New Social Media: We're serving the Second World

Chen Lin Shen Qing

"We all replaced the WeChat beauty photo into a cartoon avatar, and I just got one." Wang Xiaoyi, a cell phone social artist who likes to experiment with various fresh APPs, describes the most popular APP Like a virus. "Although the form is very simple, there is no deep content, but it is very interesting and very cute, which is enough." Like Wang Xiaoyi had this kind of thinking, especially in the network and mobile phone user groups, "90", "00 After "in, not a minority.

Because of these users' appetite, new social media similar in nature to "Face Moments" have flocked to the area recently. Let users define their own network cartoon avatar, face Meng is not the first one. Before it, Magic Man with tens of millions of registered users, access to 30 million of venture financing. Later, the "diffuse" and so on also more content to attack.

Only an 8-hour production of an APP "Yo", its rapid burst of red even more incredible. Users can only use the character "Yo" to communicate, so "idiot", APP store has shut it out. On-line, it quickly attracted millions of users and millions of dollars in financing. Not only "Yo", but also its other APP Emojli, which only allows users to communicate with emoticons, has received great attention.

When new social media is thriving, it's time for a new round of thinking. When the early networks infiltrated all aspects of people's lives, some experts and scholars began to worry that the intrusion of virtual technology into reality would cause various psychological and social problems. Today, the wave of new wave of social media wave, also brought controversy.

Real-name registration of Facebook and with the certification of microblogging, WeChat, has been criticized to the user and the reality of isolation. But compared with these "veteran" social media, the latter are worse off. At least, "senior" social media and the real world also have close interaction and mapping. What we've seen on these new social media is that the original strong text has been replaced by a myriad of lovely, but insignificant, images and symbols. Do young people like to use this kind of new social media have alienated their way of life and thinking? Or Arbel, the founder of "Yo", has openly stated that his principle is "Do not allow users to think."

Putting aside the many rules of human social interaction, replacing the deep thoughts and emotions in communication with cartoons and symbols of the second dimension, the educational function of the media can not be seen on these new social media. Is this a problem? From a more macro perspective, what are these new social media symbols of progress, pluralism, or human civilization?

We are serving the world of second world

In the opinion of Wu Jie, the co-founder of "Little Man" in the cartoon social media platform, new social media such as Magic Man, Face Meng and Yo can attract a large number of users in a short period of time. On the one hand, it is from the Internet cultural transmission and promptly enables "Moe" People heart. "The image of lovely things will be sought after, there will be a fan effect." On the other hand, evolved from the animation development of secondary meta-culture, and gradually become part of the lives of young people. In the minds of these young users, in addition to the real-world mapping, there is a world of cartoons. To see how many fans of a Lolophora song that Virtual Lolita "Hatsune Miku" attracts, you should know how the secluded world, a hidden world, is "hot" for young people.

"To sum up these two reasons, I'm optimistic about the development of new social media." But at the same time, Wu Jie also believes that now is in the initial stage of the development of new social media, many users choose only some simple and easy to use software, "taste" . This is why the simpler the form content, the quicker the accumulation of popularity in a shorter period of time. "After that, the content and form of a new social media problems will arise. Users sticky, so popularity gathered faster, dissipated faster."

At the end of last year, Wu Jie, a former media man and co-founder of the company, founded the APP "Little Man" to introduce the concept of cartoon social platform. Although it started a little later than "Face Moment", which also featured the concept of cartoon, with its diverse content, "Micro-Man" attracted millions of users within half a year.

According to Wu Jie's initial entrepreneurial vision, the real function of these new social media is to provide users with another form and means of self-expression outside of reality. "In general terms, there are new social platforms in the early stages that have given users the value of being self-existential, and have allowed users to brand themselves and create their own image on the platform, but to become a long-term platform, it Need more content to support it. "In addition to allowing users to create their own cartoon images through menu selection on their platform, Wu's team also provides users with a variety of scenarios and interactive modes.

