Independent application with only one function is currently fashionable in China. It’s called yes, but (死了吗), which literally translates to “Are you already dead.” The app asks users to press a button once a day, and if they don’t do so for two consecutive days, it automatically sends an email to a designated emergency contact requesting a personal check on the user.
Guo, one of three Gen Z developers behind Are You Dead Yet, says he has been building social and entertainment apps for several years. However, he wanted to focus on something more fundamental. “When I looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I saw that security needs were deeper and affected a much broader group of people. That seemed like a good direction to me,” Guo said in an exclusive interview with WIRED. (For privacy reasons, he asked for only his last name.)
The app’s practical functionality and the gloomy humor its name evokes appealed to juvenile people in China, who started downloading it last week. At the time of publication, Are You Dead Yet was the most popular paid app on the Chinese version of Apple’s App Store. It’s also rising in the rankings of overseas app stores, even though Guo says he hasn’t spent a penny on paid advertising. “We don’t have that kind of money,” he says.
Guo tells WIRED that since Are You Dead Yet exploded on social media, the team has been contacted by over 60 investors who are in vigorous fundraising talks. It alleges that some investors offered millions of Chinese yuan – hundreds of thousands of US dollars – for shares in the parent company Moonscape Technologies, which released only a few applications. The team expects to announce the results of the fundraising talks within a few weeks. “We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of it completely exceeded our expectations,” Guo says.
Guo and his colleagues initially charged users a one-time fee of 1 RMB (14 cents) to apply the app; amid increased interest this week, they raised the price to RMB 8 ($1.15), which is still a minimum considering no subscription is required. While Guo declined to reveal how much money the app has made or how many vigorous users it has, he says the money it has made so far will go toward the long-term development of the platform.
Are You Dead Yet has become especially popular among people living alone. Over the past few decades, the average Chinese family size has decreased dramatically. According to the 2020 census, 25.4% of households consist of one person, up from 14.5% a decade earlier. While older people are still most likely to live alone, there is a growing group of younger people living alone, and Chinese companies are increasingly meeting the needs of this demographic by offering digital or physical companionship services.
On Tuesday, the developers announced on Chinese social media that Are You Dead Yet will officially change its name to Demumu to better serve the global market. This name, previously also used in the foreign version of the application, was inspired by another success of a Chinese business. Guo says Demumu is a combination of the word “death” and the naming pattern of Labubu, a Chinese stuffed monster that went viral around the world last year.
Fans of the app are not thrilled. Even before the announcement, they asked the creators not to change the explicit name, which was half the appeal. On Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, the most liked comment on the name change announcement reads: “Honey, your previous name made you popular.”