Text | Tao Zong is reasonable
During this time, there was more and more controversy about red fruits.
Around October 14, many terms related to Hongguo hit the hot search list on Weibo, such as “Hongguo short drama to reduce intelligence”, “Hongguo short drama must not be downloaded”, “What Tencent plans to use to leverage Hongguo’s nearly 200 million daily active users”, “Hongguo short drama homogenization”, “Hongguo short drama to prevent addiction”…
Further back, Jia Zhangke, Wang Shuo and other literary and artistic representatives publicly stated that they were addicted to short plays and short videos, which triggered a collective “big cry” in the entire literary and youth circle. In short, with the development of the mobile Internet to this day, short drama apps represented by Hongguo have penetrated into the national camp and become more and more popular.
According to statistics from a third-party data agency, in August 2026, among the top 50 applications in my country’s monthly usage time, Hongguo short drama lasted about 125 minutes/day, which has exceeded Douyin’s approximately 112 to 120 minutes and WeChat’s approximately 82 to 90 minutes.
Seeing that the situation has developed from pure entertainment to bad trends such as “increasing intelligence” and “addiction”, a trend of “withdrawal” of red fruit has set off on social platforms. It is reported that a post-00s student who was preparing for a graduate school exam uninstalled red fruit five times in one month; some people have spontaneously formed mutual aid groups to supervise each other and fight against addiction.
However, quitting red fruits is not easy. Everyone wants to get rid of the mindless fun brought by “cool”, but once they get the chance, they still fall into the trap.
The “Red Fruit Withdrawal War” in the Kaogong Group: What we are fighting is never an APP
In the early morning, Lin Jing (pseudonym) stared at the “Install” button in the app store and was stunned for three minutes. There was a pile of test papers and application materials stacked on the desk. Several highlighters of different colors were thrown in front of the tablet. There was a “Countdown to Landing” label on the wall. After hesitating for a long time, she gave up the installation.
Later, Lin Jing sent a screenshot to the group, saying “Today is also a day to successfully resist the red fruit.”
Lin Jing, who was born in 1998, is an older candidate among those taking the public examination. Last year, she had just signed a “lifetime contract” with her leading foreign pharmaceutical company. Originally, she was no longer as anxious about the future as her peers. However, soon, medical reform, environmental involution, and regional leadership changes… various factors made her work pressure increase sharply.
Lin Jing simply started preparing for the civil service job.
Since she was working and preparing for exams at the same time, her already busy life became even more monotonous. At first, Hongguo was just a “background sound” on her commute, and then it gradually turned into a “short-term relaxation” when she was tired of studying. Later, she couldn’t remember how many times she wanted to finish reading for ten minutes before starting to write an essay. When she looked up from the drama, she only wrote a title.
This is the fifth time she has uninstalled Hongguo this month. The reason is that the mock test dropped seven points from the previous time.
Lin Jing summarized it and found that the nodes of several uninstalls were similar: failure in the mock test, too much time wasted during review, strong self-loathing after finishing the game late at night… There is always only one reason for reinstalling: just watch for a while, and balance work and rest.
The first uninstallation only lasted three days.
Screenshots of the daily group chats of the “Coming ashore Fruit Quit Mutual Aid Camp”, provided by Lin Jing
“I thought it was because my willpower was too weak.” It wasn’t until I saw more and more “withdrawal failure” posts on social platforms that I discovered that I was not a special case. In some high-pressure preparation groups for postgraduate and public examinations, “repeatedly uninstalling red fruits” has almost become a collective symptom.
So, Lin Jing directly pulled a “Withdrawal Red Fruit Group”.
In the beginning, the group was composed of people who grew up together. Later, the group members spread from 6 to more than a dozen, and the group members were basically all members of the exam preparation party. The group name was finally decided as “Going to quit fruit mutual aid camp”. The group rules are simple and straightforward: post uninstall screenshots to check in every day, post to the group to ask for scolding when you can’t help it, and report the study time of the day in the evening.
Every morning, there are all uninstall screenshots in the group, and the captions are as neat as some kind of ritual:
“Today is the first day of abstinence” “It will definitely work this time”. In the afternoon and late at night, messages of confession will appear one after another: “I’m sorry everyone, I pretended to be back again” and “I just uninstalled it for half an hour, I’m really useless.” There is always a long list of echoes below: “Me too” “+1, it took me just an hour to react”…
After repeated attempts, everyone began to use all possible methods: some shared phone locking software, some recommended phones for the elderly, and some directly canceled their accounts… They tried all the methods, but they failed more than they won.
