Picture source @VisualChina
Text | Hedgehog Commune, author | Xinghui, editor | Director
In the modern content war for attention, the name is always the first bullet loaded.
In terms of attention-grabbing, the sharpshooters in the field of public accounts are called "clickbait party" by the public, and the outstanding ones in the online literary circle are classified as "Fei Lu Feng" with half envy and half contempt by their peers. The naming examples in the light novel world are even more It’s the famous sentence pattern that gave birth to viral communication—about the fact that I had to use such a long title to attract attention.
Nowadays, the most eye-catching new naming contestant in the traffic field is the short drama. A brand new knowledge of naming is emerging together with the alluring myth of wealth creation.
I’m curious, what are the most popular keywords for naming short plays right now? Why do they get Chinese viewers to stop swiping and clicking on payment links? What are the men and women attracted by the names of these short plays looking for in fictional stories?
In order to answer these doubts, I collected and sorted out the names of 6,000 Chinese short plays, and used them as samples for word segmentation processing and word frequency statistics to obtain the 200 most frequently occurring short play naming keywords. Then, based on the differences in the main audience categories, I conducted a secondary classification of these 200 keywords, and observed the nomenclature of short dramas from the perspective of specific users.
This is undoubtedly a spectacle that only belongs to the Internet era: behind 386 "presidents", 240 "ladies" and 98 "gods of war", countless propositions about class, gender and desire are hidden in the words, undercurrents. Under millions of flashing mobile phone screens.
Women’s Chapter: A Thousand Subdivisions of Marriage
An interesting fact is that if the high-frequency words in short dramas that clearly have a female orientation are lined up, the first one will be "president", and the last one will be "president". The name is "love", and the two looked at each other from a distance and were speechless.
In the long area between the top and bottom of the list, we can clearly see the theme closely surrounding the female short drama - marriage.
Focusing on the word "marriage", the creators of the short drama racked their brains to come up with names that could seize the vertical category market. They came up with various tricks and introduced new ones, and they knew how to answer points better than chatgpt.
First of all, at the time of marriage, the names of these short dramas completely cover the entire industry link of "newly married" (21 times), "divorced" (205 times), and "remarriage" (15 times) - yes, Divorce is always the most watched episode.
Specific to the "newly married" stage, there are many starting options besides the conventional path, such as "flash marriage" (148 times) that continues the "marriage first, love later" tradition and "hidden marriage" (20 times) where young men all have their own version. ). The reverse operation interrupted the naming idea of "newly married", and then two major genres were derived: "broken engagement" (16 times) and "escape from marriage" (46 times)...
Secondly, for the male characters in the marriage story, the short play creator We are also pursuing retro while pursuing innovation.
There is no doubt that the "classical" domineering lover is still the absolute mainstream in the short drama market, and the density of CEOs is comparable to that of traditional female online writing platforms. With an astonishing frequency of 386 times, the word "president" firmly ranks at the top of the list of high-frequency words in this statistics.
In other words, for every 100 short plays, there will be almost 6 and a half CEOs who will show you a doting smile.
In fact, the actual proportion of the CEO's character in the short drama is probably even higher, because the expression "surname + president" is also a very common alternative in the title of the short drama, and they are in a league of their own in statistics.
Judging from the word frequency results, the CEO surname has ushered in a wave of updates in the field of short dramas, which is known in history as the second CEO war.
"Mr. Gu", who occupies the dominant position in the traditional female channel online articles, was replaced by his old rival "Mr. Fu" (36 times) in the short drama world, while "Mr. Lu" (35 times) was defeated by one step. "Mr. Huo" (23 times) and "Mr. Huo" (18 times) followed closely.
I don’t know since when, the Li family has surpassed the older generation of big CEOs and has become a tacit choice for many short drama creators to try out "niche surnames".
Of course, the retro CEO theme is not the only option.Some creators also choose to take a different approach, naming short plays with highly charged characters, giving people a sense of beauty that "it would be disrespectful not to click in and take a look."
For example, in the initial statistical results, a high-frequency word named "plant" (16 times) once puzzled me. It wasn't until I reviewed the name of the corresponding short play that I suddenly realized that the full term should be "vegetative", or more specifically, "vegetative husband".
Yes, the "vegetative husband" has become a popular and fashionable setting in the short drama circle. Every time the heroine awakens her "vegetative husband" in a surprise scene, the audience is inevitably torn between the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Prize for Medicine.
Finally, introducing external variables into the marriage world of two people has become a new naming trick for more and more short drama creators.
