China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You’re Still Alive

An indie app with only one function is currently all the rage in China. It’s called si le ma (死了吗), which translates literally to “Are You Dead Yet.” The app asks users to tap a button once every day, and if they fail to do so for two consecutive days, it automatically sends an email to a designated emergency contact, urging them to check on the user in person.

Guo, one of the three Gen-Z developers behind Are You Dead Yet, says he has been building social and entertainment apps for a few years. But he wanted to pivot to 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 felt like a good direction,” Guo told WIRED in an exclusive interview. (He asked to be identified only by his last name, for privacy reasons.)

The app’s practical functionality and the dark humor its name evokes have struck a chord with young people in China, who swarmed 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 Apple’s App Store. It is also climbing the rankings in overseas app store charts, even though Guo says he hasn’t spent a dime on paid advertising. “We don’t have that kind of money,” he says.

Guo tells WIRED that the team has been contacted by more than 60 investors since Are You Dead Yet blew up on social media, and they are in active conversations about fundraising. He claims that some investors have offered millions of Chinese yuan—hundreds of thousands of US dollars—for a stake in its parent company, Moonscape Technologies, which has released just a handful of apps. The team expects to announce the results of the fundraising talks in a few weeks. “We knew there would be some traction, but the scale of this 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 heightened attention this week, they raised the price to 8 RMB ($1.15), still a minimal amount considering there’s no subscription required. While Guo declined to disclose how much money the app has made or how many active users it has, he says the money they have earned so far will go toward developing the platform for the long term.

Are You Dead Yet has caught on particularly among people who live alone. The average size of a Chinese family has shrunk dramatically over the past few decades. According to a 2020 national census, 25.4 percent of households consisted of just one person, up from 14.5 percent a decade earlier. While elderly people remain the most likely to live alone, there is a growing cohort of younger people living a solo lifestyle, and Chinese businesses are increasingly catering to this demographic by offering digital or physical companionship services.

On Tuesday, the developers announced on Chinese social media that Are You Dead Yet would officially change its name to Demumu in order to better serve the global market. That name, which was also used for the app’s overseas version previously, was inspired by another Chinese business success. Guo says Demumu is a combination of the word “death” and the naming pattern of Labubu, the Chinese plushie monster that went viral globally last year.

Fans of the app are not thrilled. Even before the announcement they had been asking 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 previous name was the reason you went viral.”