No one admits to liking Mi Meng, but everyone loves to watch Mi Meng. This is true in the era of pictures and texts, and it is still true in the era of short videos.
author | Charles
editor | Guge
Mi Meng, a very distant name.
Recently, this "traffic queen" has returned to the public eye in a magical way. Since February 22, the two Weibo topics "Mimeng earned over 100 million yuan from two short plays during the winter vacation" and "Mimeng produced me as a stepmother in the 1980s" have generated more than 200 million views and More than 10,000 discussions. The reason for
is that during the Spring Festival that just passed, two short dramas "I was a stepmother in the 1980s" and "Mr. Pei thinks that the father is more valuable than the son" produced by the label "Tinghua Island" accumulated over 100 million yuan in recharge. The actual controller behind Tinghua Island is Mi Meng (Ma Ling).
When people thought that Mi Meng had disappeared from the Internet or was hiding in some nook and cranny, she had risked her life and survived, and once again she was proud of the traffic. Therefore, people can't help but sigh: going round and round, it is still the same group of people who make money on the Internet.
Whether it is the early Chinese self-media era or the current vertical screen short drama trend, Mi Meng is destined to be an unavoidable name. Her methodology of teasing public emotions and capturing traffic has been tried and tested repeatedly and always comes out on top in the content field, becoming an effective "gold coin making machine".
Seeing Mi Meng's success, we can't help but wonder, why do people fall into Mi Meng's "trap" again and again? And why can she move between texts and videos and always succeed? Another victory of
emotional traffic. During the
public account period, Mimeng once summed up a creative experience: most people click on an article in their circle of friends based on instinct rather than thinking. Therefore, Mimeng's creations have always been irrational. She starts from "instinct" to give the audience a primitive "feeling of pleasure".
The biggest characteristic of Mi Meng's writing is that he can create an imaginary enemy and create emotional opposition. This imaginary enemy may be a "bitch", a "low", a scumbag, a loser... She will give this imaginary enemy various personality flaws that are hated by others, amplify these flaws infinitely, and use various emotions He verbally humiliates, criticizes, and attacks him using specialized vocabulary, allowing readers to enjoy the pleasure of emotional catharsis. The creative characteristics of
are very intuitively reflected in Mi Meng's masterpieces "To the bitch: Why should I help you" and "To the lowly bitch: It's not that I am too high-profile, but that you have a glassy heart". Not only did these two explosive articles soar in reading volume, making Mi Meng's fans exceed one million, but also because of their "cool writing" qualities, Mi Meng rose to prominence and became a swordsman defending the social boundaries of contemporary young people.
Mi Meng extended this "imaginary enemy" creation method to the creation of short plays. The short dramas she produces are bound to be extremely exciting, similar to the setting where the heroine cheats and takes revenge, and the elite daughter-in-law rips off the evil mother-in-law, which is frequently performed in the drama.
"Black Lotus's Handbook", which was urgently removed from the shelves last year, is a typical Mi Meng-style cool drama. This short play is adapted from the online novel "Zhaohua Rebellion" and tells the story of the revenge of Song Zhao, the concubine of the protector of the country. The drama has a total of 120 episodes. It became an instant hit after it was released on November 16 last year. It became a hot search on Weibo and attracted nearly 20 million yuan in top-ups within 24 hours.
In order to maximize the "coolness", "Black Lotus Master's Manual" sets some plots to be very exaggerated, such as letting the heroine poison her biological father, burning her half-sister alive, etc. These plots have caused widespread controversy because they are too extreme and violate human nature and ethics.
5 days later, the show was removed from the platform for "exaggerating the bad values of extreme revenge, using violence to counter violence, and confusing the concept of right and wrong."
were removed from the shelves together with "Black Lotus's Handbook" and three other short dramas created by Mi Meng's team: "Li Teshu is So Beautiful" was removed from the shelves due to "alleged violations of pornographic and vulgar themes", and "The Dark Side" was removed from the shelves. "Maid" was removed from the shelves due to "suspected violations of extreme revenge themes", and "I Make a Million Monthly as a Substitute" was removed from the shelves due to "suspected violations of themes that objectify women and violate public order and good morals".
