Bilibili has over 100 million short videos, why are they all ghost videos?

On Bilibili, a single video with over 100 million views is worth studying and discussing, but among the videos with over 100 million views, most are ghost videos. Why do so many people watch secondary creation videos? Why are ghost videos so popular among users? Let's discuss these questions together.

What kind of video can reach over 100 million views?

On average, with a population of 1.4 billion in China, anyone picked up on the street may have seen it once. This number is indeed beyond the imagination of most people.

When the short drama market was hot, videos of a few minutes each were widely streamed, and with the cumulative number of views of dozens of episodes, it might be possible to achieve the miracle of hundreds of millions of views.

For a time black hole like Tik Tok, exceeding 100 million doesn’t seem to be a big deal. After all, Brother Yang already has over 100 million fans.

But for Bilibili, a single video that has achieved over 100 million views is worth studying and is more worth observing.

Recently, a secondary creative video of "Let the Bullets Fly" released in 2020 continued to win the favor of young people in early 2024 by relying on long-tail traffic.

But it is still confusing. It is true that Director Jiang Wen is famous, and it is also true that a movie with a high score of 9.0 given by 3 million Douban users is influential, but how come so many people have watched the secondary creation video? And have watched it so many times?

01 Concise version to learn about the universe

"Dare to Kill My Horse?!" is actually the third video on Bilibili to exceed 100 million views. The first two also became popular on the Internet. The first was a macho man dancing on the New Treasure Island, and the later was based on Zhao Benshan's skit "The Spring Breeze of Reform is Blowing All Over the Land, and the Chinese People Are Really Doing Well."

This video is great to watch, first of all because every line in Let the Bullets Fly is so classic that it can be engraved in your DNA after watching it twice.

Zhang Mazi's "I came to Echeng to do only three things: fairness, fairness, and fucking fairness!", "Please fucking translate for me what a fucking surprise is", and Huang Silang's "Treat, behead, accept him as a dog" have all become meme titles for secondary creation videos.

Huang Silang shouted angrily "Damn Zhang Mazi, how dare you kill my horse", and Hu Wan opened his belly to see his fans and said "Aren't you bullying the honest people?", which is also a classic that "let Xue Yuzhou" go viral.

The netizens who have polished "Let the Bullets Fly" have even developed the "Let the Bullets Fly" theory by observing it with a microscope. There are many "10,000-word interpretation" videos on Bilibili, each of which has millions of views. The comment section is full of talented people, and the "Let the Bullets Fly masters" are no exception.

The video "Dare to Kill My Horse?!" extracts classic lines and packs the core narrative of the entire movie into a two-minute video. Reviewing this video is like reviewing the movie. Even the creator @哦呼w created it because he rewatched Let the Bullets Fly every time he watched it recently, so he thought of making a ghost video.

Compared to the movie, this ghost video has a faster story rhythm and more exciting and dense music.

The laughter of Zhang Mazi and Huang Silang at the dinner table was edited into a continuous magical background sound, and the subsequent game between the two in Goose City was condensed into several key shots, which not only quickly explained the story, but was also very appropriate: the two people who attended the Hongmen Banquet had already thought of ways to deal with each other at the dinner table, and had rehearsed the fate of both parties when they were toasting each other.

The devilish laughter attracted comments such as "Watch it once a day to prevent depression" and "Why am I laughing along with you?" The repetition of classic lines automatically played in the minds of viewers who watched the show twice or three times, and even matched the comments, "It is recommended to memorize the entire text of the following content."

The Tom and Jerry and SpongeBob SquarePants version of "Dare to Kill My Horse" expanded from this video are not at all inconsistent. With the same audio and appropriate editing, everything can be "learned" and "cannot get out" of the comment section and recommendation page.

The fact that the "Let Learn" video has exceeded 100 million views is inseparable from the high quality of the "Let the Bullets Fly" film itself, but its popularity is also closely related to the ghost-like presentation form.

02 The magic sound penetrates the ears, recite the whole text

The term "guichu" is well known in China and comes from a video based on a mashup of Ronald McDonald's dancing, "The Ultimate Guichu Blue Road".

