This is an article that explains why 300 million people are forgotten.
First, the origin
In early June, an article titled "The Cruel Tale of the Bottom: A Video Software in Rural China" (hereinafter referred to as "Story") swept through the circle of friends. The article makes a painstaking reference to an app called "Kuaishou", which reports that Kuaishou is a social "video software" that is "vulgar, simple and crude", but accurately reproduces the increasingly poor life in the countryside, especially the increasing urban-rural binary. The article quickly sparked discussion, and for a time, there were calls, laments and doubts. But as I expected, the enthusiasm did not last, and after about 72 hours, the discussion fell silent.
The discussion about Kuaishou sank? It's not normal! In this regard, I would like to put forward three facts:
1. Kuaishou users 300 million +, equivalent to the total population of the Republic when it was founded in 1949. At the same time, Kuaishou is also the fourth mobile phone application in China, with more than 10 million daily active users. In this era of the national Internet, this is the star that can smoothly squeeze into the top 10 of global social products.
As a successful social product, Kuaishou's achievements are enough to shock people's hearts, and its user body is the "rural people" who have disappeared in the urban media before.
2: A few days before the article "The Story" came out, I went to Tsinghua to do business. After walking out of the East Gate of Tsinghua, I was surprised to see that the orange logo of Kuaishou replaced the NetEase signboard on the Tsinghua Science and Technology Park. Tsinghua Science and Technology Park is a totem office location in the IT industry of Didu, where Google, EMC, Adobe, Sohu and other coffees are gathered. Kuaishou's posture is obviously not to say goodbye, in other words, 300 million users are just the beginning for it.
3: What is even more intriguing is that Kuaishou was "forgotten" by us!
According to the intelligence I have collected so far, after "The Story", there are only about five introductory public account articles about the product, and the views are superficial. At the same time, most of the keen investors know nothing about Kuaishou, smart Internet peers are silent about it, and media people who like big news are like wooden chickens - in short, Kuaishou actually "disappeared" from the circle of friends of white-collar workers in the city, so it was forgotten!
2. Past and present lives
Where did Kuaishou come from? In this regard, I briefly reprinted the "818 Circle of Friends Brush Frequency Caused Controversy Of Kuaishou: The APP that I have never heard of has 300 million users! and "Tiantongyuan Zhang Xiaolong" two articles reported:
2011.3 GIF Kuaishou was born
2012.11 GIF Kuaishou transformed from a pure tool application to a short video community
2013.10 After the transformation, GIF Kuaishou has greatly improved both the number of users and the length of user use
After the Spring Festival in 2014, the traffic of Kuaishou began to blow out, and a large number of northeastern users settled in Kuaishou
2014.11 GIF Kuaishou was renamed Kuaishou
2015.6 The number of uploaded videos by Kuaishou users in a single day exceeded 2.6 million, and the number of users exceeded 100 million
2016.2 The number of Kuaishou users exceeded 300 million
The above reports are nothing at first glance, but if combined with the reality of the Internet, the contradiction is shocking.
In 2011, a humble app was born in the turbulent era of mobile Internet, and its development soon encountered a bottleneck, so the founding team made a "difficult decision" to enter the social field. From the end of 13 to the beginning of 14, the data growth proved the correctness of this transformation, and at the same time, Kuaishou stepped on the short video outlet. Since then, Kuaishou has sung all the way, and the number of users has exceeded 300 million. According to the writing of the history of the Internet, the founding team of Kuaishou should now continue to accept media interviews, go to various industry forum summits, or go to Silicon Valley to be received by the gods of venture capital - they "deserve" to be envied and jealous by people. However, it should only be a matter of course, and such a situation has not become a reality, for example, just when I typed this text, Kuaishou Laocheng's smiling Weibo only had 702 fans!
The weight of 300 million users does not have to be nonsense, but what is confusing is that the media has not only not exposed the fast hand on a large scale, but has fallen into a humiliating dullness!
In addition, if you accept the views of the previous articles, you still can't explain this core problem:
Why are there mostly "rural people" on Kuaishou?