Wu Jie said that the current users are more "courtship," "work overtime shouting tired," "boss salary," "vacation and leisure" and the daily life of relatively close situation. "On the one hand, users have this kind of expression needs, but their expression is obviously accompanied by the characteristics of humor, self-deprecating and so on in the network culture.Your life you always have some things inconvenient to say or hard to tell because there are always kinds of things in the real world Rules limit you, but on these new social media platforms you can talk about things in a relatively relaxed, stress-free way. "Many users choose to use vacation scenarios to tell others what their holidays are doing. Because of various privacy issues, they may both want to tell and retain their reservations, which also allows many users to choose a cartoon social platform that has a considerable distance from reality.

"I do not think people would indulge in virtual worlds because of these new social media." According to company statistics, Wu Jie told First Financial Daily that users are currently using new social media only as a general communication channel supplement. "In other words, they currently treat it as a game of life, as a new platform for storytelling and listening to stories." Their platform and the older generation of social media such as Weibo, WeChat and QQ also remained Switch channels.

However, Wu Jie believes that the potential of new social media will continue to be tapped, and eventually form a general climate. Perhaps, as some have predicted, new social media will completely separate people from reality. But this is caused by the entire social environment. Nowadays, the acceptance and recognition of young people in the dual world are getting higher and higher.

Now, Wu Jie comics division team are almost all "90 after", she did most is to bring these young people to different scenes of life experience. "They are the times, they are the future, they create new social media, and they will use new social media more than anyone else in the future, and we are ready to serve users in these two-dimensional worlds.

"90 after", alone social friends

In the "Small World in Great Times - China's Post-90s Youth Lifestyles Report" curated by the research team China Youthology, the connection with society after "90s" has been labeled as " Self "is a lonely social person, looking forward to sincere and relaxed relationships.

As more and more new social tools come on stage, people's identities and demeanor are constantly "fissioning", and their needs for creative classes and personalization are getting more and more profound. Chen Weiru, a researcher of anthropology at the youth ethnology, said: "Behind the social software is essentially a social approach. The uniqueness of '90s' is largely achieved by social means."

For instance, Chen Wei-Ru is using the social trumpet of "90s". She launched a discussion on how many trumpets "after 90s" on different mainstream social platforms. The answers she received were basically more than five. Chen Wei as frankly, he also holds a lot of trumpet, respectively, corresponding to different levels of interpersonal relationships. "Whether Yo, no secret, WeChat, or earlier posts and weibo, people are trying to get what they want on those platforms, rather than stereotyped, generic messages."

She attributed Yo and his face to a short-lived app, claiming that users enjoyed only freshness and did not bring deep-seated pursuit of communication and satisfaction, nor would it enrich the market for social applications. "Ephemeral applications are not unimportant, just as the songs are not popular because of the good songs, the games are not popular for fun, and only giving people new insights and experiences is the value."

However, the fiery face Meng proves that no text does not hinder communication. Last month, the literary revolution initiated by data engineers subverted the limitations of what people know about facial expressions. All of Herr Melville's famous Beluga characters are replaced by over 250 emoticons. This was a "makeover" literary works on sale, hardcover this price $ 200. In this regard, some linguists believe that the use of expressions and symbols weakens the exchange of people's emotions and can even be regarded as a return to the original hieroglyphs.

Chen Wei Ru believes that the presence of facial expression elements greatly enriched the "90 after" online social language, and strengthen their communication and presentation skills. However, she also agreed that the strong cultural expression will counteract the social enthusiasm. It is noteworthy that in this report, in addition to its longing for "Being Existential," there is an anxiety about the "post-90s" that are not isolated but "too power-hungry".

The conclusion of the report states the following sentence: "Young people have their own unique genes, a generation of people a generation way to shape their own unique individuality, to find ways to get along with this world will eventually promote social change."

First Financial Daily: From a communication perspective, how do you interpret the emergence of social media such as Yo and Meng Face? These "second-ary" social media captured a large number of users in a short period of time.

Li Tongxing: I do not advocate the use of single-unit knowledge of communication or psychology to explain such phenomena. According to some of their characteristics, their emergence and rise represent, on the whole, a kind of progress in social civilization. Technology is improving, productivity is improving, people are making progress, and social software is making progress. I use "progress" to express, many people will not agree, because the word "progress" has obvious value judgments. Then I tentatively use "development" to express my own judgment.

