How do these Chinese Content Farms, where dozens of people sit packed in front of selfie rings in dilapidated locations, work? What are they streaming?

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How do these Chinese Content Farms, where dozens of people sit packed in front of selfie rings in dilapidated locations, work? What are they streaming?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Very simple OP. Para social relationships that pray on desperate men in a country with a massive disparity between male and female genders. Desperate men pay money for attention from their favourite streamer which then leads them to pay more money the more attention they get. The amount of money involve here is pretty massive and is entirely controlled by influencer “agencies” that essentially force these women to work around the clock generating donations. It’s basically social online prostitution. Most of the women after awhile get completely burnt out mentally and turn into a husk of their former selves.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Very simple OP. Para social relationships that pray on desperate men in a country with a massive disparity between male and female genders. Desperate men pay money for attention from their favourite streamer which then leads them to pay more money the more attention they get. The amount of money involve here is pretty massive and is entirely controlled by influencer “agencies” that essentially force these women to work around the clock generating donations. It’s basically social online prostitution. Most of the women after awhile get completely burnt out mentally and turn into a husk of their former selves.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Most of these content farms brand themselves as “media” companies that are basically providing a form of entertainment with their trained hosts…some will even have under their brand, personalities that specialise in online selling of products (product influencers) etc

Im sure you’ve probably seen the video of rows of girls sitting on concrete floors in an unrenovated office building doing their thing but the majority of them definitely arent located in dilapidated locations…many are located in upscale apartments or office buildings where these locations are cordoned off into smaller rooms/personal filming spaces for the hosts…after all, they are selling a certain image and it’s not a good look to have the streamer all dolled up with a shitty backdrop

If you want to experience these streams for yourselves, just download tantan (Chinese tinder) or momo (another social app) and then change your location to china and you should be able to access these streams…you’ll know which streams these are by the headshots of these influencers that are heavily photoshopped and filtered

The reason I recommend these two apps is because they are used mainly to interact with the other sex…and it will be on here where the streams really demonstrate the para-social aspects of the relationship between the host and viewer…there are other apps like Xiao hong shu (little red book) which focus more on selling products etc or may have a host trained to sell/model clothing that would attract sales from girls and then flirt on the side and talk about their lives to attract the lonely males

Males go on tantan and momo to look for girls…and many will be regulars of these girls’ streams…if you watch any of the higly ranked streams long enough, you’ll start seeing viewers showering these girls with gifts that come in the form of digitized stickers like cars or yachts or bouquet of roses etc…all of which cost a shit ton of real life money to buy…for example a bouquet of roses could cost 99 RMB while a yacht could cost 999RMB (160USD or so)

I remember watching a stream of a girl playing the Chinese zither (harplike instrument)…she was beautiful and would wear revealing outfits while playing the instrument…no joke, she would make thousands of (US) dollars for performing a couple of hours each night (if she even felt like streaming at all)…she’d chat most of the time to her viewers and play a couple of tunes here and there…I was gobsmacked how easily she was raking it in

If you don’t have a certain talent, then for the most part, these girls would have to rely on their looks and charms…it’ll just be an endless stream of fake laughing, pouty eyes and duck lips…they may sing a song now and then…invite other streamers to chat and play games and other mundane stuff like that…it really just takes one or two big spending whales to get hooked and these girls will be comfortably hitting the monthly targets set by their companies and sharing in the wealth…as another poster mentioned, the sad thing is that many big spenders are actually lonely guys that can ill afford this type of lavishness but do it in the hopes of winning the girls affection

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most of these content farms brand themselves as “media” companies that are basically providing a form of entertainment with their trained hosts…some will even have under their brand, personalities that specialise in online selling of products (product influencers) etc

Im sure you’ve probably seen the video of rows of girls sitting on concrete floors in an unrenovated office building doing their thing but the majority of them definitely arent located in dilapidated locations…many are located in upscale apartments or office buildings where these locations are cordoned off into smaller rooms/personal filming spaces for the hosts…after all, they are selling a certain image and it’s not a good look to have the streamer all dolled up with a shitty backdrop

If you want to experience these streams for yourselves, just download tantan (Chinese tinder) or momo (another social app) and then change your location to china and you should be able to access these streams…you’ll know which streams these are by the headshots of these influencers that are heavily photoshopped and filtered

