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.

李子柒是中外网民熟悉的名字，她凭借在网上分享中国味道的诗意生活走红。在她分享的视频中，不同网友感受到了不同的东西：田园牧歌、返璞归真、传统文化、追逐梦想……

短视频社区里有很多跟李子柒一样的姑娘。能做到这些事的姑娘有很多，只是李子柒被看见后，也就不再是李佳佳。

“被看见”意味着你做再奇怪的事，都能找到同好。

河北小伙耿帅有个更为人熟知的名字——“手工耿”，他用600个螺母做了一挺机枪，24小时内刷播超过百万次，涨了10万粉丝，他觉得这是件很神奇的事情，因为他们村也只有5000人。手工耿做的那些无用至极的东西，莫名触动了人们的兴趣。

40岁、小学毕业，辽宁铁岭农民老朱造了一架“空客A320”。一下子火了，空姐、搞装修的、卖保温材料的，也有货真价实做航空配件的……都关注他的“事迹”，其实，最初他只是想开一家飞机主题的烧烤餐厅，就叫了5个兄弟，买了50吨钢材，在家附近的废旧厂房开始造，并用快手记录每天的进程。没想到，一个干巴巴的钢筋焊接视频竟然吸引了许多具有同样爱好的人。老朱和他的“飞机”火了以后，好多人找 他打广告，有的只要在飞机上粘几个字就能赚6000元。

“被看见”意味着小人物也能做大生意，隔着屏幕，没人知道你是谁，抛去头衔，只拼“专业”。

计算机专业毕业的小乔和砖厂退休的父亲老乔，正在职业创作以陕西美食为主题的短视频，拥有412万粉丝，在不到一年的时间里卖出3万多瓶油泼辣子。被粉丝称为胡歌和吕子乔结合体的重庆男孩浩东，其短视频风格也有如电视剧《爱情公寓》一般的情感和喜剧效果，他的自热小火锅推出三四个月就有了200万元销售额。

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.

“被看见”意味着乡村和城市之间只隔着越来越薄的屏幕。

贵州省黎平县盖宝村的第一书记吴玉圣，是“浪漫侗家七仙女”这个短视频账号的运营者。拍短视频、做直播，在传统观念中并不被认为是一个正经职业，他费了好大功夫，才让村民接受他的想法，村中的7个女孩化身古老神话中的“七仙女”，宣传美丽侗寨。依靠26万粉丝，村民卖土特产、民族服饰。2018年年底，盖宝村实现全面脱贫。

在玉狗梁村短视频出现之前，没人会把农民、老人、瑜伽、扶贫这些词联系到一起。河北张家口玉狗梁村书记卢文震，曾经被人当成一个笑话——他的扶贫方式，居然是带着老人练瑜伽。最初他只是想组织大家练习瑜伽来锻炼身体，然而当短视频在网上传播后，网友们惊讶地发现，80多岁的老人能灵活自如地掰弄自己的手脚，一群平均年龄70岁的老太太能做一字马，还能轻轻松松把脚盘到脑后。老人练瑜伽就不仅能健身了，还能变现。除了吸引来自海内外的游客，“玉狗梁瑜伽老太”不到半年时间就积累了15.6万粉丝，上线了一套瑜伽教程，一个月卖出1000多套，收益2万多元。

互联网的核心资源是注意力，但这是一个分配不均的资源，毕竟“网红”就那么几个，而且代际更新迅速；但若没有互联网，我们大多数人可能一生都得不到关注。以快手、抖音为代表的短视频平台，让注意力有机会分配到一些过去没有机会的人身上。

快手创始人兼CEO宿华有个爱好——拉二胡，曾经拉到半夜2点，邻居大爷早上碰到他，说：“娃娃，你昨天拉得不错。”宿华当时没听出来这是在说他扰民。现在，宿华已经没有时间拉二胡了，但是他在快手上关注了一个大爷，所有视频都是大爷一个人拉二胡，已经有9万粉丝。

“被看见”，原来是一种如此巨大的能量。