My second aunt wants to be an internet celebrity

As I got closer to home, I opened Douyin and saw many videos with Hunan accents popping up on the recommended homepage. Suddenly, I saw a post from my second aunt’s account. She danced with hand gestures with special effects, wishing friends a happy Year of the Rabbit. She was quite skilled in the movements, and these new and trendy ways of playing were no problem at all. In the following article, the author wrote about how his aunt learned Douyin step by step and how the whole family became extras for her. Let’s take a look.

"You can just call me 'handsome guy'." Second aunt clapped the stack of red envelopes in her hand, "After this video is shot, each person will get a commission of ten dollars." After the reunion dinner, she wanted to use the money she had just won at the poker table to "hire" us young people to cooperate with her in shooting short videos on Douyin.

We were arranged by my second aunt to stand in a row in the yard, and other relatives who were responsible for overall supervision began to give instructions. My mother was responsible for "explaining the play" to the extras: "After the phrase 'call me handsome' is finished, you pretend to shout it out loud, and then take the red envelopes from your second aunt in order..."

The yard has no walls and is next to a road. Motorcycles roared past, and people we knew and didn't know glanced at us. I felt quite embarrassed and my straight back bent a little.

Second Auntie didn't care. When the recording started, she swaggered up the stairs one level higher than us, stepped on a chair and gave us instructions: "Call me handsome!"

We made exaggerated movements to the rhythm of the music, and then swayed one by one to take the red envelopes distributed by my second aunt, with a very high degree of cooperation.

It took more than ten minutes and four or five takes before the video effect reached a level that satisfied my second aunt. She nodded, handed out ten-yuan bills to us extras, and sat in the yard to edit the video. I stood aside with my reward, and before I could walk away, she pulled me over to help edit the video.

This is not the first time that my second aunt has taken great pains to shoot a short video.

At family gatherings, we shot several versions of a series of videos with the theme of "I am the eldest, I am the second oldest". Almost everyone had one of the "most handsome guys on this street", and everyone had appeared in my second aunt's video.

In the small town where I came from, my second aunt became a local Douyin celebrity with thousands of fans by actively updating and interacting with others. In the past year, she has clumsily started her own "commercialization." My second aunt spent thousands of yuan learning how to sell goods through short videos and began to try live streaming. In order to sell goods, she even hid all her previous daily videos.

Home page of Eryi's sales account

Now, my second aunt’s large “little yellow car” is still running, and the tuition she paid has just paid off. Her presbyopia has become more serious, so she has started to operate a small one again.

Although I am far away in Beijing, I have participated in my second aunt's business exploration discussions in the WeChat group over the past six months. I have been the number one "big sister" in her live broadcast room, and I was almost recruited to become my second aunt's video editing instructor.

When I went home this time, I talked to my second aunt about her live streaming business.

First and second aunts, no hesitation to spend 3000 yuan to learn to bring goods

This is the first time in three years that I have the opportunity to go home from Beijing for the New Year.

I took the high-speed train southwards during the Spring Festival travel rush, and after seven hours, I finally got off at Loudi South Station in Hunan Province, carrying my bags. This city is located in the center of Hunan Province, and its license plate code is "Xiang K". Like the alphabetical order, it is relatively unpopular in Hunan Province, and was not established as a prefecture-level city until the end of the last century.

The humid air and gloomy sky immediately made me realize that it was different from Beijing. During the two years when I was "dissuaded from returning home" for the Spring Festival, the empty streets of Beijing remained in my memory of the Spring Festival for a long time.

My memories of the Spring Festival were updated by push notifications from major apps. As I got closer to home, I opened TikTok and saw many videos with Hunan accents popping up on the recommended homepage. Suddenly, I saw an update from my second aunt’s smurf account. She performed a hand gesture dance with special effects, wishing her friends a happy Year of the Rabbit. She was quite skilled in the movements, so she was no problem at all with these new and trendy ways of playing.

The story of Second Aunt and TikTok is somewhat difficult to trace.

In 2018, my second aunt had already started using TikTok. She filmed herself for fun, lip-synced, and played with filters. At a party in 2019, I first felt her love for shooting short videos. That time, our family went hiking in the spring, and she took selfies with everyone. At the top of the mountain, we looked out at the distant mountains and felt the fresh air. She sat alone and started to edit videos with those selfies, without looking up for a long time.

In most people's eyes, my second aunt is a person who is vigorous and sometimes aggressive. Although she is thin and small, she always has a strong spirit to support her family and friends. She is the "anti-bullying fighter" in my life. She is also good-looking and popular in the surrounding area. Perhaps it is this spirit that made her like Douyin and devote herself to it.

From 2019 to 2020, it can be regarded as the rising period of Second Aunt's Douyin career. From shooting alone to taking relatives and friends to shoot, Second Aunt almost never missed the hot topics on Douyin. She showed her square dance career in short videos, and she would interact enthusiastically when someone left a message for her. During that time, the first video that relatives and friends saw when they opened the Douyin App must be updated by Second Aunt.

