China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You’re Still Alive
An independent application with a single function is currently all the rage in China. It’s called if the mother (死了吗), which literally translates to “Are you dead yet”. 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, inviting them to check on the user in person.
Guo, one of three Gen-Z developers behind Are You Dead Yet, says he’s been creating social and entertainment apps for a few years. But he wanted to move towards something more fundamental. “When I looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I saw that safety needs are deeper and apply to a much broader group of people. That seemed like a good direction to me,” Guo told WIRED in an exclusive interview. (He asked to be identified only by his last name, for privacy reasons.)
The app’s convenient features and dark humor evoked by its name have struck a chord with young Chinese, who have rushed to download it over the past week. At the time of publication, Are You Dead Yet was the number one paid app in the Chinese version of the Apple App Store. It’s also climbing the app store rankings overseas, even though Guo says he hasn’t spent a cent on paid advertising. “We don’t have that kind of money,” he said.
Guo tells WIRED that the team has been contacted by more than 60 investors since Are You Dead Yet exploded on social media, and that they are actively in conversations about fundraising. It claims some investors offered millions of Chinese yuan, or hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars, for a stake in its parent company, Moonscape Technologies, which has launched only a handful of apps. The team plans to announce the results of fundraising negotiations in a few weeks. “We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this initiative completely exceeded our expectations,” Guo says.
Guo and his colleagues initially charged users a one-time payment of 1 RMB (14 cents) to use the app; Amid the increased attention this week, they increased the price to 8 RMB ($1.15), which is still a minimal amount considering no subscription is required. Although Guo refused to disclose how much money the app has made or how many active users it has, he says the money they have made so far will go towards developing the platform in the long term.
Are You Dead Yet particularly appealed to people who live alone. The average size of a Chinese family has declined significantly in recent decades. According to a 2020 national census, 25.4% of households were composed of one person, compared to 14.5% ten years earlier. While older people remain the most likely to live alone, there is a growing cohort of young people living alone, and Chinese companies are increasingly catering to this demographic by offering digital or physical support services.
On Tuesday, the developers announced on Chinese social media that Are You Dead Yet will officially change its name to Demumu in order to better serve the global market. This name, which was also previously used for the foreign version of the app, was inspired by another Chinese commercial success. Guo says Demumu is a combination of the word “death” and the naming pattern of Labubu, the Chinese stuffed monster that went viral around the world last year.
Fans of the app are not happy. Even before the announcement, they asked the developers not to change the blunt name, which was half the appeal. On Weibo, a Chinese social platform, the most liked comment under the name change announcement reads: “Baby, your old name was the reason you went viral.”
