TikTok refugees are flooding in, is it time to start looking for memes on Xiaohongshu?

Author: Jaleel加六, BlockBeats

"Hello Chinese people, I am American, I am a refugee from TikTok." Users scrolling through Xiaohongshu these days may have been inundated with similar posts.

This wave of "cultural immigration" from Europe and America has propelled Xiaohongshu to the top of the App Store overnight, making it the hottest free app globally.

Since TikTok faced a ban in the United States, the "spiritual home" of trendy people in Europe and America has collapsed in an instant. To resist the U.S. government's ban on TikTok, millions of creators, fashion influencers, and content consumers have surged towards Xiaohongshu like a digital version of the "Exodus."

This sudden "refugee wave" has not only skyrocketed Xiaohongshu's ranking but has also led foreign netizens to affectionately refer to it as "Rednote, a book of the world."

Interestingly, Xiaohongshu recently updated its short video interface, mimicking Douyin's design style. It seems the official team has been well-prepared to welcome TikTok refugees, with some netizens joking, "This team operation is simply out of this world."

It is said that the Xiaohongshu team is frantically updating algorithms and adding real-time translation features. Netizens joked that this year's Spring Festival in Shanghai will have an additional brightly lit office building. However, this has also brought a grin from early investor Zhu Xiaohu.

This is also a sudden "cultural immigration," sparking a multinational surfing carnival and a collision of Chinese and American cultures:

"The biggest suggestion for Xiaohongshu is to hope the CEO quickly improves his English level for future U.S. hearings," "Why do so many Chinese Xiaohongshu users call themselves momo and use the same avatar?" "Surfing in their respective time zones, Xiaohongshu has realized the new era of 'early C (Chinese) and late A (American).'"

Okay, after scrolling through these interesting memes, some netizens with a knack for making money suddenly had a bright idea: "Suddenly thought of ways to earn dollars on Xiaohongshu":

One dollar for giving foreign netizens Chinese names, One dollar for calculating zodiac signs, One dollar for face reading, One dollar for checking BaZi…

Immediately, a netizen in the comments raised the barrier to this money-making method: "How to open up a payment channel?"

This might be a bit difficult for ordinary netizens, but I believe this question won't stump the readers of this article; cryptocurrency enthusiasts have a thousand ways to choose their payment methods.

As I write this, I suddenly wonder, besides trendy refugees flooding into Xiaohongshu, could there also be TikTok refugees from the crypto industry getting involved?

A quick search reveals that indeed, even major players in the crypto space have quietly set their sights on this wave of traffic, with suspected soft ads from Coinbase appearing. With hints from other colleagues, I also found a lot of content related to the "cult coin" $XRP, bringing its own "faith" to Chinese netizens.

For such a high-profile hot event, sensitive Chinese stock investors also want to join in the fun. However, after searching through all related stocks, they only found one with business cooperation and conceptual relevance: Yiwan Yichuang.

Compared to the traditional financial sector, which has few speculative targets, the crypto space offers many more options. Various related Xiaohongshu memes have started to fly around, "$xiaoya, $momo, and Captain Potato, etc., but so far, no heavyweight and viral meme concept has emerged."

Just as cultural refugees have found a home on Xiaohongshu, the heat of the crypto world is also gradually spreading across this land. As the heat continues to grow, it is highly likely that Xiaohongshu will produce viral memes similar to those on TikTok, like chillguy or apple, and even become the next cultural export stronghold.

While foreigners learn memes on Xiaohongshu, they are also gradually experiencing the unique charm of the Chinese internet: "Americans are too boring and too serious; their homepages are either self-introductions or cat and dog stories and coffee insights, while here in China, everyone is an abstract saint, naturally full of memes. Let's learn Chinese memes hhhhh!"

If there will be another wave of TikTok meme frenzy, then this wave of meme hundredfold coins is likely to come from local memes, with foreigners adapting to the customs and learning Chinese internet memes.

For those in the crypto space reading this article, if you haven't downloaded Xiaohongshu yet, you might miss the last "meme economic experiment" of this bull market. The next hundredfold coin, or a brand new cultural symbol, might just be born in some inconspicuous comment section, possibly originating from Xiaohongshu's Chinese memes or a blend of Chinese and English "Chinalish memes."