Because the common sense of the industry is that the vast rural areas have the scarcity of network traffic, the scattered population, and some other objective conditions that are not conducive to Internet penetration.
In order to eliminate the above doubts, we can only follow the vine in the existing clues.
I think that in the historical record of the rise of Kuaishou, there is a key message that has been omitted, that is: after the Spring Festival in 2014, the traffic of Kuaishou began to blow up, and a large number of northeastern users settled in. Why?
Veterans know that the change in Internet traffic is actually an online portrayal of daily crowd changes. The Spring Festival is the most important festival in Chinese's heart. During the Spring Festival, even if we are not far away, we still have to go home for reunion.
The Spring Festival immediately entered the field of vision. The 2014 Spring Festival began on January 16 and ended on February 24, transporting more than 3.6 billion passengers, a spectacle of human migration that occurred at a specific time. The term "Spring Festival" first appeared in the People's Daily in 1980, and since then, a large number of rural people have poured into the city in response to the national policy of reform and opening up, becoming waiters, construction workers, security guards, courier brothers and other professionals.
My judgment is that during the Spring Festival in 2014, it was these migrant workers who brought Kuaishou back to their hometowns. After their return trip during the Spring Festival, the geographical division once again cut off the connection between large cities and third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities and rural areas, and this cut-off enabled Kuaishou to infiltrate and grow wildly in these places without interference.
Sometimes we feel that the circle of mobile Internet is fighting, but it may only be in the north, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, or even just Zhongguancun, or even even just in your circle of friends. In other words, we may not know what is happening in this vast land of China!
One might question that such speculation seems too hasty, as there has been no actual investigation in it. The response to this article is that the use of migrant workers as a "source of infection" for fast hands can illustrate at least two unusually critical situations:
1. Why did Kuaishou break out after the Spring Festival in 2014?
2. Why are Kuaishou's users concentrated in Northeast China and North China? Because working nearby is a common sentiment, migrant workers in the north of course prefer the birthplace of Kuaishou: Beijing.
Third, migrant workers vs white-collar workers?
According to the previous description, Kuaishou is a product pushed up by "migrant workers in the city". But then the question follows, who are these migrant workers? What are the characteristics? How do you define them? This seems like nowhere to start.
In order to solve this problem, I would like to make a bold assumption here: "migrant workers" are the relative group of "white-collar workers". First, through comparison, the characteristics of "migrant workers" can be better elucidated. Second, the relevant people in the Internet venture capital circle are white-collar workers, and comparing them with "migrant workers" will help us understand why Kuaishou, which has 300 million users, is forgotten.
Here I would like to mention a piece of my own experience:
In the autumn of 2011, I lived in Tiantongyuan, the "sleeping city" in the north of Beijing. This is the most densely populated neighborhood in Asia, aerial photography of its panoramic, two words "spectacular"! (Figure)
It is said that Cheng Yixiao also lived here in that year.
All the North Drifters who have crossed the TiantongYuan know the "fierceness" here, especially line 5 during rush hour.
At eight or nine o'clock in the morning, the Line 5 subway station in Tiantongyuan is more crowded than the Shanghai World Expo: all kinds of bodies fit together, wrestle together, and are pushed into the subway at the same time; toothpaste, bad breath, perfume, egg cake and other smells are mixed together, which is really a discoloration of men, women and children.
The Line 5 subway departs from Tiantongyuan and will soon arrive at Huixin West Street South Exit Station – a very interesting stop.
Huixin West Street Nankou Station is an interchange station where beijing where living and working Beijing intersect, because this station connects Line 5 and Line 10 that run through the north and south of the imperial capital, east and west.
During the morning rush hour, passengers squeezed up from Tiantongyuan Station of Line 5 squeezed out at Huixin West Street South Exit Station and ran to Line 10. For most of them, the destinations are Zhongguancun in the west and Guomao in the east.
The Zhongguancun hypermarket in 2011 is still in full swing, and it is not on the verge of closure because of the rise of e-commerce today, and Guomao is becoming synonymous with the world's top central business district.