My second aunt who is good at playing the Internet has become the most fashionable person in the family. Every time we have a party, she will come up with one or two short video ideas and ask everyone to cooperate in shooting. Every time we hear her say, "Let's shoot a Douyin video!", we know that everyone will be busy for another ten minutes.

Second Aunt worked very hard to update videos and interact with others. Second Aunt's account began to appear on the recommendation page of every Douyin App in the town, and the number of followers on the account quickly increased from a few hundred to three or four thousand. Before the account officially began to be commercialized, her number of followers had reached 8,000 - a very surprising number in a small town.

Most of her 8,000 followers are from the town. To some extent, Second Aunt has become the "short video benchmark" in the town. Whenever she updates a short video, her neighbors will shoot videos with similar themes. I often hear Second Aunt express pride because of the imitation behavior of her neighbors.

At the dinner party, when we young people questioned her short video aesthetics, she would take out her Douyin personal homepage and show us the video interaction data. These were her best rebuttals to the opposing opinions.

As the number of fans gradually increases and after a few years of settling down, Second Aunt will also start to think about how to make money from the account.

In June and July 2022, my aunt saw some short videos on Douyin that showed products. In my aunt's opinion, a simple video display, plus a yellow cart in the window, could make a few dollars per order - such a commercial attempt did not seem difficult.

So, next time she saw the Douyin videos of such media companies, she took the initiative to send private messages to the operation staff to learn about the situation. They can provide video materials, guide bloggers to open showcases, and carry out subsequent operations, editing, and commercialization, charging a one-time fee of 6,800 yuan.

The price made my second aunt give up immediately.

But a few days later, another person added her WeChat and provided the same service. For a fee of 800 yuan, she could receive one video material every day, and for another 2,200 yuan, she could be assigned a tutor for comprehensive training.

When relatives and friends knew that my second aunt was ready to pay, they all advised her not to pay, but she still paid the 3,000 yuan without hesitation.

Since I like making videos and playing Douyin so much, why not spend some time to make it a career? Thinking this way, the second aunt started her own learning journey.

2. Second Auntie's live broadcast, family members support her

Since then, Second Aunt has officially entered the self-media industry.

She hid all the videos she had taken in the past, just like hiding her past self. She synchronized the new products she uploaded every day in the family WeChat group, letting us choose and buy them, and also shared her learning experience with us.

She was eager to do something big.

As for the "teaching service" she purchased, the instructor opened a window for her, stuffed 8,000 zombie fans, and began to teach her how to edit videos and find materials. But for Eryi, this series of work was too difficult. She collected videos on Taobao, edited them together and sent them out, and spent several hours every day looking for materials and editing.

According to the contract they signed, the company would provide a video of the material every day for three months. But in the actual process, Eryi found that the resolution of the videos they provided was extremely low, and sometimes, they could not pass the review of the Douyin background because of the blurry picture quality.

Videos on Second Aunt's Home Page

"It was moved too many times, and the clarity is very poor," Eryi recalled. "All my editing experience now was learned in another live broadcast room later."

Second Aunt accidentally came across that live broadcast room, where the host introduced the editing ideas and how to use the software in a detailed and thorough manner. After that, she began to follow the host in the live broadcast room to use the Jianying App to edit videos. Her editing skills improved by leaps and bounds, and she could complete the editing work that used to take several hours in 20 minutes.

But because of this, she had some arguments with her tutor. After they said a few unpleasant words to each other, their cooperative relationship ended very unpleasantly, and the 3,000 yuan "tuition" could not be refunded.

I recall that on a weekday evening in August 2022, my second aunt found me in Beijing and wanted me to teach her how to edit videos. At that time, she had no idea how to use editing software like Jianying, and I was busy with work, so I asked her to come to me when she encountered specific problems. Unexpectedly, she mastered the craft herself not long after.

Second Aunt kept in mind many of the things her mentor had told her. For example, the content of the account must be vertical. If you want to buy goods and make household products, don't post your daily content; actively starting some live broadcasts will help attract traffic to the account and increase activity. You can start live broadcasts whenever you have nothing to do.

My second aunt works in the town government and is the captain and soul of the square dance team. Because she has many fans, she is often responsible for some extra publicity work. The town’s anti-drug propaganda, fire prevention and flood prevention propaganda, etc., sometimes ask her to post on her own account; she also posts about the square dance team’s daily training and pre-match rehearsals to interact with her sisters.

"I used to be very influential in local content, and usually a video I posted would get 700 to 800 likes. But now I have no choice but to open a small account to post daily life content, and now I only have a hundred or so fans." Second Aunt's job position has also undergone some adjustments this year. She no longer needs to do related publicity work, and similar video content no longer needs to be posted on Douyin.

When she first started selling goods, she would do a live broadcast in the evening: after dinner, she would walk to the town's playground, set up a mobile phone stand and start live broadcasting, and dance square dance with her friends in the live broadcast room. She would not always pay attention to what the audience in the live broadcast room said, and would stop dancing when she was tired, and then reply to the messages.

Although they are called audience members in the live broadcast room, they are actually family members, real family members, not a slogan-like family like “Lao Tie 666”.

