The "Carrot Knife" trapped in the short video platform

This article starts with the recent explosion of popularity in the short video field, analyzes the deep logic behind its explosion and the problems and hidden dangers it has. With the case of Luobodao as an example, it looks forward to the future development of short video platforms. It is recommended for students who are interested in short video marketing and e-commerce related content.

The "blade" comes out with one swing, and goes back with another. This toy, which looks a bit like a carrot, has a dopamine-inducing color scheme and relies on gravity to achieve fancy gameplay, has inexplicably become popular.

As if in an instant, the "radish knife" became popular among primary school students. They stabbed each other with the carrot knives, the popular phrase became "嘎腰子", and they experienced some unique fun in the repeated click sound of the knives being drawn out of the sheath.

The "radish knife", a toy that has fascinated millions of primary school students, has also attracted continuous heated discussions in the public opinion field.

Faced with these phenomena, many parents and teachers are worried, and some parents call for a rational approach. However, some businesses have also seen business opportunities and made a lot of money by selling carrots.

How did Luobodao become so popular nationwide that it attracted primary school students from all over the country to become addicted? What should the short video platforms that "boosted" it do?

1. “Carrot Knife”: New Social Currency for Primary School Students

In fact, the design principle of the carrot knife is very simple. It is a plastic imitation knife toy. Because it uses its own gravity to slide, it is also called a gravity knife. With the blessing of speed, the knife can be quickly drawn and put away, and there is no special "technical content".

The origin of the carrot knife's popularity can be traced back to June last year, when a UP host named "Crazy Question Mark" used 3D printing to print a carrot knife and released a video titled "It's useless... No, it's a gravity cub carrot!" The brainwashing and magical material was almost "zero" and received millions of views.

Later, with the help of short video platforms such as Douyin, the carrot knife became even more popular. Topics such as "My boyfriend gave me a self-defense dagger" and "My boyfriend gave me a small knife" became popular on Douyin, and many netizens began to use the carrot knife to "play tricks" in the comment section, such as "If I take this out, how will you respond?"

Later, the Carrot Knife quickly gained the favor of children for its cheapness, funness, and stress-relieving properties, and spread rapidly among children, achieving a "human-to-human" phenomenon among children.

Through earthy and brainwashing audio and video, children's aesthetic taste is captured. On major social platforms, "I don't want to play with people who don't have a carrot knife" has become a high-frequency copywriting, and the carrot knife has become the latest "social currency". Many elementary school students are gradually addicted to the carrot knife. The first thing they do when they get up in the morning is to look for their own carrot knife, "Mom, where is my knife?" Some even hold it in their hands when they go to bed at night.

From the Baidu Index, we can see that it took less than a month for the Radish Knife to become popular across the country.

At the same time, sales data is the most powerful proof of how popular Carrot Knife is.

Searching for "radish knife" on Taobao, the monthly sales of "genuine" stores have exceeded 200,000+, and the sales of single products in the top-selling stores have exceeded 100,000+. In the list of decompression toys released by the 1688 platform, 19 of the top 20 are products related to the radish knife.

The popularity of Luobota has further boosted the output of Luobota content, and the output of Luobota-related short video content has further boosted the popularity of Luobota products, forming a "closed-loop" chain.

On many short video content platforms, there are not only various types of carrot knives for sale, but also tutorial videos such as carrot knife gameplay tutorials, teaching consumers how to play with the "carrot knife". A short video of "carrot knife gameplay tutorial" even received over 50 million views. In just one month, the Douyin topic #萝卜刀# has been viewed 1.7 billion times, approaching the previous "primary school student top stream" Ultraman card.

2. The “Carrot Knife” trapped in short videos

In the sharing of many parents, many children could not clearly explain why they wanted a carrot knife, but the reasons were very consistent: “other children have it, I want to play with it too.”

This is also the reason why many children like carrot knives - they can't explain why they like it, but they want to have it if others have it. Even kindergarten children, through communication with older children, spread popular culture, and the "carrot knife" trend spread from primary school to kindergarten.

In fact, the popularity of Luobudao is inseparable from the rapid spread on social platforms.

In fact, the radish knife is not the first popular product. Some parents have counted the "popular products" among primary school students in recent years. There is not only the "children's song" "The Lone Brave Man", but also Ultraman cards, wax seals, Guka, nano glue, hand diaries, quiet books, bracelets, wooden fish... The popularity of these elements is inseparable from the blessing of the Internet and the promotion of short videos.

