I spent 9.9 yuan to buy a live broadcast script and acted as a babysitter in the live broadcast room of "Zhang Dada"

At a time when live broadcasting and microphone connection have become the secret to traffic, what truth is hidden behind the bizarre stories and dramatic interactions in the live broadcast room? Through the author's personal experience, this article reveals the industry chain of live broadcasting and microphone connection scripts: from microphone connection scripts that can be bought for 9.9 yuan, to the inside story of recruiting "microphone hands" to perform, to the traffic business of the live broadcast industry.

These days, the stories told in live broadcast rooms are more explosive than each other.

Things like "I'm dating someone with a triple personality", "The person I'm ambiguous with has a girlfriend, and the girlfriend has a husband and children", "My friend is hermaphrodite, and she got herself pregnant", etc., both parties on the live broadcast dared to speak and the other dared to listen, and netizens passing by kept sighing that the world is so big and full of wonders.

A "one-man show" of a single person telling a story via live broadcast is not enough, and two or more people telling the story together can increase the dramatic tension in the live broadcast room.

A family of three entered the live broadcast room together, arguing fiercely and demanding that the host be fair; there was also a current girlfriend who pretended to be the ex-girlfriend and connected to the host to test the current boyfriend, who was kicked out on the spot when his performance was not up to standard.

Regardless of whether you have paid attention to these live broadcast rooms, once you see them, few people can resist their curiosity and swipe away directly, wanting to hear what is going on. After all, gossip is human nature.

If the anchor can pick up these topics and become a "mouth substitute" for netizens, then this live broadcast room is likely to be "successful" and have the opportunity to gain more traffic. In the past two years, many celebrities have become popular by connecting with netizens through live broadcasts, becoming top streamers and bringing in tens of millions of goods.

However, are those explosive stories just for show or are they true? The doubts are getting more and more intense as the popularity of live broadcasts increases.

Many celebrities who became famous through live streaming, including "Tingquan Shangbao" and "Criminal Lawyer Guo Qingzi", have stated or even sworn that "there has never been a script" and "I will never hire anyone to fake it." Li Dan, who became popular again for reading bloody gossip in his live broadcast room, also said in an interview with Phoenix.com, "Because it's so fake, it must be true."

But in January this year, Zhang Dada's failure still pushed the live broadcast script issue to the forefront. Zhang Dada once relied on the live broadcast room persona of "the only connection in the entertainment industry" to reverse his reputation, gaining tens of millions of fans on Douyin, and the clips of fans of various actors and idols "going crazy" in his live broadcast room were widely circulated.

Now, these live broadcast contents have also been mentioned in the revelations of his former staff, and they are suspected to be scripts written by the team for live broadcast traffic. Some netizens who have been connected to the live broadcast room also came forward to confirm that they had been connected to Zhang Dada’s live broadcast room as "actors" and were asked to keep it confidential.

Screenshot from the Internet

We are also curious about what the scripts for these live broadcasts look like? Where are the "actors" who come to the live broadcast room to connect with the microphone found? How does the whole process work?

As enthusiastic observers of the live broadcast industry, we also purchased the scripts ourselves and did some research following the “small advertisements” for recruiting actors to host live broadcasts.

01 Only 9.9 yuan, get dozens of live broadcast scripts at low cost

My story is quite unbelievable. My husband and I have been married for 10 years, but I don’t know where his home is and his whereabouts are very mysterious... The first sentence of the story is full of suspense and whets your appetite.

This is a collection of live broadcast scripts that we bought on an e-commerce platform at a “huge sum” of 9.9 yuan. It includes 60 to 70 scripts with a total of more than 70,000 words. So far, more than 300 copies have been sold.

The first story is about a housewife who has been married for 10 years. She will say that she doesn’t know where her husband’s home is, and that she has never taken a penny from her husband as a full-time housewife. Her daily expenses are all paid with shopping cards, gas cards, etc. Now she and her husband are in different places, and she suspects that her husband is having an affair but cannot find him. The purpose of the connection is to ask the host to help her contact her husband.

Correspondingly, the host's reactions and lines were also written in the script, which first emphasized that "whether before or after marriage, women must have their own independent lives and finances", and then asked the woman to ask her assistant to help contact her husband.

As for how the problem was solved after leaving the microphone, the netizens watching the show might not care. Anyway, they did hear the entire sad marriage story.

The seller said that this was a "carefully edited" copy. It was not possible to verify whether it was original, but the modal particles were clearly written. There was no problem in buying it and reading it directly in the live broadcast room. However, there was a chance that the text might overlap with other live broadcast rooms.

Emotional scripts like this can be readily purchased on major e-commerce trading platforms. The subject matter is diverse and rich, ranging from marital conflicts, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships to cheating.

As far as we know, not only the emotional live broadcast room, but also the legal live broadcast, jewelry live broadcast, beauty live broadcast, etc. are filled with a large amount of script content.

In a previous report by "Cover News", the head of a lawyer's live broadcast operation team revealed that the scriptwriters would find real cases and then embellish them for adaptation. Criminal cases would include pornography, gambling, robbery, hit-and-run, etc. He stressed that in order to avoid risks, the plot of the script should not be too exaggerated, and the region should not be set. "You must not mention the specific region, otherwise it will be easy to be targeted."

02 Earn 15-30 yuan for each live broadcast, is live streaming like a play, does it all depend on acting skills?

Even if we have the script for the live broadcast, we still need people to cooperate with the performance.

