Content transferred from Tencent, original publication(她刊)
“Several big brothers gave me tens of thousands of yuan just to see me turn off the beauty filter.”
Qiu Yu stood on the talk show stage, paused slightly, and said to the audience, “So you made a lot of money tonight, just watch it.”
A burst of laughter broke out from the audience, but the memory of the winter of 2022 was not so funny.
At that time, 26-year-old Qiu Yu fell into the anxiety of repeated unemployment, and only the live broadcast company frequently threw olive branches to her.
With a basic salary of 5,000 yuan, she walked into the live broadcast room with the mentality of “try it first” and became a female anchor-to be precise, a “borderline anchor”.
4 months, 200,000 income. Squat 600 times for a carnival, answer the “big brother”‘s call at 2 o’clock in the morning, and provide emotional value for the “big brothers” 24 hours a day…
As the account balance gradually became full, her psychological burden was also increasing day by day.
I talked to Qiu Yu about her four-month experience as a “borderline anchor”. What kind of emotional labor and self-consumption are hidden behind those seemingly relaxed chatting and performances? When “skirting the edge” becomes a means of survival, how should we view such choices?
At two o’clock in the morning, Qiuyu was not in a hurry to sleep, and clicked into the live broadcast room of a male anchor.
That man was her neighbor, and the platform positioning showed that he was only two hundred meters away. There were very few people in the live broadcast room, and the male anchor tried hard to please the camera, looking a little down and out.
Qiuyu stared at it for a while, and a trace of pity emerged in her heart. She swiped gifts worth twenty or thirty yuan. “It’s too miserable,” she later explained, “Just for encouragement.”
A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was the “big brother” in her live broadcast room.
“Why are you swiping money for other men?”
“That’s my friend. There’s no one in the live broadcast room. It’s too pitiful. Brush a little to support him.”
“You still pity others, and you use my money to support others?”
The platform’s push mechanism betrayed her-whoever she watched and what she swiped were all accurately pushed to the big brother. She listened to the man’s emotional outburst on the other end of the phone: You are not allowed to look at other men in the future, and you are not allowed to connect to men during live PK, and you are not allowed to say a word to other men.
The elder brother scolded her, and she didn’t dare to hang up the phone. She just kept “coaxing” him, whispering an apology, and following his words: “I get annoyed when I see other men, and I just want to talk to you. They are not as good as you.”
As a female anchor, Qiuyu knows the rules of this game: those gifts worth tens of thousands of yuan are not given in vain. She needs to continue to provide emotional value to maintain the elder brother’s sense of involvement and possessiveness.
“You can be angry with me, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t give gifts, but I hope to have your company in the live broadcast room.” Qiuyu coaxed softly.
At five o’clock in the morning, the elder brother finally calmed down.
For Qiuyu, similar emotional tug-of-wars have been experienced countless times. She is already familiar with these coping skills of flattering, comforting, and dealing with things.
Before becoming an anchor, she was an accountant. In just two years, she experienced the misfortune of three companies going bankrupt. When the last company announced its dissolution, Qiuyu was completely unemployed.
It was the end of the year, the most difficult time to find a job. Her resume was ignored, and no one responded to her on the recruitment website. Only one live broadcast company took the initiative to send a message, saying that it was recruiting operations.
After adding the HR on WeChat, the other party looked through her circle of friends and immediately suggested that she try to be an anchor.
The basic salary of 5,000 is a good income in Qiuyu’s hometown. She did not refuse immediately, and convinced herself to give it a try, just as a transition.
The company is located in a third-tier city in Jiangsu. It is not large in scale, with only more than ten live broadcast rooms.
The company structure is simple: 3 operations are responsible for more than a dozen anchors, and 3 HRs are busy dealing with high-frequency personnel turnover.
The employment contract was signed on the same day, and it had to be broadcast the next day.
The company did not have any pre-job training, and Qiuyu only got two A4 papers printed with “talking skills”. “Too rustic.” Qiuyu commented, “It’s like the shouting rap a few years ago, all jingles, teaching people how to thank the big brother.”
These so-called “speech skills” were never used in her subsequent live broadcast career.
The company has almost harsh requirements for the live broadcast time of the anchor:
At least six hours of live broadcast must be completed every day, and the KPI indicator of 10,000 sound waves (about 1,000 yuan) must be achieved. If the data does not meet the standard, overtime must be worked until the performance is completed. Sometimes the entire office building is empty, with only one live broadcast room still lit.