Cases of being pampered by "brothers" (29 times) are no longer new. In comparison, the more popular trend of women in short dramas today is "cute babies" (94 times).
As the cute baby becomes more and more powerful in the short drama circle, a number of named keywords are promoted to heaven. The most representative ones are "Daddy" (84 times) and "Mommy" (80 times), which refer to the male and female protagonists, and "Assist" (16 times), which points out the cute baby's plot positioning.
The existence of the latter reminds us once again that even with the addition of the Bringing a Baby DLC, the main plot of the marriage story remains unbreakable.
In addition, it is particularly important to point out that the naming of cute babies often comes with another major "selling point", that is, "one child" (23 times) has more than one child. In addition to the most common "Two Treasures" (34 times), there are also many short dramas about bringing "Three Treasures", "Four Treasures" and even "Five Treasures" and "Seven Treasures" to the war. It seems that they are unwilling to give up the Nobel Prize. The medical award was easily given to the "husband in a vegetative state".
To sum up, if we string together several characteristic keywords that are used to name short dramas about women, we will probably get such a short drama with twists and turns and thought-provoking plot - "After divorcing the wife who gave birth to three children, the domineering Mr. Fu Became a vegetable".
Men's Chapter: Superlative Adjectives Quick Reference Manual
In another world, male-oriented short dramas also have their own clearance tasks, and the keywords in them can be roughly divided into two categories of themes.
One is love. is similar to the various male gods in female-oriented keywords. Many male-oriented keywords reflect a mirror image of the "goddess" realm.
The "she" in the story can be the regretful "ex-wife" (63 times) and "fiancée" (14 times), or the high-ranking "empress" (40 times) or "princess" (24 times) times) and "senior sister" (24 times), the main common feature is "stunning beauty" (22 times).
It’s interesting to say that although “empress” is the favorite target of male-oriented short dramas, the word “queen” with a similar meaning rarely appears in the names of male-oriented short dramas. In most cases, "Queen" (27 times) is a female self-identification to the protagonist of the short play.
Of course, more male-oriented creators did not bother to think too much, but simply used the most straightforward and concise summary: "beauty" (70 times). In order to conquer them, he is willing to do whatever it takes to imitate Mr. Jin Yong and use the technique of "fake eunuch" (10 times).
From this perspective, the male-oriented "beautiful woman" is probably the same as the female-oriented "president". They are part of the truth of the universe and are the ultimate answer to all naming problems.
However, under another big topic of male orientation, the creators of short dramas are not so easy to reach a naming consensus.
is something that can make everyone roll up. To put it simply, it means becoming stronger.
So, how to name it so that the enthusiasm for counterattack can go to the minds of male viewers and tell them their payment password?
On the one hand, the key lies in the sense of contrast brought by identity.
For example, the universal killer feature of male-oriented short dramas is to borrow the most popular image of a loser in the past and present - "the son-in-law" (39 times), and then start a happy life that is reversed and slapped in the face.
takes this as the starting point. "Crazy Son-in-law" (21 times), "Godly Son-in-law" (15 times), and "Dragon Son-in-law" (15 times) appear in turn in the short play titles, as if they are aiming to collect 101 crazy and cool styles. Hyun "insert the door" and hold a vigorous son-in-law talent show.
, a more trendy creator, directly made "beating workers" (17 times) the protagonist, breathing the same fate as Weibo's hot searches. In terms of specific occupations, "security guard" (24 times) and "takeout" (23 times) have become emerging industries with intensive protagonists, even surpassing the evergreen "bodyguard" (22 times).
On the other hand, if you want to conquer the audience of male short dramas, you have to write the level of strength you will get in your name, make it bold and scroll. How powerful is
? The answer is usually the strongest. How powerful is
? The answer is "Supreme" (74 times), "Invincible" (48 times), "Unparalleled" (43 times), "Peak" (34 times), "Super" (34 times), "Unparalleled" (27 times)... ...Countless adjectives all point to the highest level.
The simple domineering attribution is not enough. The male-oriented short drama also comes with a series of circuitous top identities, with a large number of tubes for you to choose from.
In addition to "God of War" (98 times), which hot-blooded middle-aged people can't stop watching, the mainstream best-selling wholesale titles can be summarized as "Descendants of the Dragon" large-scale TV series, including "Dragon King" (32 times), "Crazy Dragon" "(31 times), "Longshuai" (22 times), "Dragon Master" (20 times), "Tianlong" (17 times), "Hidden Dragon" (17 times), "Hidden Dragon" (16 times) and "Shenlong" (15 times) can wear a different skin every day from Monday to Sunday.
