Facial Profiling: YY.com and Commodity Voyeurism? Or: Youth Pay To Watch Youth Do Young Things

Here's a thought: instead of reading the next novel on your booklist, why not simply watch someone else read it instead? Can't decide whether the latest Oscar fare makes the cut? How about sitting back and observing others' reactions to American Sniper or Birdman?

It might sound odd, but in the weird and dangerous world of so-called 'modern youth', vicariously experienced entertainment has been a fast-growing and diversifying trend.

The popularity of Teens React to JPOP, Lets Play videogame play-throughs (NSFW) and this bizarre phenomenon of paying to watch a woman eat food can only mean commoditisation is being taken to perverse extremes: today's young people are the generation that consumes consumption itself.

In this, Chinese youth may be ahead of the game.

YY, R U WATCHING ME?

Enter YY.com, a NASDAQ-listed Chinese company that allows you to watch predominantly young women and men talk into their webcams. It also allows you to pay them to…well…I'm not exactly sure yet.

Launched in 2008, YY is a kind of online entertainment hub featuring game portals, chat rooms and livestreams of users who sing, game or commentate on seemingly any topic that comes to mind. By the middle of last year, YY.com had 773.4 million registered user accounts and 100 million unique, active monthly users.

On November 21, 2012, YY had its public offering at RMB 89.1 million.

YY is currently preparing a release on its Q4 and full year results for 2014 in March. In 2013, YY pulled in RMB 1.8 billion, a year on year increase of 122.4% from RMB 820 million in 2012 (results unaudited).

On YY, account-holders can set up their own livestream channels, which other users can browse through and watch. In the spirit of vicarious experience, here's a quick walkthrough.

This is the YY homepage:

At first blush, it looks like some sort of dating site. But click the icons of one of those femme fatales (or dashing lads; male users have a considerable presence on this site) and it links you to a page like this:

This is Guo Meizi's stream. Guo Meizi (Little Sister Guo) is a 网络主播 (Wǎngluò zhǔbō) or 'Internet Anchor', which means she's one of a growing number of amateur and professional livestream personalities who simulcast whatever they happen to be doing on the computer to virtual crowds of adoring fans.

In the middle of the screen (1), Guo Meizi chats away to her audience, whom she can also interact with in the chat box on the right (2). Her profile icon in the top left (3) shows her user number and, more importantly, the amount of 'flowers' she has received from her audience. Here's a closer look at a different 'anchor':

Shuai Zong (Handsome Zong) has, as of the day of publication, received five and a half million flowers.

Back to Guo, the two boxes at the bottom right (4) indicate where I can send Guo a flower, or choose a special animation from the grid, and express my adoration…or something like that.

"I Hope He Buys You Flowers..."

Those flowers and animations are nothing more than colourful, coordinated instant messaging pixels, but for YY anchors they represent cold, hard renminbi. This is all part of 粉丝经济 (Fěnsī jīngjì) or fan economics, a phenomenon entailing Internet anchors receiving gifts and payments from devoted groupies.

Like other online video celebs, YY anchors make money from advertising. Flowers – along with an exceptional personality, wit or cleavage – determine popularity. The more flowers given, the better you're liked. The better you're liked, the more advertisers like you.

Leaving no corner of cyber celebrity un-monetised, YY turns a profit on this fandom. Die-hard fans can purchase red or purple 'diamonds' – YY's virtual currency – to send cartoons of glittering lips, streams of balloons or flashing 'I Love Yous'. The simplest ones cost 100 diamonds, and the glitziest (if you have to ask, a diamond ring and silver necklace) go for just under 20 thousand diamonds. 10 thousand diamonds cost 10 renminbi (just over $1.5 US).

In format, YY doesn't differ radically from similar overseas sites like Twitch.tv, where streamers can generate ad revenue and viewers can pay $5 subscription fees to their favourite streams.

Bekuh.tv's Twitch stream. Her top monthly donation (e.g. that someone donated to her) so far is US $1,500.00.

Thou Shalt Enjoy

Aside from the diamond credit system, YY also departs from its foreign look-alikes in content. YY.com offers a vast number of streams (and old-fashioned, pre-recorded videos) of every kind: video gaming, singing, comedy, chatting, web-surfing (sadly, watching someone use the Internet as a form of entertainment is a thing), there are even streams for the stock market (which, come with chat boxes on the side so traders can talk shop while they watch the numbers roll).

Beyond consuming consumption itself, through YY's Game Centre you can access a slew of smart phone and online games linked through game portal Duowan. There's also a Leaderboard where you can find the site's top anchor-men and women. Topping every category – Popularity, Trending, Flowers (received) and Shares – was this man, Li Ge:

Li Ge sits at his computer, chatting with his audience and chiming in with funny observations.

The next obvious frontier is reaction videos to reaction videos.

(Ed: To my utter, infinite and complete misery, it looks like this is already happening. Sigh. Quick, someone get the scotch.)