On that day, when the residents of Tongyuan changed trains at the south exit of Huixin West Street, they were divided into two according to the "hypermarket style" and "office building style", feeling that the "old soil" migrant workers went west, and white-collar workers dressed as "foreign" headed east.
These two groups of people are easily distinguishable for anyone with normal sanity. In other words, their distinction is objective for the vast majority of people.
So what separates these two groups of people?
First of all, it won't be dressed. It's too external. We can't accurately evaluate and position a person just by dressing.
Secondly, it is not appropriate to judge by the settlement, in order to avoid the high housing prices in the center of Beijing, most people choose an affordable community such as Tiantongyuan.
Finally, it is not right to judge by the income level, according to the data of recruitment websites, the average income of white-collar workers in Beijing is 6947 yuan, and there are few left. At the same time, in Beijing, Shanghai and other places, although the overall income of migrant workers is slightly lower than that of white-collar workers, the income of most skilled migrant workers may exceed the average of white-collar workers.
So what is the essence of distinguishing these two groups of people?
I think there is only one essence, and that is that these two groups of people have different expectations for their future lives.
This difference in "self-expectation" will further manifest itself in their "identity" and even reflect the difference in external "feelings".
For white-collar workers, the top priority is to integrate into the city and stay in the city. Choosing to become a white-collar worker is not just a matter of choosing a "white-collar" job, but also choosing a whole set of symbolic expressions and lifestyles. In order to be able to live a life with a car and a house in a big city, white-collar workers must accept the symbol system of big cities: urban hukou, five social insurance and one gold, office politics, and so on. This system is like an objective standard of urban life, and white-collar workers must learn to cater to it in order to become the so-called "middle class" in the future.
But the expectations of migrant workers are not so "high", because the big cities are just a transit point for most of them — migrant workers earn money and earn a living, just to go back to their hometowns to live a good life; they don't care about things like buying a house and paying off a mortgage in a big city. In other words, migrant workers seem to be less concerned about whether they are integrated into big cities.
White-collar workers' self-expectations lead them to accept the symbology of urban life in their entirety, which means that white-collar workers and their world are bound to ignore the migrant workers and their world, because those who are irrelevant to the survival of white-collar workers are irrelevant. This indifference can even manifest itself in some cases as discrimination. For example, part-time waiters often encounter cold eyes or even contempt from city people in their work.
As quoted in the article "Tiantongyuan Zhang Xiaolong": "Some people comment, click on Kuaishou, you will see a loser world, a loser's world, they have no money, no culture, they have their own taste, although these tastes are not very high, these people in the county, rural, or urban corners, they also need an Internet platform that satisfies their tastes." ”
This comment, which repeatedly mentions "taste", is very high-profile, it ostensibly talks about kuaishou, but in fact it dismissively comments on the migrant workers and their world.
It should be pointed out that white-collar workers have no choice in their acceptance of the symbol of the big city. Their topics are basically fixed, such as fashion, fitness, LOHAS, constellations, etc.; their discourse system is full of symbols, such as various brands, the Internet, Ma Yun's father, etc. But without exception, these symbols are created and prescribed by the "elites" who lead the "taste" – they either already exist or are about to be indoctrinated into the minds of white-collar workers. In the process of talking about and manipulating these symbols, white-collar workers complete the identification of their own identity. But this is just a fantasy game, and behind it is the anxiety of white-collar workers who want to "get ahead" and "be different". Thus, white-collar workers are actually a group that has been completely tamed by urban symbols, and their sense of superiority has a subjective fabrication.
This sense of self-superiority among white-collar workers has reduced migrant workers to the silent background – they are forgotten by white-collar workers in the "colorful" urban life.
In other words, white-collar workers have a "collective unconscious" level of indifference that acts as a self-cajoling and self-reinforcing role, so much so that they are cut off from strange things.
I think that's the real reason why Kuaishou has disappeared from the city media and white-collar circles.
