Author / Moss
Edit / Ying Qi
The pictures in this article are from the Internet
Popular science workers have a consensus: scientific facts stand the test of time, and pseudoscience cannot become public knowledge.
In April last year, the anti-intellectual paper on the rebirth of boiled eggs to hatch chicks was published in academic journals, an incident that caused heated discussion and ridicule. "If modern people don't even have this kind of basic common sense, it is no wonder that they are paid IQ tax", people scorn it, and they also scold pseudoscience for harming people. This argument reflects a kind of contempt, as if anti-intellectual waves are not destructive to the strong scientific spirit.
In the eyes of young people, rumors such as "quantum speed reading" and "garlic prevention of new crown pneumonia" are too outrageous, and most people will not be easily caught. Coupled with the public criticism of the official media for the chaos of short video pseudo-science popularization, the platform is also strengthening supervision, and the anti-intellectual content has always been contrary to mainstream cognition, and we seem to have reason to "scorn".
However, under the accurate screening of big data, the information diverted has long been built into a high barrier. Young people who are eager for self-improvement and confused and anxious are trapped in the information cocoon, dodging false advertising and network scams, but they still have not escaped the disaster of "popular science tax".
Human beings have developed from the era of oral communication to the era of print communication and electronic communication, and the channels of knowledge dissemination have gradually shifted from graphic forms to short videos and live broadcasts, and more and more people have joined in. The increasing popularity of knowledge dissemination means two kinds of changes, good and bad: on the one hand, professional views are known to more people, rumors and pseudo-popular science are difficult to survive for a long time; on the other hand, the threshold for preaching knowledge has been greatly reduced, and various opinion leaders and online bloggers have swarmed.
This fosters a kind of harvesting in the name of "popular science".
Strictly speaking, this kind of "popular science" is not a complete pseudo-science popularization, it uses a large number of miscellaneous knowledge and facts as a disguise, piles up seemingly objective and correct jargon, intersperses it with professional dry goods that pick up people's teeth and wisdom, and constantly uses and exaggerates the information gap. It resembles popular science, but in fact its "sandwich" is partial door marketing. With a seemingly harmless biscuit coating "clamp" the "heart" of interest, we temporarily call this kind of science "sandwich biscuit science".
For example, in a popular science video about "what happens after death", most of the space is just talking about "near-death experience". In order to attract people's attention, the video uses a curious tone to summarize scientific research, and finally comes to an ambiguous "nonsense conclusion" - death is uncontrollable, and usually there will be a link with goods under such videos; or explain the common sense science such as skin tissue and solar radiation, eliciting the importance of sun protection, and then recommend an authoritative product and attach the same link.
There is also a typical financial science popularization, first split the face to analyze the relationship between the international situation and the gold price, and then use a "neutral attitude" to indicate that blind investment in gold is not stable, investment needs to be cautious, guide users to click on the following life services, learn financial knowledge.
Such miscellaneous content practitioners and the operating institutions behind them are well versed in the red line of content supervision, taking advantage of the wind outlet of the pan-knowledge industry, quietly accumulating a large number of young audiences, and staging "monetization success" on major content platforms.
01 Mille-feuille routine
In order to preserve the accuracy of scientific concepts, serious science popularization often uses highly universal language descriptions, follow "rigorous and concise", it is difficult to take into account "simplicity and specificity", so knowledge dissemination is always more difficult than the spread of rumors. However, in the Internet era, especially relying on the carrier of short videos, science popularization is more "approachable", and pan-knowledge content is becoming more and more popular.
According to the "2020 China Mobile Internet Content Ecological Insight Report", in the past year, users' demand for popular science and practical knowledge has increased, and the demand for pan-knowledge content with life orientation and seriousness has increased by 21% and 16.7% respectively. Station B, Douyin, Kuaishou, Baidu, etc., are all working in the field of knowledge to support knowledge content creators.
Taking Douyin as an example, the 2021 Douyin Pan-Knowledge Content Data Report shows that the number of pan-knowledge content plays increased by 74% year-on-year, accounting for 20% of the total playback volume of the platform; 1 in every 5 plays is pan-knowledge content; pan-knowledge live broadcasts exceeded 1 million. Among them, popular science videos occupy the third place in the list of pan-knowledge content categories.
Under the efforts of many science popularization workers, many of the past "cold knowledge" has become public knowledge, but this does not prevent speculators from new wine into old bottles, so that popular science appears in the form of rumor variants in cyberspace to sell goods and harvest, confusing the public.
But with that, a crackdown on speculators followed. At the end of 2021, based on the "General Rules for the Management of E-commerce Creators" and the "Specifications for The Creation of E-commerce Content" issued by Douyin E-commerce, the platform has punished 97.1w of illegal creators, 1.1w people have been permanently closed e-commerce permissions, and more than 152w low-quality short videos and 8w low-quality live broadcast rooms have been suppressed. Among them, there are many medical "popular science" bloggers who spread rumors, and "fake doctors" who sell health care products and health instruments.
