Who has made money by being "abstract" on Xiaohongshu?

Written by Zhong Yixuan

Edited by Qiao Qian

This week, Xiaohongshu officially released the 2024 annual keyword - "Abstract".

One set of data is that in 2024, Xiaohongshu has more than 10 million notes about abstract, and the reading volume of the notes is 7.2 times that of last year; the number of comments about "engaging in abstract" in the community exceeds 160 million, which is 102 times that of last year.

This is a rather interesting topic. Xiaohongshu is a platform with a DAU (Daily Active User) of over 100 million, which is sufficient to give birth to some public behaviors, events, and value orientations. And what a company chooses to let its users see, spread, and retain is not only the individual power of text and creation, but also the orientation and logic of the platform.

So, when we decide to seriously discuss the "abstract" of Xiaohongshu - who is engaging in abstract, what is the abstract in 2024, who has made money through abstract on Xiaohongshu, and what does abstract mean for Xiaohongshu?

Source: Xiaohongshu

What is Abstract?

First, let's simply understand what abstract is.

In 2024, abstract is no longer the representative technique of the genius painter Picasso. Nowadays, it is more moderate and mostly initiated by young people, becoming a state of the Internet.

It can be an inversion of the value order -

"There's really no need to buy Mixue Bingcheng just for the sake of face. Buy it to drink, not to be looked up to by friends."

"Primary school student luxury unboxing: Luckin ice cubes. The receipt is here. Straws are not for sale. Please don't steal the picture if you haven't drunk it."

It can also be a dissipation of negative emotions -

"There are too many shadows in life. It's really cool."

"Finally, I'm living the life in the novel. The author of the novel is Yu Hua."

It can also be a confrontation with the mundane daily life -

"Find a mutual slapping partner, with a master's degree preferred, proficient in English, and the eldest son is better. I hope to complete the mutual slapping work well."

"Remember, the bigger the fish, the bigger the bones. The bigger the bones, the less the meat. The less the meat, the smaller the bones. The smaller the bones, the smaller the fish. So, the bigger the fish, the smaller the fish."

Not only simple and reversed texts, but any real events and characters can become the source of abstract. At the beginning of this year, the rapper Nomi was eliminated in the audition stage of a music variety show and wrote a song to tease the judge Xie Di, "Xie Di, Xie Di, I want to diss you", and thus Chengdu Disneyland was born.

Because he is long associated with 12 extremely long titles, including writer, host, folk singer, bartender, oil painter, leatherworker, hand drum artist, golden left face, old backpacker, investment consultant, French knight, and Zen disciple, Da Bing is teased that 1 Bing = 12 people, and he is the one who would cause the elevator to be overloaded. The abstract meme-playing directly made Da Bing's comeback live stream extremely popular. The more you savor the "Iceology", the more interesting it becomes, easily crossing the internet celebrity cycle and envying his peers.

Wang Meng once evaluated the maverick Wang Shuo in his article "Avoiding Loftiness" like this, "Reading his works, you feel as relaxed as taking a puff of a cigarette or playing a round of mahjong. It has no nutrition, is not very in line with the principles of hygiene and the calls of the superiors, and is not touching... But it also satisfies one's personal interests to some extent, and even tastes the happiness of violating norms and being naughty, so that one no longer lives so stupidly and tiredly."

Applied to today's abstract, it is also quite incisive.

Where you fall, where you sleep (Source: Xiaohongshu)

Who Has Made Money Through Abstract on Xiaohongshu?

Abstract is not just for fun, but it can also make money.

The representative figure in this field is Li Dan. After testing the waters in making friends and Taobao, starting this year, Li Dan has been steadily live-streaming on Xiaohongshu, using an old-fashioned way of answering readers' emotional letters to give the audience a "spiritual massage", with product sales interspersed in between.

Readers' questions are often very abstract, "My boyfriend's ex-girlfriend gave birth to his child without telling him. What should I do?" "What is our many years of relationship worth?"

Li Dan's answers are also very abstract, "You're just unlucky."

His live stream is like an absurd drama, with both banter and seriousness. While providing emotional value, he is also good at using humor to dissolve opposition and conflict. In Li Dan's live stream, the content is more important than selling goods, and most products appear in the form of props.

Li Dan rarely stands during the live stream. He has to sit when discussing emotional issues. If it's a day to sell mattresses, he simply lies down throughout the entire stream. His abstractness is everywhere. Someone says that they find it difficult to get out of the previous relationship, and Li Dan conveniently picks up a pair of black slippers, puts them on the link, and tells the person to "walk out" by wearing them. Sometimes, Li Dan simply asks netizens to help sell goods, "Place your own order and recommend it to your family for me."

From May of this year to now, the total number of viewers in Li Dan's live stream has increased from several hundred thousand to one million. 90% of the products in the live stream are food and beverage items. This type of product selection has a low decision-making cost, a high consumption frequency, and a high repurchase rate, which is very in line with Li Dan's positioning of "chatting and buying by the way". Li Dan may also have considered his compatibility with the platform. Compared to the GMV results of several thousand at the beginning of the live stream on Taobao and Douyin, Li Dan's actual GMV on Xiaohongshu has been fluctuating at several million (until it exceeded ten million after August), but Xiaohongshu is the platform where Li Dan has the most consistent带货. After all, only here will he be allowed to have a slow speaking speed and带货 at will.

