After the explosion of "Tao Baibai", is the metaphysics track profitable?

Starting from the perspective of Internet metaphysics, this article objectively analyzes metaphysical consumption from the perspectives of astrology and tarot divination, as well as metaphysical side jobs and metaphysical practitioners. It is recommended for those who are engaged in the Internet industry and short video field.

In November this year, Chen Zhong, who was in Nanjing, planned to go to Jiming Temple, which is known for its "efficaciousness", to pray for blessings. While she was making plans, she found that the official WeChat account of Nanjing Jiming Temple had issued a notice stating that it would be temporarily closed to the public due to the epidemic.

The last line of the notice reads: "During the suspension period, the public can pray through the WeChat public account of Jiming Temple, the first temple of the Southern Dynasties."

Image source: Jiming Temple official account

Although it sounds like "electronic incense burning and cyber blessing", in fact, the onlineization of metaphysics is already a major trend . Previously, Chen Zhong also received a cinnabar pendant that his mother bought from a Kuaishou travel expert's live broadcast room. According to the anchor, these cinnabar products had been "blessed" in Mount Wutai.

At the same time, Internet metaphysics has participated in the daily lives of young people in various ways and to varying degrees: some people are concerned about how to safely survive the "Mercury retrograde" and search for information about zodiac signs; some people forward koi fish on Weibo and take tarot tests online; and some people "burn the first incense stick" on their WeChat Moments on the first day of every month, hoping that life will treat them better...

The wave of mysticism sweeping the Internet, will it bring a long-lasting business?

1. Metaphysics “wins” the Internet

"From the 1st to the 5th of the month, your ruling planet Venus interacted with Neptune, and you may have developed a sense of distrust towards someone since the last week of last month..." In the "2022 Zodiac Horoscope", Weibo blogger @Alex is an uncle made a detailed analysis of the fortunes of the twelve zodiac signs this month.

When it comes to metaphysics, the most familiar thing to people is probably the horoscope . Every once in a while, the horoscope will become a hot search, and there are many horoscope bloggers active on content platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin.

@同道大叔, who successfully created the constellation IP in the early days, became popular on Weibo in 2014 for his constellation comics. After launching a WeChat subscription account in 2015, it achieved more than 10,000 fans in the first week. Relying on the strong complaints and resonance of constellations, 同道大叔 quickly created the constellation IP image and developed derivative cultural and creative products, becoming a leading expert in the constellation track.

Turning our attention back to the short video field, people may also be familiar with @陶白白Sensei. As a well-known astrology blogger, Tao Baibai undoubtedly has a "hot search" physique, and often accidentally becomes a hot search due to entertainment events.

In August this year, when a male artist surnamed Huo was involved in a scandal, Tao Baibai became a hot topic due to a live broadcast that was extremely consistent with the incident. In November, Wang Xiaofei's "mattress literature" became popular, and Tao Baibai's "Don't mess with Cancer" was regarded as a motto by the netizens. In addition, the popularity of topics such as "Will you search for Tao Baibai for me?" is enough to show its influence.

@陶白白Sensei Tik Tok video screenshot

@陶白白Sensei is also a big V who started his career in the Weibo era. After switching from text and pictures to short videos, he quickly gained followers due to his deep content foundation and highly immersive horoscope analysis. Currently, Tao Baibai has 21.99 million fans on Douyin and nearly 3.2 million fans on Xiaohongshu.

Tarot is a divination technique popular in the West. By drawing different Tarot cards, Tarot masters interpret the past and future of the things that the person asking the question is concerned about and anxious about.

This type of public divination is frequently seen on Bilibili and Xiaohongshu, such as "When will your true love come?", "Will the person you have in mind come to you?", "How is your fortune this month?"... Love and career are undoubtedly the most popular topics . After moving the supposedly secretive divination online, the mystery of Tarot disappeared, replaced by quick feedback and an increase in instant satisfaction.