Why do a large number of sandwich biscuit-style science popularizers still have a lot of room for survival under such a punishment warning? Different from the pseudo-science popularization of "wanting to call the police at a glance", the "sandwich" popular science is not only aimed at the superstitious and gullible elderly, but also more and more young people are also "recruited", which is due to the help of the "original manuscript team", such miscellaneous general accounts, do not cross the thunder pool, and have never stepped on the red line of the platform.
From the perspective of topic content, such miscellaneous general accounts tend to cover a variety of topics, which are closely related to daily life and radiate a wide range of people, but the professionalism is not high. For example, in Douyin, Xiaohongshu platform cumulative number of fans more than seven million of a short video science blogger [xxx said economy], his popular science theme is as small as how to sing without out of tune, how to help his girlfriend catch dolls, to entrepreneurship, financial management, real estate, meta-universe and so on.
Other short video accounts of the same type such as [xxx education], [xxx director], [nutritionist xxx] are no exception; the purpose of topic selection is two, either the popularity is high enough, or can let the audience feel that the account content is close to themselves, the content of the statement basically does not violate scientific facts or objective principles, but it is only a dragonfly, or simply for nonsense literature, without saying anything real "value".
From the perspective of the display form, these short videos are often narrated by real people, and the commentators who appear on the camera seem to conform to a certain professional image or identity, and appear in a fixed scene; men often conform to the "erudite, serious, and reliable" image in the public's mind, and women need to be "intelligent, affinity and beautiful" to establish a "credible" stereotype for the audience.
With the form of "face-to-face live commentary", after narrowing the psychological distance with the audience, the confused people who recommend the "Pingshui encounter" in the information flow may be attracted to or even upgraded to fans. The establishment of a real image IP propaganda is only the first step, and the copywriting routine should be more inducing, such as a fixed speech template formulated according to the psychology of the audience.
The purpose of the discourse template is first of all to hype up the audience's fear and anxiety, and secondly, to make the audience feel that the anxiety can be resolved. For example, the video titles of some accounts: "A few habits that make you uglier and uglier", "Don't buy an apartment without money", "The only child is going to panic"...
It is not difficult to find that topics such as face value anxiety, housing pressure, and pension policies are the general anxiety of young audiences, and these titles with anxiety hints, the corresponding "solution" is exactly what the account can provide: selling beauty and skin care products, real estate agents, medical and pension consultation, etc.
However, just having a title to create anxiety is not enough to constitute the audience's sense of trust in "rushing to the doctor", so the logical routine of video content has begun to exert its fists.
The content of the video often abandons the whole to talk about the part, and directly defines the social phenomenon. When explaining, throw a rhetorical question sentence at the right time to deny your original concept, and then popularize science knowledge, using the slippery slope fallacy to argue that "if you do a behavior, it is likely to have b consequences", and then cite some credible cases to support it.
The theories and opinions that are singled out in these contents can be justified, but chewing on unprovable or non-falsifiable things is to constantly imply that users - "believe me" is right. Whether it is inspirational chicken soup, rendered anxiety, real cases, or seemingly tall professional knowledge, from the first time the user clicks into the window link, the first 0 yuan appointment trial lesson, the harvesting strategy begins to work.
In the window links and comment areas of various popular science accounts, you can also see fancy benefits: free development of medical beauty plastic surgery programs, original painting speed, voice actor training camp... Welfare is a stepping stone, but in fact, it circles the audience, builds a community, and sells "services" in all ways such as social group chats and circle of friends.
The problem is that the people who sell are not responsible for the content, and the layered division of labor in the assembly line can make video uploads easy to review, and also make the essence of popular science no longer exist.
02 Behind the scenes players
The 2021 China Pan-Knowledge Payment Industry Report from the Huge Engine shows that the market size growth rate of China's pan-knowledge payment industry reached 202% in 2018 and has maintained an increase of more than 40% in recent years. As of October 2021, there are a total of 3763 knowledge payment enterprises (including the upper, middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain) nationwide.
Such data means that the cake of "paying" for knowledge is getting bigger and bigger. And "science" is an attractive cream, its growth trend and communication ability to make capital and behind-the-scenes players are quite crazy, short videos lurk in a variety of forms of monetization: knowledge payment, brand cooperation, live streaming with goods, private domain drainage and so on.
Looking at those "popular science" content practitioners from a business perspective, it is easy to understand that high-quality and professional knowledge content producers can not be sought, and the popular and water-mixed miscellaneous "experts" on the market, personal bloggers, self-media companies, and MCN institutions are essentially profitable.
