Why TikTokers are flocking to Xiaohongshu
📱 One of my lightly held 2025 resolutions is to stop picking up my phone when I don’t know what to do with my hands
Issue #247: Excalidraw, luck, and tea
Even if two products do the exact same thing — like enabling you to upload 90-second videos or publish 1,000-word blog posts — they’re different. They have different histories, communities, and vibes. They have different forms of cultural baggage. Using each of them says something different about you.
On Medium, UX writer Daley Wilhelm believes vibes are one of the main reasons why TikTok users are downloading Xiaohongshu, a 13-year-old Chinese app that’s kind of like TikTok + Pinterest + Etsy, rather than migrating to more established platforms like Instagram or YouTube Shorts. Quick background: As of this writing (Wednesday evening) it looks like the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold an upcoming ban on TikTok. The U.S. government fears ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, may use the app’s recommendations algorithm for geopolitical gain. (I haven’t seen convincing evidence of this, though I’ve seen several jokes.) The ban will likely go into effect this Sunday, meaning TikTok may disappear from the App Store or shut down completely.
So, where will its 170 million users in the U.S. go?
Substack’s CEO announced a $25,000 TikTok Liberation Prize, which he’ll award to anyone who can start a “viral trend” convincing TikTokers to jump ship for Substack. But most of the momentum is happening on Xiaohongshu, known to most English speakers as RedNote. Over 500,000 TikTokers created accounts as a form of tongue-in-cheek (?) protest. (I don’t know who was the first migrant, but it’s now #1 in the App Store.)
There’s a vibes element to this, too. As Wilhelm explains, Xiaohongshu is the best available approximation of TikTok’s rambunctious, young, vaguely illicit chaotic energy (at least from Americans’ point of view). Instagram, Threads, and YouTube Shorts are sanitized, professionalized platforms for upstanding citizens with reputations to maintain. Xiaohongshu harbors more of what TikTok’s Gen Z userbase craves: “authentic snippets of life rather than skits devised by professionals.” And, like TikTok, its recommendations are highly personalized based on your interests (instead of your network). It’s messy and serendipitous — many isolated communities instead of a monolith. And it’s what TikTok refugees want, which aligns with other cultural trends happening now: Decentralized, fragmented, indie, and chaotic forms of culture are overtaking more coherent ones (for better and for worse at the same time).
— Harris Sockel
What else we’re reading
- Jacob Bennett, backend engineer at Medium, returns with his annual list of the top 5 paid subscriptions that help him get work done. One tool Bennett recommends that I want to start using this year? Excalidraw, a free way to create maps and diagrams in an endearing hand-drawn style.
- An unusually wet winter in LA spawned tall grasses, which dried out during last year’s exceptionally dry summer… leading to larger than normal piles of, essentially, tinder. The result: peak wildfire conditions. (Ricky Lanusse)
- A detail from a delightful and informative history of tea: Black teas are more popular globally than green or red because they’re fully oxidized, meaning they can travel further without going bad. (Just Norah)
Your daily dose of practical wisdom
“Luck” is mostly code for being open to opportunities and trusting your gut — which you can train. Psychology professor Richard Wiseman recommends journaling about (a) good things that might happen and (b) bad things that used to happen but no longer do. (Kelly Eden)
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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