My mother, my cousin, and I competed for the top spot in the live broadcast room all year round. We gave out free gifts every day and occasionally recharged a few dollars. We just did it for fun. After broadcasting more than 20 times, we only earned 70 or 80 yuan. Later, we stopped live streaming.

It was the end of summer, the best time for square dancing, so my cousin and I stayed in the live broadcast room every day. My second aunt was dancing square dance on the screen, and my cousin and I chatted in the live broadcast room, occasionally sending gifts and calling my second aunt to interact, as if we had become each other's "electronic pets".

Search for "Video Sales" on the Douyin App

At the window, for every transaction, the amount that my second aunt can get ranges from 1 yuan to 8 yuan, and she can earn dozens of yuan every day.

A considerable number of the products hanging in my second aunt's window were also ordered by relatives and friends. According to incomplete statistics, the things my mother has bought from my second aunt's window include but are not limited to slippers, garbage bags, paper towels, towels, etc. My mother thinks that there are really only a few products that are satisfactory in quality or cost-effective.

Since Eryi has only been selling products for a short time and her account level is low, she can only apply for limited trial products in the Douyin Mall selection square, and it is difficult to guarantee the quality of the products hung in the window. But at least she is satisfied with many of the samples she has tried. "One product is linked to many merchants, and the products are many and diverse. Although they have taught me how to choose products, they are often unable to guarantee it."

3. “Forget it then”

Second Aunt’s business of selling goods came to an abrupt end. Her eyes couldn’t take it anymore.

One day in November 2022, when my second aunt woke up in the morning, she suddenly couldn’t see anything clearly. “I didn’t go to bed until I finished editing the video the night before.” She still feels a little palpitating when she talks about it now. Due to her age and excessive eye use, my second aunt’s presbyopia worsened sharply that morning.

This sudden "presbyopia incident" made her consider stopping this side job.

Nowadays, although my second aunt’s daily life has not been affected too much, when she occasionally plays mahjong or watches Douyin, she still has to move her head away and squint her eyes to see clearly.

The "tuition fee" issue that her family was most concerned about had already been paid back. Including the 500 yuan that had not yet been withdrawn from her second aunt's account, she had earned back the 3,000 yuan in teaching fees she had spent before in the few months of selling goods through short videos. This put her and those around her at ease.

"In the past six months, I spent 3,000 yuan learning how to sell products, and got 3,000 yuan in return, without making a penny." said the second aunt.

Everything started quietly and ended quietly.

Second Aunt has stopped updating the account that sells goods, but there are too many videos of selling goods accumulated, and it is difficult to hide and delete them one by one. She has not considered using that account again, but continues to update some daily content on the small account. The original window still has products hanging, and occasionally one or two commissions can be seen in the account.

Maybe this experience took up too much of her energy, so for this new account, Second Aunt did not consider increasing followers or improving influence. She just wanted to go back to her past state of happily shooting videos.

Second Aunt’s experience in selling products over the past six months has not received much blessing from the beginning. Most family members feel that they have been cheated and that her account cannot make any money at all.

I have to admit that when I heard the words "vertical content" and "local content" from my second aunt, I was a little unresponsive as I come into contact with these words on a daily basis. However, it was during this discussion that my second aunt's seriousness in researching Douyin content began to emerge.

She did work hard, but she lacked some luck and opportunities. Limitations did exist, but there were gaps for her to break through.

After talking with my second aunt, I seem to be more likely to pay attention to elements related to live streaming in my hometown.

In the commercial center, I often see vans recruiting Tik Tok anchors. There is a red advertisement on the van that says "Douyin anchor recruitment van", but when I look closer, I never see anyone inside. They are just parked on the roadside or under trees. The Tik Tok logo is on the body of the van, and sometimes there are stickers saying "free training" and "favorable treatment", which is really tempting.

Image source:

One midnight, after having supper, I walked into a small supermarket. The cashier was sitting at the table, warming herself by the fire, with her hands and feet tucked under the table and her phone clamped on a phone holder. She was watching a live broadcast. A male teacher explained the platform's streaming rules for live broadcasts and short videos in a high-pitched and passionate tone, repeatedly emphasizing "don't stop updating" and "must persist". Even after I said "check out" twice, the boss suddenly reacted and paid for me.

I find these details very interesting. We may have seen many cases of people achieving economic freedom by doing self-media sideline business, and there are endless stories of gold coins colliding, but in the broadest content pool, those who really want to make some extra money and supplement their family income are always ordinary people.

Regarding the video of "Call me handsome", my second aunt did not post it in the end.

She and I sat by the hot stove, spending more than ten minutes figuring out how to separate the audio, and another ten minutes editing the video separately, but the final result was still not able to make the audio and video match, so we had to give up. During this half hour, relatives came and went with tobacco and tea, and no one lowered their heads to pay attention to us.

When I persuaded my second aunt to give up, I felt a little reluctant. After all, we had filmed for so long and spent money on hiring extras. My second aunt put her phone away, squinted at the video in the editing, and said with a smile: "Forget it then."

Author: Ouyang, Editor: Shi Can

Source: Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe), observation and research on the Internet content industry.