Chapter 2, Shorts
Chapter 2, Shorts
Shorts.
What percentage of the 20-30 generation in South Korea doesn't watch Shorts or short-form platforms at all?
'Even in my case, I watch bullshit Shorts often...'
Even in my unit, as soon as I got my phone, I'd go on YouTube and watch Shorts first.
Because it was the fastest way to get a dopamine hit.
I can say for sure.
The percentage of the 20-30 generation that doesn't watch short-form platforms is the smaller one.
"Kkeu. Home-cooked food really is the best."
"It's tasty because Mom made it. Samchon, you should be grateful to Mom."
"Is there any family member who isn't grateful to Keun-nuna?"
I glanced at my niece sitting across from me, muttering that it was obvious.
Baek Ha-rin was chewing on some egg rolls.
Picking up kimchi with her chopsticks and putting it on her rice, she asked.
"But... do you actually make money filming that?"
Honestly, that was the part I was most curious about.
Rumors are everywhere on the internet that YouTubers and TikTokers rake in money.
But that's only for the top 1 percent, and I wondered if a normal college student could really make money just by dancing a bit.
Baek Ha-rin shrugged at my question.
"Eh. It's just enough for some pocket money."
Pocket money, huh.
Does she make like 300,000 to 400,000 won a month?
'True.'
Come to think of it, there's no way it wouldn't make money.
A grown girl dancing seductively in flowy silk pajamas in front of a camera.
It's obvious that countless men won't be able to take their eyes off the screen and will hit 'like'.
No, not just men, women would watch too.
Selling youth and looks to create traffic, and that traffic becomes money.
That's how the world works these days.
"Really? Let's see how much you make. What's the channel name?"
I took my smartphone out of my pants pocket and placed it on the table.
I opened the YouTube app and put my finger on the search bar.
Then Baek Ha-rin furrowed her brows as if looking at me with contempt.
"Samchon, do you really want to see your niece dancing that much?"
"Huh?"
"No, isn't it kind of perverted for a blood-related uncle to ask for a channel name just to watch his grown niece shaking her butt?"
This girl, seriously.
I flicked Baek Ha-rin on the forehead.
Ttak!
"Ouch!"
With a 'Ttak!' sound, Baek Ha-rin covered her forehead with both hands.
She glared at me with tears welling up.
"That hurts! Why did you hit me!"
"If someone heard that, they'd think I was some creepy uncle with a twenty-year age gap. We're only one year apart, basically like siblings, so what pervert?"
"But we're still uncle and niece!"
"Hey. And why would I have ulterior motives watching you dance? In my eyes, you just look like a monkey doing a talent show."
Baek Ha-rin pouted at my scolding.
"Ssi... I'm going to tell Mom everything later. That Samchon hit me and bullied me."
"Go ahead, tell her. Do you think Keun-nuna will take the side of her cute youngest brother or her creepy eldest daughter? Forget it, just tell me the channel name."
I urged her, pushing the phone screen toward Baek Ha-rin.
Baek Ha-rin, still rubbing her forehead, opened her mouth in a voice that was barely audible.
"Harin-geongdyu."
"What?"
"Ha, Harin-geongdyu!"
Baek Ha-rin shrieked.
I doubted my ears.
"...Princess?"
"...Not Princess, it's Geongdyu..."
Haa.
A deep sigh escaped me.
I clicked my tongue without realizing it.
"Sigh. A twenty-year-old girl acting like this, 'Geongdyu' bullshit. Aren't you embarrassed?"
"So what! It's a nickname the fans gave me! It's a kind of cuteness that an ajusshi like a Samchon who just got discharged from the military could never understand, so mind your own business!"
Ajusshi sensibility, my foot.
I shook my head and searched for 'Harin-geongdyu' in the search bar.
As soon as I hit the enter key, one channel popped up at the very top.
"Let's see..."
I almost dropped my spoon after entering the channel.
[Harin-geongdyu]
[342,000 Subscribers]
"You have over 300,000 subscribers?"
"Pfft~"
I doubted my eyes.
Not 30,000, but 300,000.
It was a subscriber count that rivaled a decent mid-tier celebrity or a broadcasting station channel.
I went to the channel's video tab and scanned through the Shorts videos.
The videos were packed so tightly I'd have to scroll endlessly to reach the bottom.
There looked to be well over a hundred.
Plus, the view counts were no joke.
"Crazy."
Most of the videos were easily surpassing 1 million views.
1.5 million, 2 million, 3 million...
"This one is 8 million?"
