China Predicted the Future that I Refused to Believe In

There’s a certain kind of embarassment that comes with being wrong about things you very confidently opposed. Living in China for nine years now, I’ve seen trends emerge that I judged as “low level”, gimmicky, or just beneath my self-evaluation of being an enlightened consumer.

Influencer marketing. Selfie sticks. Strangers on the internet with no obvious credentials hawking products to their followers.

I thought: Geez, why does promotion in China feel so low? Are people really this “stupid”? As it turns out, China was just ahead of the curve on trends that would eventually hit the western world, and everywhere else, too.

A Trivial Example: Selfie Sticks

Let’s start with something simple. When selfie sticks started appearing everywhere in places like China and South Korea, I thought they were genuinely pointless. Who needs a telescoping rod to photograph themselves? Why not ask someone nearby to snap a few shots for you? It seemed like a solution chasing a problem that didn’t exist.

Then, I proceeded to witness their spread to every country on Earth. Museums started to ban them. People were dying or getting injured while trying to get the perfect shot. When I read stories from the United States about the hazards of selfies and selfie sticks, I realized that maybe my opinion of them wasn’t as universal as I had originally believed.

Influencer Marketing

In China, the concept of a “KOL”, a key opinion leader, has been established for quite some time. These are people with massive followings on WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, or other platforms who got paid handsome sums of money to promote products to strangers on the internet. Brands were obviously spending money on this.

My reaction at the time was something along the lines of: Why would you trust some random person on the internet over an established outlet that actually specializes in product reviews? That’s what their entire business is about. Telling you what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s kinda meh.

I thought this was a “trend” unique to China. These influencers rarely have credentials. They’re not journalists. They probably don’t have editorial standards or anything like that. I reasoned that maybe influencers are a thing in China because having permission to publish things here isn’t easy. You can’t just buy a domain, set up a website, and start talking. There’s a process for your website to be approved. It involves the government. It involves some level of inspection. Surely this was why influencers became so popular here—people simply didn’t have many other viable alternatives to seek out this kind of information.

It turns out, people aren’t just seeking cold hard facts from an expert. They enjoy the added personality. They enjoy watching a real human being demonstrate or use the product. Maybe people even perceive these online personalities to be more genuine than a specialized review platform, that may or may not be financially incentivized to say certain things?

Well, here we are in 2019, and now I see this kind of promotion all over YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. This is a real industry, and one that isn’t just an isolated Chinese phenomenon.

Gaming Reviews: RIP IGN and Game Informer

Maybe it’s just me, but as a lifelong gamer, I was always into traditional gaming media. I remember reading printed copies of magazines like Game Informer and Nintendo Power. I would read game reviews on IGN. I would base my purchasing decisions because of playable demos and information via relatively “official” publications.

Now, however, video game promotion has taken a completely different turn. People read Steam reviews for the rage, entertainment, or for genuine opinions. People watch other gamers stream on Twitch or YouTube. They see the “hot takes” and the opinions. They debate and battle with each other in the comments section.

As with influencers in general, I just thought this was an isolated phenomenon. I never tune into Twitch to watch someone else play a video game. I find that idea… silly. But apparently there are plenty of other people out there who do find value (or at least entertainment) in this medium.

Mobile Payments

China has had mobile payments for years now. My own western friends in China remarked at how “ahead” China was in this regard. I shrugged. Didn’t we have PayPal for over a decade now? Plus, is there any demonstrable advantage in using your phone as opposed to using a contactless credit card?

Phone Method: You open WeChat, navigate to your wallet, and then have a QR code or barcode scanned. Payment done.

Card Method: You open your wallet, pull out your card, and then tap it against the POS machine. Payment done.

I didn’t see why this was seen as an improvement. I reasoned that, because Chinese people weren’t accustomed to using credit cards, that this was unique to China. Union Pay already exists, yes, but the infrastructure for credit card payments just isn’t every extensive in China. The jump from cash only payments to WeChat Pay or Alipay was a nice improvement in convenience for people living here, but I thought this tech provided little to no benefit for people in the West.

Now there’s both Apple and Google Pay. These “phone wallets” are becoming increasingly popular. WeChat Pay and Alipay didn’t travel abroad themselves, but this underlying behavior of using a cell phone for payments certainly did.

I was already aware that many Chinese households didn’t even have computers before smartphones became affordable to the masses. So this, I reasoned, is why mobile payments are so popular in China. It’s a local phenomenon tied to China’s rapid growth and due to it skipping the home computer + cable/dsl internet era of the early 2000s.

But as it was with the influencers, it turns out people everywhere want to use their phones for payments.

So the takeaway here is… don’t confuse your own use habits and preferences with broader trends.

I still do not watch YouTube reviews or “reaction” videos for games I’m interested in. I still dislike having random products peddeled to me when I’m watching a YouTube video. I would still rather read an official press release, visit the game’s official website, and directly participate in a closed or open beta before buying a game. But I realize that gamers and consumers in 2019 aren’t like this anymore.

Now I try to clearly separate my own ways of thinking, my own use habits, and my own prejudices when evaluating new trends or ideas. A new “thing” may seem silly to you or I, but there’s a reason why trends trend.