Live life that makes people love and hate.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “on pineapple Finance” (ID: kaiboluocaijing), Author: open pineapple Finance team.
Author | Jin Yunyun Su Qi Wu Jiaoying Wang Huixian
Edit | Kim Jung-young
Will you spend the whole night staring at the almost still slow live broadcast? Will you accompany an anchor for seven years? Many young people will.
According to the data from iiMedia Consulting, affected by the epidemic in 2020, the overall user scale of China’s online live broadcast industry will reach 587 million. This data will grow to 635 million in 2021. According to the type, the ranking of the live broadcast types most frequently watched by users is E-commerce, games, education, charity, show, tourism, etc. Take the very mature game live broadcast as an example. The report of Xiao Hulu Big Data shows that the live broadcast time for the whole year of 2020 has increased by 22% compared with the previous year, which is a significant increase.
Disclosing live broadcast duration is a common operation for every platform with live broadcast business. Many people have always been curious that live broadcast is undoubtedly a disruptive tool, but are there really such people buying it? Who are they and why did they choose to pass the time in the live broadcast room?
Remember the slow live broadcast of thousands of people guarding and supervising the construction of Wuhan Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals? Nowadays, some novel methods such as slow live broadcasting, growing up with the anchor, watching people sleep, live learning or postgraduate entrance examinations, etc. are popular among young people.
Watching live broadcasts has become a part of the lives of many young people. For contemporary young people who are accustomed to a fast-paced and stressed life, squatting in the live broadcast room every night or even a whole day will not be bored, but a valuable way to relax, heal, and relieve loneliness, but At the same time, it also brings troubles to some people.
What is the charm of the live broadcast room that makes people love and hate, and can’t stop it? Let’s hear what the following five young people have to say.
Accompanying an anchor for seven years,Watching him grow up, buy a house, and decorate
Corrosion| 26 years old dentist
I have watched game live broadcasts for a long time, and I will watch live broadcasts of games such as League of Legends and Battlefield, but my favorite is the anchor “Super Jie” in the Douyu host area. I have been seeing work since university, and it is seven years at a glance.
Super Xiaojie’s Betta live broadcast page
Seven years ago, I paid attention to Xiaojie. He was playing the console game “Super Mario Maker” when the Switch was not so popular. Everyone played Super Mario when they were young, but he played very differently. At first, he was attracted when he saw his title “I may have played a fake Mario”. The special thing about this game is that netizens can make maps and set levels on the Nintendo platform, and then players can pass levels in it. Until now, many water friends deliberately use ranked mode to “snipe” him in multiplayer mode. very interesting.
Xiao Jie’s live broadcast is not just for playing games, there will also be many tricks of “shows.” He usually starts live broadcast from noon and broadcasts until 6 or 7 in the afternoon. Live dinner at 12 o’clock at noon. He doesn’t eat much. He guesses how many mouthfuls he eats every time the bullet screen; he often buys some products and broadcasts the unpacking process.
I like to watch him live, the most important thing is his reality, which shows him in daily life, not human design. He graduated from the Chinese Department, and later became a programmer by self-study, and became a technical nerd, knowing more. One example is that he likes photography and would go hiking in the suburbs of Changsha during his break. The grandparents in those mountains may not have taken photos in his life, so he would take photos of them with Polaroids and send them to them. Once he mentioned it in the live broadcast room, which was very touching.
In short, our fans who have been watching for a long time have a sense of companionship to grow up with him. His first live broadcast room was in an old house. We watched him buy a new house, decorate it by himself, install smart homes, and set up the garage of his new house like a game hall when he was a kid. There were snacks and QR codes in it. Scan You can play for one dollar, and Changsha’s friends will go offline to find him to play.
When I was in college, I watched his live broadcast almost every day, one afternoon. We also formed a fan group for him. People who are more fond of chatting will play games together and develop into friends who are often in contact. It’s a bit sad to say that I have less time after work, and I must watch his recording and broadcasting when I get home every night. Until recently, I got busier and I couldn’t finish the recording and broadcasting.