Although domestication inevitably led to a lack of creativity and cultural upbringing, the superiority of white-collar workers made them self-proclaimed a privileged class of cultural creation in this era. For white-collar workers, judging the "taste" and "value" of a thing in daily life seems to be a matter of course. At most, they accept only the influence of the "elite" above them, and they instinctively choose to ignore, forget, or even completely disdain the creation of migrant workers.
In the eyes of white-collar workers, the work of migrant workers is all cottage, rough and barbaric, they are a group of people with no "future", the so-called "bottom".
In the eyes of white-collar workers, migrant workers do not deserve the word creativity, they only create content that makes people feel embarrassed and disgusting.
In the eyes of white-collar workers, Kuaishou reflects a poor, ridiculous, vulgar world .
A world of monkeys.
The symbology accepted by white-collar workers determines that they are more or less bound to see it that way.
Although some migrant workers love to dry cars and dry bags, selfie awl face scissor hands, and do appear "low" and "earthy", they are not completely tamed by the city symbol (P.S. white-collar groups do not dry bags and dry cars, and public sunbathing will make people think that you are doing micro-business. White-collar workers who do these things will show the "elegance" and skill of being domesticated).) Because big cities ignore migrant workers, and migrant workers themselves do not have a strong desire to integrate into big cities, they will naturally produce their own symbol markets that are different from the white-collar world.
So we see that migrant workers are uploading content on Kuaishou almost frantically, and these contents can get thousands of likes at any time. We must be clear that whether it is migrant workers, or their relatives and friends in their hometowns, they all live in an environment where network traffic is relatively scarce, so there must be a strong and unquestionable production and consumption power behind the crazy upload.
That is to say, in the eyes of white-collar workers, who are the background workers, are not silent in their own place, they are full of vitality, and they are consumers with strong desires. In fact, migrant workers have even gone beyond the category of consumers, as seen on Kuaishou, they have become the creators of their own symbols and are self-sufficient outside the white-collar world.
Migrant workers are creating their own symbology on Kuaishou, while white-collar workers are sinking into a given symbology.
In this sense, migrant workers are the ones who have the "vitality" to create.
Fourth, the fast hand exploded
Why are migrant workers more dynamic?
1, Kuaishou has been creating its own popular symbols, which is why people are confused as soon as they open Kuaishou, because they don't know what routines are in Kuaishou. For example, the phrase "double-click comment 666" is popular in Kuaishou, which is Kuaishou's own symbol.
The fashion trend on Kuaishou is also changing with each passing day, constantly changing the way of playing. For example, two or three months ago, Kuaishou was particularly popular on the "fried crotch" video, my point is that "fried crotch" is related to the New Year's cannon, with the Spring Festival gone, the "fried crotch" play method must be passed.
Kuaishou already has its own enclosed garden, where tourists are "rural people" who have been forgotten by white-collar workers. As mentioned in an article: "Kuaishou and its crowd are an objective existence, and their split with first- and second-line life scenes and customs is also an objective existence." "There's a supplementary example here: celebrities in other mainstream social products are nothing at Kuaishou.
The above points show that Kuaishou is a complete, self-sufficient social system.
2: The content in Kuaishou is simply a genre film. Just as movies can be divided into genres such as highway, police, horror, and sci-fi, the content on Kuaishou can also be classified in this way.
The content on The Fastshoe by Type can be divided into two categories:
One type is talent shows or various explosive "juggling", such as various types of "masochistic videos" mentioned in "Monogatari", "vulgar performances" and so on.
There is also a category of photography for life. It's just like a normal photo shoot, without even adding filters, just presenting the "facts" as it is.
But for the subject of life shooting, I have to say two more words: because it is not a performance, but a first-point shooting, it has newsworthiness. Kuaishou, because there is a lot of this kind of content, has become the most youTube-like product in China.
3: The relationship between these two seemingly unrelated subjects has given rise to a third type – this article calls it "posing journalism." Because it is the product of intersection, this genre has two characteristics: one is that it has the juggling nature of talent display, and the other is that it reflects real life and has news value.
"News for filming" completely subverts the audience's eyeballs, making it difficult to distinguish between true and false.
