If you are friends with " Talk Show Conference " actor Wang Jianguo , but you want to buy a house, you may get his sincere advice - dear, should you consider buying a haunted house? The average price is cheaper than one million, the best choice for the well-off homeless people.
Meng Chuan , who is also a talk show actor, was moved. He went to see seven or eight haunted houses in one day. Among them, the most "fierce" house has been given away by 2 landlords, so it is also the cheapest, 200W+ cheaper than the house in the same location.
The haunted house is called feudal superstition, "If you believe it, you will be murdered, if you don't believe it, it is simply a bargain." It’s just that most people avoid haunted houses with the heart that they would rather believe, the only exception may be the houses for vacation travel by third-party short-term rental platforms. It's not a lifetime, most people don't understand it carefully, and it's very likely that they don't know it's a haunted house after living there.
▲ Picture from: "Talk Show Conference"
The third-party short-term rental platform is such a magical existence. Today, when everyone’s vigilance is not low, you can live in a stranger’s house directly after seeing good reviews on the platform, and you have absolutely no idea what happened in the other person’s house, just lock the doors and windows. This kind of trust and suspicion is intertwined, and the special phenomenon is also used thoroughly by horror films.
Airbnb Horror, unique style
Airbnb before 2019 and Airbnb after 2022 may be two images.
▲ Airbnb is the travel choice for many travelers
At least from the perspective of film distributors, Airbnb in 2019 belongs to the category of road movies, comedy movies, and romance movies. After 2019, it has completely become the first choice for horror movies. The warm atmosphere of comedy has almost disappeared, replaced by undefended guests, hidden cameras, ghostly landlords, closed basements, and murderers in the dark.
The reason for this change is largely due to the fact that over time, Airbnb, the platform, has almost no problems in protecting the safety of hosts and guests, and more and more vicious cases are also being reduced. users' confidence in the platform.
Since then, Airbnb has become a fertile ground for horror films, and the artwork reflects people's fear and suspicion about Airbnb.
"Barbarian" strikes: Airbnb finds N tunnels for one night
You are a job seeker. The market is not good these days, and I finally got an interview opportunity. Even in other cities, I can't resist your footsteps. You came to Detroit for an interview, but saving money was also important, and backhandedly booked accommodation on Airbnb.
arrives on the scene and you find your homestay is in a remote, run-down neighborhood, and it's already occupied. The other party is a young male, he did not follow you, just booked the house through other third-party platforms.
crashed the house, which seems to be a common story of third-party platforms. You are very upset, but it is stormy outside and there are no vacancies in the hotel, so you think you can make do with it first.
Separate apartments, single men and women, it seems normal for two people to have a good impression of each other. What's unusual is that the door to the bedroom was opened in the middle of the night, and there was the sound of people running back and forth. You go out to check yourself, and find that the guy who hit the room is sleeping very deeply in the living room, and there is no third person in the room. You tell yourself it might be an illusion.
You have an interview the next day, and your new prospective colleague tells you that the B&B community you're targeting is not very safe. As soon as you got back, you found out that what she said was true. A homeless person followed you into the house and asked you to get out of here immediately. You thought he was crazy and ignored it.
But while searching for toilet paper in the basement, you discover more secrets. There are also hidden secret doors and corridors in the basement, where you see people who have been imprisoned here, and the escape attempts of the imprisoned people are all recorded by a camera. But you are not the turtle in the urn of this prison, because these things are a little old, and your roommate came to the basement to rescue you.
Your roommate heard about the adventure in the basement and decided to investigate by himself, but he didn't come back for a long time. In the process, you discover another secret passage leading to the underground corridor. Then I heard the scream of the roommate. He said that someone else was also in the tunnel. When you were panicking together, you were attacked. Your roommate's head was slammed into the wall by the attacker and died on the spot.
Two weeks later, comedian AJ, accused of rape, came to the house. He is the owner of the house, and because of his troubles, he can only sell the house to save the cash. As a result, when he entered the door, he found that the former resident's personal belongings were still in the room. AJ checked the basement for this purpose, found hidden doors and corridors, and also saw a video of a mother breastfeeding a newborn in one room.
AJ was soon attacked too, being chased frantically by assailants hidden in the house. In the process of escaping, he fell into a pit with you alive in it.