I watch the live broadcast not purely to “kill time”, but to watch him live and grow up with my favorite anchor. It can be said that it started from the game live broadcast, fell into the live broadcast style, and was loyal to the anchor character.
Unmanned mountains, urban blocks,Slow live broadcast makes me feel the fireworks in the world
Xiaoyu| 25-year-old service industry practitioner
Strictly speaking, I am not a person who spends all day in the live broadcast room, but for me, the live broadcast room is a place to escape from real life.
I am not too cold about most of the game live broadcasts, talent live broadcasts or live broadcasts with goods. Probably because my daily work is relatively busy, I rarely have time to go out shopping and watch the scenery. The slow live broadcast allows me to see many different scenery without going to other places.
The first time I came into contact with Slow Live, I couldn’t fall asleep one night, and accidentally swiped a local media account in Chongqing on Douyin to broadcast live. Click in, the place is Chaotianmen in Chongqing, where the Yangtze River and Jialing River meet. In the picture, the river flows quietly, and the tall buildings on the opposite side stand in the dark, and time seems to have stopped. At that time, I thought it was very novel.
I stared at that picture for a long time, and fell asleep after watching it.
Later, Douyin often pushed me some similar slow live broadcasts, mostly broadcasted by local media accounts in a certain city. Some shots are aimed at a lonely mountain, and some shots are on a certain block of the city, which will last for a long time.
The official Douyin account of Qingdao Radio and Television Station is conducting a 24-hour slow live broadcast in Qingdao Source/ Screenshot of Douyin
I prefer to watch the slow live broadcast of the block. It seems that the scenery of each city block is the same, but there will be many passers-by coming and going, some people stay in front of a certain shop, and some people work in a certain corner. These scenes do not impress me particularly, but they find it very interesting. I really like such human fireworks.
In this kind of live broadcast room, you don’t need to listen to the anchor Amway, you don’t need to chat with people, and you don’t even need to comment. During that time, before going to bed every night, I would open a slow live broadcast to accompany me, without thinking about anything.
However, watching this kind of slow live broadcast for a long time does cause visual fatigue. Some live broadcasts will show some BGM. If you hear something noisy or you don’t like it, it will be difficult to keep watching, and it will affect your sleep. Now, I prefer to watch some live broadcasts of sleep aids before going to bed.
Some young people feel that they are overly addicted to short video platforms such as Douyin and choose to deliberately uninstall withdrawal.But I think it’s not a waste of time to use TikTok and watch live broadcasts in free time. Outside of work, everyone will have some entertainment, but the format is different, just be happy.
In order to follow the anchor,I downloaded Kuaishou, Douyin, Pinduoduo
Xiaojin | 25-year-old Internet practitioner
I am a post-90s social animal. Apart from work every day, I watch the live broadcast of the short video celebrity “Mr. Guo”.
She never used beauty in live broadcasts, and her hair was disheveled but never taken care of. Others broadcast live broadcasts by beauty, and “Mr. Guo” live broadcasts by funny. Watching her live broadcast, you never know what weird words she will pop out in the next second. “Don’t send lost” (don’t know), “Yesmola” (a universal vocabulary), and “duosunna” (to describe a person is very detrimental) are all entry-level vocabularies in “Guo language”.
She will live make-up in the live broadcast room, calling herself “Hyuna imitation makeup”, but she is actually too ugly. I was eating food for the first second, and suddenly screamed in the next second—every “Mr. Guo” fan must bear these shocking moments.
Mr. Guo puts on “Hyunya imitation makeup” in the live broadcast Source/ Douyin
I usually watch the live broadcast of “Mr. Guo” before I eat and go to bed. I am tired from work every day, but I still want to watch her live broadcast for a few more minutes while lying in bed. Sometimes I fall asleep watching it. When I woke up, I saw that the phone was still on.