The end of the live broadcast does not mean the end of the work. The anchors have to cooperate in shooting short videos, the company’s operations team is responsible for shooting and editing, and there is a makeup artist to create a suitable appearance for the anchor.
Surprisingly, the company does not provide any accounts and equipment.
The anchor has to bring their own live broadcast account, WeChat account, and even live broadcast equipment. For this reason, Qiuyu specially applied for a new phone card. After registering a new account, she blocked her relatives and friends in the address book one by one.
“Is it different from what you imagined?” she asked me back, “You think the company will help the anchors arrange everything, but in fact, they are all our own accounts.”
Qiu Yu almost sat in front of the screen stiffly when she started broadcasting for the first time.
Someone came in and asked her how old she was and whether she was a new anchor. She answered but didn’t know how to continue the conversation. She didn’t know what PK was, and didn’t understand the interactive rhythm of the live broadcast room, so she could only bite the bullet and chat awkwardly. The atmosphere in the live broadcast room was dry and long.
She was the kind of small anchor who “no one talked to, no one watched”. There were often only two or three people in the live broadcast room, and the operation encouraged them to chat one-on-one or one-on-two to protect the “big brother” who was really willing to spend money.
At first, the operation said lightly: just chat casually. But Qiu Yu soon found that it was impossible to keep people by “chatting”.
The operation began to hint that she was wearing too thick and not good-looking enough, and suggested that she go and see how other anchors dress – suspenders, short skirts, black silk.
The clothes had to be paid for by herself. Qiuyu buys things on Pinduoduo for dozens of yuan each. She doesn’t care about the quality, as long as the style is acceptable. The company requires different clothes every day, and the anchors borrow them from each other privately and wear them to make up the numbers.
Soon, the company “positioned” her. The operation found that her live broadcast effect was best when she wore a cheongsam. It was not a traditional cheongsam, but a sleeveless, tight-fitting one that emphasized the body curve and matched it with a classic hairstyle.
Before the broadcast every day, Qiuyu had to post a short video first. If the audience liked the short video, they were more likely to click into the live broadcast room, and then there would be subsequent rewards.
At first, it was just a gesture dance, which was quite easy. But soon, the “excellent cases” sent by the operation made the rules clear: in those videos with good data, the camera is always shot at an upward angle, and the long legs and slender arms must occupy the center of the picture.
“It’s okay not to show your face, but you have to touch the edge”, the scale is stuck on the tolerance line of the platform algorithm.
Qiuyu doesn’t know how to wear stockings, and her nails always accidentally hook the silk thread. When she was upset, the operator said, just wear ripped ones, sexy.
In the live broadcast room, Qiuyu, who was born in 1996, said that she was born in the 2000s.
The beauty filter during the live broadcast is adjusted by the male operator himself. They know better than anyone what kind of face the “big brothers” like – the corners of the eyes should be opened to the temples, the face should be pointed like a cone, the skin should be white, and the light should be strong.
In real life, Qiuyu’s face is round, but in front of the camera, she must be another person.
After half a month of live broadcast, Qiuyu met her first “big brother”.
That was the first time she made money in the true sense. The gifts of several thousand yuan made her income exceed the company’s stipulated basic salary of 5,000 yuan.
Before that, her live broadcast room was empty, and sometimes the number of viewers was even zero. Once, after broadcasting for a whole day, she received only 30 yuan in gifts. According to the rule that the platform takes 50%, the company takes 15%, and the anchor takes 35%, she only got 10 yuan.
The “big brother” claimed to be disabled and had experienced a car accident, which caused his girlfriend to leave him. He said he was very lonely and no one wanted to get close to him or love him.
Qiuyu believed it. She began to sympathize with him and pity him. She chatted with him every day, comforted him, listened to his past, and cheered him up.
Until one day, another female anchor in the company told her: the “big brother” also gave gifts in her live broadcast room, and they even met. He was not disabled, and the story of the car accident was made up.
Qiuyu realized that she was just one of the anchors that the “big brother” cast a net to fish.
“Live broadcast room in the same city” is the key for these big brothers to select anchors. Because “close” means a higher chance of meeting.
