From Xiaohongshu to Dianping, your cover is too fake

This article reveals the "cover party" phenomenon that is prevalent in today's video and social platforms, that is, attracting users to click through beautiful and attractive cover pictures, but the actual content does not match the cover. With rich cases and detailed analysis, the article reveals the reasons and impacts behind the "cover party" phenomenon, as well as the response strategies of platforms and users. It has certain reference value for the majority of Internet users, content creators and platform operators.

If you find that the cover image never appears once when browsing videos, pictures and text content, don't doubt your eyes, because you have encountered the "cover party".

Nowadays, on long and short video websites such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili, you may be attracted by the cover of the work, but after watching the entire content, you will find that the cover picture does not exist.

At the same time, whether it is a social networking site like Xiaohongshu or a local life platform like Dianping, the cover images of the note content may disappear after you click on it, or may not match the actual situation of the merchant.

After the "title party" has been overused, the "cover party" is becoming the rising star and is being praised by more and more people. Among them, the "beautiful school", "bizarre school" and "picture and text combination school" have become the three main forces, and each school has its own secrets to bluff people.

Now, the "cover party" that deceives the feelings of netizens is facing the double stranglehold of users and platforms, and its living space is constantly shrinking; but the game about cover pictures seems to be continuing.

1. There is something fishy about the video

Recently, Brother Pang found a video on TikTok that seemed to be from the dark web, and his curiosity was instantly ignited.

The cover of this video is a bunk bed with seven or eight layers. The height of each layer is just enough for the people inside to lie flat, and everyone huddled up in bed has a look of despair on their face.

The bunk beds in the "forbidden prison style" of Myanmar made Pan Ge see the miserable world. The numb and painful expression of the cover characters aroused Pan Ge's curiosity: Where is this? Who are these people? Why do they do this?

With three consecutive doubts, Brother Pan clicked on the video. After watching the several minutes of content, he found that the content was not an infringement of human rights, but an introduction to more than a dozen storage tools; of course, what were stored were not people, but items in home life.

The cover, which was completely different from the content, successfully tricked Pang Ge into clicking, wasting several minutes of his time; but not long after exiting the video, Pang Ge, like a fish with only seven seconds of memory, took the bait of the "cover party" again.

On Xiaohongshu, the cover of a video note is a room covered with sand, like a family in the Sahara Desert; and the completely open window in the picture and the text "This is the home I have lived in for seventeen years" made Pan Ge start to imagine a sad story of sand prevention and control before he even clicked on the video.

However, after clicking on the video and seeing the content, Pan Ge discovered that what was introduced in the video was actually a mini household mop. The product link in the video showed that this mop was priced at 31.9 yuan, 260 pieces had been sold on Xiaohongshu, and more than 700 people had purchased it.

In addition to adopting the method of "selling dog meat under the guise of selling mutton", using eye-catching pictures as covers and then introducing and selling products in videos, there are also some "cover party" bloggers who do this simply to attract traffic to their works.

For example, Brother Pang saw on Bilibili that the cover picture of a beauty blogger’s vlog was a selfie of her wearing suspender yoga pants. However, after watching the work with 120,000 views, he realized that the entire content of the video was a sharing of life from a first-person perspective, without any selfies of the blogger.

Nowadays, whether it is video platforms such as Tik Tok and Bilibili, or social networking sites such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, the covers of video works seem to be becoming more and more unbelievable.

In this regard, some netizens said: "In the past, we watched the title party, now we watch the cover party." "Even the video cover has started to be fake, what else is real in this world?"

2. Pictures and text can be fake

The purpose of the "cover party" in video works is not only to sell goods but also to attract traffic. In some graphic works, the "cover party" also has its place.

For example, on Dianping, some offline businesses have also adopted similar tactics as the "cover party" in order to attract traffic to their stores.

A Shunde restaurant in Beijing has a check-in note with a strawberry cake and cream bread on the cover , which looks appetizing . However, when Pan asked a friend who had been there, he said, "They don't have Western food like the one in the picture. It's obviously Shunde cuisine."

It is worth noting that below this suspected "cover party" note, Dianping marked it: "The places associated with this article may not be related to the main text and are for reference only."

On the other hand, at a hot pot restaurant in Sanlitun, Beijing, the cover of a netizen’s notes was a freezer full of dairy products, and the text read: "Ordered sweet double skin milk, red bean coconut milk, pure colostrum, and yogurt."

