I wasted a week staring at 19 short video apps from China

From TikTok to Kuaishou to WeeSee, short video apps are an entertaining, weird, sleazy and maddening world

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I wasted a week staring at 19 short video apps from China

Masha Borak

Published: 9:10pm, 7 Jan 2019Updated: 8:49am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

If there was a trend that stood out in 2018 in China, it was the short video app frenzy. And it’s not calming down any time soon. Much like the live streaming boom, which saw a whopping two hundred apps competing, there are now dozens of short video apps in China. 14 of them come from Tencent alone!

That’s why my editor said I should go through all the short video apps to let you know what they were like. And I said yes, because he’s my boss and I don’t have a choice.

1. Douyin: Teen’s choice

First up is Douyin, the Chinese version of global sensation TikTok. Immediately, I’m welcomed by an alien-faced woman singing in a 5-year-old's voice dressed in a traditional Chinese dress.

So far, so weird.

Content is unsurprisingly geared towards younger people. There's lip-syncing to Mandopop hits. There are teenagers showing off their dance moves on the street while obstructing traffic. There are the pop star stalkers. There's memes, skits, and more alien-faced women. All in all, everything you would expect from a viral app.

But then it gets weirder. I stumble across a video of soldiers throwing themselves in the snow naked. This leads me to the realization that the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, also has a Douyin account. And it's mostly military propaganda, including a speech defending the contested South China Sea.

Never realized Douyin could be so... militarized. (Picture: Douyin)