Giving gifts is an investment; and distance is the condition for them to calculate the rate of return. They prefer to look for anchors who are geographically close enough and have just started.
There are only a handful of live broadcast companies in Qiuyu’s city, and it is easy for big brothers to find female anchors from the same company.
When she first entered the industry, Qiuyu sincerely believed that every reward meant some kind of appreciation and support. Gradually, she found that the big brothers also had their own “talking skills”, “You are the only anchor I support”, “I only give you gifts, and I only like you.”
The big brothers wandered in different live broadcast rooms, copying the lines of “I only love you”.
Qiuyu gradually saw through the big brothers’ unchanging lines, and slowly practiced her own “performance style”.
In front of the camera, she knew when to act coquettishly, when to be “sensible”, and when to be silent and give way to the other party’s desire to talk.
The threshold to become her “big brother” is getting higher and higher.
At the beginning, when she didn’t know how to broadcast and chat, someone was willing to give hundreds or thousands of dollars, which was enough to move her. Later, she learned to distinguish between value and attitude. The most generous big brother gave a total of 200,000 in her live broadcast room.
“At first, he gave me 200 yuan, which was considered a big brother. But later, he gave me 20,000 yuan, which was no longer a big brother.” She described.
In the live broadcast room, the anchors gradually figured out a way to identify potential reward users.
Each audience has a level label, which is their “achievement” on the platform – the amount of recharge, activity, and who is the resident fan of the live broadcast room, all of which are clear at a glance.
Those with too low levels are mostly passers-by and “retail investors” who only watch but do not reward. Those with too high levels mean that they have a fixed “guardian” female anchor, which is difficult to shake.
What is really worth paying attention to is the audience in the middle layer. They have both the willingness to consume and have not yet belonged. The anchors will interact with this type of users, start topics, and establish connections through chatting.
What kind of people are these “big brothers” who spend a lot of money in the live broadcast room?
The “big brothers” that Qiuyu has come into contact with have similar portraits.
They are often between 40 and 50 years old, with some money, but not to the point of spending money like water. Common occupations are middle-level managers in enterprises or small business owners who open their own shops. These people have enough money, relatively free time, and little daily emotions.
They almost all have one common feature: they do not get emotional response in marriage. They are either divorced or separated from their partners for many years, and they are silent in daily life and have no one to talk to.
The big brothers spend money in the live broadcast room not to consume content, but to buy a “feeling of love”.
What the anchors have to do is to learn how to “coax” the big brothers and provide them with emotional value.
The scale of this ambiguous game must be properly grasped.
Qiuyu concluded that we should follow their emotions, give back our care, and always maintain a sense of boundaries. We cannot be too intimate. If we are too enthusiastic, the big brothers will mistakenly think that they really have the opportunity to fall in love with the anchor offline and develop a real relationship.
Without exception, the big brothers want to meet the female anchors in the end.
Qiuyu is very resistant to this. She has her own “talking skills” to deal with such requests:
“I’m not ready yet, how can we meet? We haven’t established the connection we should have. We are not familiar with each other yet, and we haven’t known each other for long. I want to meet after we fully understand each other. I want to show you the best of myself, and I’m not the best of myself yet.”
The words are gentle and measured, neither refusing nor agreeing. Always maintain a vague and controllable ambiguous area.
Sometimes, when she really doesn’t know how to reply to the message, she asks the operation to write it for her. After all, men understand men best.
Most big brothers’ patience can only last about a month. If they don’t see progress for a long time, they will disappear silently and turn to the next live broadcast room to find the anchor who is “willing to meet”.
After just one or two months, Qiuyu felt physically and mentally exhausted from the live broadcast work.
She joked that she has been sweet-mouthed and can coax people since she was a child. But to provide emotional value 24 hours a day, this consumption is much deeper than she imagined.
Chatting with the big brothers is not just the 6 hours of live broadcast. After the broadcast, she had to continue chatting on WeChat, often until the early morning. The next morning, as soon as she started broadcasting, the big brothers appeared in the live broadcast room on time.
“My whole life is chatting with them and accompanying them.”
Sometimes, the big brother called in the middle of the night. If she didn’t answer, he would keep calling; if she turned off her phone, he would rush into the live broadcast room and curse her the next day.
In addition to dealing with the big brother, she also had to face more direct and rude harassment.
In Douyin private messages, people often asked directly: “How much does it cost to come out for one night?” Some people even sent private photos.
