The author | Dorothy
A week ago, the news that Douban was punished 20 times and fined 9 million yuan in 2021 set off waves in the public opinion market, and related topics quickly rushed to Weibo's hot search, "Douban has been punished many times" and "Will Douban go out of business" and other remarks.
In this context, entertainment groups such as the Douban Goose Group, the New Market, and the Little Elephant Paradise were blocked, the Douban group reply function was suspended, and the content of the group's selected channels was stopped updating. And things continue to deteriorate. On December 9, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked 106 APPS such as Douban and Sing Bar to be removed from the shelves for rectification. This has stimulated the nerves of the Internet industry, the industry in this graphic era with niche circle layer content and community ecology among the Internet head content camp platform feels sorry, Douban did not keep up with the tide of content commercialization, and now even survival is in danger.
The split situation of Douban users is also becoming more and more obvious. The old users of the audio-visual section of the book began to call for Douban to cut the seat with the group, and the group users believe that the group is the biggest driving force for Douban to be new today, and Douban cannot go on in today's Internet era.
Different people have different attitudes towards the Douban storm, such as the "Douban Team Leader" who still insists after losing the group, the "Douban Small V" who has more than 20,000 fans, and the "Gossip Group Member" who eats melons and chases stars in the group... But these people seem to have one thing in common, they have not thought about leaving Douban.
The Douban team leader who lost the group
"This matter, strictly speaking, does not have a great impact on me." Chen Yue said.
At the end of September this year, the group created by Chen Yue was banned.
Chen Yue has been registering a Douban account for 9 years, she has been marking works in the Douban book audio and video section for many years, releasing film reviews, book reviews, etc., but she is more accustomed to browsing the Douban group, digging in various groups to watch some strange and interesting things, and also meeting some cattle people.
Around 2011, on a whim, she set up a group to share daily life on Douban, she did not deliberately operate, although the original intention of this group is to share interesting things about life, but the topics discussed are various, and over the past few years, there have been about a thousand members, a group of people here spit on eating melons, including some of the gossip entertainment content of the port.
"Actually, I didn't want to be the team leader for the first two years. Some people in the group did not know how to pour in, control the direction of the discussion, constantly bring rhythm, send some water stickers, although the group leader has the right to delete the post ban, but every day to kick people I also feel tired. And this group is not very big, I myself am building fun, not how to manage, sometimes some posts in the group are very angry, at every turn is a scolding war, I am too lazy to manage. ”
In September, Chen Yue received an email from Douban asking her to change the name of the group. "I changed the 'melon' in the group, and I thought that such a small group should not be noticed, but I didn't expect that in the end, I still didn't escape."
This is a small episode in The "Qinglang Action" of Douban in September this year, starting from this action, the storms with the Douban group as the core have erupted one after another, and the scope has become more and more extensive.
"I know that the Douban group has some smoky miasma content, but I don't want to take sides in this matter." Chen Yue said. "You can't deny everything just because there are some problems with the entertainment group. Although my group also has problems, there are also many moving things in the group. I remember that the group was very harmonious at the beginning, I was at that time because of the pressure of learning, the mentality was unbalanced, the group members have been comforting me, is my support during that time. ”
Chen Yue described her mentality as a "tomb keeper".
"Douban removed from the shelves, the group can not reply, there must be an impact, I have also seen a lot of speculation and remarks, most of them are saying that Douban is going to be cold or Douban has become flavored, in fact, so many years, this is not the first time Douban has faced this situation, it should not be the last time, but no matter what, I will stay here."
Chen Yue attributed this behavior to an inertia.
"Probably used to it, it's part of my life. The various groups on Douban, the diaries, film reviews, and broadcasts I left behind are all my personal imprints, although it has appeared in many unsatisfactory places, but it cannot be replaced. If you want to say it's feelings, then maybe it's feelings. ”
And because of this inertia and imprint, there are more people who leave watercress than expected.
There are more than 10,000 fans, hundreds of business orders, and the commercial hard work of "Douban Little V"
Like Chen Yue, who generally has special feelings for Douban, wang feiran, compared to the group leader experience of Chen Yue's tragic ending, Wang Feiran feels the helplessness of being a content producer.
