Why do popular check-in spots have such short lives?

Nowadays, major cities and scenic spots like to put up road signs with some rather rustic texts, such as "I miss you very much in ××". This series of Internet celebrity road signs has been criticized by netizens for being too rustic, so why do people resist them so much? Let's take a look.

Nowadays, people like to put up road signs in various places with very earthy copywriting, such as "The wind that misses you still blows to xx", or they put up a pink neon sign with "I have a story, do you have wine?"

Especially now, in major cities, for some reason, they have collectively created a bunch of blue-bottomed white-letter road signs that are extremely realistic, and even the copywriting is surprisingly consistent:

I miss you very much in xx.

It would be fine if there were only one or two, but now you can see this thing no matter which city you go to. And there are a lot of people checking in and posting it online. Not only are the major scenic spots becoming more and more similar, but even the check-in locations are indistinguishable.

No wonder some people complain:

How to quickly make a tourist attraction look tacky? Put up a road sign that says: I miss you so much in xx.

01

Although the Internet celebrity road signs have only become popular recently, if we analyze their origins, they can be traced back to at least ten years ago.

In 2013, a movie called "Waiting for the Wind" was released. It tells the story of a fashionable female white-collar worker in a big city who cleansed her soul and gained inner peace during a trip to Nepal.

The film itself was not very interesting, it was one of those popular chicken soup movies at the time. But they did something very interesting during the promotion. They launched an activity similar to the "Ice Bucket Challenge" on Weibo, inviting netizens to take a photo of themselves holding a small note with the words "I am in xx (place), I am waiting for the wind to come" written on it.

At that time, social network marketing was just taking off. Simple netizens had never seen such fun things before, so they all participated in the challenge. For a while, people all over the country took photos holding up the words "I'm waiting for the wind to come in xx".

In the end, the movie box office was 80 million, which was not very popular. But "wait for the wind to come" became a very interesting sentence pattern, and also became a common condiment in various online chicken soup golden sentences.

So, today’s “I Miss You So Much” road sign is just a replica of “Wait for the Wind to Come”.

This is also why there are copywriting like "The wind that misses you still blows to xx".

02

In my opinion, the emergence of a large number of Internet celebrity road signs is the ultimate manifestation of the city being alienated into a landscape, and is the projection of the circle of friends into the real world.

I have mentioned before in the content about scenic spots that the core of creating many popular online attractions is actually the "output rate", that is, how to attract people to take photos to the greatest extent.

At first, this kind of photo-taking and check-in was random and a bit of spontaneous exploration. For example, when traveling to a place, people often post their location on WeChat Moments to show where they are. Sometimes, they just find a place with a place name written on it and take a photo. The bigger the place name sign is, the better.

Soon, the place name alone was no longer enough. I think it was the real estate developers who chose to use this type of copywriting in large quantities, because the criteria for these copywritings are: first, to highlight the city name, and second, to show a petty bourgeoisie style. You can pay attention to some real estate copywritings on the road, many of which have these characteristics.

But real estate developers are rich after all, and they will at least hire specialized advertising companies to design the layout and copy. So even if the copy is a little tacky occasionally, the overall effect will not be so embarrassing.

For businesses with vertical road signs, it’s different.

What do businesses want? Customer flow, as long as they can attract people to take photos and check in. It would be too expensive to hire someone to design this kind of thing.

It doesn't matter if the copy is tacky or greasy. What matters is directness and simplicity, and emotional copy is obviously the easiest to attract people. Not only road signs, but also various confession walls, broken love museums, etc., can easily arouse people's desire to share.

As for street signs, they are very interesting. I occasionally go out to sweep the streets. Friends who have experience in street sweeping should all know that street signs, fire hydrants, mailboxes, and even trash cans are all items that appear very frequently.

Therefore, it is no surprise that this low-profile version of a real estate developer's advertisement, which is already an attractive way to take photos, coupled with a pretentious copy, has become a popular check-in spot.

03

Why do I say that Internet celebrity road signs are the projection of the circle of friends in the real world?

Because the common elements in many travel circles are a sentence + a photo + a location, and Internet celebrity road signs have completed all of these at once.

The biggest advantage of this kind of Internet celebrity road sign is that the cost is low enough, which is equivalent to an Internet celebrity patch for ordinary businesses. If you want to build an Internet celebrity store, you need to design the style and pay attention to the interior decoration. Internet celebrity road signs don’t require anything, just spend a few hundred yuan to customize one, and the biggest risk is violating management regulations and being removed.

However, the original purpose of the Internet celebrity check-in spots was to show a sense of specialness. It was just that such a low-cost artificial landscape was not difficult to replicate and soon spread across the country like a virus. When these photos of "I miss you so much in xx" filled the social network, this artistic sense disappeared, leaving only the vulgarity that had been copied a thousand times, and it turned from an Internet celebrity road sign into a rustic road sign.

After all, rapid decay is the fate of all internet celebrities.

Author: IC Lab; Official Account: IC Lab (ID: InsightPlusClub), looking at business from the perspective of brand.