Inventory of "Internet celebrities" in 2023: from popularity to fall

Economic Observer reporter Shi Zhenfang In the past 2023, social platforms have witnessed the ups and downs of many "Internet celebrities".

From Teacher Peach, Huang Qiong, who became popular because of "digging and digging" at the beginning of the year, to Wen Huijun, who swiped the circle of friends at the end of the year, unlike in the past, these people have stronger "amateur" attributes. Early Childhood Teacher and Driving School Principal...... We can find the same identity coordinates among the people around us, and even when Yu Wenliang became popular, he was labeled as an "ordinary person".

"Amateur" has become the keyword of the "Internet celebrity" industry in 2023.

In the view of Dong Chenyu, a lecturer at the School of Journalism of Chinese University, the creation of "amateur Internet celebrities" is inseparable from the positioning change of social platforms and the development of the Internet celebrity economy. As a super platform in the short video industry, Douyin has the right to decide traffic and regulates the direction of traffic.

Andy Warhol once made a prediction: "In the future, everyone may be famous in 15 minutes, and everyone can be a celebrity in 15 minutes." The Internet has made this prediction come true, and the traffic of short videos has made the "Internet celebrity" famous far beyond the "15 minutes" prediction.

However, for most people, a quick rise to popularity and a rapid fall is still a fate that they can't escape.

"Amateur" became popular

In May 2023, a video called "Planting Flowers in the Garden" suddenly circulated widely on the Internet, accompanied by the phrase "dig and dig in a small garden", and the creator Mr. Momoko was remembered by everyone. Ms. Taozi is a preschool teacher working in Hangzhou, and the video records her daily routine of teaching nursery rhymes to children in class.

In the week after the video went viral, Ms. Peach's Douyin followers grew by more than a million followers, and her name began to appear frequently on Weibo hot searches. After Teacher Peach, Huang Qiong, a music teacher in Wuhan, also became popular because of this children's song.

In addition to "Internet celebrities" like Mr. Peach and Huang Qiong who became popular because of a certain clip or experience, there are also some "amateurs" whose popularity is accompanied by controversy. On platforms such as Station B, secondary creators regard them as the objects of spoofs, such as Ma Baoguo and Wanyan Huide. With the spread of spoof content, it has also brought about a surge in the popularity of Ma Baoguo and Wanyan Huide and others.

The controversy over Wan Yan Huide focused on her academic qualifications and status as a psychological counselor, claiming that she had graduated from Peking University with a major in psychology through self-examination and had a national second-level psychological counselor license. But many viewers did not recognize Wan Yan Huide's identity, and one viewer who watched Yan Huide's live broadcast felt that "she is often logically confused when explaining problems". Especially once when answering a fan's question about "After the divorce of my parents, my mother no longer pays attention to herself", Wan Yan Huide replied: "Because you are your mother's oil bottle." This remark caused controversy and became one of the evidences for the audience to question Wan Yan Huide's identity.

Wanyan Huide became popular more because of her accent and appearance, because she was born in rural Gansu, Wanyan Huide often can't distinguish between front and back nasal voices, and Mandarin is not standard. At station B, Wanyan Huide's speech was made into a ghost animal video (a kind of funny video that produces a comic effect through highly synchronized and fast-repeating materials and the rhythm of background music), and in the process of dissemination, Wanyan Huide became the object of ridicule.

In December 2023, Wanyan Huide posted a video on Douyin, hoping that the secondary creator can stop using her live broadcast content to make "homophonic stalks". But this still hasn't stopped the "carnival" of secondary creators, and most of the time, the number of blocks in Wanyan Huide's daily live broadcast room will reach the upper limit.

Dong Chenyu agrees with the academic community's view that "Internet celebrities" are divided into three categories: "elite Internet celebrities" who are originally celebrities, "creative Internet celebrities" who have singing and dancing skills, and "social Internet celebrities" who are very close. Most of the "amateurs" are "social influencers" who "mainly sell a sense of familiarity and closeness to the audience". But just like that, the ceiling of "social influencers" is also much higher than the first two, and the number has greatly increased, "because there are not many social elites, creative and talented people themselves, but there are too many people who can become your family".

Every time an "amateur" becomes popular, people can't help but have a question: "Why them?" Dong Chenyu summarized the factors of "Internet celebrities" becoming popular as symbols on their bodies. For both teachers, these symbols include the professional identity of preschool teachers and the gendered symbols of simplicity and kindness. In Wanyan Huide, this symbol is "persistence", and in Wen Liang, this symbol is "ordinary". These symbols are the memory points and communication points of the "Internet celebrities", coupled with the traffic push of the platform, which made them quickly popular all over the Internet.