The most popular video I found while scrolling had a whopping 8.4 million views.
Isn't this way beyond the level of pocket money?
I clicked on the videos one by one.
They were all videos of Baek Ha-rin dancing to trendy challenges or lip-syncing in her room, living room, or outdoors.
Every single one was either in flowy pajamas or a tight crop top that showed off her figure.
Seeing her wink at the camera and act all fatal, I felt nauseous.
"8 million people liked this? What is the world coming to?"
"Damn it! Men like that kind of stuff!"
"Then is your uncle a woman?"
I scrolled much further down.
I saw the channel's early videos.
"Hmm?"
Among the videos at the bottom, there were some where she was wearing a school uniform and dancing with friends in a school classroom or hallway.
Baek Ha-rin's high school days, wiggling in front of a blackboard wearing gym pants and a summer school shirt.
"You've been filming and uploading this since high school?"
"...I started it as a joke with friends in my second year of high school, and it got a good reaction, so I kept doing it."
Baek Ha-rin answered nonchalantly while eating tofu from the kimchi stew.
I shook my head, alternating between looking at the phone screen and Baek Ha-rin's face.
'Tsk tsk.'
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
My blood-related uncle was called by the nation, holding a gun in the mountains and struggling, while this niece was shaking her butt in a warm room, raking in money.
Even though it's a capitalist world, this terrible unfairness made a corner of my chest ache.
It's despicable. Truly despicable.
But as I kept watching the videos, one annoying point stood out.
"Hey. But why are these videos like this?"
"What."
"There's no editing at all."
Baek Ha-rin tilted her head at my remark.
I'm not a video expert or editor, but I roughly know how the YouTube ecosystem works these days.
Even for short Shorts videos, it's the golden rule to do cut editing, add appropriate sound effects, transitions, and text subtitles to prevent viewers from leaving.
But Baek Ha-rin's videos were just raw recordings from a smartphone camera, uploaded as-is.
It even included the awkward moments of her running to press the record button at the start, and coming back to turn it off after the dance ended, all without filtering.
"Why didn't you edit it? You should at least add subtitles, do some color correction to make it look bright, and cut out the useless space at the beginning and end."
"Ah, that? I don't know how to do that."
Baek Ha-rin replied nonchalantly.
She said it so naturally that I wondered if it was weird for me to be asking.
"What? You don't know how?"
"You just film with your phone and upload it directly to the YouTube app, right? I use an app filter that makes me look glowy, so I didn't need color correction."
Unbelievable.
The owner of a large channel with over 300,000 subscribers doesn't know how to use a single video editing program.
Even if Shorts value raw sensibility...
Isn't this too lacking in sincerity?
At the very least, if she just cut out the mistakes or the dragging tempo, the quality of the video would improve significantly.
It's even more amazing that she hit 8 million views with this quality.
"Are you really an idiot? If you had just edited this cleanly and uploaded it, you would have gotten twice as many views. You need to add a hook so the watch time doesn't drop."
"Ah, damn it, stop nagging!"
Baek Ha-rin said, annoyed, burying her spoon into the rice bowl.
If someone saw that, they'd think it was a shovel.
"I'm not some professional YouTuber. I'm busy as hell doing assignments for my major, so when am I supposed to edit! I'm already splitting my time just to memorize dances and film them."
Her excuses are flowing like a river.
Baek Ha-rin jumped up from her seat.
I thought she was going to clean up after eating, but she walked to the kitchen with the empty rice bowl.
Then she opened the electric rice cooker, scooped a full ladle of rice, and was filling it again.
"Are you not on a diet? You're eating again?"
"College students use a lot of energy, you know? Mind your own business."
Baek Ha-rin returned to the table, stomping with the bowl of rice piled high.
Just as she was about to sit in the chair, I pushed my rice bowl forward.
"Since you're up, scoop some for me too."
Baek Ha-rin stopped moving and glared at me.
It was a look that suggested she might dump the rice bowl on my face right then and there.
"Ah, damn it, you're so annoying I could die."
"Is it right to be annoyed at your Samchon?"
Even while grumbling, she snatched my rice bowl and headed back to the rice cooker.
A moment later, she brought back steaming rice and set it down in front of me with a thud.
"Eat it and choke."
"Thanks, our Princess-nim."
"Ah, damn it! Stop it!"
When I teased her, Baek Ha-rin got furious and sat down.
Then she started eating again.
It's a trait of the women in our family.
They don't gain weight no matter how much they eat, and they eat a lot and move less than others.