"After two years of employment, the leader finally handed over the account to me", this sentence is accompanied by a kitten dancing a magic dance, and the first video made by the post-00s operation after taking up the post became popular.
Two days ago, the Yichang Public Security Bureau released an alternative propaganda video, in which the editor turned into a "humble cat", typing on the keyboard for a while, cutting the video, and holding his head for a while, and playing the experience of the migrant workers in a funny way.
Some netizens found that the number of likes on this article is more than all the previous videos combined.
Recently, "cat meme" has become a traffic password for playing short videos on the Internet. Click on the popular video list of station B, and you can see two or three videos marked with "cat meme" every day, and the official accounts of many companies have joined the meme.
Why did these nonsensical "cat meme" videos suddenly become popular? And how did it "mass produce"?
Use kittens to show all kinds of life
First of all, let's explain that the foreign word meme originated from the work of British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976, referring to the "cultural genes" of human beings.
In today's Internet context, memes can be understood as what we often call "memes", such as Crazy Thursday copywriting that is updated every week, memes that poke at the joke, etc.
The "cat meme" video is a short video made from cat memes that have become popular on the Internet, and the kitten can convey certain emotions through exaggerated and vivid movements or expressions, such as happiness, grievance, pride, and collapse...... Together, these cat materials can be combined with simple explanatory text to create a coherent story.
The first person in China to become popular with cat meme videos was a Japanese netizen on station B, who now lives in Dalian. Because her Chinese is not fluent enough, she chooses to use cat meme to record the cultural differences she feels in the workplace and life. Crossing the language barrier, the cat meme conveys real emotions that many netizens can resonate with.
On major social platforms, many young people also share those painful and low experiences through cat meme videos. UP master "HerenotFreya" used a cat meme video to tell "my seventeen years of love and hatred with anxiety disorders", which received more than 1.8 million views and 400,000 likes on station B.
In addition to individual players, many official accounts also seized this traffic password and sent post-00s to operate and produce "cat meme" short videos. For example, Genji Foods' official account on station B has made a series with cat meme, from stealing spicy noodles when he first joined the company to conquering the boss with data and visiting the production line, so that tens of thousands of netizens are willing to "watch advertisements".
Why did cat meme videos suddenly go viral?
In recent years, more and more people have cats. According to the "2023-2024 China Pet Industry White Paper", the number of pet cats in mainland China will reach 69.8 million in 2023, with an average of 1 in 20 people having cats. At the same time, the team of "cloud cats" on the Internet has gradually grown, and various types of kittens have brought "sky-high traffic" to pet bloggers.
It is understandable that many young people like cats, why even the official accounts of enterprises and government departments have joined this "abstract" carnival?
The post-95 operation Xiaoxing said that the recent "cat meme" tag has its own traffic, and the cat meme video recently posted by their company is the best data since the creation of the account, so the boss also supports continuing to update in this funny way.
The main reason is that "the threshold for the creation of cat meme is very low, and there is no need to shoot materials." There is no difficulty in editing, basically just pasting materials and subtitles. ”
As the "top stream" in the emoji industry, kittens can be said to be popular for as long as the history of the Internet has been. Many popular cat memes have spread because of funny emojis, and netizens' continuous secondary creations have added stories to them, and they have gradually become a popular meme.
Therefore, there are a lot of materials to choose from for cat memes, and there are bloggers on major social platforms who specialize in sharing cat memes to provide a steady stream of inspiration for videos.
Many vloggers have also shared tutorials related to cat meme videos, the production process is simpler than imagined, prepare the story script, background image and cat meme material to start editing.
Station B @k rat shared the tutorial of making cat meme
However, with the explosion of similar videos, viewers are also prone to aesthetic fatigue. Xiaoxing said that the threshold of technology has been lowered, and there are higher requirements for storytelling ability. Popular cat meme videos are often real life experiences, and the emotions conveyed should resonate with the public.
The AI power behind the magic cat
If you watch a few cat meme videos, you will find that there are several cats that appear very frequently. For example, jumping around behind the glass is the "happy cat" photographed by foreign netizens. This cat, which is often used to express grievances, is the own kitten posted by the UP master of station b @ bard.
However, as cat memes continue to upgrade, the technology behind a picture and a video is getting higher and higher.
On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, young people who play with AI mapping software have begun to use Midjourney to generate various "brain-opening" cat memes. For example, let the cat take a selfie in a jacket on the mountain, run away with two cups of milk tea, and even pick up a spatula to cook in a decent manner...... You can see that the scenes and details of the picture are realistic. The kitten's movements are becoming more and more "anthropomorphic", which also produces unexpected and interesting effects.
The dancing cat, which often appears in cat meme videos, is born thanks to the AI model. Last year, Alibaba Cloud's large model Tongyi Qianwen launched the Tusheng video function "National Dance King", which can generate a dancing video of about 10 seconds as long as you upload a full-body photo.
Netizens uploaded this chubby cow cat, made it shrug its shoulders and twist its waist, looking happy and proud, and suddenly became a cat meme that swept the whole network.
Tongyi's newly launched "National Singing" section, as well as a special "Animal P-mouth Singing" template, once again lowered the technical threshold for cat meme players. You only need to upload a photo of the kitten, and the AI will automatically put a mouth on the kitten, and the mouth shape can also change synchronously when speaking. The effect is very "magical", and I feel that it will become the next popular cat meme that swipes the whole network.
Source: Orange Persimmon Interactive City Express