The Power of Visibility

By Bai Jianjian

Li Ziqi, a vlogger and internet celebrity, is known for her videos displaying her poetic lifestyle with Chinese flavor on the Internet.Netizens see lots of beautiful things in her videos: pastoral life,traditional cultures, a simple and natural lifestyle, and her dreams...

There are lots of girls like Li Ziqi in the short video community. What Li does in her videos may be just part of a normal life for some living in the countryside, but what makes her different and known is that she has successfully reached millions.

To some degree, in the economy of attention, if you have the visibility, then no matter how strange a thing you do, you can find followers.

Geng Shuai, a man from Hebei Province has a well-known screen name-“Handmaker Geng.” He made a Gatling gun model out of 600 steel nuts by hand. In 24 hours, his video of the gunmaking process was played more than a million times and gained him 100,000 fans. He was amazed by the large number of hits, as the village he lives in only has a population of 5000.While seemingly insignificant, the things he makes have inexplicably aroused people’s interest.

Mr. Zhu, a 40-year-old farmer living in Tieling,Liaoning Province, received poor schooling, but built a fullscale replica of the Airbus A320 and displayed it online. All of a sudden, he became popular.Stewardesses, decorators,sellers of insulation materials,and even sellers of real aviation accessories were all attracted to his work. Originally, Zhu only wanted to open an airplanethemed barbecue restaurant.Together with his 5 friends, he started building the replica in a deserted factory near his home with 50 tons of steel he bought,while using Kuaishou, a popular video-sharing mobile app, to record their daily progress.Unexpectedly, their videos on welding the steel framing attracted wide attention from many people with the same interests. After Mr. Zhu and his“aircraft” went viral, many people contacted him for ads, and some would even offer him up to 6,000 yuan for posting just a few words on Zhu’s airplane surface.

Once they have the visibility,these internet personalities,no matter where they are from,have an opportunity to do great business. Across the screen, no one knows who you are. Titles are not important at all, as your audience only cares about your work and your professionalism.

李子柒是中外網民熟悉的名字，她憑借在網上分享中國味道的詩意生活走紅。在她分享的視頻中，不同網友感受到了不同的東西：田園牧歌、返璞歸真、傳統文化、追逐夢想……

短視頻社區里有很多跟李子柒一樣的姑娘。能做到這些事的姑娘有很多，只是李子柒被看見后，也就不再是李佳佳。

“被看見”意味著你做再奇怪的事，都能找到同好。

河北小伙耿帥有個更為人熟知的名字——“手工耿”，他用600個螺母做了一挺機槍，24小時內刷播超過百萬次，漲了10萬粉絲，他覺得這是件很神奇的事情，因為他們村也只有5000人。手工耿做的那些無用至極的東西，莫名觸動了人們的興趣。

40歲、小學畢業，遼寧鐵嶺農民老朱造了一架“空客A320”。一下子火了，空姐、搞裝修的、賣保溫材料的，也有貨真價實做航空配件的……都關注他的“事跡”，其實，最初他只是想開一家飛機主題的燒烤餐廳，就叫了5個兄弟，買了50噸鋼材，在家附近的廢舊廠房開始造，并用快手記錄每天的進程。沒想到，一個干巴巴的鋼筋焊接視頻竟然吸引了許多具有同樣愛好的人。老朱和他的“飛機”火了以后，好多人找 他打廣告，有的只要在飛機上粘幾個字就能賺6000元。

“被看見”意味著小人物也能做大生意，隔著屏幕，沒人知道你是誰，拋去頭銜，只拼“專業”。

計算機專業畢業的小喬和磚廠退休的父親老喬，正在職業創作以陜西美食為主題的短視頻，擁有412萬粉絲，在不到一年的時間里賣出3萬多瓶油潑辣子。被粉絲稱為胡歌和呂子喬結合體的重慶男孩浩東，其短視頻風格也有如電視劇《愛情公寓》一般的情感和喜劇效果，他的自熱小火鍋推出三四個月就有了200萬元銷售額。

Little Qiao, a graduate in computer science, and Old Qiao,his father who retired from a Brick Factory, shoot short videos about Shaanxi cuisine. They have 4.12 million fans and have sold more than 30,000 bottles of oil and spicy pepper in less than a year. Haodong, a boy from Chongqing, who is depicted as a combination of famous Chinese celebrities Hu Ge and Lyu Ziqiao by fans, has vested his short videos with a style that has the same emotional and comedic effect as the TV seriesiPartment(Lovers Apartment). His revenue from sales of self-help hot pot has reached 2 million yuan in just three to four months.

