- TikTok could get banned except it’s offered to a non-Chinese language proprietor. TikTok has mentioned they won’t do this, thus the app might shut down on January nineteenth.
- Many TikTok customers have migrated to Xiaohongshu (Purple Observe), one other Chinese language social media app, unrelated to TikTok.
- Xiaohongshu is primarily catered to Chinese language-speaking nationals, thus a lot of the content material is about issues in China, together with Chinese language-market EVs.
Common Chinese language-owned social media app TikTok appears more likely to be banned by the U.S. authorities quickly, however true to their ironic and barely spiteful aura, Gen Z’ers and millennials aren’t taking it mendacity down.
Nationwide safety considerations aren’t sufficient to sway America’s TikTokers from becoming a member of one other Chinese language-operated app: Xiaohongshu, generally known as Purple Observe. Some would say that these children have gone from the frying pan and proper into the hearth—leaving the semi-walled backyard that was TikTok and immediately right into a China-controlled and oriented app whose identify actually interprets to “Little Purple E-book.”
However the sardonic and if considerably nonsensical humor of American TikTokers is meshing fairly effectively with the brainrot-meme-posting mainland Chinese language customers. It is additionally letting common People peer behind the scenes and get not less than a glimpse of what’s occurring in China, which works past simply meals, dancing, or memes; it even contains China’s extremely superior electrical automobiles.
Now, a number of regular, non-car fanatic People are getting a style of what they drive in China, and so they need extra.
Take this video posted to TikTok, for instance. A girl was lurking on Purple Observe/Xiaohongshu and discovered concerning the BYD Dolphin.
“They promote it in pink, it’s like $15,000. Which is reasonably priced, so reasonably priced. And it has so many options,” she says. By the top of the two-minute-long video, she’s fairly disillusioned at the truth that she will’t purchase a Dolphin in the US, on account of U.S. tariffs on Chinese language-made EVs.
“We principally have merchandise made, that we don’t have entry to, that we don’t even understand we don’t have entry to, which might be truly tremendous reasonably priced and tremendous good, however we are able to’t have them,” she mentioned.
Some are extra humorous and rather less bitter grapes than others, like this video from RaphaelMontes. It does a fast overview of a number of the greater hits in China just like the Yangwang U8 or Xiaomi SU7, interjected with the Bing Chilling John Cena meme.
To be honest, this was considerably of a pattern even earlier than People determined to semi-ironically invade Rednote/Xiaohongshu. On TikTok, it wasn’t unusual for “edits” of Chinese language automobiles to go viral. For individuals who aren’t within the know, an “edit” is glamourized and classy footage of Chinese language EVs clipped collectively, normally to a well-liked track, geared toward going viral. These movies would usually be swarmed with feedback of people who find themselves excited concerning the automobiles themselves, however as soon as once more, are let down after they be taught they will’t be offered within the U.S. with out extreme tariffs. Or, probably in any respect, in keeping with the brand new guidelines set for Chinese language-operated linked automobiles.
It’s not clear what precisely will occur with People on Xiaohongshu, or with the tariffs on China’s EVs. There’s been an emergency invoice drafted to delay the Jan. 19 TikTok sale (or ban) for 270 days, it’s not clear if that can move. However the cat may simply be out of the bag right here, there could also be an actual likelihood that extra People will turn into conscious simply precisely what’s taking place on the opposite facet of the world, and what they may be lacking.
It is like she says within the first video: “America’s free and honest commerce for everybody? Capitalism? [But] we won’t promote this automotive as a result of it is Chinese language… there are merchandise being made that we do not have entry to which might be tremendous reasonably priced and tremendous good.”
Since Chinese language social media would not appear to be going anyplace, count on extra People to be saying that quickly.
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