"I registered a Douban account in 2008, and I am an old user of Douban." Wang Feiran is a group of users who have witnessed the initial state of Douban, and also caught up with the initial stage of Douban user accumulation. "I feel that at that time, a lot of people on Douban were expressing and sharing some content, and you can find something particularly unpopular but interesting on this platform, and there are cattle people everywhere."
Perhaps it is the first-mover advantage, although Wang Feiran said that he was "all scribbled by nature", but for so many years, he marked more than 7,000 movies, books, music, etc. on Douban, and the account fans were close to 20,000. Although this is not a top big V on Douban, it can also allow him to occasionally receive some invitations from film parties to watch movies, or some content parties to find advertising cooperation.
"I think some people in the outside world have some misunderstandings about some Douban film critics." Wang Said.
In August 2012, Douban announced that its monthly coverage of independent users has exceeded 100 million, with an average daily PV of 160 million, Douban Books, audio and video and various groups have quickly entered the public eye, and Douban Big V has become one of the representative groups of content KOLs.
In the following five years, the film box office market expanded rapidly, the Internet publicity became an important position for major content companies, and Douban changed from a niche spiritual corner to one of the important positions for the fermentation and judgment of various types of domestic content. In terms of movies, Douban scores have a subtle impact on the film box office, although there have been many douban scores and box office inversion movies such as "Predecessor 3" and "Why Sheng Zhen Mo" in the market, or some literary and art films that are not popular, but most movies adhere to the law that Douban scores are positively correlated with the box office.
In this process, every once in a while on Douban, there will be a scoring sniper war, all groups express their attitudes with Douban scores, and film critics have become an important group of content parties to create word-of-mouth heat. In 2019, the "one-star movement" that broke out with "The Wandering Earth" as an opportunity allowed the public to focus its greatest firepower on the "Douban Big V", when the public opinion market pointed out that the Douban Big V "collected money and scored", a praise of thousands of thousands, and this assertion was even more rampant in the environment of Douban's water army and fan enclosure in the past two years.
For this statement, Wang Feiran only felt bitter and could not say, "I don't know how other people are, but I am not." ”
Recently, Wang Yiran received a content cooperation, the filmmaker invited him to watch the movie in advance, hoping that he could write a Douban evaluation for a TV series, and the fee for this cooperation was 300 yuan.
"Seriously, Whether it is fan accumulation or commercial monetization on Douban, it is relatively slow." Wang Said.
In fact, in addition to the Douban account, Wang Feiran also has Weibo, Zhihu and other accounts, these platform accounts are opened later than the Douban account, but the number of fans has long exceeded Douban, Wang Feiran is now close to 200,000 Weibo fans, and the same gap also exists in commercial realization.
Wang Feiran revealed that now he has the same type of content cooperation or advertising exposed, the content income published on Douban is about a few hundred yuan, the price is comparable to a short comment in his circle of friends, while on Weibo it is 1,000 yuan-3,000 yuan, and his WeChat public account and other self-media simple writing cooperation price is 5,000 yuan -10,000 yuan.
"I am not a head KOL, and a short review of the popular big V can reach 8,000 yuan or tens of thousands, but it should be very little." My own feeling, if you want to make money with content, Douban is really not suitable. ”
However, in this case, Wang Feiran still subconsciously published some content on Douban, his paragraphs about life, film and television works, travel photography sharing, etc.
"Douban is a kind of spiritual symbol for me, pure land or paradise, whether it can have income is not the most important." What matters is the entry of movies and books, and I don't know where else to go besides Douban. I habitually post dynamics on Douban, and the frequency is higher than weibo and circle of friends, because many things can only be quickly understood by friends and neighbors on Douban. ”
After Douban was removed, Wang Yiran still opened Douban at a high frequency, and he saw that some friends and neighbors expressed concern about Douban and planned to move the content to other platforms, but Wang Feiran did not have this idea, "Now that everything on Douban is still there, it will always be here in me." ”
The team members who have nowhere to go on Douban
Compared with users or KOLs such as Chen Yue and Wang Feiran who have pure emotional bonds to Douban, Jelly's feelings for Douban are lifelike.
