The "three borderline tricks" in the new era are targeting girls who are strapped for cash.

Author / Mian Er

Editor / Zhang Yu

Just as the internet has a dark web, there are also dark corners in real life that are inaccessible to the general public.

Even the development trajectories of today's internet cafes, billiard halls, and tourism companion play industries have converged to form their own "three-piece set of edge-walking services".

As I recall, billiard halls in the past were nothing more than venues for rent.

The maximum high consumption for customers here was no more than a bowl of instant noodles with sausages and a can of Red Bull. Even booking a separate table with your billiard buddy was considered a luxurious way to have fun.

But in today's billiard halls, the additional service attached to playing billiards has become beautiful female assistants in revealing outfits.

As long as you scan the QR code after entering the store, information such as age, personal signature, and fee details will come at you in an ambiguous and vague form.

The billiard assistant position, which originally belonged to technical teaching, seems to have deviated from its original career path.

Coincidentally, the business focus of many offline entertainment venues is shifting from "venues" to "people".

Functional positions that have long existed such as network administrators, play companions, and local tour guides have all begun to take ambiguity as a premium bargaining chip to engage in edge-walking businesses.

Business drifting, billiard assistants, e-sports play companions, the "three-piece set of edge-walking services" in the new era

In the past, the customer attraction focus of ordinary entertainment venues was more inclined to cost-effective drainage like "9.9 yuan for 3 hours of play", but today it has become:

"99 yuan for 2 hours of play with a beautiful female assistant".

Search for "billiard assistant" on any social platform, and the content that pops up is roughly divided into two categories.

One category is the member display of billiard halls in various places: all are internet-style beautiful women, their work uniforms are tight-fitting clothes, short skirts, and maid outfits; on their personal business cards, there are only stage names, height, weight, personality and hobbies.

The time of beautiful female assistants is clearly marked with a price, most of which are charged by the minute, giving people the illusion that you can casually "place an order" as soon as you enter the store.

The other category is active drainage by the beautiful female assistants themselves.

A selfie, paired with copywriting similar to "Play billiards with you, location XXX, anyone coming?"

The target customers of the two types of content will eventually be guided to offline scenarios.

Target customers have no strict requirements on the billiard skills of the beautiful female assistants. When selecting people offline, they only look at the skin exposure degree of the assistant's outfit on that day.

To put it exaggeratedly, the assistant is the key to whether the billiard hall can "retain customers".

Edge-walking businesses are penetrating into ordinary entertainment venues, which is almost a common phenomenon at present. Ordinary entertainment venues that were not considered high-consumption in the past have skyrocketed in prices in just a few years by adding the "play companion" attribute.

There are also "e-sports play companions" and "internet cafe assistants" in internet cafes that use similar methods to guide target customers from online to offline.

In the past, people mostly chose internet cafes based on computer hardware and instant noodle menus. Now, the ace that attracts customers to some internet cafes has become:

Play with beautiful female assistants.

The hourly rate depends on whether you want a goddess, a small internet celebrity or a JK play companion; whether you prefer a loli voice or a mature lady voice, a casual home-style interaction or girlfriend-style company, and whether you need additional services with full emotional engagement.

"Girlfriend-style company for e-sports" is the core service, and imagination itself is part of marketing.

Even though they are all service industries, different themes will derive different edge-walking services.

To judge whether there are edge-walking businesses in the business scope, you need to check whether there are "unnecessary" links in it.

For example, the cheongsam worn by tea art masters in tea houses does not have to be so tight, they do not have to go barefoot, and there is no need to add labels such as "06 female college student" and "business preferred" to the detail card of the tea art master.

Including the cigar sommelier in the cigar bar, under normal circumstances, in order to improve the customer experience, there is indeed a fixed set of processes. But it does not include taking the cigar out of the chest, and then rolling the cigar around the thigh during the cigar waking step.

All these unnecessary contents have become characteristic services of specific stores for specific groups of people.

One of the fields with the most serious overflow of edge-walking behaviors is probably tourism local tour guides.

In a large number of "private local tour guide" posts on the Internet, the content describes the just-needed functions of local tour guides as "can drive, accompany throughout the journey, take good photos, and provide emotional value", but the photos attached are all on the edge of network review.

However, this is not the most extreme case of edge-walking forms.

The business drifting that was stopped not long ago was originally divided into different levels of "companion drifting services".

398 yuan for "good-looking pure play";

1288 yuan for "polite physical contact";

The highest grade of 1988 yuan directly advertises "temporary girlfriend", allowing hand-holding, hugging and kissing.

At this point, emotional value is no longer just a popular buzzword on the Internet, but has begun to become an ambiguous service that can be clearly priced for offline consumption.

In contrast, the era of big results in the past was just empty talk, and before we knew it, the era of widespread edge-walking has arrived shockingly.

Why do we say the end of edge-walking is debt?

The carrier of entertainment edge-walking is not commodities, but people.

When a large number of industries start to sell suspected edge-walking services, we can't help but ask:

How do these positions recruit so many young people?

Following the recruitment chain, you will find a very mature process: attract people with high salaries, constantly test boundaries through rules, push people to take the initiative to engage in edge-walking with performance pressure, and finally lock people in with debt.

The first step is often the high-salary bait.

At a time when young people are having difficulty finding jobs, this kind of work that is "not very formal but makes money quickly" is naturally attractive.

Recruitment posters like this can be seen everywhere in part-time groups, recruitment apps, and campus forums, and the wording is highly unified:

No experience required, free training, daily settlement;

Available for students, only need "good image and elegant temperament"

Billiard assistant, party assistant, play companion, daily salary 500-2000 yuan.

On the Internet, countless young people who have tried these positions share the same recruitment process:

Before the interview, the merchant will lower your psychological threshold online, telling you that the job content is just to accompany guests to have fun, the hard recruitment condition is to have service awareness, even if you can't play billiards or play games, you can make up for it through training, as long as you have good appearance conditions, these requirements can be relaxed, plus you can take photos, drive, and make travel strategies.

When it comes to the interview stage, the wording is further upgraded:

"We are a formal store, and we can sign a contract."

"No experience is required, and there is a guaranteed base salary."

Finally, they will "inadvertently" reveal the income: the last batch of girls who came here earned no less than 15,000 yuan a month; those who do well can easily earn 30,000 to 50,000 yuan a month.

After being successfully hired, many young girls will encounter a compliance test on the first day of employment. The work uniforms are all revealing styles, and if the skin exposure of the clothes you wear at work is less than 60%, you can't do this job.

Even wearing trousers will lead to a direct interview and warning, girls who can't accept will leave, and those who can accept will be screened into the system.

There are often runaway assistants sharing online that the sales pressure is getting higher and higher after joining the job. The rule of many billiard halls is that the assistant can get a commission only when the guest orders the assistant for more than 2 hours or the consumption exceeds 200 yuan.

In various dissuasion posts on the Internet, we can also see the hidden truth behind the high salary of this job.

Relying solely on the natural flow of customers to the store is definitely not enough, so these girls need to post their photos online to cast a wide net.

The goal is to get potential customers to spend in the store, then turn one-time visitors into regulars, and make regulars spend more money.

From the perspective of ordinary consumers, few people will spend hundreds of yuan at a time just