The title of this video distorts the original meaning of the word "鬼畜". Now in the Chinese context, it refers to videos that use highly synchronized, quickly repeated materials with the rhythm of BGM to achieve brainwashing or comedic effects.

In September 2014, Bilibili launched its first independent section called “Ghost Animals”. At the same time, many well-known Chinese “Ghost Animals” works were born here. The relevant contents of some works even became the source of popular buzzwords on the Internet.

The ghost culture developed on Bilibili has also been supported by Bilibili. Many of the must-watch lists on Bilibili are ghost videos with over 10 million views, from Home with Kids to Zhuge Liang Scolding Wang Lang. Everywhere is filled with a relaxed atmosphere that is appreciated by both the elite and the masses, and more people are watching.

The development of barrage culture has added a layer of fun to ghost videos. The insightful comments point out the funny points, and the enthusiastic atmosphere also brings the psychological suggestion that "the video is very funny".

After ten years of development, what is the attraction of ghost animal videos? Jack Yuan, who has been watching ghost animal videos since junior high school, has a lot to say about this.

He watched the video "How to Make Children Fall in Love with Learning" by @伊丽莎白鼠 many times and memorized the whole text. In junior high school, he even memorized the lines of the video. Once, his Chinese teacher found him and asked him to perform in front of the whole class. He sang the whole content very coolly, and the whole class laughed happily. "Jiangnan Leather Factory Closed Down" He not only memorized the whole text, but also sang it in Wuhan dialect in class.

When Cai Xukun's ghost videos were all over the place, you could even see people "exchanging secret codes" in QQ groups, repeating the lyrics of the ghost video one by one, and smiling knowingly, "You and I have both seen that video." In a sense, through the ghost videos, people created a community of mutual recognition.

When asked about the reason for repeatedly watching the video, Jack Yuan said, "I want to be amused, and it's just so funny. Many of the lines are so funny that I want to memorize them."

There is a concept in psychology called the Mere Exposure Effect, which states that simply because people are exposed to a stimulus multiple times, without any other positive or negative experiences, their liking for the stimulus will increase.

People feel more familiar with things they experience repeatedly, and because the cognitive load is reduced, the brain processes information more efficiently, which also means that the situations related to it are controllable and predictable. This ability makes us feel comfortable and thus increases our liking for that thing.

Just as brands often use repeated exposure to build familiarity and trust among consumers, many people also like to listen to classic old songs that they are familiar with. Similarly, ghost animal videos become more and more brainwashing, and the more you watch them, the more you like them.

The music in some ghost videos is indeed of high quality, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a sublimation of the original work. Some works with "million-dollar tuning" and "brainwashing" will have a petition from some viewers to be put on NetEase Cloud Music. The top comment on "Zhejiang Wenzhou Jiangnan Leather Factory Closed Down" by the up master @女孩为什么穿短裙剪 on NetEase Cloud has 270,000 likes and more than 50,000 comments in total, which shows the grand occasion at that time.

Guichu achieves the effect of subverting classics, deconstructing traditions, and conveying values ​​by dissecting, repeating, and recreating materials. The unnatural expression combination can create laughs, deconstruct all narratives, and the slightly noisy music also coincides with the restless spirit of young people who pursue rebellion.

Watching ghost videos, one is also influenced by the values ​​of a person who just wants to have fun. The recreational attitude of taking everything in a laugh may also be a refuge from reality.

03 Bilibili Community and Ghost Culture

In recent years, Bilibili has made many attempts in community and content.

Whether it is original variety shows and self-made short dramas, or the introduction of more film and television works, Bilibili is trying to break out of the comfort zone of two-dimensional dramas.

At the same time, Bilibili's Lifestyle, Beauty, and Film and Television sections have become well-known "cash cows". FeiGua data shows that these three sections each created more than 100 million views on Double Eleven last year, becoming the sections with the most commercial submissions viewed by Bilibili users on Double Eleven in 23 years.

