Cat meme goes viral, an “emotional digestive” in the cyber age

Recently, cat meme-style vlogs have quickly become popular on the Internet. Many operators or personal bloggers have used them as material to make videos. Let’s take a look at the author’s analysis of them.

The ancient Greek god in charge of emotions is none other than the cat meme.

When he joined a Fortune 500 company and could slack off with pay, Cat Meme happily did a happy dance; when he encountered a crying child on the plane, Cat Meme collapsed and covered his ears and screamed; when he accidentally said the wrong thing, Cat Meme became weak, pitiful and helpless...

Recently, a type of cat image with rough cutouts, sloppy state, and almost zero aggressiveness - collectively known as cat meme, has quickly become popular on the Internet. With its magical background music and direct emotional expression, it has even become the emotional spokesperson for netizens.

At first, cat meme was just a simple emoticon package, until a Japanese blogger borrowed the image of cat meme to create a series of vlogs - "The story of a Japanese single mother's changing values ​​after moving to China", and the cat meme model of narrative began to become popular.

In the cat meme vlog, the blogger expressed his original prejudices and the stories of how they were broken by telling details of life such as small frictions between neighbors, the lack of distinction between seniority and juniority in the workplace, and scrambling to pay the bill at meals. The simple, humorous, and realistic narrative method cleverly resolved the original conflict and negative emotions of the story, and also aroused the empathy of netizens. In the comment section, many people shared their similar experiences.

Currently, the blogger has 355,000 followers on Bilibili, and the 16 videos he has posted are all cat meme vlogs.

Since then, more and more people have started to use cat memes to create various versions of vlogs, such as "The story of sleeping ten minutes longer in the morning at Hengshui Model School", "I had a car accident and lost my memory one month before the college entrance examination, and finally got into a 985 university";

Moreover, cat meme has now become a standard feature of major brands in order to increase followers and promote events. Even official accounts of fire protection, public security, culture and tourism in various regions have joined in and leveraged the opportunity to promote science.

Why did the crudely made cat meme vlog go viral? Why did it become a new secret to gaining followers? In fact, it is closely related to its narrative style of "sad" core and "happy" shell.

1. Cat meme vlog: a short video emotional digester

From the moment cat meme became a way for netizens to express their emotions, it is no longer just a simple emoticon.

As more and more netizens began to join in the creation and dissemination of secondary creation, the narrative framework of cat meme vlogs gradually took shape. In terms of emotions, cat meme vlogs are light-hearted and humorous on the surface, but their core is often filled with negative emotions or even bad experiences.

After oversleeping at the Hengshui Model School, Cat Meme and his roommates were surrounded by the head teacher and the physical education teacher at the dormitory door, and finally had to "break through the card" to escape.

"It's a very youthful and funny story, but I don't know why, I felt sad and distressed after watching it", "I am a teacher at Hengshui Model School, and when I was watching the video, I kept thinking that you two must not get caught"... In the comment area, while everyone was feeling that it was fun, they also expressed their helplessness towards the strict system;

Some netizens also shared their stories of having a car accident a month before the college entrance examination, which led to amnesia. Every day, they had to repeatedly confirm what grade they were in high school. Fortunately, they performed at their best in high school in the end. The comments were filled with "heartbreaking and funny";

Some people even shared their tragic experiences when they were young, such as witnessing their father cheating on their partner and happily preparing to sing karaoke only to have their mother call and tell them that the house was on fire.

However, when these negative emotions and experiences are expressed through cat memes, they effectively reduce the heaviness and add a bit of humor. From the perspective of the presentation of cat memes, simplicity, repetition, and magic are its core characteristics.

Although the stories are different, the expression methods of cat memes are similar. They are almost all cats in different states with magical background music, which are combined into direct emotional presentations such as happiness, pride, or helplessness, and the repetition rate is very high. This, to a certain extent, lowers the threshold for netizens to understand the story itself and the blogger's emotions.

Looking back at the vlogs made by Japanese single mother bloggers, the reason why they can trigger empathy and discussion is essentially because under the interesting and relaxed expression, what are wrapped up are the difficulties of life in a foreign country and the prejudices under cultural differences. For example, "In addition to taking care of the children, I studied Chinese for 14 hours a day, and finally I was able to work in China a year later", "I bought clothes in a clothing store and the salesperson praised them, but after I bought them back, I found that the clothes were severely shrunk."

Overall, cat meme vlogs can also be viewed as a narrative framework that amplifies emotions and simplifies expression.

Therefore, no matter whether it is a serious and heavy topic, or a little embarrassment or contradiction in life, as long as the cat meme template is applied, it will immediately become simple, interesting, and even reveal a touch of madness.

The biggest advantage of this narrative style is that it gives netizens ample room for interpretation. Because the stories are real enough and often involve negative experiences, the expressions are simple but the emotions are clear. The highly condensed stories and emotions allow netizens to read without too much burden, while also providing room for discussion.

In the comment section of many cat meme vlogs, there are no moral high ground accusations, nor endless arguments and doubts. Instead, there are sympathy for the bloggers, warm encouragement, and taking the opportunity to talk about the bad things they have experienced. No wonder some netizens say, "Cat meme is really a rare and kind joke on the current Internet full of hostility," and "a unique warmth in the cyber age."

