Who was cured by the boring live broadcast?

Looking back at the live broadcast content ecology in recent years, various live broadcast rooms have come and gone. But there is a type of live broadcast room that attracts many users and has existed for a long time. Taking the boring live broadcast of "fishing live broadcast" as an example, why is it so attractive? Is it just because of boredom?

Looking back at the live streaming content ecology in recent years, in addition to the live streaming rooms that bring surprises and benefits to fans in various ways, there is another type of live streaming room that has attracted many users to stay and has existed for a long time.

Unlike live streamers who sell goods, these anchors do not frequently interact with fans in the live streaming room using well-trained speech, nor do they sing and dance in front of the camera like talent streamers. Sometimes they just put their phones aside and do their own work, or live stream themselves eating or daydreaming, using a slightly "boring" live streaming method to show their ordinary but real lives.

The "China Online Performance (Live Streaming and Short Video) Industry Development Report (2022-2023)" shows that the scale of online live streaming users in my country has reached 751 million, and the number of online live streaming accounts has exceeded 150 million. While the scale of the industry creates content value, the magnitude gap in supply has also given rise to a variety of live streaming formats.

Looking back at the boring live broadcasts that went viral in the past year, from fishing live broadcasts to the four idiom live broadcasts of "Jingwei Filling the Sea", "Yugong Moving Mountains", "Iron Rod Grinding Needle" and "Water Drops Wear Away Stone", the audience's mentality has gradually changed from curiosity to commonplace. At first, they flocked to watch the fun, but ended up sighing that they had found the "cloud companionship" of the Internet. Is it really boredom that makes boring live broadcasts more and more popular?

1. “Boring Live Broadcasting” and “Interesting Economy”

Open major live broadcast platforms and search for "钓佬" (fisherman), you can get unexpected fishing perspectives here. From day to night, from deep mountain forests to suburban lakes, in front of the similar landscape background, a well-equipped fishing enthusiast sits quietly by the lake, waiting for the fish to bite.

Until the fishing rod is raised, the live broadcast room is extremely quiet and even static. But the number of people in the live broadcast room in the corner of the screen will tell you that there are hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of people waiting for the exciting scene of the fish being caught out of the water.

People who are not familiar with such live broadcasts will ask in the comment section: What is so interesting about such boring content without plot and meaning? A lot of people will immediately refute: What do you know? Don't delay our cloud fishing. Fishing can still be broadcast as a sport or a personal hobby, while the motivation for some boring live broadcasts has a hint of "fairy tale" color.

In the field of boring live broadcasts, "Jingwei Filling the Sea", "Yugong Moving Mountains", "Iron Rod Grinding Needle" and "Water Drops Wearing Away Stone" are the pinnacle works. On the homepage of some anchors, there are thousands of videos of people grinding a spiral steel rod on a stone, with the title "This is the XXXth day of grinding the iron rod into a needle". Similarly, some people live broadcast digging mountains, and some people insist on throwing stones into the sea every day. And these seemingly nonsensical contents have also brought hundreds of thousands of attentions to the live broadcast room, and even commercial value.

In 2016, Bilibili planned what may be the longest and most boring live broadcast in history: the Xiaomi Max "Xiaomi Max Super Durable Experience, We Don't Know When This Live Broadcast Will End" live broadcast event. The rules of the event are simple: starting from 16:00 on May 10th, the live broadcast will be continuous and uninterrupted, and the battery level of the mobile phone in standby mode will be checked every hour. If there is power, the lucky draw will be held on the hour, and the lucky draw will be stopped when the mobile phone is out of power.

This live broadcast, which lasted for 19 days, attracted more than 30 million users to watch, and the number of people online at the same time remained at 100,000 for ten consecutive days, which also made the battery life of Xiaomi mobile phones deeply imprinted in consumers' cognition.

* Screenshot of the boring live broadcast at Station B

In fact, before the boring live broadcast, entrepreneurs had discovered the value of "boredom" itself. In 2002, Jiang Nanchun, the founder of Focus Media, realized that people were extremely bored during the short time in the elevator, and because of boredom, people were very receptive to advertisements, so Focus Media, an elevator advertising company with a market value of over 100 billion yuan, was born.

In the field of economics, experts call this type of business model that uses people's "boring time" and "eliminating boredom" to transform economic benefits "boredom economy." Initially, the term "boredom economy" was born simply to tell people that people can also generate economic benefits when they are bored.

The background of the emergence of the "boredom economy" is that the world is too complicated and attention has become a relatively scarce resource. How to "grab" the attention of potential customers in a competitive environment has become an opportunity for the beginning of the boredom economy. To some extent, this boredom is a niche choice in the form of interesting economy.

2. The needs of the times behind the “boredom economy”

What the public is passionate about is often the externalization of the psychology of an era. Similar "boring" performance art has appeared many times in history.