She is always banned by the platform, so she can only use her family’s ID card to open a trumpet. For this reason, I have followed a lot of “Mr. Guo” trumpets. I downloaded Kuaishou because of “Ms. Guo”. She used to broadcast live in Kuaishou. Later, I moved to Douyin with her. She often asked fans to bargain prices for Pinduoduo in the live broadcast room. For her, I also downloaded Pinduoduo specifically. There are many people who like her. Once, fans cut down a newest iPhone for her in a few minutes.
Her peak moment should be straightA golden sentence broke out in the broadcast room: “I feel like you were born out of nothing, secretly concealed, imagined out of thin air, fabricated out of thin air, speechless, and hopeless.” At that time, I really laughed at me, a few words that were not related, were “Mr. Guo” was strung together abruptly, and it seemed to make sense. Later, netizens made a variety of ghost and animal videos, which were circulated on Douyin and Station B. “Mr. Guo” was completely popular. It was made into emoticons by various netizens. I would collect them when I saw them. Now they are all hers on my phone. Emoticons.
In my daily life, I am a person who is not very talkative and a bit introverted, but in the “Mr. Guo” live broadcast room, I often send barrage “hahahahahahahaha”. I didn’t even expect that one day I would charge up money and make gifts for an anchor. Compared with the other fans who gave “Mr. Guo” tens of thousands of fans in a live broadcast, I have very few fans, up to 200 yuan a day.
Watching the live broadcast of “Mr. Guo”, I am not passing the time, because I have regarded this incident as an essential part of my life. It is a way of decompression for me, which can make me temporarily forget what is not in life. Happy things. Although my life is still messed up after leaving the live broadcast room, short-term happiness is enough.
I will broadcast the live broadcast of Amway “Ms. Guo” to the people around me. Some people think she is pretending to be crazy, but I think she lives a very thorough life and knows exactly what she wants. I have always hoped that I can become an open-minded and transparent person like “Ms. Guo” who can bring happiness to others.
Spent a few cents to give a reward to the young lady,was thanked all night
Lele| 28-year-old practitioner in the live broadcast industry
Due to work needs, I often drive Douyin, Kuaishou or Station B during work hours, and work while watching live broadcasts, and I have developed a habit of brushing. I still use it until I get home from get off work at night, and I can go to bed after I use the “sage mode” that I really don’t want to use. Counting this way, my leisure is almost live-streaming.
I usually dive in the live broadcast room. Whether it is watching the game anchor or the young lady anchor, I am not used to interacting. I also know that the anchor will not have any stories with the audience, but I still give a reward to the anchor lady.
That was the first time I gave a reward to the anchor. The other party was a young lady with few fans. I guess she should not be playing the live broadcast for a long time. That night, she was PK with a female anchor who also had few fans. Both of them had very few online viewers. There were only a dozen people, and only a few people gave rewards.
I don’t know where their enthusiasm comes from. Even in the face of a dozen people, they are trying hard to ask everyone to give a reward and support. Out of curiosity, I rewarded a female anchor with a few gold coins. whenWhen my ID appeared on the screen because of the reward gift, the female anchor suddenly became happy and said, “Thank you, Brother X, thank you for your reward!”
My ID is just a random nickname. The anchor read out the first word X, calling me “Big Brother X”, and continued to thank me all night. Of course, I also squatted in her live broadcast room all night. I only rewarded a few cents, and the anchor’s so hard soliciting votes and thanks, made me feel a little funny and complicated. At that time, I sighed in my heart, whether it is in the live broadcast room or the real world, she and I are lonely and poor people.
Miss sister is just an episode. I still spend my daily life watching short videos and watching live broadcasts. I think this way is normal, just like some people play games for entertainment, and some people read books for entertainment. .
However, the difference is also obvious. When there was no app like Douyin Kuaishou before, it seemed that there was nothing to do after get off work, playing games, checking Weibo or other apps, and time passed. But other apps can’t be like Douyin Kuaishou, “killing time” is intangible, and can bring people a sense of happiness that is effortless and brainless. This may be the reason why it has become a national-level app.
But too much brushing is not good, because the stimulation brought by short videos is too short and instant, and there is no need to use the brain, and the ability to think deeply will gradually deteriorate. I myself feel that it is difficult to read books, just like many people watch videos at double speeds, they need a faster pace and stronger stimulation, otherwise it is difficult to enjoy them.