Worry-free Media, the leading MCN organization in China (a content creation agency that serves and manages content creators), understands "symbol" as "persona", and "persona is the soul of short video content".

life cycle

Dong Chenyu summarized the life cycle of "Internet celebrities" into four stages: "red and black persuade cool". After the unexpected popularity, it is often followed by the attack of public opinion and the maintenance of fans, and in the end, the popularity quickly fades like the wind.

On December 17, 2023, a photo of a middle-aged man swiped the screen in many people's circle of friends. Along with the photo, many people will be accompanied by the sentence: "I have been walking on thin ice all my life." The principal of the driving school named Wen Huijun is also a short video creator, relying on the "matrix operation" of three accounts, Wen Huijun has created three kinds of characters, work-related "Li'an Wen Huijun Driver Service Department", "Wen Shen" who focuses on dance, comedy and live broadcast, and "Wen Huijun" who is sad alone late at night.

After the explosion, Wen Huijun's popularity only lasted for three days. From December 18th to 21st, Wen Huijun held a total of six live broadcasts, the first five of which were watched by more than 20 million viewers, and the live broadcast on the 21st fell to 8 million. After that, Wen Huijun suspended the live broadcast event.

This is also a process that most "amateur Internet celebrities" will go through, although it has been more than "15 minutes" to be famous, it is still difficult to keep their name on the Internet for a long time.

Soon after the children's rhyme video went viral, controversy ensued. First of all, on the issue of song copyright, some viewers questioned the plagiarism of Teacher Taozi and Huang Qiong, and found out the original author's video released on the Douyin platform in 2021. Subsequently, when the two began to live broadcast and bring goods, the attack of public opinion began to become more violent, and the audience attacked the two for taking the opportunity of the explosion to "make money". Some people on the Internet began to question that the two were not ordinary creators, but were promoted by institutions. Subsequently, the popularity of the two continued to decline.

For most "amateurs", they neither know where their popularity comes from, nor how to leave their popularity, most people choose to be like Huang Qiong and Teacher Taozi, open live broadcasts, bring goods, and quickly monetize. In the midst of such a change in roles, the attacks of public opinion often come more violently.

But there are also word-of-mouth reversals. On December 11, Douyin officially released a micro-documentary about Yan Huide, telling about her own growth and work experience. Different from Wanyan Huide, who was ridiculed in the second creation, the micro-documentary tells the story of Wanyan Huide's admission to university from rural Gansu Province, self-examination for adult education at Peking University and a national second-level psychological counselor license. This micro-documentary largely reversed Wanyan Huide's public opinion.

Dong Chenyu defines the platform's behavior as "creating ordinariness". The increase in the frequency of "amateur Internet celebrities" is a manifestation of Douyin's psychology of "you can also become popular" to users. Dong Chenyu believes that "the platform needs to create ordinary people and become creators in the short video industry", so as to retain users to the greatest extent.

But no matter how word of mouth reverses, it can't change the reality of the rapid decline in traffic.

2018 was a turning point in the development of the influencer economy. "Before 2018, Douyin was doing the Internet celebrity wholesale market, but this thing has limitations, if a new platform emerges to take the Internet celebrity away, the wholesale market itself is worthless." Dong Chenyu said.

Professional "Internet celebrity"

"Internet celebrities" and live broadcasts have created a new "myth of getting rich", and the superficial glamour and high income are the reasons why many young people are eager to become "Internet celebrities".

According to the "China Online Performance (Live Broadcast and Short Video) Industry Development Report (2022-2023)", by the end of 2022, more than 150 million anchor accounts had been opened in the mainland online performance (live broadcast) industry, of which the average daily peak number of new anchors was 43,000. According to the report of the China Performing Arts Association, among the live broadcast practitioners in 2022, the 18-29-year-old age group has the most anchors, accounting for 64.2% of all anchors, and the 30-39-year-old accounts for 20.9%. Some industry insiders mentioned that the upper age limit of the anchor of the live streaming company where they work is 30 years old.

However, it is a profession with a high degree of uneven income. Among these anchors, 95.2% of the anchors whose main source of income are live broadcasts have a monthly income of less than 5,000 yuan, and only 0.4% of the anchors have a monthly income of more than 100,000 yuan.