"Popularity is just a passing fad." Countless Ultraman cards plus the blind box gameplay have successfully stimulated the "comparison" and "collection" desires of primary school students. The card game characters, levels, appearances, and versions have launched countless Ultraman cards, stimulating children's "collection" desire, with annual sales reaching 1.5 billion.

Before Luobodao, the last "top trend" was "playing with skewers". Primary school students held a handful of beads in their hands and played with them under their desks during class. During breaks, they gathered together to discuss their experience of playing with skewers and did their homework while playing with them. Previously, related terms were on the hot search list several times. The two daughters of the famous actor Lu Yi also played with skewers in a Vlog with a smile, and their technique seemed very skilled.

Just like the popularity of "Carrot Knife", there are also various "tutorial videos" for making Sichuan skewers. On platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, "Primary School Students' Sichuan skewers" has become a popular content, with hundreds of pushes.

Reviewing the popularity of these products, Douyin has become an important role in promoting them. Data shows that the exposure rate of short videos among minors was 65.5% in 2019, and by 2023, the exposure rate of short videos among minors was 96.6%. The comprehensive coverage of short videos among the youth group means that the Internet has officially become the infrastructure of youth life, and the emerging trends are having an increasingly profound impact on young people.

Watching content such as "game live broadcasts", "funny videos" and "internet celebrity dances" has become popular among young users. Adult internet celebrity dances such as "Ace of Spades" and "Qinghai Social Dance" have also become objects of imitation among young people.

Related content has become popular on short video platforms, and has achieved a rapid "explosion" with the help of Douyin. The popularity of these Internet celebrity products soon disappeared with wave after wave of new trends. Short video platforms may become the "biggest winners", creating waves and absorbing the heat of the waves, creating waves of "money carnivals" with the blessing of traffic and e-commerce.

In fact, parents’ doubts about whether toys like carrot knives are safe are not unreasonable.

On the one hand, there are concerns about its safety. The top of the toy is a bit hard. If children are not careful when playing, or accidentally fall while running and chasing, it is easy to hurt the eyes and other vulnerable parts of the body. Online evaluation videos such as carrot knives opening apples and carrot knives cutting watermelons also show that parents' concerns are not unfounded.

On the other hand, parents are worried that "playing with 'carrot knives' may have a certain impact on children's psychology. Using a toy knife to stab, poke, or poke may subconsciously stimulate children's violent tendencies.

In the dissemination of Carrot Knife content on short video platforms such as Douyin, there is no lack of publicity for the "chuachuachua" stabbing attributes of Carrot Knife. Many popular videos of Carrot Knife are poking around, with the message "Click here to order the same model as the video" displayed below.

Not only that, the risk of exposure to bad content such as pornography, violence, hatred, personal privacy leakage and cyber bullying, fragmented thinking, programmed communication, conflict of multiple values ​​and other issues have caused concerns about the phenomenon of teenagers watching short videos.

If the all-plastic carrot knife can be considered a relatively safe toy, the toothpick crossbow, laser pen, stinky bag, etc. that were popular before were initially used as "children's toys" and "prank items" in short videos. They became popular all over the country in a short period of time after short videos, and then their dangerousness was further discovered and "banned across the entire network."

One parent commented on the popularity of the “carrot knife” and said that you can avoid the “cutting knife” but you can’t avoid the “carrot knife”. If Pinduoduo is just consuming in the “network of human relationships”, as long as you are “hard-hearted”, you will not fall into the cycle of “cutting knife”.

Although some of the popular contents on Kuaishou were popular before, netizens may still have some "psychological high ground", "I don't know because I'm not low", "I'm not the target group for this kind of video", I can choose not to buy Simba's bird's nest in sugar water.

However, as Douyin has become a popular short video app, if you don’t follow some hot topics, it seems that you are “not keeping up with the trend”. In this context, the popularity of products such as “Carrot Knife” has changed from an active choice of consumers to a “passive choice”, and they are forced to be involved in this trend.

In order to avoid possible risks and negative consequences, short video platforms need to take action. Nowadays, when searching for Carrot Knife on Douyin, there are already tips advising consumers on how to use it correctly.