With their visibility online,the distance between rural villagers and urban citizens is only separated by a thin screen.

Wu Yusheng, the first secretary of Gaibao Village, Liping County,Guizhou Province, is the owner of the short video account “Seven Fairies of Dong Nationality.” In the past, the businesses of video shooting and live broadcasts were not considered mainstream professions. It took him a lot of effort before the villagers accepted his ideas. Seven girls from the village dressed up as the “seven fairies” of the ancient origin myth of the Dong ethnic group for a video, which greatly promoted the beautiful Dong Village. Relying on 260,000 fans, the villagers can now sell local products and ethnic costumes. By the end of 2018, the village had achieved the goal of complete poverty alleviation.

In addition, before a short video about Yugouliang Village,Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province went online, no one would associate the words “farmers,”“elderly,” “yoga,” and “poverty alleviation” together. Lu Wenzhen, secretary of the village,was once regarded as ridiculous for his idea to have the elderly practice yoga as a means of poverty alleviation. At first, he just wanted to get people together to practice yoga for the sake of physical strength. However, when a short video about their practice was spread on the Internet,netizens were surprised to find that the 80-something folks could flexibly twist their hands and feet, and that the old ladies could do the splits and easily put their feet behind their heads.Thus, with their yoga videos, the old villagers have not only kept fit, but also made money. Apart from attracting tourists to the village, the “Yoga Grannies” have accumulated 156,000 online fans in less than half a year. They launched a set of yoga tutorials online which sold more than 1,000 copies in a month, gaining a profit of more than 20,000 yuan.

Attention is the core resource on the Internet. However, this resource is unevenly distributed.It only makes a few celebrities at a time, and they keep changing to new faces. Without the Internet,most of us would probably not be able to get even a small share of such attention in our lifetime.

Short video platforms represented by Kuaishou and TikTok can facilitate people who had no chance to promote themselves in the past to get attention now.

Su Hua, founder and CEO of Kuaishou, used to play the erhu, a bowed, 2-string Chinese instrument. He once was playing at 2 o’clock in the morning. The next day, an old neighbor said to him, “Boy! You did a good job last night.” At that moment, Su didn’t realize that it was a hint suggesting him not to disturb neighbors again in the nighttime.Now, Su no longer has time for the erhu, but on Kuaishou he has followed a grandpa who plays the erhu in all his videos and has attracted 90,000 fans.

The power of visibility is amazing in today’s economy of attention.

“被看見”意味著鄉村和城市之間只隔著越來越薄的屏幕。

貴州省黎平縣蓋寶村的第一書記吳玉圣，是“浪漫侗家七仙女”這個短視頻賬號的運營者。拍短視頻、做直播，在傳統觀念中并不被認為是一個正經職業，他費了好大功夫，才讓村民接受他的想法，村中的7個女孩化身古老神話中的“七仙女”，宣傳美麗侗寨。依靠26萬粉絲，村民賣土特產、民族服飾。2018年年底，蓋寶村實現全面脫貧。

在玉狗梁村短視頻出現之前，沒人會把農民、老人、瑜伽、扶貧這些詞聯系到一起。河北張家口玉狗梁村書記盧文震，曾經被人當成一個笑話——他的扶貧方式，居然是帶著老人練瑜伽。最初他只是想組織大家練習瑜伽來鍛煉身體，然而當短視頻在網上傳播后，網友們驚訝地發現，80多歲的老人能靈活自如地掰弄自己的手腳，一群平均年齡70歲的老太太能做一字馬，還能輕輕松松把腳盤到腦后。老人練瑜伽就不僅能健身了，還能變現。除了吸引來自海內外的游客，“玉狗梁瑜伽老太”不到半年時間就積累了15.6萬粉絲，上線了一套瑜伽教程，一個月賣出1000多套，收益2萬多元。

互聯網的核心資源是注意力，但這是一個分配不均的資源，畢竟“網紅”就那么幾個，而且代際更新迅速；但若沒有互聯網，我們大多數人可能一生都得不到關注。以快手、抖音為代表的短視頻平臺，讓注意力有機會分配到一些過去沒有機會的人身上。

快手創始人兼CEO宿華有個愛好——拉二胡，曾經拉到半夜2點，鄰居大爺早上碰到他，說：“娃娃，你昨天拉得不錯。”宿華當時沒聽出來這是在說他擾民。現在，宿華已經沒有時間拉二胡了，但是他在快手上關注了一個大爺，所有視頻都是大爺一個人拉二胡，已經有9萬粉絲。

“被看見”，原來是一種如此巨大的能量。