Picture this: You’re doomscrolling through TikTok in your free time, and your brain is searching for the most dopamine-inducing content it can latch onto. So when an advertisement for a duanju (or in English, “short drama” or “micro-drama”) starts with a girl asking a guy which piece of very skimpy underwear works best for her, you go “huh, what?” and stick around out of curiosity.
Without missing a beat, the guy character’s inner monologue reveals that the question alone is enough to get him aroused, so he sets a pillow on his lap. You think: “WTF?” Now all this happens in under ten seconds. So… what else are you supposed to do except keep watching. Right?
(Yes, the example above is an actual advertisement I’ve gotten for one of these English duanju.)
Suddenly, you’re ten minutes in, hooked, and yelling at your phone screen because every thing about this is so dumb! Then, just as the story reaches its climax, the advertisement ends. You get irritated because you want to know what happens next. So, you take the plunge and download the app that has the full series.
You’re instantly paywalled. US$20, or you don’t get to know if the popular guy gets the nerdy girl. Damn. (He does, obviously. He always does.)
Are you going to pay up, though?
So What Are Duanju? Where Do They Come From?
Like the name suggests, they’re micro dramas.
Each episode is anywhere between a minute and three, though they usually lean on the shorter side. One series might range from 50 to about 100 episodes, which in total can’t be more than one or two hours of content.
They’re also made natively for short-form video platforms like TikTok, which means everything is viewed in portrait mode. It’s content made to scroll.
While it’s only in the past year that these micro-dramas have gained major relevance on TikTok, they originated in China around 2018, not long after the platform was established. It’s been raking in millions of dollars ever since, with an estimate that by 2027, the industry will be worth $13 billion.
… and Why Are They So Addictive?
The thing that draws people into these bite-sized dramas isn’t just the format. It’s the capital “D” Drama. They’re low-quality soaps that hinge directly on our human inclinations towards pathos and catharsis.
In other words, they appeal directly towards our ape-brain desire to find a dopamine hit every chance we get and drop anything that doesn’t immediately appeal to that. Unfortunately, the public perception that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter continues to ring true.
The majority of these dramas use well-worn tropes and fantasies to create stories that rival the likes of Wattpad werewolf fanfiction and low-quality rehashings of the Cinderella tale. They are story beats that viewers know and recognize, and yet can’t help but get hooked on because you just have to see how it plays out.
Add in some vulgarity and violence, and you have a recipe for TikTok success.
The Good: Dopamine Factory
From there, it’s easy to see how this format has hit it big. It’s easy, breezy, and something you don’t have to get too invested in. Even if you find yourself initially hooked, it’s easy to scroll away without any consequences because the end is predictable. (Good triumphs above evil, the jilted woman gets her revenge, etc. etc. etc.)
It’s an easy escape that typical viewers find comfort in when they don’t have the capacity for anything more. As Nadia Khomami simplifies in The Guardian: “The common appeal for all of them is escapism; […] when life feels overwhelming.”
The Bad: Depressingly Low Quality
There’s little to no quality in almost any aspect of these dramas.
The scripts are as surface-level as they can get, with barely any depth put into them. The focus is usually on the melodrama or the scandal, sometimes with repeating beats just to drive points home. Nuance doesn’t exist, and characters don’t have personalities — even main characters get shafted with just being “good” and nothing else.
This doesn’t help even the best actors in these shows. It’s hard to take anyone seriously when there’s nothing to take from a flimsy script. It’s that, or the wooden performances from the actors — it’s typically the side characters, but sometimes even the leads phone it in.
It’s hard to look past the very low production value too. These micro dramas skim by doing the bare minimum, with a very obviously threadbare budget that they don’t even attempt to stretch out. There’s little effort to conceal it, with a vibe of “whatever, this is enough” that is genuinely depressing, especially when it becomes apparent that the people producing these shows seem to know what they’re doing.
It’s almost like turning over a profit matters more than any value or substance.
The Ugly: Soulless and Money-Minded
That leads to maybe the most sinister thing about these TikTok duanju. There’s no soul in it. No matter how much effort that actors and producers try to put into it, ultimately, it never feels right. The format as a whole feels empty and money-grubbing. Because that’s all it is at the end of the day. Money.
Of course, money is important in any aspect of the entertainment industry; it’s how things keep spinning, how things get made. But with these micro dramas, it’s more about quantity than any level of quality. Hook people in, make them pay, and get millions in returns.
It’s probably why they rely on shock value and tropes so heavily. Why there’s no risk or passion in the storytelling, and why they don’t spend more to make them look better. Profit matters more than anything else.
It’s also right there in the subscription models. Using the freemium model to give viewers just enough episodes for free, usually where it gets “juicy”, and then locking away the rest behind a paywall.
As of writing this article, the largest English-language short drama app, DramaBox, has over 100 million downloads. And while it’s possible that many, if not the majority, don’t end up paying for the dramas once they have the application, there have to be at least thousands, if not millions, that do.
So, Is This the Future of Entertainment?
The CEO of ReelShort believes as much, saying that they “see mini dramas becoming a dominant form of entertainment, potentially even outpacing the traditional film market in a few years.” ITV even names them ‘TV for the TikTok Generation’ in their video exploring these short dramas.
And if any part of those statements is true, then where does that leave high-quality, landscape aspect-ratio, film and TV?
Does the TikTok generation not deserve good, meaningful entertainment? Do they not need movies that can change lives, or TV episodes that they think about for days after? Is that not the beauty of good media?
There’s no way to know if we’ll be ditching movie theatres and big screen TVs for micro drama verticals on our phones in the next ten years. But if duanju are fated to be the future of the industry, then what does that say about how we consume our entertainment? About the messages we want to see portrayed?
Is it really so hard to sit down and watch a good film in a theatre?
Or are we doomed to paying US$20 to watch the nerdy girl and the popular guy get together (again) through 50 one minute long episodes and nothing else?
