In China, there are groups and chats on social networks where users pay to receive compliments from dozens of strangers. The groups are called kuakuaqun, which in Mandarin Chinese means “flattery groups”: they have existed for a few years but in recent days they are growing a lot. Most of the groups are on WeChat, which in China is widely used both as a social network and as a messaging service, but they can also be found on QQ, another social network. In most cases, users pay between 15 and 50 yuan, or about 2-5 euros, to receive five minutes of flattery and compliments. But there are also groups where compliments or consoling phrases are free.
In the case of free groups, the mechanism is easy. Someone creates a mutual support group and new members are gradually invited: everyone's job is to compliment others and occasionally complain about something, so as to receive support from others. In general, we try to be positive and encourage mutual kindness.
The question of paid compliments is much more interesting: several sites and newspapers – first Chinese, then also foreign – have tried to reconstruct its history and dynamics. Kuakuaqun seats are generally offered for sale on sites such as Weibo and especially Taobao, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon. The paying user is then invited to the group: enters, receives the compliments he paid for and exits. Inside the kuakuaqun compliments are given by users who in exchange receive small percentages of the price paid by the newly invited user. In the groups there are also moderators who manage the entry and exit of users and say when it is time to start and end the session of compliments, flattery and phrases full of joy and optimism.
It is not clear how much users who write compliments earn: someone talks about a few cents per session and users who do it just to collect some money, someone else tells of users who after several hours spent writing compliments also earn several hundred yuan . It seems that in some cases it is a real job, in others just a weird pastime. But obviously there is no way to make accurate checks or estimates, also because after we started talking about it, the kuakuaqun have increased a lot: rates may have changed and new business models may have developed. Recently, for example, there are more and more cases of people giving compliment sessions to friends, family, boyfriends or acquaintances: in that case both people are invited into the group but only one is the beneficiary of the flattery; the other is there only as a guest. It also appears that some groups are specializing in certain types of users: mothers, students, singles or white-collar workers.
Given the seriality of compliments and the limited information available on paying users, things written in groups are often mundane and resemble those motivational phrases that run on the internet, those that are generally written in questionable fonts on backgrounds that show a sunset or a beach. tropical. Wandering around the internet you will find these examples of answers:
To a person who says he has a hard time learning Chinese: «There is no limit to knowledge. You are a studious person. I believe in you. In the future you will speak Chinese perfectly. ” To a girl who complained because she was distracted from reading: “It's because your level of knowledge is too high than that of the book.” To those who said they were on a diet but had just eaten a piece of cake: “Already the idea of wanting to go on a diet is an excellent starting point” To a user who wrote that he had just moved to a new place and that he felt only: «Excellent! Now you have more free time for yourself, enjoy it! ». To a student who complained about the problems encountered in the study of computer science: “Your heart is too pure for complex algorithms.” Chinese sites write that the first kuakuaqun were born in 2014 on Douban, a social network initially dedicated to reviews. These groups have come back into fashion in recent times, probably as a reaction to the “insulting groups” that were talked about a few months ago. In those groups, users, who often did not know each other, insulted each other or, at best, argued about specific issues, sometimes futile but always clearly divisive: for example, what was better between iPhone and Android devices.
It's not clear to anyone why compliment groups have grown so much in the past few days. A contributing cause could be that on the occasion of World Happiness Day, which is celebrated on March 20, many newspapers have chosen to talk about it. But the groups were growing a lot already in the previous days: the People's Daily, a newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, already mentioned it on March 18.
On March 14, Xinmei Shen spoke on Abacus (an English technology site owned by the South China Morning Post) about her personal experience in a kuakuaqun. He said he paid about 5 euros to go to one of the most popular, and therefore large, groups. She said she waited an hour because there was a queue of people who had to complain about something and be comforted and then it was her turn.
Xinmei said that in her group there were 130 people who, when her time came, “showered her with sentences”. She wrote that when she entered someone even greeted her with phrases such as “I feel that the air has just become sweeter” or “you are an angel fallen from heaven” and that many compliments seemed “the worst phrases to use to approach a lass”. She wrote that she tried to complain about specific things (“My little fish is dead!”), But that the flow of people wrote general praise and flattery, regardless of what she wrote. He said he found more attention in a free QQ group, found by searching a bit on Weibo.