There is a term in the industry called "microphone hands", which refers specifically to those "actors" who are connected to the microphone during live broadcasts. However, compared with professional actors, the threshold for being a microphone hand is much lower. No skills are required, basically just being able to speak Mandarin is enough. The time and location are also relatively flexible, and even the script is provided by the live broadcast team.

The Douyin netizen "Zhang Haha" once had a live broadcast in Zhang Dada's live broadcast room.

She appeared on the show with her boyfriend, showing off the stir-fried beans she made. After taking a bite, she played Huang Lei's popular beans joke, "These beans are not old at all." At the end of the live broadcast, she even made a vomiting gesture and shouted, "These beans are not cooked!"

After Zhang Dada's fall, "Zhang Haha" posted screenshots of his live broadcast, revealing that it was all a script. He was paid 200 yuan to perform in the live broadcast, and said that "everything particularly outrageous in the live broadcast room is a script."

According to observations, the price of 200 yuan for a live broadcast is far higher than the market average. Most live broadcast rooms pay the microphone operator an average of 0.5 yuan to 2 yuan per minute, while some pay on a per-conference basis, with a payout of 15 yuan to 30 yuan per live broadcast. If the live broadcast time is longer than an hour, the income will be relatively higher.

But if you want to make a living as a chef, there are actually quite a few tricks.

We added the contact information for four or five MC recruiters. After introducing the MC's job content, each recruiter mentioned the need to pay an "entry fee" with prices ranging from 280 yuan to 500 yuan. After paying the money, they can introduce jobs, connect with resources, and receive professional training.

A recruiter named "Taozi" said that the 380 yuan paid was a kind of "knowledge payment". After paying the money, he could receive three-on-one training. "As long as you are not lazy and follow the training, you will get your money back. You can earn at least 50 yuan a day."

In her circle of friends, she also posted screenshots of many students and her own orders. She can earn an average of 10-30 yuan per order, and up to 80 yuan for a single order. A 60-year-old aunt has also joined the team.

Some netizens who have paid the money have reported that it is not easy to make a profit through live streaming.

Xiaoli paid a fee of 298 yuan, and has only received two orders so far. "It costs 10 yuan for a live broadcast, and it takes two hours to rehearse before and after. It is not recommended for people who don’t have much free time."

Some people also revealed that after paying the money, they found that there were more microphones than live broadcasts, and it was difficult to make back the investment. Now they make money more by recruiting people. "It costs 380 yuan to join the company. I can get about 100 yuan from each person I recruit. It makes money faster than live broadcasting."

Xiaohongshu netizen "ZE" shared his experience of being a microphone hand. Nowadays, as long as you post a microphone hand recruitment post on the social platform, it will attract at least a dozen or as many as dozens of messages for consultation, and there is an endless stream of people who want to try the waters.

To a certain extent, being a mic hand does not necessarily mean you can make money. After all, there are too many people and too little porridge now, but recruiting mic hands will most likely not lose money.

Rather than a part-time job, MaiShou seems to be becoming a new "knowledge payment" business.

03 Buying scripts and hiring microphones, is this live broadcast business worth it?

Some practitioners believe that both the script and the microphone have their own reasons for existence.

"In the initial stage of the live broadcast room, there is no popularity, so the microphone operator needs to take the script to the room to tell stories, so that netizens passing by will stay. The time they stay is used to collect data for the live broadcast room," an operator explained, "This is a very common operation."

The person in charge of the live broadcast room of a popular celebrity once said that a microphone hand can not only help new anchors fill the blank time when no one is connected to the live broadcast room, but also help anchors practice their speech skills. "A natural microphone cannot guarantee the quality of the connection, or whether the words are in violation of regulations, and the anchor may not be able to connect. Finding a microphone hand can better ensure the quality of the live broadcast."

However, there are only a handful of anchors who can become popular. For most anchors and MCNs, is it worthwhile to spend the money on buying scripts and hiring microphones?

A live broadcast operator told us that buying scripts and finding buyers can not only increase popularity and earn tips, but also rely on scripts to attract traffic. Legal anchors can attract traffic to the private domain of legal consultation, jewelry anchors can also attract traffic to sell goods, and emotional anchors can also attract traffic to one-on-one courses, thereby generating more secondary monetization.

But so far, this is still an underwater business that everyone knows about.

For a long time, platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have been clearly cracking down on live broadcasts of script interpretations and malicious plot hype. Many top anchors who have become popular through live broadcasts, such as "Tingquan Shangbao", have also responded to questions about the script, emphasizing that they did not find a microphone or buy a script.

The well-known lawyer "Criminal Lawyer Guo Qingzi" with 3.5 million followers on Douyin said in a live broadcast that this kind of live broadcast acting and fraud constitutes a crime, "I myself will not ask the microphone host to fake, and I don't hope that the people who come to the microphone are bragging."

Of course, some people are angry about being deceived in the live broadcast room, while some netizens do not mind the truth or falsity of the live broadcast story.

Zhang Dada himself once responded to the script in a tactful way, "If there really is no Santa Claus in the world, it doesn't hinder everyone's happiness in receiving gifts."

In the discussion of related topics, opinions such as "The authenticity of the melon is not the focus of the live broadcast room, the focus is the values ​​conveyed by the anchor" and "Anything that can trigger thinking is already considered high-quality content" were praised and hotly commented.

True and false are the norm on the Internet. For most netizens, it is better to be a spectator. If you get caught up in it with real feelings, you may be the one who loses money.

Author | Truffle Editor | Xiaoba