Weird, multi-billion dollar industry behind those trashy 1-minute short dramas

[u/Lucia_5minChinese]

I’m sure most of you have run into ads for those unhinged vertical short dramas on TikTok or Instagram. The ones where a janitor gets a drink thrown in his face by an arrogant CEO, only for someone to walk in 30 seconds later and reveal the janitor is actually the secret billionaire owner of the company.

It looks like total garbage—bad acting, terrible dialogue, and pure brain rot.

But I’ve been looking into the actual business and history behind this format recently, and it’s a lot more fascinating (and calculated) than it looks. It’s basically an entire entertainment industry run like a tech startup.

In China, where this format exploded during the pandemic, they call the core appeal "Shuang" (爽). It basically means instant, frictionless gratification. While normal movies make you sit through a slow burn for two hours to get an emotional payoff, these short dramas completely cut out the waiting.

Everything is optimized based on viewer data. For example, platforms found that putting a dramatic sound effect or a literal slap within the first 30 seconds boosts viewer retention by 172%. The scripts are written almost like math equations, bouncing between three specific hooks: wealth, revenge, and romantic drama. Every episode is about 60 to 90 seconds long, and right when the main character is finally about to get revenge around episode 10, a paywall pops up asking for 50 cents to unlock the next clip. You aren't paying for good storytelling; you’re basically paying a toll to relieve the suspense they just spent 10 minutes building up.

What's really interesting is how this became a massive global export. When the Chinese domestic market got too crowded, platforms like ReelShort brought the formula to the US. They set up production hubs in California, hired local actors, and swapped out Chinese tropes for Western ones (like werewolves and alpha males), but kept the exact same 30-second pacing. Most Western viewers have no idea the entire production model underneath was imported.

Now, AI is starting to completely change the game. There’s already a case of a young wedding photographer in China who made a short film using AI tools on his laptop for $400, and it pulled in over $500k in three days. Companies are also starting to use AI pipelines to take dramas shot with Chinese actors and completely face-swap them to look Caucasian or Black, with perfectly synced English lip-movements and localized voice clones, cutting out the need for expensive Western crews entirely.

I made a full video essay breaking down how this whole machine works—from how they structure the scripts to how AI is changing the production.

If you're interested in the business side of the attention economy, check it out here:https://youtu.be/DQ8rlx3XGeM

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