Because of his abstract persona, Li Dan doesn't even have to care about the price comparison system of e-commerce. The price of Niucuicui in Li Dan's Xiaohongshu live stream is 2 yuan higher than that on Taobao, but it has become the top-selling product. His price has almost no chance of winning on other platforms, but on Xiaohongshu, where people are willing to pay for emotional value, even if someone complains that Li Dan's Niucuicui is expensive and not delicious, they will eventually find a way to reconcile themselves, "Forget it, just consider it as buying a ticket for a脱口秀." - It can be called an internet wonder.

When encountering unusual reader letters, Li Dan is used to smoking a Niucuicui to calm himself down (Source: Li Dan's live stream)

Li Dan's abstractness is also quite successful. His live stream clips have been circulating on various social platforms with high traffic. In terms of monetization, the "Buyer Business Value List" previously released by Xiaohongshu E-commerce shows that Li Dan has ranked first in the food buyer list, adjacent to Dong Jie, who is the first in the fashion buyer list, and Zhang Xiaohui, who is the first in the beauty and skin care buyer list.

And another abstract representative is Jiang Sida.

If you are not a long-term fan of Jiang Sida, you may not recognize his Xiaohongshu account now - Jiang Sida likes to use the old age effect and calls himself "Grandma". He used to be a well-known debater on "I Can I BB", and now he is a well-known outdoor live-streaming host on Xiaohongshu because he loves outdoor sports. His style is outgoing, eccentric, narcissistic, and generous, and the name of his live stream is "Goddess Supermarket".

With long hair and straight bangs, often wearing women's clothing, some people evaluate Jiang Sida's style as "abstract and real". Different from others' "1, 2, 3", Jiang Sida is "7, 8, 9, put it on the link". In March of this year, Jiang Sida's first live stream finally achieved a GMV of nearly 13 million, with an average customer unit price of 900 yuan, and even sold millions of units of products such as Merrell Barefoot Shoes and Asics Kahana.

To some extent, both Li Dan and Jiang Sida are those who fit the "Xiaohongshu style". They have a strong and precise desire to express, have output, have uniqueness, and have a sense of interaction. Xiaohongshu also intends to pave the way for Li Dan. At the Acquaintance Festival event held earlier, Li Dan was invited to attend and also won the only "Annual Interactive Anchor Award" on the spot. A small episode is that when asked how long he would live stream at the event, Li Dan also gave enough face to Xiaohongshu and shouted "Ten thousand years".

Although the success of Li Dan and Jiang Sida is strongly related to their past career experiences, for Xiaohongshu, as non-typical buyers, the demonstration effect they possess is precisely the value that the platform values.

Why Does Xiaohongshu Need Abstract?

Abstract culture is an original subculture spirit, and its birth and collection require a more active and free community environment. Capturing it, forming it, and amplifying it, from a niche to a breakthrough in the circle to the public context, and becoming an annual keyword, is inseparable from the boost of the Xiaohongshu platform behind it.

The growth of abstract on Xiaohongshu is related to the equalization of traffic. It is no secret that Xiaohongshu's UGC orientation. One set of publicly reported data is that users with less than 1,000 followers on Xiaohongshu have produced more than 90% of the note content and have taken away 50% of the platform's traffic.

Some media once reported a difference between Douyin and Xiaohongshu. Douyin once conducted a user survey and found that their users could not express their preferences for content. In an algorithm-driven platform, users watch what PGC produces. But 70% of Xiaohongshu's monthly active users use the search function. Compared with the former, users here have a stronger subjectivity.

Huxiu also once reported that in order to expose the high-quality content of ordinary people, Xiaohongshu has a special scoring system for traffic distribution, namely timeliness, quality, and interaction. Therefore, those who create differentiated content, that is, those unique and in-depth areas that others rarely involve or do not do well, are more likely to receive platform traffic support.

At this point, although it has been constantly criticized for the mutual pull and even restraint between e-commerce and the community, it is undeniable that Xiaohongshu is indeed very sensitive and good at creating popular internet words - citywalk is a typical example.

On the other hand, Xiaohongshu itself also needs a new cultural phenomenon like "abstract" to stimulate the activity of the community.

Last year, the month-on-month growth rate of the average DAU of Xiaohongshu showed several small declines, and the impact of the e-commerce and advertising businesses on the community atmosphere has already appeared. At a strategic co-creation meeting in the same year, the executives of Xiaohongshu clearly defined the plan of "sitting on one and looking at three", that is, sitting on 100 million DAU and launching an impact towards 300 million DAU. Xiaohongshu officially bid farewell to the era of slow expansion.

If it wants more daily active users, Xiaohongshu must also deliver more diverse content to retain users. In the past two years, Xiaohongshu has started to focus on vertical community. The growth in sports, games, pan-entertainment, and video fields is essentially expanding the ecosystem and improving the advertising monetization rate. If the goal is 300 million DAU, Xiaohongshu must provide more choices beyond the usefulness of the "Life Guide".

The abstract, full of deconstruction and rebellion, can not only provide fun for the community, but also to some extent dilute the transactional nature of buyers. Xiaohongshu once expressed the most ideal buyer template - in addition to the transaction, continuously providing cognitive and emotional value. Perhaps the abstract Li Dan can also be a beautiful example.

However, just like the word itself, whether the ungovernable image is a fleeting subculture trend or a valuable retention still needs time to verify.