may repeat the same mistakes.

the perpetual motion machine of consumption and production seems to have been realized in contemporary society. hot spots and hot products drive the mutual transformation of producers and consumers, and people are happy to visit internet celebrity cities and check in at internet celebrity attractions.

the short video platform templates record netizens’ similar transition styles and the same citywalk routes. imitation has replaced the shame of homogeneity. the new declaration of the internet is that as long as you have been to the same place as me, or seem to have the same hobbies, we are good friends.

get rid of the internal friction in decision-making and throw yourself into the destination that everyone is rushing to. in a sense, internet celebrity cities are also carefully selected by netizens. the words that will definitely appear in travel guides are "superb atmosphere", "suitable for taking photos and checking in" and "especially fun to visit". everyone is accurately stepping on the forefront of the internet wave and sharing more common topics with everyone.

during the time of isolation, the internet is the communication medium that people rely on for survival. the gradual opening of physical space has also stimulated the desire to narrow the distance between people.

wang zhixing, who used to shoot funny campus life, turned to short dramas, telling the daily life of the nanny and the lady and the master. the highlights are the resonance of the workers, the breakdown and madness of the plot and the mental state of the characters. but once returning to reality, the entrepreneurs who play the role of workers still exploit the labor force, and the sense of substitution is broken.

short video platforms continue to produce and display large amounts of repetitive content and derivative works. people live in a world of copies, where it is difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake, and spiritual emptiness is ready to spread at any time.

the idea of ​​"i think, therefore i am" can no longer calm the existential anxiety of contemporary people.

"i am not alone", "internet family", "cyber ​​home", the bond of internet interest connection has undeniably become one of the fulcrums that support and leverage life. i exist because there are people paying attention to and interacting on social platforms. the void needs to be filled, and truth and falsehood are not prioritized. real laughter and the satisfaction of being integrated into the collective are the "true meaning" of existence.

people are learning to mobilize themselves again and looking for the source of passion in life. whether it is to keep warm together or to create new feelings, no one can completely break away from modern production tools. they are embedded in the big machine of society, and the perpetual motion machine cannot stop. the cultural industry and the business world will never lack new stories and new miracles.

new consumption growth points are also being incubated and promoted. in the opposite direction of the crowds, outdoor camping and niche attractions can quickly attract a large number of "believers". the way to get rid of emptiness is to be shoulder to shoulder on the pedestrian street, in the fireworks of local specialty restaurants, under the stars and by the bonfire. of course, also in the live broadcast room of the "three sheep".

guo youcai has two accounts on douyin. one is "heze shu ge", which starts broadcasting at 10 a.m. every day, when most young people are still asleep or already sitting at their workstations. "thank you for giving a young country guy who has been selling barbecue for five years a chance to show himself."

the other is guo youcai (inspirational version), who posted a video about saving money for more than 20 days before october 8, 2023. the next video was on april 4, 2024, and then there were several life reports after the popularity.

it seems that one can see the shadow of dong yuhui in guo youcai. he leans forward, expresses humility, and desires to be a representative with real strength.

after withdrawing from heze and other bloggers chasing the next hot spot of internet celebrities, 25-year-old guo youcai needs to face the same dilemma as other amateur internet celebrities. how can he continue? at the same time, people who participate in or watch the ups and downs of internet celebrities also need to think about what kind of spiritual fulcrum and what kind of internet creator ecology we need.

if guo youcai is a representative of self-employed individuals under the small peasant economy, the "three sheep" of yang ge and yang xiao have completed the primitive accumulation of capital, moved towards collective economy with traffic breaking social circles, surging social reputation and realizing local monopoly trend.

the attention of netizens is like a glimpse of a beautiful woman, and the million-like "promise" is proof that traffic has existed. four months later, netizens continue to leave messages in the comment area like checking in, "today is september 6, 2024, is anyone still here to listen to guo youcai's promise?" - this comment has 107 likes.

physical goods are displayed in the live broadcast room of brother yang and brother yang. there is no anchor on the screen, and no one is selling the products. it is silent.

no matter what, there will always be the next guo youcai to be created, and there will always be the "three sheep" dominating the e-commerce rankings.