Imitating skits, Zhihu short articles are popular with "earthy taste"

Nowadays, Zhihu short articles combined with local handicrafts are increasingly popular among young people, and are regarded by them as "spiritual food" late at night. Let's take a look at what's going on.

"I have read a lot of novels. Let me read them to you while doing Subway Surfers." As one netizen joked, the "decompression video + novel recommendation" model has become the most common option for promoting current vulgar online articles.

Among them, Zhihu, which has more than 100,000 stories and is considered the largest short story production base on the entire network, is the most popular. With the support of many popular elements such as "short drama", "earthy", "decompression" and "cool articles", the promotional videos related to Zhihu short articles are precisely targeted at young people - as of December 31, 2023, among Zhihu's active users, about 74.1% are under 30 years old, and female users account for 60.5% of the total number of active users in December 2023.

This has also brought considerable benefits to Zhihu: Zhihu's 2023 financial report shows that the paid membership business has become Zhihu's most profitable business segment. In 2023, Zhihu's paid membership revenue reached 1.827 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.4%, accounting for 43.5% of total revenue.

However, while Zhihu short articles have shown strong money-making ability like short dramas, they can hardly avoid defects such as routine plot settings, deliberate opposition of viewpoints, and frequent creation of explosive conflicts. So much so that netizens lamented that Zhihu has now fallen from the altar and its positioning has gradually slipped to a third-rate online novel platform.

1. Zhihu short articles, targeting young people who like to watch short dramas

"I made an appointment with my online crush to meet in person during the Chinese New Year, but I bumped into my ex-boyfriend's party. He held his new girlfriend's hand and told me to get lost in annoyance. We had already broken up, could you please stop pestering me like a dog? Everyone looked at me with disdain. I held my phone tightly in embarrassment and called my online crush: I'm here, where are you?"

"When I was in college, I bought a boyfriend. As long as he was with me, I would help him with his family's medical expenses. This poor top student followed me for 4 years in humiliation. Later, my family went bankrupt. When we broke up, he was still cold and didn't say a word to keep me. Later, I worked as a waiter in KTV to pay off my debts. He became a new tech elite and was with the class beauty of that year. He asked me, do you regret it?"

…

If it is not specifically stated, just looking at the plots described in text, with its "short, flat and fast" characteristics and various "cool" elements contained, it is inevitable that people will associate it with the popular short dramas. But in fact, the above video content is from the Zhihu short article recommendation video, and the video with the novel copy is not the handsome men and beautiful women in the short drama, but manual work such as making cakes, cutting soap, and scooping ice cream.

Zhihu short article recommended video

When she first saw a similar video recommendation, Molly, a short drama enthusiast, was quite interested. "It was like watching a low-profile short drama." After a detailed comparison, Molly believes that if the video content is ignored, this "short drama-style" novel does capture the key points. "It explains the cause and effect in two or three sentences at the beginning, and then frequently leaves suspense, so that the audience will consciously follow up to complete the subsequent plot."

"But after reading the entire article, you'll find that the plot routines are all familiar to everyone, so I think this kind of short article is even faster than online literature. Basically, after reading the first few sentences, you can match the process and ending that you have seen in your mind. Anyway, the short article recommendation videos I've seen basically don't jump out of the framework, and some recommendations can even serve as a substitute for short dramas." Molly said.

According to Molly's sharing, Zinc Scale watched a short play called "After the Breakup, He Can't Forget His Ex-Boyfriend", which tells the classic story of a domineering boss who reunites after a breakup. The plot outline is highly similar to the "buying a boyfriend" mentioned in the previous article: the heroine's family is extremely wealthy, the hero is the son of her nanny, the heroine's mother has a terminal illness and needs money, so the heroine spends two million to buy him as her boyfriend. They meet again eight years later, and the heroine's family is bankrupt and she can only work in a bar to make a living, while the hero is recognized by the tycoon...

"It's the same feeling as a skit, which maximizes the excitement right away and is particularly attractive." Molly admitted that she was really addicted to these "short-play" novels. "They bombard people with dense information right from the start, with all kinds of plots of getting rich quickly, getting slapped in the face, and revenge, which makes people want to see the sequel."

Compared with the short plays that can be easily found for free on third-party platforms, or the online articles that are shrouded in the shadow of the pirated website "Biquge", there are some unconventional ways to read free Zhihu short articles. "For example, some accounts share longer content, and you can try your luck to read the whole article. If you find it troublesome, you can also find a 'partner' on Xiaohongshu, and share a Zhihu Yanxuan membership account with four or five people. Or you can go to a certain website and spend a few cents to buy a collection of 10,000 Zhihu short articles, and then slowly look for good articles from it." Molly said.

The only thing that puzzled Molly was why the content of this type of tweets and videos were all about various "earthy" handicrafts?

2. "Video + novel", double the decompression effect?

In fact, it is not difficult to find out from the relevant reports that videos of manual work such as repairing donkey hooves, washing carpets, and picking barnacles have become a stress-relieving tool for young people for quite some time.

Zinc Scale noticed that on a leading short video platform, the topic of "decompression" has accumulated more than 262.7 billion views, and the video content includes multiple categories such as teeth cleaning, hoof trimming, and acne removal. On Xiaohongshu, more than 5.66 million notes on "decompression" have been published, including cutting tape balls, making glue pinches, making cakes and other immersive experiences.