The most central issue here is the relationship between people and media, people and the outside world. Our traditional definition of the media before us is that it is a tool, a channel, of communication between people and the outside world. It has two functions, one is to help people to understand the external world, the equivalent of the extension of human organs, played the role of telescopes and microscopes. Another is the communication function. Even in the early days of the Internet, people invent, buy, and use social media are all based on these principles. But by today, these two purposes have been weakened by using media tools to understand the world and to communicate effectively through it. What kind of media do you leave now? What kind of electronic social tools can not survive?

In just one or two decades, media theory has evolved from McLuhan's "extension of the media as a function of the organ," to what Pomehty called "human-media relations interactive and equal." In other words, people and the media, people and online social tools is already an equal relationship. This shift has been particularly evident in recent 35 years, and the development of social media is beyond our imagination. Before the people around the media, or people around the media represented by the external world in turn. But right now, the media turns around people's self.

Excess productivity has left many people ignoring their livelihood issues and not paying too much attention to the outside world. This new social media simply keeps people communicating with the outside world, and these users communicate with the outside world not for survival nor for useful information. For example, for example, you are now interviewed by phone. This communication is for job completion. In order to earn a salary, it is actually a (based on) survival communication. But now, users of these new social media do not need to think about survival issues, they do not need to think about whether information is useful, nutritious, and helpful to their lives. It is enough for them to be fresh, interesting, and to have different expressions and experiences than before.

Daily: Do users also need to demonstrate self-worth in communicating with the outside world?

Lee Tong Hing: Their user identity is itself a kind of self-worth. They use, experience, and create their own content, and then spread, this process is the use of new social media self-value embodiment.

Daily: Why is it an important achievement of the crystallization of human civilization - writing, rather weak on this new social media platform?

Lee Tong Hing: text in the information dissemination process what kind of role? Originally invented, it was because it delivered useful information accurately, efficiently and directly. But now, users of new social media do not have to think about the speed and efficiency of their communications, regardless of whether they are useful or not. They do not have to consider these "utilitarian" factors at all, so symbols, images and images that are more readily accepted by audiovisual organs dominate these channels. In fact, this in turn proves that the advent of new social media like Yo and James Meng is a kind of civilized progress.

From these representations, they are symbols of social progress. However, the contents of these new social media programs have simply omitted the rules of social interaction in many real societies. They spread the symbolic cartoons and "dog blood" and filter out deep-seated ways of thinking and emotions.

Li Tongxing: Yes, this civilization also contains a crisis of progress. Before such new social media flocks appeared, all the information we received in the media, including news and drama, even the subsequent network drama, communication on Weibo, most of the posts circulating on WeChat, All provide useful information to educate us on how to socialize. In other words, they have the function of returning to reality, whether it is to cultivate or release.

However, the new social media now emerging, based on the further development of cyberculture, are totally disconnected from the real world. Here, people can put aside all the social rules of "gentle and ausgard" and other social rules. With the current productivity and economic development, part of the otaku and house women can still live very satisfactorily without going back to the real world. If such groups gradually become large to a certain extent, accounting for a certain percentage of the population, they will evolve into civilizations.

We have two frame of reference. If many people, especially the younger generation, fall into this virtual world without giving new impetus to the development of the real world, they may slow economic development. The second layer of concern comes from the principle of minimum cost of evolution. Creatures do not need to work hard when you do not need to make real effort to survive. When such a group develops to a certain scale, it will have an impact on the evolutionary genes of the entire human being.

The virtual world that these new social media offer to young people contains a myriad of non-realistic, non-social rules. Once accustomed to the world without face, no hierarchy, no order of life, when they have to return to reality, they will show up. Can not say he learned bad in the new media, but he is a non-social person, so he will make incredible things.

As these new social media emerges, society needs to provide more ways for people to return to reality so that people can live more in reality and encourage people to express their true feelings in reality.