Last week, Lin Jing suddenly realized: they seemed to be fighting against Hongguo, but in fact they were fighting against the attention trap of the entire Internet era. It is reported that exam prep party members are one of the most addicted groups to red fruits, because their behavioral patterns and emotional needs are exactly what “Hong Guo” wants.
First of all, it is a perfect adaptation to fragmented time. The pace of preparation for the exam is high-pressure and ruptured, with fifty minutes of focused study and ten minutes of rest. This ten-minute “relaxation gap” is the golden entry time for Hongguo.
Secondly, it is precise compensation for delayed gratification.
Preparing for exams is a battle with an extremely long feedback cycle, and Hongguo provides instant to second feedback. With every few seconds of feeling refreshed and every few seconds of emotional resonance, the brain will instinctively avoid the boring and painful task of answering questions and invest in this kind of low-cost, high-return happiness.
What’s even more interesting is that as the current group of public examination editors grows, more and more short dramas integrate this “era stalk” into the plot.
For example, revenge dramas such as “She Passed the Public Examination, and the Whole Family Was Panicked” portrayed “going ashore” as a counterattack card; effective plays of 57.79 million and other cool dramas such as “You Are a Lecturer in the Public Examination, How Did You Become a National Teacher” packaged the examination ability as a golden finger; reality dramas such as “The Bully She Passed the Public Examination” turned the public examination into a conflict skeleton, with natural room for suspense, competition and reversal.
Compared with the grievances of rich families fabricated out of thin air, the short drama about the public examination has its own empathetic narrative, and it is a special content hunt for people preparing for the examination.
At present, Hongguo is no longer just an entertainment APP. For young people who are in the uphill stage of life, it is an emotional outlet in high-pressure life, a social compensation in closed preparation for exams, and one of the few happiness that can be obtained immediately in the boring day after day. They hate it for stealing time and rely on it for respite.
On one side is a loose community maintained by willpower and guilt, and on the other side is a team of professional product managers, algorithm engineers, and content operators. They study human weaknesses and design countless trigger points and hooks with only one goal: to let you stay for one more minute, and one more minute.
This is not a fair fight.
Behind “Withdrawal Red Fruit” is a group of ordinary people trying to escape the industrial attention harvest.
At 12:20 in the morning, Lin Jing finally pressed the return button and threw the phone to the other end of the bed.
She picked up the pen and looked at the unfinished data analysis question again.
It only took 4 days to bring down the literary youth from the altar: Why should we despise low-level happiness?
Wang Yuan (pseudonym) is Lin Jing’s childhood friend and the only outlier in the “Jieguo Group”.
She works as an accountant for a new materials company. Due to the deteriorating performance of the company, she is currently following the trend and taking the public examination. She also followed the trend of watching dramas and quitting… While other members continued to feel ashamed and guilty due to their addiction to red fruits, she was the only one who always showed a sense of relaxation that was not concealed or internalized.
“Life is hard enough, what’s wrong with watching two episodes of a short drama?” This is what she often talks about.
In Wang Yuan’s eyes, the one who is even more “weird” than her is Su Rui, another young girl. Su Rui is recognized as a “senior spokesperson for happiness” in her circle of friends. She watches old movies every day after get off work, lights incense and makes tea on weekends and collects physical books. She does not have any short video APP on her mobile phone. On social platforms, she either excerpts from poetry collections or takes film photography…
Before returning to her hometown during the National Day, Wang Yuan made a bet with Lin Jing that she would drag this young man into the red fruit pit within these seven days.
“Even Jia Zhangke couldn’t avoid it. All the young people in the literary world have fallen for me.” She set a flag in the group.
The annual hair party was held in a coffee shop in the county town. Lin Jing was swiping red fruits on the sofa, and Wang Yuan was forwarding the AI orange cat short film. Only Su Rui rolled her eyes on the other side. She also advised the two people preparing for the exam: “You already need concentration, but you still swipe at this every day. The more you swipe, the less focused you will be on the questions.”
Lin Jing nodded in agreement and turned around to brush.
Su Rui criticizes all the way, from the alienated logic of algorithms to the sterility of cultural fast food, with plentiful references and rigorous logic. Wang Yuan couldn’t bear it anymore and handed her phone to her. On the screen, an AI calico cat was picking at the refrigerator door: “Look, it can open the freezer layer and get ice cream. It’s as smart as you.”
Su Rui rolled her eyes again.
On the second day of the holiday, the three of them went to do handmade pottery. Wang Yuan found a historical short drama and deliberately played it next to Su Rui. The opening lines of ancient Chinese are deep and profound, and the soundtrack is textured. Suddenly, Su Rui suddenly said: “This dubbing sounds like a dubbing actor I am familiar with.”