The reason I recommend these two apps is because they are used mainly to interact with the other sex…and it will be on here where the streams really demonstrate the para-social aspects of the relationship between the host and viewer…there are other apps like Xiao hong shu (little red book) which focus more on selling products etc or may have a host trained to sell/model clothing that would attract sales from girls and then flirt on the side and talk about their lives to attract the lonely males

Males go on tantan and momo to look for girls…and many will be regulars of these girls’ streams…if you watch any of the higly ranked streams long enough, you’ll start seeing viewers showering these girls with gifts that come in the form of digitized stickers like cars or yachts or bouquet of roses etc…all of which cost a shit ton of real life money to buy…for example a bouquet of roses could cost 99 RMB while a yacht could cost 999RMB (160USD or so)

I remember watching a stream of a girl playing the Chinese zither (harplike instrument)…she was beautiful and would wear revealing outfits while playing the instrument…no joke, she would make thousands of (US) dollars for performing a couple of hours each night (if she even felt like streaming at all)…she’d chat most of the time to her viewers and play a couple of tunes here and there…I was gobsmacked how easily she was raking it in

If you don’t have a certain talent, then for the most part, these girls would have to rely on their looks and charms…it’ll just be an endless stream of fake laughing, pouty eyes and duck lips…they may sing a song now and then…invite other streamers to chat and play games and other mundane stuff like that…it really just takes one or two big spending whales to get hooked and these girls will be comfortably hitting the monthly targets set by their companies and sharing in the wealth…as another poster mentioned, the sad thing is that many big spenders are actually lonely guys that can ill afford this type of lavishness but do it in the hopes of winning the girls affection

Anonymous 0 Comments

Chinese content farms typically employ large numbers of people to create and stream live video content, often through platforms like Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and Kuaishou. The content can vary widely, but often includes performances such as singing, dancing, or comedy routines, as well as mundane activities like eating, chatting, or playing games. These content farms operate on a business model that rewards popular streamers with gifts or cash from fans, and the platform takes a cut of the earnings. The conditions in these farms can be harsh, with workers often working long hours in crowded and uncomfortable environments in order to produce as much content as possible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Chinese content farms typically employ large numbers of people to create and stream live video content, often through platforms like Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and Kuaishou. The content can vary widely, but often includes performances such as singing, dancing, or comedy routines, as well as mundane activities like eating, chatting, or playing games. These content farms operate on a business model that rewards popular streamers with gifts or cash from fans, and the platform takes a cut of the earnings. The conditions in these farms can be harsh, with workers often working long hours in crowded and uncomfortable environments in order to produce as much content as possible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The big gap between streaming in China as opposed to in the west, is the way it’s viewed. In the US people dream of becoming a star, and work mostly individually online to do so. In China, the career is more guided by agencies and companies. In the U.S., streamers make most of their own money, while in China they are beholden to companies and often only receive a small share as they are coached on appealing to a wider audience.

The relationship between streamers and users is also a different, significantly more para-social than the usual streams on twitch.

As an example of this effect in microcosm, take the live streaming of young women on Chinese websites.

From the audience perspective, in wide swaths of china, poorer men, who have little chances of a romantic match given the gender disparity, often engage with streamers, for the chances to feel like they’re the big brother to a little sister, like they matter to them. Being a big brother often means spending money to “save” their streamers. **The more you spend,** **the more well respected you are, both to the streamers** ***and to the online communities surrounding them***. That last piece applies not just to the specific form of streaming targeted at young lonely poor men, but to nearly every variety of streaming in China. In theory, however, this acting as a “big brother” is a fabrication the streamers keep up, a joke everyone but the most devoted viewers are in on, like simps for streamers in the west, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

From the perspective of the young women streamers, those viewers actually **are** acting as big brothers, paying to ensure their job and position, their increasing rise in their agency or organization. Furthermore, to increase popularity, **many young women engage in punishment games**. For an idea, think the sort of excessive embarrassment found on Japanese game shows, except significantly more malicious. Remember, **these women are beholden to their agencies**, so they can’t simply ignore pushes toward that sort of content. They put themselves essentially at risk to increase views, and hope that their more well paying clients come through. Many of these women are being manipulated emotionally by those companies to **view their audience as “big brothers”**. This sort of two-way street makes for a significantly better paying audience, with plenty who can barely afford their current lifestyle dipping further into their pockets to “save” their streamers.

