- TikTok could get banned except it’s offered to a non-Chinese language proprietor. TikTok has stated they won’t do this, thus the app may shut down on January nineteenth.
- Many TikTok customers have migrated to Xiaohongshu (Purple Notice), one other Chinese language social media app, unrelated to TikTok.
- Xiaohongshu is primarily catered to Chinese language-speaking nationals, thus many of the content material is about issues in China, together with Chinese language-market EVs.
Standard 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 issues aren’t sufficient to sway America’s TikTokers from becoming a member of one other Chinese language-operated app: Xiaohongshu, generally known as Purple Notice. Some would say that these youngsters 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 title actually interprets to “Little Purple Ebook.”
However the sardonic and if considerably nonsensical humor of American TikTokers is meshing fairly properly with the brainrot-meme-posting mainland Chinese language customers. It is additionally letting common Individuals peer backstage and get a minimum of a glimpse of what’s happening in China, which fits past simply meals, dancing, or memes; it even consists of China’s extremely superior electrical automobiles.
Now, a number of regular, non-car fanatic Individuals are getting a style of what they drive in China, and so they need extra.
Take this video posted to TikTok, for instance. A lady was lurking on Purple Notice/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 be able to’t purchase a Dolphin in america, 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 are truly tremendous reasonably priced and tremendous good, however we will’t have them,” she stated.
Some are extra humorous and rather less bitter grapes than others, like this video from RaphaelMontes. It does a fast overview of among the larger hits in China just like the Yangwang U8 or Xiaomi SU7, interjected with the Bing Chilling John Cena meme.
To be truthful, this was considerably of a development even earlier than Individuals 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 trendy footage of Chinese language EVs clipped collectively, often to a well-liked track, aimed 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 once they study they’ll’t be offered within the U.S. with out extreme tariffs. Or, probably in any respect, in line with the brand new guidelines set for Chinese language-operated related automobiles.
It’s not clear what precisely will occur with Individuals 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 would possibly simply be out of the bag right here, there could also be an actual probability that extra Individuals will turn out to be conscious simply precisely what’s occurring on the opposite aspect of the world, and what they is likely to be lacking.
It is like she says within the first video: “America’s free and truthful commerce for everybody? Capitalism? [But] we will not promote this automotive as a result of it is Chinese language… there are merchandise being made that we do not have entry to which are tremendous reasonably priced and tremendous good.”
Since Chinese language social media would not appear to be going anyplace, count on extra Individuals to be saying that quickly.
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