From today's perspective, the 1998 film "The Truman Show" almost corresponds to and imagines today's live broadcasting scenes. In the film, Truman's daily uninterrupted live broadcasts have allowed viewers to watch for thirty years without getting bored, and the authenticity of having no scripts and an unpredictable future is the most critical attraction.

In contemporary times, collective loneliness has turned the "boring" live broadcast into a productive force. In 2022, "Bye Bye Disco" led by Pang Kuan, a member of the New Pants Band, became the only performance art to be broadcast live on the Internet.

*Screenshot of Pang Kuan's "Bye Bye Disco" live broadcast

In this exhibition, he ate, drank, played, defecated, urinated and slept for 14 days on a platform that was 2.5 meters long and wide and 1.2 meters high. All the supplies included only a box of water, a box of rice, a box of wine, a box of snacks, a box of the most fashionable clothes, a sofa and a toilet. The high degree of participation in the technical means of live broadcast has made this real "Truman Show" more widely spread, with a total number of viewers on Weibo, Video Account and Douyin exceeding 35 million.

Many people couldn't explain why they couldn't help but click on Pang Kuan's live broadcast room, but inertia made them continue to watch for 14 days. Just as people watch boring live broadcasts, on the one hand, they are curious, and on the other hand, people can happily chat with "Internet family members" in the "field" of the live broadcast room while watching boring things.

The main purpose of the live broadcast is not the content. The main purpose is to have such an anchor, open such a boring live broadcast room, share similar loneliness with others, and seek group resonance. Compared with the exquisite makeup, script interpretation and deliberate wording in the regular live broadcast room, this kind of unsystematic and boring live broadcast is more realistic and is a real companionship between the anchor and the audience beyond time and space. It can be said that Pang Kuan's boring live broadcast briefly gave people a dose of spiritual comfort.

In contrast, boring live broadcasts lack continuity and the regret of missing a wonderful moment. Because its content is too monotonous, it is the same no matter when you enter the live broadcast room to watch it, which is more suitable for the current fragmented entertainment time requirements.

So it is no surprise that boring live broadcasts have become popular, and at the same time, they have exposed the impoverished spiritual world and empty social situation of contemporary young people under work and social pressure. People need to ensure that there is something stable in a fixed place so that they can check it at any time and gain a sense of security in this certainty.

3. The Group Value of “Curing Boredom”

Judging from the application value alone, watching live broadcasts can consume a lot of time cheaply, but this consumption of time is not equivalent to "wasting life."

Since the birth of the Internet, the efficiency of connecting individuals has been unprecedentedly improved, and social networks have closely connected the world's population in a diverse and unstoppable way, but human loneliness has never disappeared. This is because the improvement in production efficiency brought about by technology forces people to spend more time on "creating value."

As a result, many people are tired of dealing with work and choose to deal with life, perhaps in bed late at night, or on the toilet in the office bathroom, using fragmented time to find the joy of life. Gradually, in the current highly individualized life, people have begun to get used to gathering in the online world to kill boredom and pleasure.

In this unprecedented living state, live streaming as a form of media has broken the boundaries between public and private spaces. When cooking, eating, singing, playing games, and other personal daily activities that relieve boredom can be live streamed, users on the other side of the screen can also relieve their daily anxiety by consuming this illogical, rational, and professional content.

Although the anchor may not sincerely call the fans in the live broadcast room "family", this stable state is enough for some people to get a sense of relaxation brought by stress-free communication and emptying their minds. Some users who are addicted to live broadcasts said that it is a kind of enjoyment to lazily lie on the bed and watch the live broadcast with an empty mind. And giving tips to the anchor can get the anchor's name and thanks, which means a kind of respect.

In real life and mass social interaction, many young people do not have advantages in terms of economic foundation and social status. However, by being named in the live broadcast room, they can be known by others in the live broadcast community, and viewers can gain a sense of satisfaction and belonging that is difficult to obtain in real life. In this sense, it can be said that some people hope to seek things that are lacking in real life from live broadcasts.

As a media phenomenon, the media companionship function of boring live broadcast can relieve loneliness and stress. Although boring live broadcast itself has no real meaning, and even the starting point is nonsensical fun. However, the empty state brought by boring live broadcast makes people start to pay attention to themselves and life itself.

When the host occasionally reveals his or her identity or experience in front of the camera, people will naturally bring their personal experiences into the show and share their views in a plain and objective manner as strangers, which becomes a kind of unburdened expression - this is also a rare experience in the current social networking world.

In general, when the outside world seems more complicated and noisy, boring things stand out more. Although boring live broadcasts may also be aimed at traffic and monetization, in this age of information overload, at least this aimless live broadcast content can keep the audience in front of the camera emotionally stable.

"Interesting" is often carefully designed, while boring things are a true reflection of life, and they are just as fascinating.

Author: Cheng Yu

Source public account: Jingzhe Research Institute (ID: jingzheyanjiusuo), exploring and discovering the new economy.