Why can these strange manual works easily attract traffic? Some experts believe that mechanical movements involving repetitive movements and regular forms can give people a sense of control and accomplishment through order and structure, thereby reducing stress; destructive movements such as cutting, grinding, and squeezing themselves have the meaning of reducing stress. After watching the entire process, the audience can increase their sense of individual control to relieve anxiety and stress.

As these "earthy" contents are increasingly sought after by young people and regarded by them as "spiritual food" late at night, they naturally become the best choice for tweet traffic , and even make many tweet bloggers praise them as "high-quality essential tweet materials."

Zinc Scale noticed that a fairly complete methodology has been formed for running short videos of handicrafts as a side job : through small programs or APP platforms such as Qingfeng Assistant, DouTe Network, Qianshunshun Vision, and Youbao, select novels on the platform to be promoted, use software such as Jianying and Dubbing Magic to make promotional videos, and after publishing them on the short video platform, fill in the link back to small programs such as Qingfeng Assistant and wait for the income.

A tweet strategy shared by a Xiaohongshu blogger

A blogger wrote, "As long as users see your video and use your keywords to search for the novel you promote on the corresponding APP, you can sit back and wait to receive the money (this is divided into attracting new users and attracting old users. The cost of attracting a new user is generally 7 to 12 yuan, and the cost of attracting an old user is generally 4 yuan)."

Even Zhihu Yanxuan members' related advertising is widely using this model, which shows that its influence has already expanded to the B-side and has been well accepted. From the user's perspective, there are also many users who subtly recognize this model. For example, some handicraft videos with original sound are likely to have such a comment: "This video looks a bit dry without a novel."

However, this does not mean that you can achieve "win without effort" as long as you learn to use this model . Some practitioners said that because such works are currently being transferred in large quantities and the video images are highly overlapped, the video content under this novel push model is likely to be judged as low-quality video by the publishing platform and therefore restricted. As for the future, perhaps only other models can be tried to obtain traffic, such as novel scrolling plus pictures and texts, real-life appearances and entertainment, pictures and texts plus interpretations, etc.

3. Is stirring up readers’ emotions a shortcut to success?

As a "low-end short drama" in the eyes of some users, judging from the Zhihu short article-related tweets and videos strongly recommended by bloggers, its content layout inherits the advantages of short dramas while also failing to avoid their shortcomings .

Liu Yang, assistant professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Peking University and a media research scholar, believes that short plays capture the audience with exaggerated emotions, "at present, there is a lot of mud and sand." It is necessary to tell the audience all the settings at the beginning, and straightforward narration is considered "too mediocre", and just write what can most stimulate the audience.

"You must mobilize the reader's emotions in the first 500 words (preferably the first 300 words if you are able)." One netizen concluded that the role of Zhihu's introduction is to create a sense of anticipation for readers. Its characteristics are that the main story is to the point, the contradictions and conflicts are clear, the sentences are concise and the information is large, the characters are three-dimensional, and the readers are left with suspense. "If you want to make readers feel nervous, you must follow up with the emotional point after the introduction. Short articles have fewer words overall, so you must create a reversal after introducing the plot. The best way for newcomers to use is to create a contrast between the characters."

When a blogger named "Well-known Top Author Xiao Cen" was studying some highly praised short stories on Zhihu, he couldn't help but complain about how this type of work uses brainless routines to manipulate readers' emotions.

"I've read so many articles about mistreating the heroine that I can't help but complain about it. Take "Juedu Fengzhou", a short story with 15,000 likes, for example. Such a high number of likes shows that it is indeed a very successfully written article, but I personally really don't get it." According to Xiao Cen, the story is a typical "heart transplant + stand-in" plot. The heroine falls in love with her boyfriend because his heart is transplanted to him, but the hero begins to mindlessly mistreat the heroine, including but not limited to making the heroine peel walnuts with her bare hands until she bleeds, asking the heroine with a high fever to buy him roasted sweet potatoes at three in the morning, and calling the heroine out in the middle of the night so that she is assaulted by bad guys, and the heroine just tolerates it.

"The setting of this heart-swapping is exactly the same as the early TV series "There Will Be Angels Who Love You for Me". This short story is simply a whole youth pain literature, but it does one thing very well, which is that it causes readers to have very intense emotional fluctuations, making people very angry after reading it." Xiao Cen said, "After reading it, I have two feelings: the heroine is very miserable, and the hero is very scumbag. The melodrama is indeed timeless."

Some users who expressed dissatisfaction with the short article routine said

As for the plot arrangement of the paid part later, it seems insignificant in this case . After all, judging from the results, this type of Zhihu short article recommendation video targets precise users, and it is likely that it only relies on the beginning to stimulate purchases, as a considerable number of users have expressed dissatisfaction: "Every time the membership expires, Zhihu short articles are pushed like crazy, and I can't see any after the activation." "Only the beginning is good, and it gets worse and worse later. If you don't want to waste your membership, you can only ask for recommendations everywhere." "It's ugly, and the male protagonist is tortured for no reason. I, a distinguished Yanxuan member, don't like to watch it"...

At present, we can only say that the "bloody" short articles vigorously promoted by many bloggers and even the government have indeed attracted many users to pay to watch them, but in the "

Despite the support of many popular elements such as "short dramas", "earthy taste", "stress relief", and "cool writing", Zhihu is getting further and further away from the reliable and high-quality question-and-answer platform it once was.

Author: Meng Huiyuan, Editor: Chen Dengxin

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu) This article is authorized by @Zinc Scale to be published on Operation Party. Any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.