Although these four short dramas did not cause Mimeng to liquidate and withdraw from the network like the official article "The Death of Another Number One Scholar from a Poor Family", they still urged Mimeng to transform, let her learn lessons and secretly adjust her direction. For example, the content of "Mr. Pei Thinks of My Father Every Day" and "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s" that came out this year are much more conservative in content, and they are like Mr. Pei's little sweet pet.
In comparison, the hit "I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s" has more complex elements: time travel, female videos, country, sweet pets, etc. The story is about a modern female college student who traveled back in time to the 1980s and married a divorced male protagonist with two children. Although the male protagonist is a big pig farmer, he is not only not sloppy, but also handsome. He is considerate to the female protagonist and focuses on the "strong contrast" in his personality.
The actor Su Chuanhe, who plays the male lead, has attracted a large number of "face fans" because of his appearances with male stars such as Huo Jianhua and Xiao Zhan, and is regarded as a "potential stock" by fans. The heroine's design is also quite bright. She calls herself a "crispy college student", but is actually a "choking little pepper". She can silence the weird relatives with a few words. The main theme is "when strong, you get stronger".
Comparing the previous and later creations of the Mi Meng team, it is not difficult to see that although they still pursue provoking emotions and creating a sense of joy in their creations, they have restrained themselves a lot after the series were taken off the shelves one after another - staying away from the evil spirit. Move closer to sweetness.
How can the invisible Mi Meng be "resurrected"? The main position of the
Mi Meng team is the Silver Earth of mcn company established in June 2019.
According to Tianyancha, the legal person of Silver Earth is Zhang Jingsi, who was once one of the shareholders of Mi Meng Company. The two have cooperated with each other to invest in shares many times and can be called "China's best friends". At the same time, the email prefix used in the recruitment information released by Silver Earth is also Mimeng’s email prefix “mm_hr”. There are various signs that there is a close connection between the silver earth and Mi Meng. Since the establishment of
, Silver Earth has continued to grow. It currently has more than 20 experts, among which 3 leading accounts are @江七七, @浩杰来, and @青青秋, all of which have accumulated more than 1,000 users on Douyin. Thousands of fans. @江七七 has more than 37 million fans, making him a “top player”.
The existence of these master accounts is equivalent to the Mi Meng accounts in the public account era: Mi Meng, young people with limited talents, Mi Meng who is in pain, Li Lililili, and abnormal sister. Its essence is the video version of Mi Meng's "Poisonous Chicken Soup".
When you open these accounts, the plot can be condensed into two words - conflict. Gender conflicts, family conflicts, class conflicts, and interpersonal conflicts take turns taking place. The heroine fights against her useless husband, her evil mother-in-law, her bad boss, and her weird clients... The titles of
Mi Meng's past articles often have consistency in the core of their creation. She believes that the headlines with the highest forwarding rate are nothing more than "hot topics, money, sex, and violence" and cannot escape this circle. The titles of her skits also use these elements, striving to make the topic eye-catching and discussion-worthy, such as "In order to avoid a baby kiss, I randomly married a handsome guy, and the fate turned out to be... wonderful." Deduction of money, not human affairs! I will put you out, you will not survive one episode!"
Mi Meng once claimed to be a "pastoral feminist". In terms of love, she has always advocated female independence and awakening. However, in her creations, she always puts women in a passive position of receiving love, emphasizing an abnormal love state, that is, whatever girls like/need, boys must blindly give to satisfy each other.
If a girl cannot be pampered like a princess and cannot be readily available, boys will be labeled as "straight men" and "scumbags". In other words, she regards women as inherently weak and in need of protection from the outside world. And this kind of protection is exactly the trap dug by patriarchal culture in marriage.
These Mi Meng-style views on love and feminist ideas were also indirectly brought into the master account by Mi Meng. "Jiang Shiqi" in the short play is beautiful and cute, but she always encounters dilemmas such as cheating on her by scumbag men and bullying in the workplace. Her encounters with the male protagonist are always full of dramatic coincidences or accidents.
The male protagonist is a handsome, wealthy boss who wears a Patek Philippe, drives a Rolls-Royce, and lives in No. 1 Shenzhen Bay. The male protagonist can always save "Jiang Shiqi" from fire and water, eliminate all kinds of unhappiness for her, and then create sparks of love with her through some physical interactions such as pulling the seat belt, wiping the corner of the mouth, and banging on the wall.
