Identity and Transcendence of Urban Bottom Layer in “Kuai-Shou” App

Abstract

In the article “Cruel Stories of Bottom: Rural China in a Video Social Media” published online, the author describes, with great length, contents about self-torture, eye-catching and crude etc. on “Kuai-Shou”, rendering “cruel and absurd scenes” for us. Under the circumstance, “Kuai-Shou”, a short video social media and its users have been pushed to the centre of public opinion. “Kuai-Shou” seems to have become a place where full of “vulgar perform”, and its users are also labeled “vulgar”. But is that true? This paper use data research and literature analysis to explore the deep problems behind the phenomenon of “Kuai-Shou” app. 1. Kuai-Shou: Rapidly rising short video social media According to iiMedia research, in the ranking of the percentage of active users of China short video app in 2017Q1, “Kuai-Shou” topped the list, with a significant advantage of 7.63 percentage of active users. Kuai-Shou formerly known as “GIF Kuai-Shou”, which was born in March 2011 as a mobile phone app used to make and share GIFs. In October 2013, Kuai-Shou officially decided to make short video social media, since then Kuai-Shou users began to rapid and stable growth. In June 2015, Kuai-Shou users exceeded 100 million, according to official data. After 8 months, the number of users reached 300 million. By this year, the number of Kuai-Shou users has reached 700 million, with more than 100 million daily activity, far more than other any other short video social media. There are several reasons that contribute such rapid growth. First is the development of technology. Since the advent of the Internet, it has expanded rapidly throughout the world. China officially became a member of countries which Internet is full-featured. After twenty years of development, China’s Internet popularity has rapid increased. According to the 43rd China Internet Development Statistics Report released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), as of December 2018, the number of Internet users in China reached 829 million, and the Internet popularity reached 59.6%. At the same time, the number of people who own smartphone in China is doubling year by year. The report shows that the scale of China’s mobile netizens has reached 817 million. Short video social media, based on the Internet and smartphones, has also seen its own boom in the past two years. As a pioneer in this industry, Kuai-Shou naturally can also grow quickly. Second is the choice of target audience. At present, most of short video social media users are concentrated in first-tier and secondtier cities, which to a certain extent ignored vast rural areas and a large number of urban fringe community needs. According to the China Statistical Bulletin on National Economic and Social Development in 2018, reported by National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2018, the total population of mainland China was 139.538 million, of which 831.37 million were resident in urban areas and 56.401 million were registered in rural areas. The rural populations accounting for 40.42 percent, it can be said that this group has a great development value. Based on the blank point of this market, Kuai-Shou can quickly occupy the rural areas. “Some people interpret the emergence of Kuai-Shou as a kind of hunting for novelty victory, because it contrast to reality strongly generated users’ peeping psychology. Cao, who worked as a product manager at Tencent, says Kuai-Shou is the second Internet product to attract spontaneous contributions from thirdand fourth-tier cities, even rural groups. Too many Internet product products overlooked this part of users at the start.” 2nd International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 369