The impact of Douyin Kuaishou on people is no different from Weibo and King of Glory. The APP itself is not wrong, it depends on how the individual uses it. As for Douyin, Kuaishou, or Internet companies, how to seduce you is their business. Just like every business is tempting consumers to buy goods, are they wrong? In fact, there is no question of right or wrong.
Indulge in game live broadcast for ten years, personality and lifestyle have changed
Cheng Chuan| 27-year-old securities analyst
From my sophomore year to graduating from a PhD student this year, for nearly ten years, I watched the game live broadcast as long as I was fine. The time in the live broadcast room added up to at least two or three years.
In the beginning, I was playing LOL (“League of Legends”) as a group. In order to improve my technique, I watched instructional videos and live broadcasts. Later, I didn’t have a lot of time to play the game by myself, so I watched the game live. I watched the common game live broadcast platforms in the early days, but only Huya and Douyu in the later stages.
It seems that playing games is more harmful than watching live broadcasts, but in fact it is the other way around. You can watch live games whenever you want. IThe final habit is to open the live broadcast whenever you are free or in a bad mood. Unless you are very busy with short-term work and you have no time, you will also watch it for about half an hour before going to bed.
Being addicted to live streaming is because of loneliness, lack of goals, and need for company. The game anchor speaks nicely, and all the bullet screens are talents. In the live broadcast room, you don’t have to face the pressures of the real world. On the other hand, because watching live broadcasts is the most convenient and fast way for me to relax, it is faster than playing games. Playing games on your own burns your brain, afraid of losing, and always wants to play after winning. When you encounter a class or other interruptions, it will seriously affect your mood.
Being addicted to live broadcasts is due to loneliness, lack of goals, and need for company. The game anchors speak nicely, and all the bullet screens are talents. In the live broadcast room, you don’t have to face the pressures of the real world. On the other hand, it is because watching live broadcasts is the easiest and fastest way for me, which is faster than playing games. Playing games on your own burns your brain, afraid of losing, and always wants to play after winning. When you encounter a class or other interruptions, it will seriously affect your mood.
Slowly, whether I study or work in reality, I can’t get a higher sense of satisfaction and comfort than watching a live broadcast. This is very scary. When I first entered school, I still had a certain sense of initiative and anxiety, and I have always maintained the habit of reading and exercising in my spare time. After so many years, more and more homes, sports and reading are completely abandoned, it is very difficult for the whole person to focus on long-term things, and there is no motivation to go out to find pleasure. When I go home during the New Year, some elders use vibrato all day, and I find that I am no different from them.
After my senior year, I told myself that I couldn’t go on like this anymore. I thought of a lot of ways, such as moving from Douyu and Huya to Station B. The result was just a change from one place to another, essentially “nipples”. “Le”, there is no way to change the status quo of addiction. Later, I found that it was more effective for me to change the external environment, such as going to the library, the office, and other places where it was not convenient to watch the live broadcast, but when I returned to the bedroom, it became clear again.
It is very difficult for ordinary people to quit the matter of indulging in game live broadcast. The main reason is that it is difficult to find other alternative ways to give people timely positive feedback besides game live broadcasts. Many of my PhD students around me are more or less addicted to game live broadcasts, because the research is not going well, and they need to find excitement and freshness through live broadcasts. Like me, in the long years, after indulging in live broadcasting, many changes have taken place in my personality and lifestyle, and I have repeatedly tried to withdraw. But in reality, such as my research projects and work, there are always moments of dissatisfaction. It will induce me to return to the live broadcast for a sense of relaxation.
Of course I know that continuing to watch the live broadcast is harmful to me, but one is to make you continue to suffer, and the other is to temporarily relieve you. I tend to take the lesser of the two evils.
*The title picture comes from Unsplash. At the request of the interviewee, Lele, Corrosion, Xiaojin, Xiaoyu, and Cheng Chuan were pseudonyms in the text.