"Qiao Qiyue" also has a similar creative direction. Different from Jiang Shiqi's sweet pet plot, the "coolness" of Qiao Qiyue's short drama mainly lies in the confidence of women in the workplace - women have their own careers, considerable income and the courage to end a relationship. In the short play, "Qiao Qiyue" often has to fight against her mama's husband and her unruly mother-in-law. In the end, she defeats the opponent with reason or chicken soup, gaining a sense of "moral" satisfaction.
Although "Haojie is Coming" is a male master account, its character is a handsome and considerate "perfect boyfriend" setting. The copywriting of the short drama focuses on female care, such as "Good girl, you are your tool to kidnap me morally." ", "After giving birth to a child, it is not the wife's changes that make the relationship between husband and wife weaken, but the husband's indifference, etc.
These copywriting make people dream back to the popular article "I treat you as my husband, you treat me as my womb". However, the article complained about men from the perspective of women, while "Here Comes Haojie" cared about women and criticized men from the perspective of men.
From the public account to the short play, Mi Meng seems to have just been "resurrected" in a different form. And what she captures is still the same audience she had when she was an emotional blogger. She continues to use "poisonous chicken soup" to conquer the city, while stimulating the instinctive and superficial emotions and desires in human nature, while satisfying women's imagination of themselves, which is painful. , makes people happy and refreshed.
loves her and hates her
Every appearance of Mi Meng will bring about a widespread cognitive dissonance. While people ridiculed her, saying that the short dramas she filmed were outrageous and vulgar, they secretly recharged their money and followed the drama silently, willing to be emotionally dominated by the ups and downs of the plot.
This kind of "discrepancy between words and deeds" is inseparable from the inducement of "emotions dominate rationality". Mi Meng's uniqueness is that she is good at grasping the "pain points" of the times: marriage, work, life... In the Internet world that lacks information circulation threshold, any hot spot can easily touch people's emotions and involve a large number of people. , becoming a "rabble". The Mi Meng team only used a small incision and a carefully created conflict to set off a big whirlwind of discussion in the short play comment area.
No one admits to liking Mi Meng, but everyone loves to watch Mi Meng. This is true in the era of pictures and texts, and it is still true in the era of short videos.
Some people may ask, I have never watched Mimeng, nor bought Mimeng’s books or short plays, so am I lucky? To this, from Mi Meng's perspective, she gave the answer as early as in the book "I Like This "Utilitarian" World": Of course it's because you are not important.
On the other hand, in addition to grasping the "pain points" of the times, Mimeng also has a trump card, which is that she knows how to monetize "emotional traffic". The market will not consider the values and artistry of the work, and the brand owners will not conduct moral judgments. Only "making money" is the king. After
's explosive article "To the Bitch: Why Should I Help You" came out, Mimeng gradually found a way to write on public accounts, and almost every article can get more than 100,000 reads. At its peak, Mimeng's personal WeChat public account had 14 million fans, and an advertisement quoted 800,000 yuan. In 2017, Mimeng said in an interview that the official account had brought her an 8-digit annual income. According to statistics from Yibang Power Network, Mi Meng received a total of 50 advertisements that year, and its annual revenue could reach 70 million yuan. After
moved to the short drama track, Mi Meng's business myth continues. "Unfamiliar Lovers" starring "Jiang Shiqi" became Douyin's first short drama to have more than 100 million views. At the same time, it was also the first customized short drama completed by Mi Meng in cooperation with a brand (exclusively named and customized by the brand).
According to media reports last year, the price of "Jiang Shiqi"'s short videos within 20 seconds reached 358,000 yuan per video, and 388,000 yuan per video for more than 21 seconds. The account's monthly business profit alone was more than one million yuan.The number of advertising creatives for "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s" in the past week has reached more than 17,000, covering nearly 100 platforms including Tencent.
It is true that whether you accept it or not, the public and brands have gradually brought Mi Meng back to the center of the stage. As Zhou Hongyi said, "The essence of business is to release human nature and satisfy human needs."
To a certain extent, it is not that Mi Meng came back on his own initiative, but that Mi Meng was chosen again in this era.
As for "Mi Meng Ti", is it spiritual opium, or is it a boring pastime? Perhaps no one can explain this clearly, after all, it is an unsolvable mystery.