The next second he said with disdain: “Today’s AI really steals people’s faces and vocal cords…”
Wang Yuan sent several popular historical short dramas “Qin Shihuang: I Have a Chinese All-Star Lineup”, “Armed into the Song Dynasty” and “The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons”… all to Su Rui. The group suddenly became Su Rui’s “criticism scene” for the short play: research on costumes and artifacts, restoration of historical narratives, and plot logic… Every exciting point was her aesthetic minefield.
Wenqing’s world collapsed when Su Rui sent a link: “This Zhuge Liang is so good at modeling!”
Group chat screenshot provided by Wang Yuan
Su Rui watched a satirical fantasy short play at twelve o’clock in the middle of the night.
The “Literary Youth Breakthrough Plan” originally scheduled for seven days, Wang Yuan succeeded in all aspects in only four days.
This seems to be the cleverness of short dramas in hunting down users: it will not forcibly pull you down from the aesthetic high ground, but use cool logic to bring the content to your high ground. When the content wears an aesthetic coat that you are familiar with and recognized, you can no longer push it away using “taste” standards.
Before the algorithm, everyone is equal. The content has been completely downgraded, and there is no chain of contempt in the world.
Wang Yuan does not understand the current collective narrative: since when has happiness been divided into strict categories? Those small, zero-threshold, low-cost pleasures are uniformly labeled as “low-level” and pushed to the opposite side of self-discipline and growth, becoming “intelligence-reducing” behaviors that everyone can criticize.
In Wang Yuan’s view, this moral judgment on “low-level happiness” itself contains arrogance that is divorced from the context of survival.
The young people of this generation are living in an all-around involved survival system: the terrifying recruitment ratio in public examinations, KPIs in the workplace, and even leisure are bound to the utilitarian goal of “self-improvement”… But the so-called “advanced happiness”, such as art exhibitions, traveling to recharge, and deepening hobbies, all require thresholds.
In the third-tier northern city where Wang Yuan lives, tickets for a theater often cost hundreds, and movies cost dozens, but Hongguo only takes a few seconds to advertise.
During the National Day, she also planned to put down her mobile phone and travel. But with thousands of dollars in travel expenses, accommodation fees, tickets and meals… combined with the company’s rumored layoff plan and salary reduction plan, she finally chose to work overtime. Fortunately, the company’s overtime subsidy for current holidays has not been cancelled.
The “Feedback on the Results of the 2026 Holiday Travel Questionnaire” from a certain place shows that residents pay attention to cost-effectiveness when traveling, and mid-range consumption is the absolute mainstream. Among the main considerations in choosing a destination, affordable price (18.33%) outweighs attraction features (15.83%). As for the reason for not traveling, high cost accounts for 17.06%.
Giving up traveling and indulging in red fruits have turned from scattered personal choices into a holiday trend.
On October 14, a reporter from “Shangguan News” checked the social platform and found that many netizens posted the recent usage time of mobile phone screens, and the average daily usage time of their red fruit short drama exceeded 10 hours. If the pleasure can be exchanged for corresponding economic costs, countless ordinary people should continue to choose red fruits.
Wang Yuan feels that she has seen through the essence of the happy contempt chain, even though she also has to “quit” Hong Guo.
Anyway, I also want to do an AI short play: Isn’t 50,000 yuan enough?
Among the “Jie Guo Group”, apart from Lin Jing, the one who is most obsessed with red fruits is Zhang Heng. It was these two people who shouted to get a group of people to “quit” together.
Zhang Heng opened a mobile phone store in his hometown county. In the past two years, as the offline market for 3C products has become increasingly sluggish, his mobile phone store has been operating half a day and half a day for leisure. Inspired by the fact that several primary school students were preparing to take the public examination, he also bought several sets of teaching materials and looked through them in the store every day.
Since this year, Hongguo short drama has gradually replaced work, life, and family as the top topic in the entire hair group.
Zhang Heng summed it up:
Lin Jing likes the boss’s sweet pet, Wang Yuan likes raising babies for healing, and there are two others. One likes thrillers and suspense, and the other likes male counterattacks. Even Su Rui, who is new to the industry, has accurately found her own “channel”: historical intrigue… Everyone guards their own “content track”, which together form a typical consumption scene in the short drama industry.
This is in stark contrast to the long video consumption pattern a few years ago.
In the past, the long video membership accounts of several people were in a “shared circulation” state. You used mine, I used yours, and Aiyou Tengmang was fixed for each person to recharge one. This year, when Zhang Heng accidentally logged into his Tencent Video account, he found that in the device login list, only Su Rui’s record was still being updated.