First of all, whether it is a personal blogger or a self-media company, you can channel goods and brands through short videos and obtain sales revenue. Some of the links with goods will appear directly in the video, and others will continue to be displayed through the entrance of the merchandise window.
Take the douyin platform science popularization top account [xxx director] as an example, the scope of science popularization of the account can be called "a pot of chaotic stew", whether it is rare animals and plants running on the ground in the sky, or excavated cultural relics, or brain science and geography, all of which are correct. The account has more than 1400w of fans, the number of recommended windows sold is 5w, most of the products are home and beauty products, of which the highest price is 6299 game TV, the highest sales price is the towel price of 59.9, and the word-of-mouth ranking with goods beat 90.65% of peers.
The details of the introduction of the company on a well-known recruitment software of the account are: xx culture media company, which mainly operates today's toutiao number, Baijia number, penguin number, douyin number and other platforms, and each platform has its own stores.
In addition to popular science accounts, the company at least has account categories such as war themes, film and television drama commentary, etc. Recently, the company is urgently hiring Douyin store customer service on the recruitment platform. From this we can see some clues, in the case of such a large number of goods, the company does not seem to be prepared for refunds and after-sales service in advance.
Of course, carrying goods in the name of science popularization is only a way of harvesting, and another type of "professional" is also good at selling courses, or providing consulting services, fund investment, insurance planning and other services. In the Douyin and Xiaohongshu fans accumulated more than 600w of financial and business knowledge science account [xxx education], its company "focuses on providing financial education for young people", has a number of talent IP, the whole network fans reached 4000w, the company's business in addition to financial and business education, as well as financial planning and family protection planning.
If we go down an account, there is a high probability that we will find the main company hidden behind it, and a series of accounts, and between different IP individuals and account subjects, there are also behind-the-scenes player MCN agencies. As a new internet celebrity economic operation model, MCN combines different types of UGC content and PGC content, signs up different content producers, and ensures the continuous output of content with the strong support of capital, so as to ultimately achieve stable commercial realization.
Spreading knowledge has never been the real mission of these players, and content production is only one part of the commercial division of labor, which also needs to reduce costs and improve efficiency. In a variety of recruitment software, you can see the above-mentioned self-media companies or MCN agencies job recruitment, from 90-150 yuan / day part-time writing, 5-6k copywriting editors, to 13-26k financial new media editor-in-chief, the actual nature of the work is almost the same.
Companies or institutions as a "interest first" business subjects, traffic-oriented, so its account is also a product of the assembly line, for those creators, the explosion, that is, the quality of the content; monetization, that is, the success of the content.
The higher the video quality, the more objective the view, the more so that the "goods" or "services" can be sold.
In the downstream of the pan-knowledge content industry chain, there are platforms such as short videos, social networking, live broadcasts, and news information. Different types of downstream platforms have different tones, so they have different advantages: the short video platform user market coverage is high, the user purchase conversion rate of the e-commerce platform is high, and the social platform is conducive to fan precipitation.
The producers of "sandwich cookies" are good at delving into the different recommendation rules of the platform, "fighting for those who swing".
According to the "2021 Xiaohongshu Active User Portrait Trend Report", the gender distribution of Active Users of Xiaohongshu in China in 2021 is 90.41% of female users; women account for 68.63% of consumer users, and the platform is dominated by young women and graphic forms. The Little Red Book is full of "good life" filters, so exquisite graphic display needs to pay special attention to the sense of detail and high-grade, and the video cover should also create a middle-class atmosphere, which seems to be "beautiful at your fingertips".
If it is said that beauty and wealth are often staged on the Little Red Book, then other short video platforms also have corresponding "traffic passwords", and even easier to grasp, the platform's algorithm rules, user portraits, and user time are linked to "monetization" in the eyes of behind-the-scenes players.
In order to win more chips, it is necessary to further cater to the "thirst for knowledge" that belongs to the new era, and let content production further please the audience of the platform. If the user wants to hear a certain voice, he will be attracted by what words, then turn over and over the same text, regurgitate and regurgitate, or simply use ignorance to spread fear and anxiety and exaggerate.
In short, it is necessary to occupy the communication field of vision with words sandwiched between the truth and falsehood, so that they can take the initiative to walk into the "trap".
03 Who's paying for sandwich cookies?
"You can't earn money outside of your own cognition", under such sober remarks in the world, "raising cognition" has become a new way of harvesting. Harmless, but also useless.
Douyin 2021 pan-knowledge payment data shows that the age of pan-knowledge paid users in 2021 is concentrated between 18-40 years old, especially the number of people in the 31-40 age range is the highest; followed by 18-25 years old. This paying group is the main force of Internet consumption, and the scope is gradually expanding.
