Learning a new language is one of the few experiences that is universally emotional. That's exactly why the "crying while pronouncing a word" trend exploded three months ago and reshaped the entire language‑learning niche on TikTok.
- a creator films themselves crying
- while trying to pronounce a difficult word
- with the hook: "Why is ___ so hard??"
As we highlighted back then, one of these videos went extremely viral, reaching 42.8M organic views.
Hanashi is a 6-month-old app that helps people practice Japanese by chatting with an AI tutor.
They have been trying to follow the trend by using the same hook:
"Why is Japanese so hard?!"
But the way it is carried out misses the key element that made the format take off.
Instead of:
- a face
- a struggle
- an emotional reaction
…Hanashi's creator posts:
- a faceless video
- filming the phone screen
- showing the app interface
This is why the original trend pulls in tens of millions of views… while Hanashi's version stops at 765.8K views.