As for whether this record will continue to be updated in the future, that is a question.
Zhang Heng only had an entertainment attitude toward short plays, until one person, a few computers, and a few computers created a hit that hit billions of views. The “grassroots myth” of AI comic dramas went viral everywhere… In July, he came across a report that a couple born in 1995 in Bazhong, Sichuan, created a work with a cumulative views of more than 4.1 billion.
What really moved him was the story he heard at the class reunion before National Day.
The owner of a building materials business in a neighboring county is worried about the lack of customer traffic in his store year after year. This year, he hired two young people to start a county-themed AI short drama. He specializes in filming stories about family troubles and market counterattacks. He plans to produce customized advertisements for car dealerships and furniture stores in the future.
In an instant, the idea of ”secondary entrepreneurship” sprouted in Zhang Heng’s heart.
In the era of live-action short dramas, Zhang Hengtao made short dramas a business for MCN and the professional team. Writing scripts, finding actors, shooting locations, and doing post-production, every step is a real investment. However, the popularity of AI-generated video tools has lowered the threshold of this industry, which has become the biggest bonus of the era for amateurs to enter the industry.
He has opened a mobile phone store for five or six years, has explored digital products at the mass level, and learned software quickly. More importantly, he wrote novels on the Qidian website when he was in college, and watched short plays for almost a year. He could count seven or eight different plots with his eyes closed, which plots retained people’s attention, and which twists were the most poignant.
On the last night of the National Day holiday, Zhang Heng became a member of the AI tool for the first month and sent the plan to the group.
He said: “If you can’t beat it, join it.”
Soon, the “Jie Guo Group” was filled with excitement. Compared with those who applauded and supported, the majority were throwing cold water.
Lin Jing sent an industry survey report. In the first half of this year, more than 221,900 new AI short dramas were launched on the Internet, with more than 500,000 practitioners. About every 200 works can have a hit. If 50 million views are used as the profit and loss line, less than 1.3% of them can recover their costs.
Lin Jing asked him a crucial question: “What is your budget?”
Zhang Heng thought for a while and optimistically reported a number: “Fifty thousand.”
Lin Jing asked again: “How long do you plan to burn?”
He replied: “One year.”
The group was quiet for a moment, and a few minutes later, Su Rui replied: “Go to bed, I have to go to work tomorrow.”
Group chat screenshot provided by Lin Jing
But Zhang Heng still refuses to give up and will share his plans in the group from time to time. After all, there are no popular industries left in the entire market. His mobile phone store was already in a state of limbo. In his plan, the annual budget of 50,000 yuan was divided into three parts:
The first piece is a one-time hardware investment with a cap of 8,000 yuan. The office computer in the store is originally a high-end machine saved for mobile phone repair, plus a professional-grade graphics card and a capture card; the second part is the cost of tools and materials for the whole year, which is strictly controlled within 12,000, and is evenly divided to exactly 1,000 per month.
The remaining 30,000 yuan is the traffic test and risk reserve fund he left behind.
Currently, Zhang Heng has planned to transform his balcony into a mini studio. Although half a month has passed, this plan has not yet been implemented.
Zhang Heng’s preparation studio and short play viewing stand
As Lin Jing and others said, the more Zhang Heng checked the information, the more he felt that he was too optimistic about this industry, especially the cost of investment.
It is reported that the streaming fee is the largest part of the cost of a short drama, usually accounting for 70% to 90% of the top-up turnover. For a hit drama with a recharge of over 100 million yuan, the casting cost is often as high as 60 million to 80 million yuan. After deducting the production cost and various divisions, the actual profit may only be a few million yuan.
At the same time, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television reported that in the first quarter of this year, the hit rate of AI short dramas was only 0.16%, which means that for every 635 AI short dramas launched, there was barely one work with over 100 million views; 64% of the works had less than 1 million views, which could not even cover the cost of computing power.
What made Zhang Heng even more withdrawn was another set of data: According to data from DataEye drama review, the revenue from the AI short drama’s 1,000 plays has been cut in half to 15 to 30 yuan year-on-year, and the revenue side has also shrunk simultaneously. A year ago, the income from 10,000 plays of AI short dramas was still between 30 and 100 yuan, but now it has been cut in half to 5 to 10 yuan.
Forget it, he might as well continue selling mobile phones.
後記
The October night wind blew past the streets and office window sills in the north, and the cold light of mobile phones was shining everywhere.
Algorithms are still being iterated, content is still being mass-produced, some are still quitting, some are already in the game, and some are forever slacking off.
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