As mentioned in "The Story", the Kuaishou Big Mom incident: According to news reports, the police suspected that the big mom was controlled by others, and released various videos of eating "disgusting" things on Kuaishou. But the suspicion was soon dispelled, because the big aunt herself declared that she was voluntary!
Of course, whether Aunt Kuaishou is controlled or not is secondary - what is important is that this incident has evolved into a "social security incident" and attracted the attention of the police. (Figure)
The surging news has more explosive:
If you don't die, you won't die. The "spoof clown" has been noticed by the police and has been announced.
What is even more worrying is that this kind of shooting has really disturbed social order:
These three examples have already shown:
On Kuaishou, the line between dramatic filming and news coverage is artificially blurred. News is no longer a sudden and objective event, but has become a kind of artificial "juggling" performance, and its impact has become a new news, in other words, artificially created "social security cases" or "news" have become part of the "talent show" on Kuaishou, and have become a means of obtaining likes.
Why?
Because, when the user shoots this kind of video, the heart has forgiven all the harm in advance, and is in a state of "entering the drama", what social security, what sense of responsibility, all to double click like 666 let go. Virtual is reality, reality is not also virtual!
The speed of development of kuaishou wind and cloud has made it faster and faster into a "city mainstream value" and a "borderland" outside the mainstream social network, which has a complete set of symbol production and consumption capabilities, self-sufficiency, and forms a closed loop. At the same time, Kuaishou's influence has been fully extended to reality, constantly creating events and popular symbols.
Therefore, Kuaishou is no longer the "video software" mentioned in "Story", it is a new and complete rapid development and independent social platform! He will build a new system of expression, even a whole set of values! Every minute of the content inside is inversely reinforcing the daily behavior of its users! And whether you ignore it or not, the user is right next to you!
Concluding remarks
"It's the same as it really is..." After recounting the main point of the article to my friend in the restaurant that day, he had a capital "uh" on his face. My friend is indeed a city white-collar worker, but he is open-minded, wise, loves to read, has culture, and does not pretend to be forced. He could accept that Kuaishou had an independent social system, but he didn't believe that Kuaishou could have such an influence among migrant workers. I told him to find a waiter and ask. So he called a waiter over. It was a Young Man from Hebei. Ask him if he knows about Kuaishou. He said that he used it often, and the things on it were very interesting. The friend asked again, do you need your hometown and colleagues? He nodded and said it was all used. At this point my friend stopped talking at all.
After dinner, send friends to the subway station and say goodbye. He said he would take a good look at Kuaishou tonight, tell me how he felt tomorrow, and then turn around and join the crowd.
At this time, I suddenly remembered the time when I commuted to work at Tiantongyuan in 2011.
Day after day, after 5:30 every day, all the migrant workers in the city have ended the day's battle and rolled back to their nests, some of them have walked out of the office building of Guomao, some have pulled down the roller shutters in the hypermarket, squeezed into the subway, and met again at the south exit of Huixin West Street. White-collar workers and migrant workers silently walked in the subway, exhaustion filled the entire Tiantong Garden, and the flashing mobile phone screen finally dimmed. They must not have known that there would be two completely different worlds here! Beijing gradually fell silent at night, but no one thought that there were actually two Beijings in this world! What about China? Will there be two Chinas? I don't know if I should think about it.
The next day, my friend WeChat told me that after verifying my views one by one on Kuaishou last night, he had mixed feelings and had no sleep all night.
Seven days later, a friend called me and said that he had recently contacted a lot of intermediary brothers in renting a house, and without exception used Kuaishou...
If you don't believe you have a chance, you can also ask about it
This article is co-produced by the Results and sillyunicorn public accounts. There are mud pit pits and public accounts of venture capital and lifestyles that are the right and posture of China's three views, and the results are good friends with mud pit public numbers. If you need to reprint, you must indicate that you have your own mud pit WeChat public number (sillyunicorn), and the author labels it as "achievement and mud pit".
*The article is the author's independent opinion and does not represent the position of Tiger Sniff Network
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