The end result is that many of the para-social relationships developed here spread to far more of the streamer’s lives than otherwise, their streams become not just about content but about their lives in every sense. Things like “she actually had a boyfriend” are incredibly uncommon as a result, many of these kinds of streamers themselves don’t draw the necessary boundaries to have separate public and private lives.

The market for that kind of “younger sister” streaming is **fucking huge**, and that “big brother” portion, and the associated risks of failure, given that many of these streamers aren’t necessarily wealthy to begin with, and are hoping not just to become a star, but to escape problematic financial conditions in a country with limited social safety nets, results less in a “city of dreams” scenario like hollywood, but instead in the sort of desperation that drives people to move under bridges for streaming to maximize payoff. That sort of desperation is the main reason they’ll go so far.

To be honest I’m barely scratching to surface of one sector of streaming in China, I hadn’t even gotten to the sexualization present given the lack of (legally) available porn in China

If you want to learn more about streaming in China more generally try the documentary

*People’s Republic of Desire*

For more about this type of streaming specifically, there was a recent paper published on the subject, [Livestreaming love games](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351738937_Playing_live-streaming_’love_games’_mediated_intimacy_and_desperational_labour_in_digital_China)

Anonymous 0 Comments

The big gap between streaming in China as opposed to in the west, is the way it’s viewed. In the US people dream of becoming a star, and work mostly individually online to do so. In China, the career is more guided by agencies and companies. In the U.S., streamers make most of their own money, while in China they are beholden to companies and often only receive a small share as they are coached on appealing to a wider audience.

The relationship between streamers and users is also a different, significantly more para-social than the usual streams on twitch.

As an example of this effect in microcosm, take the live streaming of young women on Chinese websites.

From the audience perspective, in wide swaths of china, poorer men, who have little chances of a romantic match given the gender disparity, often engage with streamers, for the chances to feel like they’re the big brother to a little sister, like they matter to them. Being a big brother often means spending money to “save” their streamers. **The more you spend,** **the more well respected you are, both to the streamers** ***and to the online communities surrounding them***. That last piece applies not just to the specific form of streaming targeted at young lonely poor men, but to nearly every variety of streaming in China. In theory, however, this acting as a “big brother” is a fabrication the streamers keep up, a joke everyone but the most devoted viewers are in on, like simps for streamers in the west, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

From the perspective of the young women streamers, those viewers actually **are** acting as big brothers, paying to ensure their job and position, their increasing rise in their agency or organization. Furthermore, to increase popularity, **many young women engage in punishment games**. For an idea, think the sort of excessive embarrassment found on Japanese game shows, except significantly more malicious. Remember, **these women are beholden to their agencies**, so they can’t simply ignore pushes toward that sort of content. They put themselves essentially at risk to increase views, and hope that their more well paying clients come through. Many of these women are being manipulated emotionally by those companies to **view their audience as “big brothers”**. This sort of two-way street makes for a significantly better paying audience, with plenty who can barely afford their current lifestyle dipping further into their pockets to “save” their streamers.

The end result is that many of the para-social relationships developed here spread to far more of the streamer’s lives than otherwise, their streams become not just about content but about their lives in every sense. Things like “she actually had a boyfriend” are incredibly uncommon as a result, many of these kinds of streamers themselves don’t draw the necessary boundaries to have separate public and private lives.

The market for that kind of “younger sister” streaming is **fucking huge**, and that “big brother” portion, and the associated risks of failure, given that many of these streamers aren’t necessarily wealthy to begin with, and are hoping not just to become a star, but to escape problematic financial conditions in a country with limited social safety nets, results less in a “city of dreams” scenario like hollywood, but instead in the sort of desperation that drives people to move under bridges for streaming to maximize payoff. That sort of desperation is the main reason they’ll go so far.

To be honest I’m barely scratching to surface of one sector of streaming in China, I hadn’t even gotten to the sexualization present given the lack of (legally) available porn in China

If you want to learn more about streaming in China more generally try the documentary

*People’s Republic of Desire*

For more about this type of streaming specifically, there was a recent paper published on the subject, [Livestreaming love games](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351738937_Playing_live-streaming_’love_games’_mediated_intimacy_and_desperational_labour_in_digital_China)