Previously, at the invitation of the Internet Society of China and the United Nations Human Rights Council, Kuaishou shared its practices in protecting young people online. It shared how Kuaishou has used its utmost efforts in terms of products, technology, and content to combat all behaviors on the platform that may be harmful to young people, and provided young people with youth protection practices that help them cultivate their sentiments and obtain high-quality content.

According to reports, in terms of product functions, Kuaishou has established exclusive review rules for teenagers, and set up a triple machine review and multiple manual review mechanisms. In terms of content supply, Kuaishou has created a pool of exclusive content for teenagers to improve the richness of the platform's youth content and the accuracy of recommendations. Tencent and other social platforms, adhering to the mission of "technology for good", have also successively launched prevention and control measures such as the "QQ Platform Anti-Internet Violence Guide".

Despite a series of measures, the popularity of "carrot knives" seems to indicate that for platforms that need traffic and e-commerce, there is a certain paradox between "creating trends" and "creating a healthy environment", and short video platforms should be able to do much more than that.

3. How to mine new mines in the “manufacturing trend”?

On October 2, ByteDance released the company's performance and future plans, covering the 2021 annual report, the 2022 annual report, and the first quarter report of 2023. This report revealed several important information:

First, the revenue growth rate has declined. The revenue in 2022 is 85.2 billion US dollars (about 622 billion RMB), an increase of about 38% year-on-year. Under the premise of increasing volume, the growth rate has declined.

Secondly, the main business will turn from loss to profit, and achieve an operating profit of US$20 billion in 2022. In the first quarter of 2023, the revenue will be about US$24.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 34%; the operating profit will be about US$6 billion, a year-on-year increase of about 2 times, and the mining of commercial value will further show results. The superposition of these key figures is enough to show that Douyin is entering a growth inflection point, from the "fast growth track" to the "mature track".

ByteDance’s core revenue mainly comes from Douyin, and Douyin’s revenue sources are also very clear, mainly focusing on two major channels, advertising and e-commerce.

According to previously disclosed data, ByteDance's core revenue is advertising, which will account for 77% in 2020. However, as Internet user resources gradually peak and China's Internet user pool enters the "stock market", the growth rate of advertising revenue is slowing down.

In the third quarter of 2022, JD.com's advertising revenue was about 18.954 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.99%; Alibaba's advertising revenue was about 66.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5%; Pinduoduo's advertising revenue was about 28.4256 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 58%; Baidu's advertising revenue was about 19.943 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.26%. Although ByteDance's advertising performance is unknown, judging from the data of its competitors, it can be said that "things are not going well."

Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is only a stopgap measure, and finding a "second growth line" has become a difficult challenge that ByteDance and many other Internet brands must overcome. For this reason, e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao have all turned to the construction of "industrial belts", investing heavily in "making hardware" to gain wealth appreciation and deeper development in the extended industrial chain.

The same is true for Douyin. In June 2022, Douyin e-commerce released the "Industry Growth Plan", which has begun to target national industrial clusters and build 100 top industrial belts, covering multiple key industries such as clothing, shoes and bags, fresh food, and beauty, as well as industries such as youth toys.

Douyin's advantage lies in the combination of "content" and "goods". Douyin has long been aware of this. At this year's Douyin e-commerce ecological conference, the official also predicted the future development direction - making good use of the dual engines of the global flywheel model "good content + good goods", in the global interest e-commerce environment, relying on the content scenes composed of short videos and live broadcasts, and the shelf scenes composed of Douyin Mall, search, and stores, to "push and support" products, so that more products can use Douyin to "become popular".

In fact, the model of selling products through short videos may indeed be the "easiest answer" to selling products, especially today when Internet users are becoming more and more accustomed to "passive search". We are accustomed to passively receiving information rather than actively searching. More and more hot content is pushed to users through the big data push mechanism of platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu. After being repeatedly viewed, it "creates a trend" and leads a new round of popularity.

Although short video platforms such as Kuaishou position themselves as "social tools" for users, exaggerating the naturalness and purity of big data, under such a model, the requirements for short video platforms are no longer limited to the simple attribute of "tools", but they should assume more guiding responsibilities.

I don’t know when the trend of carrot knives will fade away among primary school students, but it is foreseeable that, driven by short video platforms, a new round of storm is already gathering.

Author: Dake

Source: WeChat public account "DoNews (ID: lovedonews)"