This is a collection of a lot of classic elements of horror movies - thunderstorms, basements, disappearing secret doors, attackers hiding in the dark. With Airbnb on board, it all makes sense. I don’t need any mortal exploration, and I don’t need to go back to my hometown after a long absence. Now the most immersive thing is that I rented an Airbnb house and found that there was a murderer living in it.
This is the plot of the recently acclaimed film "Barbarian".
It wasn't until the owner moved in that he found you who had been missing for two weeks, and the movie began to rewind the story many years ago with the heroine's two-week experience. Forty years ago, the original owner of the house kidnapped young women, assaulted and imprisoned them, and asked them to raise their own children. Some women have been deeply traumatized by years of captivity. The mysterious person in
's house is the victimized woman, known as "Mother". She would "take care" of every child living in the house, asking them to behave like a baby and bottle-feed the "child". And the tramp who drives you is the product of this crime, he wants to save you from being murdered by the poor mother who is already insane.
hides crimes that have not been discovered for nearly 40 years, and meets the third-party short-term rental model that directly builds trust with praise in the 21st century to create such a horror film that combines various thriller elements.
is out of the immature development period, and Airbnb has become a frequent visitor to horror movies. On the 25th anniversary of the release of " Scream ", they also renovated 's original filming location in Northern California, , so that fans can go there for one night, and the actors of the year will become "landlords" to greet you .
But this is still marketing that everyone can see. Use the popularity of IP to do some national promotion.
▲ In Airbnb, you can stay in the "Scream" apartment
, but the plot in the movie is not promotional content, and no brand will promote the insecurity of its platform services. It's just that in the few years after leaving the immature development period, the existence of Airbnb really can't make people feel that safety is guaranteed.
There are even rumours that Airbnb doesn't have 100% security, but there is a way for security issues to go unheard of - a secretive team of 100 employees with military backgrounds, known as black boxes, spread all over the world, dealing with Public opinion that may be associated with murder, death and sexual assault and is known to the audience.
Of course rumors aren't necessarily true, but Bloomberg Businessweek did report that Airbnb had a team that could even use a company-provided "blank check" to sort out some troubles. Once a female guest was violated by a repeat offender using a duplicate key to enter the house, Airbnb spent 700W for thisMake sure she doesn't hold Airbnb accountable.
In 2018, 36-year-old female user Carla Stefaniak was murdered by a security guard at an Airbnb apartment after she and a friend complained about "inadequate security." Her family, arguing that Airbnb did not conduct due background checks, has since reached a settlement with Airbnb for an undisclosed amount.
In 2019, Airbnb users illegally held Halloween parties in their houses, and the originally promised 12-person family trip turned into a surprise party of 100. To make matters worse, there was a shooting at the party, 3 people died on the spot, and 2 people died after being sent to the hospital.
▲ Halloween shooting
After a series of vicious incidents, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky wrote in an email to employees that Airbnb "is a business of trust." But the paradox of this business model is that when you serve so many users on the planet at the same time, you can hardly, if ever, guarantee that users are 100% trustworthy.
Airbnb has stated that 0.05% of the service has a host or guest reporting safety issues a year, and how to solve these problems is still Airbnb's "number one priority." However, the loopholes in lax platform supervision need to be borne by homeowners and tenants. At the same time, the platform basically does not provide services and financial support. This is a problem that has been complained many times.
Even people who got hurt a little on Airbnb spontaneously share little stories of their injuries on AirbnbHell, constantly bothering your host, demanding cleaning needs, unclean rooms… all kinds of tags Different experiences from users tell you that it is not a small probability event that the service encountered by Airbnb is not very good.
▲ AirbnbHell even released a brochure
Because of these realistic foundations, film and television producers also used this skeptical background story in the movie.
In "Superhost", the landlord does everything he can to intimidate her in order to get a good reputation from a well-known tenant; in "A Perfect Host", a middle-aged old friend travels and encounters a perverted landlord again; in "The Rental" two couples Two of the couples cheated on each other, which was recorded on a hidden camera in the room, and both couples were eventually dealt with by masked men lurking in the house.
▲ Picture from: "Superhost"
The most important thing about horror movies is to make you feel immersed, but not really in danger. Now, Airbnb has become the best setting for horror movies to shape the atmosphere. For an Internet company, this should be the last thing they want to see.
