Young people, looking for their hometown in short videos

Rural videos are emerging on short video platforms with new faces. The content of rural short videos is transitioning from material production to cultural production. There are more and more rural cultural life aspects such as markets and Guanyin meetings. Why are rural-themed short videos so popular? Let's take a look.

On one side are videos of rural customs that are disliked by young people, and on the other side are videos of rural markets and banquets that make young people feel like they have returned to their hometowns.

The theme of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is undergoing a new round of changes.

In the past, rural-related short videos could only rely on selling misery, crying poor or making ugly faces to gain traffic. Although this kind of black-and-red method can quickly accumulate fans, it is not conducive to subsequent commercial operations.

After that, short videos on rural themes such as Li Ziqi's, which created a paradise and constructed a utopia, were born.

However, it is too costly to create another Liziqi, and it requires the blessing of luck. Videos showing rural production and life, including Liziqi's, are gradually becoming saturated.

Content such as markets and banquets that can boost sales of agricultural products has gradually become a new trend in videos related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

Video content about rural cultural life such as markets and Guanyin meetings is emerging, and the content of short videos on agriculture, rural areas and farmers is transitioning from material production to cultural production.

For users, it is an aesthetic upgrade; for platforms, it is a new traffic code.

1. Sink into real life

The constant cries of hawkers at the market, the enthusiastic conversations of aunties and uncles at the banquets... these rural customs such as eating at banquets and going to the market, which were almost "extinct" offline, are being reborn on short videos.

A simple video of a rural market attracted hundreds of thousands of likes in less than a day. The video showed people in simple and clean clothes and tables and chairs that were not exquisite but tidy.

Such a scene, coupled with a bowl of hot food, is the best interpretation of the atmosphere of fireworks. This type of short video content is becoming a new traffic code, and the number of views of related video collections on Douyin and Kuaishou has reached billions.

A practitioner said that rural videos with a sense of life, such as the market, are a long-term hot topic, and he would ask his bloggers to make a related video when they return to their hometowns or during festivals.

"They happen to be from the countryside, so the videos they shoot are more objective. It seems that today's users are a little tired of videos that portray pity and the rural countryside in a idyllic way."

In the past, rural life was presented through the retelling of others, such as the poor rural life in "The Metamorphosis" and the experience of going to the countryside in variety shows. Rural life was either so poor that one could not even afford to eat, or a paradise without any worldly atmosphere.

In short videos, rural areas have become objects of curiosity and traffic codes. Rural people who have been pulled into cities by the urbanization process are eager to emulate urban people in terms of language, clothing, leisure and entertainment in order to seek a sense of identity and belonging.

Rural youths without "innate advantages" often end up drawing something that looks like a dog instead of a tiger, and their behavior becomes a "copycat show" that is ridiculed by the public. This is the case with the early Shamatte and Shehuiyao.

What is even more regrettable is that in order to cater to the market demand for curiosity, many videos related to rural life will intentionally or unintentionally move towards "vulgarity", as if the leisure and entertainment life in the countryside can only be a poor imitation of the city.

Whether it is the variety shows that simply and crudely divide rural life into a place of suffering and a paradise, or the intentional or unintentional presentation of rural vulgar aesthetics in short videos for the sake of attracting attention, they are essentially a stereotyped examination of rural life.

Only by speaking out can we break the gaze of the outside world. Xiao Hemei, who participated in the topic planning and shooting of a video team, said that she felt that the rural areas on the Internet and the places she went back to every month were two different rural areas. The place where she lived in reality was not as beautiful as in Li Ziqi's videos, but it was not as bare as shown in some other videos.

Xiao Hemei said that her original intention in suggesting the team to shoot a market video was to present a more popular rural life. Neighbors in the village would quarrel because they suspected that you had stolen my oranges, and they would also send their own old hens to their neighbors to nourish their bodies when they were sick.

The real countryside is not as colorful as the city, but a different scene of fields and fields.

Just as Xiao Hemei said, rural areas should also make their own voices heard. Beyond suffering and utopia, rural life is gradually regaining its voice on the Internet.

2. The authenticity of rural short videos

Long and short videos on rural themes have always been the traffic code on the Internet.

The little Jack Ma in the early days and his later metamorphosis, the image of the countryside during this period was a clown with a hint of comedy or a victim in urgent need of rescue, responsible for satisfying the outside world's desire for prying eyes and sense of superiority.

This packaging method has changed its appearance and appeared on short video platforms. Many accounts on Douyin and Kuaishou that "act miserable" in rural areas are taking the route of "needing to be saved."