The knowledge area is also worth mentioning. In addition to these three videos that have exceeded 100 million views, the total number of views of the video collection of "Song Gao's Advanced Mathematics" has reached 140 million. "Bilibili University" is indeed worthy of its reputation. Watching learning videos on Bilibili has become the norm for college students and even middle school students in recent years. Under the slogan of "University, the worst that can happen is self-study", everyone has pushed the video courses to 100 million views.

In addition to learning videos, which are also popular on Bilibili, Bilibili has expanded its life area in recent years, de-secondaryized, and developed multi-dimensional content tracks, expanding the website for small circles of like-minded people to a community where young people can find resonance. In the partition module of the main site, the ghost animal partition is already a small and not so conspicuous block that is submerged in many categories. We can even say that Bilibili is actually "de-ghosting".

But why are the three ghost videos still the ones with over 100 million cumulative views?

In the early stages of B Station's development, most of the netizens who entered the site were ACG enthusiasts, and the content created by B Station at that time was mostly related to the two-dimensional world.

Even though the entrance exam has now become a "value question" about civilized online rules such as bullet screen etiquette and comment standards, some people still miss the days when the tricky questions of the B station entrance exam attracted countless ACG netizens.

The increase in content richness is a good change for Bilibili, but its core community culture is still closely related to subculture. Whether it is the second dimension or ghost animal, the genes of Bilibili in its early days still exist. The popularity of ghost animal nowadays actually reflects the persistence of young users of Bilibili in the core.

Just like the comment by @酒空月明 under this video, "I personally think this is a work that can truly represent the level of video creation on Bilibili."

04 Where is the future of Guichu?

We need to look at the viewers as well as the creators.

Regarding the gender composition of those who watch ghost videos, Jack Yuan said, "It's about 9:1 male to female, almost all male, in fact, I would say 100%." ​​In fact, whether from the source of the material, the selection of the subject matter or the gender of the creator, ghost videos are a video category that is mainly aimed at the male group.

Currently, the big ups with millions of fans in the ghost animal area of ​​​​Bilibili, such as @伊丽莎白鼠 and @女孩为什么穿短裙, are all men.

In terms of the creative themes of popular ghost videos in recent years, they are also closer to young male groups.

Including the basketball that appears in videos related to Cai Xukun, the rap in videos such as "Pressure Cooker Rap", and the ghost videos based on the live broadcast materials of League of Legends anchor Da Sima, they also require the two conditions of "playing League of Legends games" and "watching game live broadcasts" as prerequisites.

In the ghost videos, there are sexual innuendos, dirty jokes, and dirty words that are offensive to the female group, which excludes female audiences to a certain extent. Although the review of B station has recently restricted this kind of content, in the long run, female-oriented videos have never been a comfort zone for ghost videos. Young men or boys who are still in school may still be the audience of this kind of videos.

There used to be four masters of making ghost videos in the ghost section of Bilibili, known as the "Four Kings of Ghost". Some were known for their fast-paced percussion, some were good at ghost rap, and some became famous for their "Jin Ke La" hits, but now only @伊丽莎白鼠 is still active.

To a certain extent, this is because making ghost videos does not make money and is purely for love.

Xiao Zhang, who loved watching ghost videos in high school, gave me an example. On Bilibili, if you are a life zone up with three million fans, you may be able to buy a house in a first-tier city by taking business orders, but if you are a ghost zone up with the same size, you will still earn a few thousand yuan a month.

Moreover, the insightful lines, brainwashing moments and rich editing of materials in ghost videos all mean a long production process, which may be much more time-consuming and labor-intensive than general video creation.

For most potential video creators who have the energy and interest to do so, cutting a more technically advanced, "elegant" and high-energy mashup video may be more attractive to them.

Even though ghost videos have various limitations, we cannot assert the survival or demise of this video format. But Jack Yuan sent me a message a while after chatting with me: "Taking this chat with you as an opportunity, I reminisced about a lot of the ghost videos from the past. Classics are still classics." with a naughty expression of Loopy.

Author: Siweichi; Producer: Wu Duidui

Source: Wu Duidui (ID: esnql520), with technology and the Internet on the left hand and cultural creation and consumption on the right hand.