Looking at the dairy products in the picture, Brother Pan was almost drooling, but many people in the comment section pointed out: "He doesn't have any milk." "The store in the picture should be in Guangzhou."

The "cover party" on Dianping makes many consumers who eat by looking at pictures unable to believe their eyes, and those exquisite fake pictures seem to be mass-produced.

For example, Brother Pan discovered at a barbecue restaurant that the cover pictures of the notes of two different netizens were exactly the same. Two people who didn’t know each other could take the same photo in the same position. Brother Pan just wanted to sigh: "It’s fate."

In addition to the offline consumption area, the "cover party" also has an obligation to simply attract traffic to online articles and notes.

Recently, Brother Pang searched for a big scandal of cheating in the financial circle on WeChat public account and found that the cover of one of the articles was a mosaic beauty in scantily clad clothes, with suggestive movements.

Brother Pan, who thought he had seen the heroine's true face, couldn't wait to click on the article. However, after reading the full text, he found that the cover picture did not appear in the article.

In other WeChat public accounts, Brother Pan has also seen the routine of putting up a beautiful woman on the cover but actually talking about finance. Some LSPs "jumped in immediately when they saw the cover" and were successfully deceived by the bloggers into clicking.

3. Does cover equal success?

Pang Ge found that these "cover parties" that can be seen everywhere can be divided into three groups according to the form of the cover:

The first group is the "beautiful group". This group pursues beauty to the extreme. They use carefully edited pictures to render beautiful scenes, which can almost be used as wallpapers, making users unable to help but click on the content, looking forward to more beauty behind it.

It is worth mentioning that in the "beautiful and magnificent" branch, those slightly colored pictures seem to appear most frequently. Beautiful women with exposed thighs and handsome men with exposed abdominal muscles can often conform to people's most primitive impulses and attract the most clicks.

The second group is the "bizarre" group. Different from the "magnificent" group, the key to attracting users is: incredible. The covers of works of this group, those unreasonable pictures, unnamed objects, and scenes that have never been seen, often arouse the greatest curiosity of users.

The third group is the "picture and text combination group". Unlike the first two groups, this group does not rely solely on the power of the cover, but "consumes" it together with the text. They combine pictures with text, combining the skills of "title party" and "cover party" into one, using the dual stimulation of pictures and text to stimulate users' desire to click.

Nowadays, under the siege of the three major factions, the "cover party" forces are becoming more and more rampant on video websites and social platforms, and users have suffered from the "cover party" for a long time; for this reason, various platforms are also constantly cracking down on it and fighting wits and courage with it.

For example, regarding the "cover party" phenomenon on Dianping, an internal employee told Brother Pang: "There are generally two situations: the first is that the author of the note actually visited the store and made a mistake during the editing process. The second is malicious marketing by the merchant."

At the same time, the other party also said: "This kind of handling is generally divided into two steps: initially identifying the situation where the image and text do not match the POI, first making risk warnings and limiting traffic on the page, and then if the account or merchant has too much similar illegal content, it will be blocked and further punished."

On the other hand, a Xiaohongshu employee also told Brother Pan: "The cover image on Xiaohongshu can be set by the user himself."

Although everyone is calling for the elimination of the "cover party", the recommendation algorithms of various platforms seem to have encouraged the arrogance of the "cover party" while understanding users better.

For example, one of Pan Ge’s colleagues loves to eat wontons, so wonton covers will often appear in the recommendation notes on Dianping.com. However, after clicking on the page, it is easy to encounter a sneak attack by the "cover party", unexpectedly encounter other restaurants, and even links to massage parlors.

The reason why bloggers active on various platforms still use covers to deceive users' emotions despite continuous crackdowns seems to be that for many users, the quality of the cover may very likely determine the click.

After all, in the Internet age, information is complex and time is urgent, and a good cover and title are often the key to the success or failure of the content. Therefore, when media people write articles, they like to use titles to attract readers, and it is natural for video and graphic bloggers to use covers to attract traffic.

It seems that a cat-and-mouse game has been going on between the platform and the "cover party", and this cycle of chasing and hiding may continue for a long time.

Author: Pan Ge

Source: WeChat public account "IQ Tax Research Center (gh_c55b3561ece1)"