Douyu is a Chinese live streaming video platform, what differentiates it from others is that it allows live floating bullet comments, which is also the reason why Douyu became viral and gained overnight popularity. There are amateur hosts featured on Douyu who have live streamed their sexual life and who have even live streamed a drunk car crash in order to get more attention for their channel. The company who made this website it is actually the biggest competitor of the most popular video sharing bullet comment website, Bilibili.
The artist thinks China has already entered the post bilibili age; where watching comments is not enough anymore- we have to serve the comments, if you serve the comments well enough, you’ll get tips, which is a new culture in China where people don’t normally tip. On Douyu, amateur hosts live stream everything in order to get “fish balls” from the viewers as a “like” equivalent in other social media. The more likes/ fishballs they get, the wealthier they become. Chinese netizens are creating an emerging monetary-driven/strip club-like online culture. 1000 likes/ fishballs on Douyu is 100 cents in RMB with is about 15 cents in USD. Very well liked hosts can receive “rockets”, which fly across the screen, and cost the viewer 500RMB to send, which equates to approximately 80 dollars. The hosts talks to the comments that are floating on the screen and sometimes do things that the viewers want them to do, in order to get more likes/money.
In the video there is a channel surfing feeling; switching to different live streaming host channels, one SMART dancing, one killing and eating rats, one 3D printing while using google translator to read all the bullet comments the viewers are sending to her, one cosplayer in a student uniform and singing karaoke, one chatting to the comments and asking advice on which style looks the best from her fans, one answering people’s questions regarding customising a PC, one buying a smart phone in a fake Apple store for his live streaming channel, one playing online video games, one streaming a normal hotpot meal with his family, one playing Ma Jiang. In the background of the video is live streaming of a host barbecuing with his cat and selling viagra from his Taobao store. In concert with these streaming channels is an episode of Morgen Freeman, narrating in his profound and claim voice on “What is Reality” from Through the Wormhole, on Discovery Science.