"Thank the universe and receive good luck." If you have ever watched a Tarot divination video on Bilibili, you must be familiar with this sentence. On Bilibili, the online interactive video format provides a good carrier for public divination . Tarot masters often place three cards in the center of the camera, telling the audience to calm down and choose the card that resonates with them the most. The subsequent card drawing, interpretation, and predictions and suggestions of the Tarot master all correspond to the audience's choice.

The strong interactivity is not only reflected in the user's independent choice. When choosing cards, the tarot master will also tell the user that they can type "gratitude" into the barrage to collect energy. Therefore, "receive good luck" constitutes the main barrage of this type of divination video.

@LukaUncle Constellation Hall Tarot Video Screenshot

On Xiaohongshu, tarot divination is also very popular . Creators often locate multiple time nodes to facilitate users to jump to the selected card content.

The advantage of Xiaohongshu is that the algorithm recommendation mechanism of the platform will push a large amount of similar content to the homepage. The double waterfall flow format brings a stronger sense of immersion. Users are often attracted by other notes after the test and rush to the next test without stopping.

On the other hand, female users mostly bring a large amount of sharing content to Xiaohongshu, and many of them leave their thoughts and expectations on emotional topics.

Compared with popular divination such as astrology and tarot, perhaps because it is too close to "feudal superstition", it is the Chinese numerology that has almost "disappeared" on social platforms. Whether it is Bilibili or Xiaohongshu, most of them avoid talking about Chinese cultural knowledge, and the entrance to divination is relatively secretive.

In a live broadcast room that mainly uses "Liu Yao" divination, Kas found that the UP host used the method of shaking coins to tell fortunes. During the period, someone in the barrage asked about the charges. The UP host said that the transaction needed to be conducted on WeChat.

2. Many players have entered the metaphysics track, but are stuck in monetization

The anxiety of having a side job is sweeping young people. Among them, online metaphysics is deeply loved by young people because of its low threshold and quick feedback. There are many users who want to do metaphysics as a side job. In the Douban group "Another Day of Failed Side Job", there are many posts mentioning the desire to get started in metaphysics and seek industry advice.

Xiaoli is a tarot practitioner with four years of experience. From a part-time job at the beginning to a full-time job now, she can occasionally achieve the small goal of earning more than 10,000 yuan a month. When her Taobao store was closed and her career reached a bottleneck, she also posted a message for help, and someone suggested that she "try Bilibili and Xiaohongshu for public divination."

Summarizing past experience, Xiaoli believes that "the key is to attract traffic" . For practitioners of metaphysics, it is very important to attract traffic on multiple platforms and accumulate private domains. In the initial stage, the business of fortune tellers often relies on social fission, that is, word of mouth within the circle of friends and relatives and friends, but in order to obtain more potential customer traffic, live broadcast rooms and short videos have become important traffic scenes for practitioners of metaphysics.

In order to attract users, tarot masters often add keywords of topics that users are interested in to their works, such as "fortune", "romance", "peach blossom", etc., and interact with interested users in the comment area, suggesting that "if you want to get a more detailed interpretation and analysis, you can ask for it privately."

However, some "lazy" interpretations often lead to the phenomenon of "the goods do not match the description". Some creators directly transfer other people's content, or directly copy and privately interpret it, which will be complained by users, "If I hadn't seen Scorpio, I would have believed it" and "I have seen the old love rekindled from the three people".

Douban user @啊又没蓝了 mentioned in the Douban group "A Day of Failed Side Job" that she had seen the same analysis sent to different customers on Taobao. Although this behavior was despised by peers, the considerable sales volume was still enviable.

In the tarot divination live broadcast room, the anchor will offer a "first card free" discount. New users can experience a card prediction after following the fan group and giving the anchor 1 Douyin coin. But if you want to continue the experience, you need to spend extra money. Generally speaking, transactions are usually conducted on WeChat or in the form of rewards on Douyin. The cost of calculating a primary card array does not exceed fifty, while advanced divination may cost hundreds or even thousands.