Although compared with those anti-scientific, pseudoscience content, sandwich cookie science is much "moderate", but from the beginning, these institutions have targeted users, and their wallets, such as those young people who want to "make money", but the institution also just wants to get their money.
These "sandwich cookie-style science popularization" take advantage of the growth motivation of young people, distort knowledge into appendages of products, and are only responsible for creating a self-justifying illusion, and there is always a place for people to pay for their own tuition. There is nothing wrong with bringing goods and selling lessons, but the miscellaneous and accelerated study packaged in the name of science popularization and education is undoubtedly eating away at people's judgment.
"If you don't listen, you're already, once you listen to it, listen to it for a long time, and don't listen to it for a day." A graduate who is unemployed at home describes the state of immersion in the short video of entrepreneurship science popularization, and after buying the course, he said, "It seems that he has learned something, and it seems that he has not learned anything, which is more watery than the university online course." I know that it is very watery, and it is impossible to listen to the lessons of the 'big guy' to start a successful business, but sometimes I have confidence. ”
And the reason that prompted him to place an order to buy a class was that "the sales lady and I am a fellow countryman." Then he reacted, the phone number will show the home, and the other party has confirmed his hometown address to him first.
Another financial business course user said, "how to cultivate financial thinking", "let you have money 8 thinking", "hand in hand to teach you to invest in funds", etc., these video content for financial whites, may seem "professional", but in fact, said is not said, but also can not withstand scrutiny. "After entering the group, I saw other group friends consulting about dividend insurance, and just had this experience to help answer it, and the result was immediately kicked out of the group, maybe it was regarded as a peer."
In fact, many people can quickly realize that this "knowledge acquisition" is unreliable after falling into the trap, and even after buying classes and entering the group, they can quickly find out the knowledge loopholes exposed by the so-called professionals after consuming the existing vocabulary reserves, but the illusion of "watching a few videos can grasp knowledge" is largely based on the syndrome of contemporary people who have long accepted fragmented information.
According to the "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network" released by the China Internet Network Information Center, by the end of 21 years, the number of short video users was 934 million, while the average daily use time of short video applications was 125 minutes. Users spend an average of more than two hours a day on short videos, covering most of the fragmented time.
Short videos have become a way of life, and the content of short videos has naturally become the source of information for life.
The superiority of using short videos to disseminate knowledge lies in the ease of understanding, simple and direct, when people have been tired of work, do not want to work their minds at all, to discriminate to obtain information and deep learning, only want to solve problems utilitarianly, "zero foundation fast", "small white becomes a big god", or buy goods can "medicine to get rid of the disease". Based on this status quo, science accounts for various miscellaneous knowledge such as finance, law, entrepreneurship, and life can attract a lot of attention on major platforms without changing the soup.
The short and fast content has a wide audience and also brings a trend of "chasing more". Therefore, the video content should attract users at the beginning and cover at the first time, which makes it common to have a striking cover title and subtitles with an aesthetic taste.
Many account homepage videos are collected, splitting a topic into multiple videos. Courses, Business, Real Estate, Cognition, Economics... Short videos allow users to indulge in the illusion of instant feedback, and the sequeled short videos add a sense of satisfaction with "continuous access to knowledge".
Deliberately displaying potential logical loopholes is to quickly filter out high-judgment non-audience groups, while the coat of science is to retain loyal fans as much as possible. When people inadvertently open such videos, or appear on their watchlists for such accounts, or even use these as sources of information for their daily lives, perhaps they do not realize that the "appetite" sandwich is a trans fatty acid that should not be consumed too much.
It is questionable that there is sufficient gold content of high-quality knowledge that can be directly instilled through fragments without any intellectual involvement and reflection, and trying to learn the whole of life in these fragments is obviously a manifestation of laziness. What the masses lack is not faith in knowledge, but questioning knowledge.
The seemingly close-knit display of equality on the Internet disguises the fragmentation of life itself; seemingly well-intentioned knowledge peddling is the best way to harvest the wallets of those who are eager to achieve success.
If the dissemination of knowledge is reduced to an economic means, it is equivalent to gently losing conscience, which is a criticism of these "sandwich biscuit producers", but when the appeal and experience of "becoming better" or "wanting a better life" becomes a mass-producable commodity, the audience itself must also reflect and be wary of falling into the logical circle of the person who carries the goods.
If you recognize that the production of these popular science content is actually a commercial act, and the one-word view is only a blind box of knowledge of the industrial assembly line, then modern people who are addicted to short videos may be mentally prepared: "Welcome to the real world." After all, real learning is painful, and no one can provide a "one-step" solution for the real world.
Paying for knowledge is not the same as accepting "sandwich cookies" that are concocted with molds in order to make people pay.