In Dong Chenyu's research, most young people who want to make a living from Internet celebrities can't stick to it for more than two months. Dong Chenyu compares this industry to "lottery and commodities", and many people are looking forward to an opportunity to explode, but there are too few such opportunities after all. Most people, like the goods offered by the platform, hurriedly disappear from the audience's field of view and are replaced by another "influencer".

Dong Chenyu believes that "Internet celebrity is just a state, and content creators are a profession", and he believes that with the development of the Internet celebrity economy and the maturity of MCN institutions, content creation will gradually become professional in the future. In this process, MCN institutions need to take on the role of promoting the professionalism of the industry through their own professionalism.

For a long time, relying on the summarized methodology, worry-free media has incubated a large number of "amateur Internet celebrities". Among them, after signing a contract with the cleaning aunt who broadcast live with "Yu and Sister Maomao", her income in one month exceeded the income of the previous year. Guo Jia, vice president of marketing and public relations of Wuwu Media, believes that "new media has achieved the myth of ordinary people, and it has also given us the opportunity to touch the temperature of more ordinary people. ”

According to the judgment of worry-free media, the content creation industry has now entered the era of user stock and the stage of content stock market. The competition in the short video era has shifted from the simple pursuit of user growth to the increase of user stickiness, the platform content ecology has been upgraded, the user's demand for high-quality content has become higher, and the growth focus of content creators has increasingly shifted from traffic to word-of-mouth. Guo Jia believes that "in the future, content creation will not only need creativity, but also value, and more interesting, useful and characterful content will emerge on the basis of vertical fine farming."

Platform vs. MCN

In 2018, Douyin changed its brand slogan to "record a good life" and began to encourage "everyone to become a creator" and maintain users. "You can poach my influencers, but you can't take all my users away," Dong said, "The future of social media must be to infrastructure, they don't want to be fashionable, they want to be something that has no presence, but can't live without, like electric lights." ”

Not only Douyin, but also Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Kuaishou have written "ordinary people" and "ordinary people's lives" into the brand slogan. "Xiaohongshu has become a search engine, and Douyin has become a platform for buying coupons through local life. And the most successful of all social platforms is WeChat, "If a person does not download WeChat, it must be surprising". Dong Chenyu is often asked "Is there any trace of traffic?" It is difficult for him to give a specific answer, in his opinion, "algorithms are the product of the joint shaping of the market and the platform, not the unbridled power of the platform." "The explosion of Internet celebrities is first of all the reaction of the market in the traffic pool. However, when the traffic pool accumulates to a certain level, the platform can find out the flow direction of the traffic. As a super platform in the short video industry, Douyin undoubtedly has a greater decision-making power.

There are more than 100,000 signed influencers under Wuwu Media, covering different content types, different business tracks, and different character labels. As an MCN organization, Worry-Free Media has also felt the changes in the market environment.

Guo Jia thinks, "The emergence of amateur Internet celebrities is to a certain extent the manifestation of the development trend of the industry, and at present, the form of content is changing from extensive pan-entertainment to intensive cultivation of life and authenticity." Specific to the organization, this also affects its own strategic layout. ”

Even MCN institutions are difficult to fully understand the trend of traffic, "explosive models often appear at unpredictable times, and the emergence of phenomenal IPs is often the result of the right time, place, and people." However, as the institution and market matured, Worry-Free Media has summed up a set of methodology: cut small circles and make a big impact. Guo Jia explained, "Endorse the real personality labels of celebrities, reach the vertical circle through content that can cause strong resonance, supplemented by marketing topics to bless the popularity of the circle", so as to create a hit.

At the same time, the platform traffic push mechanism is like a customized assistant, which can help institutions and content creators perceive the trend and content preferences of the platform in a timely manner, and extract valuable information, so as to remain flexible and forward-looking in the current market.

In addition, within Worry-Free Media, a pyramidal incubation structure is adopted. According to the number of fans, monetization ability, social influence and other latitudes, the influencers are divided into different levels of the pyramid, and the corresponding resources are matched according to different levels to realize the pyramid creator ecology. In this process, the pyramid changes are dynamic and not static.

From Dong Chenyu's experience in contacting MCN institutions, he believes that this is a way of insurance, "although the birth of the head is unavoidable, the cultivation of the waist has a methodology." Compared with the head anchor, the cost of cultivating waist anchors will be lower, and waist anchors have the possibility of becoming head anchors.