Every morning when she woke up, she opened the message list and scanned it, and she could see seven or eight such photos lying quietly.
What really made her breathless was the moral uneasiness.
“The big brother gave me so much money, but I didn’t fall in love with them, and I had an ambiguous relationship with them… I really feel like a big liar.”
The most generous big brother spent a total of 200,000 in her live broadcast room. “For me, that was a very, very large sum of money, although I only got 60,000 or 70,000 yuan. But the big brother paid 200,000 yuan in real money.”
She abides by the industry rules: never accept transfers privately to avoid any financial disputes.
Sometimes she really couldn’t bear it, and when she saw the other party swiping again and again, she would advise: “Big brother, don’t swipe, today’s performance is enough.” The company’s backstage immediately sent a reminder: “How can you say such a thing?”
At certain moments, the big brother’s actions would touch the soft part of her heart.
On Valentine’s Day, Qiuyu casually said in the live broadcast room that many female anchors in our company received roses today.
Not long after, a big brother who had only known each other for a few days sent a large bouquet of roses to the company, along with a box of chocolates and a small note: “Others have, I hope you have too.”
That was the first time Qiuyu received roses in her life, and the only time so far. Looking back, her mood is still complicated.
When the psychological pressure accumulated to the peak, the company’s operation advised Qiuyu: “It’s not that the big brother really likes you so much that he wants to spend money on you. Even if you are not there, the big brother will give money to other anchors. Why don’t you put the money in your own pocket?”
The operation’s persuasion is sharp but true.
Doing this business also means putting down your dignity and learning to accept the rules of the game in this online world.
Once, a big brother who had never seen her before suddenly broke into Qiuyu’s live broadcast room. He asked her to do squats, 600 at a time, and after she finished, she would give her a “carnival” – worth 3,000 yuan.
During that period, Qiuyu happened to be off-season, and there were not many people giving gifts in the live broadcast room. She hesitated for a while, but still agreed.
As she stood up and squatted again and again, the other party kept sending small hearts and small flowers. She suddenly felt that she was like an entertainer on the ancient stage, singing while waiting for the audience to throw money on the stage.
In the live broadcast circle, “PK competition” is also a common link. Two anchors compete online for popularity, and the winner is determined by the gifts given by the audience.
This is also the link that the big brothers like: they can “protect” their favorite anchors from being bullied, and they can also gain a certain sense of male superiority from victory.
The losing party must accept any punishment proposed by the winner, which is often bizarre and cruel: drinking vinegar, skipping rope barefoot on a massage board, picking up cigarette butts late at night, and even clamping disposable chopsticks between the thighs and then breaking them abruptly.
Qiuyu still remembers that after losing the PK, she was asked to lie on the ground and learn to bark like a dog. At that moment, her self-esteem was trampled on the ground.
Qiuyu was still swiped by an acquaintance, even though she had specially blocked “people who may know” in the settings.
It was a colleague from the previous company. Although no one mentioned it to her face, she knew that everyone was talking about it behind her back. Finally, they sent a representative to ask tentatively. The moment she was recognized, she felt a panic, did not respond, and immediately blocked all of them.
In the spring of 2023, as the job market gradually warmed up, Qiuyu made a decision. She quit her job as an anchor and found an ordinary nine-to-five job.
Her last live broadcast unexpectedly became the one with the most tips, like a grand farewell ceremony. Knowing that she was leaving, a big brother who lived in the live broadcast room gave 50,000 yuan in gifts, setting a record for a single live broadcast of that company at the time.
In her four-month live broadcast career, Qiuyu earned 200,000 yuan.
At first, receiving gifts worth dozens of yuan could make her happy for a long time; gradually, hundreds of yuan in tips could not make her excited; in the end, even if the special effects of gifts worth thousands of yuan flashed on the screen, her heart was as calm as a pool of stagnant water. “But I still have to act very surprised and give the big brother emotional value.” She said.
The speed of making money was amazing, but she didn’t miss it at all.
In these short four months, her spirit was always in a highly tense state, and she even lost her normal desire to consume. People are like living in a vacuum world, unable to feel any real happiness.
One story hides another story.
As the conversation was coming to an end, Qiuyu mentioned that most of the 200,000 yuan she earned from live streaming was used to pay off debts.
