As more and more young people turn to short video platforms like Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou to express their creativity, new trends have been appearing one after another. The latest trend? Posing and taking pictures of fancily dressed ball-jointed dolls.
It only took the Douyin account Miss Edison less than six months to grow from only several thousand followers to more than 1 million. The account has continually uploaded a series of videos featuring ball-jointed dolls, called BJD, which have been gaining in popularity, especially in Asia, in recent months. Calling themselves Doll Moms, fans of these cute posable dolls love to watch videos that show them all dressed up against various backgrounds.
While posing and then recording these dolls may sound easy, producing these videos is actually quite time-consuming and expensive.
Buying one of these dolls is only the first step. You must then spend a lot of time dressing it up and applying makeup, which some compare to “the time spent feeding a baby.”
In the eyes of Wang Wei – founder of ALAB, the content studio behind Miss Edison – this once marginalized content has begun entering the mainstream public consciousness.
“Part of what is often called ACG [Anime, Comics, Games] culture, it has grown into something that a broader audience is paying attention to,” Wang said. The followers of video content on platforms like Douyin are keen about new fashion, online socializing and sharing their interests with others.
Banding together over their common interest in these dolls, these fans are becoming more involved in this type of video content and are forming their own community.
On China’s Twitter-like social platform Sina Weibo, the hashtag #BJD has earned nearly 1 billion views, with millions of interactions and discussions. Netizens are keen on uploading videos of themselves enjoying dressing up and putting make-up on their dolls and themselves.
Online statistics show that young people aged 18 to 24, mainly college students and young graduates, are the most active part of this community.
“I didn’t expect such a young group of followers,” said Wang Yipeng, who is in charge of running Miss Edison.
“However, after talking to them and visiting them personally, I found that raising a doll and how to do it have been a way for them to release stress from real life and work.”
According to Wang Wei, viewership often peaks at noon because most followers, mostly girls, often search for doll-related news and content during their lunch breaks. Videos featuring the dolls being dressed up and posed to compose various stories are usually the most popular. For instance, one such video of a doll cooking has earned more than 300,000 views on Douyin.
A ball-jointed doll Photo: Courtesy of ALAB