This type of account usually creates a miserable character. The protagonist's food, clothing, housing and transportation in the video also reveal the difficulties of life, but he still faces life positively and optimistically. The character creation is very good.

The monetization of this type of video relies on selling misery to attract fans, and then live streaming to sell goods; at the same time, some simple advertising is also placed in daily video shooting.

However, the protagonists of these videos are often just using their personalities to gain sympathy. A closer look at the camera switching and the combination of words in their videos reveals traces of the operation of a professional team. Once discovered by users, the commercial value will be greatly reduced. Therefore, most of these accounts are incubated in batches.

After all, selling misery and judging ugliness cannot last long. After Li Ziqi, the countryside has become a paradise where people can forget their worries, work from sunrise to sunset, and there is no 996 or overtime.

Thanks to this poetic rural life, Li Ziqi's number of fans has increased rapidly, and snail noodles relying on Li Ziqi's fame have also become a hot-selling product.

Driven by interests, a large number of institutions followed the trend of "Li Ziqi" and launched similar accounts focusing on the production of exquisite rural cuisine. Although they did not produce a phenomenal hit like Li Ziqi, they also achieved quite good profits.

The most popular platforms for rural themes are Douyin and Kuaishou. Kuaishou first started out by relying on the sinking market and has a certain user base in county towns and rural areas; Douyin is a national application with a huge traffic pool.

The rural-themed videos on these two platforms also have different focuses. Kuaishou's videos are more chivalrous and emphasize friendship, while Douyin focuses on observation and sharing, and is more of a recorder.

Compared with internet celebrities packaged by MCN agencies using rural themes, bloggers who were born in rural areas have more say on this topic. Under the plans of major video platforms to support farmers, more and more young people are choosing to shoot rural-related short videos as a business direction. Liziqi and Huanong Brothers are among the best.

The MCN practitioner mentioned above mentioned that "it seems that today's users are a bit aesthetically fatigued by the rural videos that sell misery and Utopia-style videos."

In fact, what the audience is tired of is not the positivity of the poor in the face of adversity, nor the poetry that can be explored in rural life, but the routine pursuit of form ignoring content, which makes the originally rich connotation one-sided.

When it is impossible or unwilling to express the content related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers in a form that conforms to it, simply presenting it may be a better choice. Therefore, in the videos about going to the market, eating at a banquet, praying for blessings, and other rural customs that we see on Douyin and Kuaishou, most of them are presented to users in the form of records or introductions.

Conclusion

Short videos on rural themes are undergoing a new transformation.

The misery-selling that has overdrawn the audience's trust in the past is inevitably heading for decline, and the Utopia-style rural videos will only be short-lived if they cannot be done personally like Li Ziqi.

In contrast, videos about going to the market or eating at a banquet, which are based on "reality", can create a new world by relying on the empathy aroused by the sense of reality. Moreover, the cost of such videos is not high, and the audience is stable, which is very advantageous in improving the loyalty of platform users.

The only thing to note is that this kind of rural activities with a hint of folk customs are not daily activities. In the absence of folk activities, Li Ziqi's pastoral idyll may be the best way to capture users at the moment.

No matter what form of market or banquet, it is essentially the business of selling emotions. However, compared with the creation of anxiety or illusion in the past, the current market pays more attention to the real emotional content after removing the packaging.

Before entertainment and selling goods dominated the mainstream of the platform, Douyin relied on the name of popularizing traditional culture such as intangible cultural heritage. Most of the skills related to intangible cultural heritage are always closely related to the land.

There is already a wealth of content about rural production and life, such as vegetable gardens, orchards, chickens, ducks, fish, etc., and agricultural products based on these have opened up sales channels; however, content related to rural customs such as markets and Guanyin festivals is very scarce. Only during festival periods, there will be a small explosion of videos related to rural cultural life, such as worshiping Mazu and welcoming the Kitchen God.

In fact, this type of video has great commercial potential. Once the related folk activities become popular traffic, they can drive the development of the offline tourism accommodation industry.

The urbanization process is inevitable. When those who have settled in cities from rural areas start families and build careers, their next generation will most likely no longer face the pain of leaving their hometowns.

And this inevitable pain is probably one of the responsibilities that this group of people who move towards urbanization must bear.

Those who stay may also try to find new business opportunities in rural folk life in addition to production and life. The spontaneous transformation of content creators is also further deepening the content of the platform.

Author: Xia Tian

Source public account: Ginkgo Technology (ID: yinxingcj), bringing you the best business people and stories.