Finally, if there is a competition to see how evil the name is, the male-oriented short drama will not give in easily.
Take "depreciation" that appeared 22 times as an example. As one of the side branches of the rich man short drama, although it may not be as stunning as "Vegetative Husband", the simple view of money contained in it can always shock my young mind over and over again. soul.
You said it’s so easy to make a fortune this way, why didn’t we think of such a good idea?
Hengping Chapter: Eternal Desire and Anxiety
Back to the original question, what are the men and women attracted by the names of these short dramas looking for in the fictional stories?
Before reading the 6,000 short play titles, I might generally answer with "love" and "feeling". But now, we can talk about the more tangible details.
For a long time, people living in first- and second-tier cities and looking at the industry from a business perspective have often associated the "short drama craze" with the "sinking market." While they are envious of the rich and attractive "sinking" rich mines, at the same time, with self-aware or unconscious arrogance, they have a cursory glance at those hot-selling items that are "hard to reach the level of elegance."
The problem is that if you only use the four words "sinking market" to summarize everything, many content logics that should not be ignored will be obscured.
In the eyes of some people, the keyword naming of many short plays is vulgar, old-fashioned, and even confusing to the point of making people laugh.
Looking back at our previous discussion, the gender keywords that best represent the stereotypes of the sinking market are “cute baby” and “husband-in-law.” They are all the starting points of a series of sub-keywords, connecting the two important categories of attracting money, "Duobao flow" and "Zhu son-in-law flow". At the same time, they suffer from the boredom and contempt of young people for the outdated framework.
After all, a woman who takes "one child and many treasures" as the source of her happiness, and a man who repeats the old drama of "returning a son-in-law" are far from the ideal self of contemporary young people.
But for others, behind these incomprehensible words, they correspond to real anxiety.
In the story of "Duobao Liu", children with extraordinary intelligence become the mother's most solid support. They not only achieve the instrumental reward of assisting love and winning respect, but also generously depict an indestructible parent-child link.
The strong sense of security is a great temptation for middle-aged women who devote all their efforts to their children in reality. Those Chinese mothers who have come out of "widowed parenting" alone have never got rid of the desire to seek rewards. A secret longing that can never really be expressed to anyone else. Therefore, they can only find an outlet from the exaggerated imagination of "one child brings many treasures" and rewrite for themselves painless childbirth and promising upbringing.
Similarly, the emotional core of the "Brother-in-law" short drama is also deeply rooted in the hearts of middle-aged men in a highly similar way.
The anxiety condensed in the unique title of "brother-in-law" has a much longer origin than short plays or even online articles. Ever since the first Chinese man was scorned for marrying into his wife, the status of “brother-in-law” has become a concentrated symbol of masculinity anxiety.
Not being recognized by society for his status and not being recognized by his family for his contributions are the two most difficult anxieties for men to get rid of after working hard for half their lives. Their essence is the fear of "incompetence" or "uselessness". And all the short play "Brother-in-law" does is repeatedly lick the deepest cultural wound and tell the silent middle-aged man in front of him over and over again: You are not incompetent.
In the final analysis, the reason why "reversal and slap in the face" never stops is because anxiety never calms down.
From a more macro perspective, the popularity of these content prototypes in the field of online literature was much earlier than the rise of short plays. A similar business story has been told once in the Internet literature circle, and the protagonist at that time was free reading.
Ji Yunfei, an assistant professor at the Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University (Zhuhai) who has long been concerned about the field of online literature, once commented that the most irreplaceable significance of free reading is that it has included and absorbed hundreds of millions of pirated users and new users. And turn them into the target readers of the author's creation, such as a large number of middle-aged and elderly readers who have not read online articles before.
The tremendous potential released by the short drama industry today, just like the market growth activated by the free online writing model back then, benefits from those who were once ignored and forgotten. With the so-called "sinking" format of , more silent Chinese people have become the target users of content creators.
Among the silent people who never show off their style, the silent desire gave birth to a consensus among creators and built the naming vocabulary we see today. This is true for online articles, and so is also true for short plays.
The social crux behind some of the bizarre remarks has its own propositions that they need to face. However, criticizing the creators for not being youthful enough in the process of literary and artistic interpretation is probably another kind of out-of-focus violence.
In fact, it is these contents that do not seem to be very elegant, and for the first time, they have found an antidote in fiction that does not harm reality, and appropriately respond to people's most unspeakable anxieties.
Literary and artistic works that soothe public desires are not shameful. There is no shame in creating works that comfort the masses and reap commercial rewards. Individual pain and desire themselves are also not shameful.
