土味情话

What does 土味情话 mean?

土味情话 are pickup lines delivered with a straight face and zero shame: puns, wild flattery, and questions with a trap answer. The 土味 part comes from the rural-flavored video style that made them popular, and the genre exploded on short-video apps in 2018, with whole accounts devoted to collecting the worst ones. Half the fun is grading them: the cornier the better, as long as the delivery never breaks.

Where does 土味情话 come from?

The term is a 2018 coinage that pairs 土味, the aesthetic label for deliberately down-market internet content, with 情话, sweet talk. After 土味 videos grew into a genre of their own on apps like 抖音 and Kuaishou, scripted cornball lines emerged as a spinoff, and during 2018 compilations of 土味情话 became a staple of short-video feeds and entertainment interviews. In December 2018, the phrase was named to the annual top-ten network expressions list by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center.

How to use 土味情话

• “你知道我最大的缺点是什么吗？是缺点你。”这句土味情话把一桌人都逗笑了。
  “Nǐ zhīdào wǒ zuìdà de quēdiǎn shì shénme ma? Shì quēdiǎn nǐ.” Zhè jù tǔ wèi qíng huà bǎ yī zhuō rén dōu dòu xiào le.
  “Know what my biggest flaw is? Lacking you.” That cornball line got the whole table laughing.
• 他追人全靠土味情话，比如：“见到你的那一刻，我的手机自动连上了你的WiFi。”
  Tā zhuī rén quán kào tǔ wèi qíng huà, bǐrú: “jiàn dào nǐ de nà yī kè, wǒ de shǒujī zìdòng lián shàng le nǐ de WiFi.”
  His entire courtship technique is cornball one-liners, like: “The moment I saw you, my phone auto-connected to your Wi-Fi.”