Her father died of illness, and she owed a lot of money during the treatment. Even though most of the money was borrowed from relatives, she was eager to pay it off as soon as possible, not wanting to leave a long-term debt in favors.
Her mother is old and now makes a living by setting up a breakfast stall. She has to get up early and prepare things, and her physical strength and energy are not as good as before. The burden of the family fell silently on Qiuyu.
It was also because of this that she was particularly anxious during the days of unemployment and eventually walked into the live broadcast room.
Qiuyu bought herself a cheap car with the remaining money. Life returned to its original track. But she knew in her heart that the experience of being a host was not part of “normal life”, and she didn’t want to mention it to others.
In that live broadcast company, similar dilemmas are hidden in every cubicle.
Qiuyu has seen mothers who pay off debts for their gambler husbands and single mothers who raise two children alone. They all chose this job for similar reasons: free time, quick money, and the ability to take care of the family.
Staying in those small cubicles is the most tolerant place that life has given them.
“Not everyone wants to make quick money, and not everyone is willing to do such a job. Most people just don’t have a more decent outlet.”
Many times, choosing this thing itself is a luxury.
After a moment of silence, she still added seriously that she hopes that the girls who become anchors must protect themselves, and if there are other ways out, change careers as soon as possible.
In 2023, Qiuyu moved to a new city to live.
Life proceeds step by step: go to work, get off work, go home, no friends, no socializing.
One day, she went to listen to a talk show offline. During the show, the host interacted with her for a few words and made the audience laugh. The club owner noticed her backstage and found her after the show. He thought her speech was very interesting and encouraged her to try on stage.
In order to pass the time, Qiuyu began to try to speak open mic. At first, she only talked about some trivial things in life, and the effect was not very good.
Someone asked her if she had any truly unique experience. She thought about it, disassembled, reconstructed, and wrote jokes about that anchor experience.
She brought the stories of “big brothers” to the talk show stage:
“Before, a big brother told me that I haven’t seen a good girl like you for many years. I said, big brother, the Internet is not real now. The big brother started to play real with me and took two shirtless photos.”
“In fact, my jokes don’t have much depth,” she admitted, “I just complain about work pressure, talk about the weird big brothers I met, and the company’s inhumane rules and regulations.”
“Let everyone understand why we become anchors, not because of money worship, not because we want to get something for nothing. If there is a decent job, we also want to do a decent job.”
Since October last year, Qiuyu has earned commercial performance income by telling talk shows.
Unlike in the live studio, Qiuyu wears plain clothes and basically doesn’t wear makeup when she stands on the talk show stage. She won’t dress up for work.
To some extent, whether being a host or doing talk shows, they are providing emotional value to others.
The difference is that the feedback is different. In the live studio, the special effects of gifts reflect the distorted power relationship.
The eldest brother gave her some material things to get a kind of psychological satisfaction, while Qiuyu’s mental pressure is getting bigger and bigger.
The talk show stage gives her another kind of “value exchange”, and the audience pays for her creation with applause and laughter. “I will think, wow, I write good jokes, and I performed well on the stage today.”
Similar struggle attitudes bring about completely different self-awareness.
At first, she became a host just to get a basic salary, and she would earn as much as she could; over time, she began to focus on the numbers, wanting to broadcast more and earn more.
The same is true for talk shows. At first, it was just to kill time and meet friends. Later, she began to polish her jokes and strive for more commercial performances.
“It feels very strange,” she said with a smile, “I feel so hard-working and motivated when I do talk shows and take more commercial performances. I am always making progress.”
“But when I am a host, even if I have the same goal, I will feel greedy if I earn a little more.”
When she said these words, Qiuyu’s tone was as brisk as telling someone else’s story.
Her big brother who spent money lavishly had been decisively blocked by her; some of her former live broadcast colleagues are still trapped in the small live broadcast room; she has paid off all her debts, now has a full-time job from nine to five, and can still stand on the talk show stage on weekends.
Life has become lighter, and her and her mother’s days are also moving in a more down-to-earth direction.
When the audience laughed, no one knew that those jokes were the knot in her heart that kept her tossing and turning. Those late night calls to check on the work, those stockings that had to be worn, those forced performances, have now become the most exciting jokes on the stage.
When pain becomes a joke, it may be the best farewell ceremony.
Except for the annotations, the pictures are provided by the interviewees.