"I usually visit the Douban group to decompress." Jelly introduction. She feels that she is a refugee in various Douban groups under the Qinglang activities. "The groups I joined are all groups that are more popular on Douban, such as goose groups, baby elephant paradise, green grasslands, fried kitchen groups, new markets, etc., happily touching fish every day, but now some groups are also fried, and the rest are lingering, and everyone is not interested in posting, and the mood is very heavy."
Jelly only entered Douban in 2018, completely for the sake of eating melons and chasing stars. At this time, idol talent shows such as "Idol Trainee" and "Creation 101" in the internal entertainment market quickly came out of the circle, and domestic idol fans were eager to feed, and everyone urgently needed to find a gathering place outside the program to share, discuss, create secondary, and gather the same kind to complete a greater degree of emotional resonance. Douban has become an important camp outside of Weibo, so that the former Douban Eight Group (now the Goose Group) based on the Hong Kong and Taiwan star gossip can quickly grow Douban to land, and under the nourishment of the talent show, there are entertainment groups such as Green Grassland, Emma Garden, and Show Group on Douban, and the number is increasing day by day.
Jelly entered Douban in this situation, she shuttled in various groups, harvested new melons every day, and could enjoy the happiness that simply watching variety shows and data shots under the attributes of the group members "Per Capita Leeuwenhoek", and even a sense of immersion.
But it's just that this happiness quickly shows side effects after the initial outburst. "Where fans gather, happiness is temporary. Whether it is the green grassland or the show group or the melon group, the endless battle and connotation, everyone will form a scolding war if they are not careful, and then the group leader will start to delete posts and kick people. ”
Jelly once saw someone maliciously slandering a traffic male star in an entertainment group, although not a fan of this star, but she couldn't help but reply to a sentence, so that talking is a bit excessive, should not involve personal attacks or gender antagonism, the result of this comment triggered a scolding war, but the post was not deleted, the landlord is fine, Jelly was kicked out by the administrator.
"The leader of the Douban group has a lot of power, they manage the group, basically control the direction of public opinion in the group, you can feel that some team leaders are bothering to operate the group, try to run a bowl of water, but some team leaders kick people to ban words all depend on their personal wishes, the group members can not communicate smoothly, the smell of gunpowder is too heavy."
Perhaps because of this, Jelly gradually lost interest in the entertainment group, but she soon discovered the real joy of the Douban group. "Once I accidentally saw Douban's 'interactive memory group', I just happened to have a web novel that I read a few years ago, I don't remember the name, in fact, it is a very bad street novel, I said a few keywords from memory, posted, and didn't care." As a result, the post has been replied to, little by little to help me piece together, and finally found this novel, I was particularly surprised. ”
Then Jelly entered the fried kitchen group, the weird metaphor interest group, the money saving group, the ugly things protection association, etc., everyone shared interesting things about life, daily sand sculpture fun facts, and there were all kinds of unexpected and ridiculous posts. "You think life is actually interesting."
Of course, in these life category groups, there is not only funny, everyday content, but also because of various social events to produce some sensitive arguments, the entertainment group in these groups can not be completely eliminated, "some people no matter what the landlord shares or asks questions, they can't learn to speak well." "But the joy that the Douban group brings to jelly is greater than the anger."
It can be said that jelly is not the same as the old users who were the first to enter Douban, Douban is not a spiritual corner created by books and videos for her, more like a life with the same mix, she observes everything in the group, shares everything, like a chat room that can discover new topics at any time. Her connection with Douban is not emotional bondage, but daily life.
In fact, after 2019, most of the users who poured into Douban are frozen, and they do not have fundamentalist spiritual beliefs in Douban, but more for daily entertainment. According to the data, as of June 2021, Douban's registered users reached 230 million, and it is not the small garden built by niche fans in 2008.
So when the old user called for Douban to close the group, Jelly said very firmly, "The Douban group is closed, and Douban has no attraction for me, but as long as the group is still there, whether it can be replied to or not, I will not uninstall it." ”
Even if Douban has always been surrounded by some negative voices, from the pace of commercialization is too slow, the user growth is stagnant, etc. the platform operation mechanism is not perfect, there are hidden dangers in the community ecology, etc. In the investment industry, some people evaluate Douban, "dead and dead, not going up and not going" But there are always some people stationed on Douban, they guard this platform for different reasons, so that Douban can live longer.