Due to the special nature of the "commodity", the main monetization platform for practitioners of metaphysics is still fan groups, or private spaces such as WeChat groups. After expressing the desire for divination, the anchor usually invites people to join WeChat groups or fan groups, and uses the benefits of free divination to increase fan stickiness and repurchase rate.

At the same time, the income of metaphysics anchors depends largely on the high loyalty of fans. Many newcomers' first attempts benefit from the recommendations of old users. Therefore, positive feedback from users becomes crucial. Most anchors will show successful cases in short videos - first throwing out screenshots of user questions, then their own answers to questions, and finally positive feedback from users, so as to build a personal traffic pool.

Metaphysical additional products, such as luck crystals and peach blossom bracelets, are also hung in the product display windows of metaphysical practitioners. These products are generally not cheap. @星愿女神, who Kas followed, has 760,000 followers on Douyin, which is already a top-tier account. The products in her display windows, such as pink crystal bracelets and crystal wishing trees, are priced at 199 and 299 yuan, while there is also a high-priced crystal that sells for 1,599 yuan.

Screenshot of @星愿女神TikTok account

In addition, another trading channel for practitioners of metaphysics is Xianyu, which is known as the "seafood market." "First, attract customers with low prices, and then change the price to trade." A Douban user introduced this specific operation, that is, first set a low price, indicate that direct bidding is not allowed, and need to communicate with the seller, and then the seller changes the price to complete the transaction after the two sides have completed the communication.

However, many tarot bloggers have been removed from Xianyu and their Taobao stores have been forced to close. It is common for amateur live broadcast rooms to be blocked. Currently, searching for keywords such as "fortune-telling", "astrolabe" and "divination" on Xianyu does not result in any relevant products or services.

"Industry leaders can indeed easily make money by creating IP and selling courses," Xiaoli told KasData, "but there is actually no need to mythify the earning power of metaphysics bloggers, because most amateurs can't make money."

The difficulty in doing business is also due to the tightening of platform policies . In January this year, Douyin Live also issued a special announcement to deal with superstitious pseudo-scientific content such as "divination, fortune-telling, and tarot", saying that it would resolutely resist all acts of spreading "superstitious pseudo-science". Once discovered, the live broadcast rights will be banned and punished according to the severity of the violation, and serious violations may even result in permanent account bans.

Perhaps some influencers can still survive in the cracks, but the platform’s explicit ban has caused most live broadcast rooms to lose traffic. “ I’ve watched several late-night live broadcasts, and the number of people online was often in the single digits, or even just me as the only viewer,” Xiaoli told KasData.

In the Douban group, metaphysics practitioner @momo also posted a post complaining: "I am often reported. The control of the occult is quite strict recently. It is difficult to promote it well."

On the other hand, it stems from the dilemma of metaphysics itself, such as Tarot divination. Some ambiguous statements about the future are difficult to disprove and verify. The algorithm will recommend metaphysical content to your homepage, but you will soon find that these statements are different, and even the same question will have two completely different answers.

Astrology has been widely questioned due to "survivor bias" and "Barnum effect". The Barnum effect refers to the fact that people tend to believe a general personality description and think it accurately reveals their personality traits. Overly general descriptions inevitably lead to ridicule by users, such as "this is not the characteristic of astrology, it is the characteristic of people" and "my dog ​​will get a few of these when he comes."

"Don't be superstitious about tarot divination," said a Xiaohongshu user. In her opinion, most of the time, such divination is just a way to vent your emotions . "If you can accept the answer of divination, don't do it again."

Do young people really believe in metaphysics? Actually, not really. Some young people who like metaphysics do it for entertainment. Self-deprecations such as "divination never stops, love never begins" and "if your fortune is not good, then try again on the next video" are common on content platforms. Others do it out of urgent emotional appeals and psychological anxiety.

For the latter, the ultimate goal of metaphysical consumption is to express emotions and relieve anxiety.

Author: Chao Guan

WeChat public account: Kas Data