Another reason why cat memes can quickly attract large-scale secondary creation is that they have a low production threshold . Compared with other video types, cat memes do not require sophisticated visuals and cutouts. They only need to splice appropriate cat materials and add text descriptions to fully express emotions. There are also a large number of cat meme materials on the Internet.

The amplification of emotions and ample room for interpretation, coupled with a low threshold for creation, are factors that together determine the viral spread of cat memes.

Of course, the core reason behind this is that in the current context of increasing pressure and increasing hostility on the Internet, netizens are more willing to see this kind of light-hearted, self-deprecating and warm little story. Regardless of whether it is through the framework of cat meme or the comment section, everyone can express the unspeakable and heavy memories in life without burden and find an emotional outlet.

2. “Reborn as an Operations Officer in a Fortune 500 Company”, has cat meme become the secret to increase brand followers?

When a certain content template becomes popular across the entire network, businesses with a keen sense of smell will inevitably join in.

After the cat meme became popular, not only did the related vlog content attract high reviews and likes, but a number of cat meme story accounts also emerged on social platforms, and they have a strong ability to attract fans . For example, the Douyin account @猫meme小剧场 made historical stories into cat meme vlogs and superimposed time-travel elements. For example, "If history is a meme of Su Che's life", "When Liu Chan secretly drank cold drinks without telling his father", and "If the Three Kingdoms were modern times".

The account currently has 728,000 followers on Douyin and has successfully received business orders. Its video "If you were reborn as a palace maid, how would you get promoted?" was produced in cooperation with a role-playing game called "Call Me the Shopkeeper". In addition, it also cooperated with the game "In the Name of Shining". The product display window of the account also has links to cat meme pendants, pet supplies, etc.

However, cooperation-related accounts are not the best choice for brands. Due to the strong traffic-generating properties of cat meme, brands have begun to make their own cat meme vlogs.

All of a sudden, cat memes were successfully employed by major brands such as Tmall, Nestle, Zeekr, Jie Rou, SF Express, Miniso, and L'Oreal . The cat memes who thought they could reach the pinnacle of life and were so happy that they were "happy~happy~" soon encountered a critical version of their KPI.

“Is it okay to increase the number of followers to 200,000 this month?”, “I have high hopes for your account, it’s okay to increase the number of followers to 100,000?”, “Young people have a lot of ideas, it’s okay to come up with a hit product”... The cat memes that received the instructions could only work like crazy, and at the end they did not forget to attach a meme of a poor working cat that kept knocking on the bowl and making crazy comments.

The above-mentioned routine of "Rebirth: I am an operator in xx company" has become a cat meme vlog template for many brands. Although the content is very similar, since these working cat memes are mainly the workplace image of post-00s, they focus on being crispy, cheerful and confident, which also narrows the distance between the official brand account and young users.

From the story template, we can see that the main purpose of brands making cat meme vlogs is to increase followers . Of course, the entry of cat meme did successfully attract a wave of fans for the brand. After @天猫’s cat meme received a request from the leader to increase followers on April 20, the official Xiaohongshu account successfully increased nearly 20,000 followers on April 28, and the total number of fans exceeded 200,000. @顺丰速运’s Xiaohongshu official account even increased 80,000 followers in 7 days.

Jie Rou also opened a dedicated cat meme Xiaohongshu account @洁柔日记 (Worker Edition), which published beautiful and crazy content such as "Reborn: I Steal Paper at Jie Rou", "Eight Virtues of Workers", and "Reborn: I Got Head-to-Head with the Chairman". The account published its first cat meme vlog on April 8, and currently has 33,000 followers.

In addition to increasing followers, many brands also use cat memes to embed event information . For example, in order to celebrate the first day of work, @DiDi’s cat meme revealed a benefit to netizens, which was actually the official event of “Wednesday Mileage Member Discount”; @Zike’s post-00s HR cat meme, who works at @Zike, asked for resumes online to recruit people for the brand.

Although it is a derived new template, the reason why the brand cat meme is popular on social platforms is that it portrays the image of an arrogant and humble post-00s worker, and uses the same workers' mentality and experiences such as "slacking off with pay", "happy to show off fans", and "being scolded by the boss" to successfully attract fans.

Many official social media accounts also joined in the fun, letting a group of post-00s cat memes take over the operation of the official accounts and conduct science popularization.

@Hainan Fire used cat meme to popularize fire safety of electric vehicles; @Yichang Public Security asked cat meme to make a video about traffic safety tips during the May Day holiday; @Jiangxi Fire, @Jiangsu Expressway Fire, etc. have also successfully handed over their accounts to cat meme. On TikTok, the related term #官方号最终還落到００后手了# became a hot topic, with 27.55 million people watching.

In fact, whether it is a cat meme vlog created spontaneously by netizens or a gameplay extended from brands and official accounts, cat memes are associated with specific emotions and personalities, which can bring fun and trigger empathy.

The popularity of cat memes is both a form of resistance to the current Internet sentiment and a form of non-aggressive self-mockery and relaxation. Perhaps cat memes will not continue to be popular, but the spiritual core behind them will exist for a long time.

Author: Douya WeChat public account: 剁椒spicy (ID: ylwanjia)