Some people say that an important reason for liking to see zhihu is that the respondent will always treat the questioner's curiosity with the most cautious and serious attitude, whether these curiosities are not marginal - such as eating a small spoonful of black holes. Why haven't you excavated the Mausoleum of The First Emperor of Qin? And if you don't really like the discipline of geography, normal people should not think about whether the Jade Emperor lived in the stratosphere or the troposphere."
Wen | Qishan
Edited by | Lu Pillow
Shared "Troubles"
Su Chengyu, editor of popular science magazine, was once invited to translate "Birds in the World" for Pu Rui Culture, which is a different set of bird science books. Regarding the crested wheat chicken, the author writes: "It is very handsome in a black and green smoking jacket."
Reading animal science to read a master's degree, reading countless literature, doing countless experiments, Su Chengyu never thought that popular science articles can be used to describe a bird as "wearing a jacket" and "looking handsome". During the translation, he found the ornithology textbook, carefully consulted the entries, and after seeing the picture of the crested wheat chicken, he found that although the author's description was strange, it was very expressive. Popular science painters' brushes are also accurate to feathers: the proportion of red on the head, the size of the yellow feathers on the wings, and the proportion of the tail to the body are extremely accurate.
Such expressions can "ignite interest", which is important for people to approach science. "To make science popular" is the signature of his circle of friends. He wanted to answer for them—the young people he didn't know, who didn't know where, but who were hungry for science—"Where are the five thousand, how are the seven thousand, a hundred thousand whys."
Coming from an animal science background, Su Chengyu finally went to science editing instead of entering the farm, which was related to a chance answer he made in Zhihu at the end of 2014. At that time, he was in graduate school, and I know that someone invited him to answer a very strange question: "Are pigs really fat?" Why are pigs so fat?" ——First ask yes or no, then ask why, this is very aware of the spirit of questioning, but many of the following answers are ridicule, Su Chengyu feels that maybe he can provide some professional views.
This casual answer changed his life, and after that, Su Chengyu insisted on sharing on Zhihu for seven years, contributing more than 400 answers, writing more than 100 articles, publishing about 50 original videos, and 3 columns. More importantly, he decided to go from animal science to a professional science writer, "That was an inspiration, because before I first wrote Zhihu, I was still a confused person, and these answers gave me a sense of identity, which I did not get in reality for a long time, but after that, I knew where my meaning was." 」
Popular science is not easy to do, through continuous interaction with readers, what degree of professional knowledge is stuck in the line of public acceptance, Su Chengyu has been groping for a long time. In zhihu, "Fish stay in the water every day, will they also be sunburned?" Why?" Under this question, his answer does not have arrogant technical terms: "Don't think that only humans will be sunburned, animals will also be at risk of sunburn if they are not careful, including fish."
In this community that starts with professional Q&A, there are some overly professional hardcore articles, which naturally cannot be only flow theory, and getting approval may not be quick, but people who pay attention to it and read carefully will further trigger more in-depth discussions in the interaction with the respondent. For a while, Zhihu Archaeology Respondent Xiang Muru, and artificial intelligence, machine learning respondent YJango found changes in Zhihu, before in their professional answers, there will be a lot of high-quality comments, those who reply can often have in-depth exchanges and discussions with them, but after zhihu broke the circle, although more and more people pay attention to them, but some comments are said to be "powerful" and "open the door to a new world".
Some people say that YJango's answer is not understood, he feels aggrieved and confused, "describing a concept, in fact, describing a collection, how big the circle of this set is, each word refers to differently, if you use the popular things that can be seen in life to refer to generally, the larger the word, the greater the deviation." Accustomed to rigorous expression, this deviation is like a fish in the throat, and once affected their desire to express.
Does the profession have to be niche? What kind of language should be used to do popular science? Where is the balance point? These questions once plagued many excellent respondents in unpopular fields, and they also related to their motivation to continue to share. On another dimension, there are also respondents who have similar troubles, Tim Rice Little Brother is the creator of the food field, but also the "newcomer" of Zhihu, he began to use Zhihu very early, but when he began to be a food blogger, he hesitated to share on Zhihu, "I think Zhihu is not as impetuous as other short video platforms, the content that needs deep thinking, suitable for people with certain knowledge reserves, will someone really watch food videos?"
People who make good food and those who do scientific research have the same annoyance: they are afraid that their sharing will not be recognized.
YJango's first answer had more than two hundred approvals, and today he thought back and felt that the initial praise would give him a very great motivation to create again, and Xiang Muru's answer to the past of the Excavation of Dingling also brought him more than two hundred approvals, making him realize that the knowledge that was very common in the eyes of these insiders was not known to many people. You share, others come to agree with you, thank you, and discuss with you, it turns out to be such a fulfilling thing.
Su Chengyu
Seriousness leads to approval
In terms of knowledge, the relationship between the reader and the respondent is not the relationship between the fan and the idol. Su Chengyu feels that it is very shameful to say the two words of fans on Zhihu, "first, because I feel that it is only the relationship between the author and the reader, and the other is that everyone is in Zhihu, they are all people who have a pursuit of knowledge, and the blogger's sense of personality will be very weak."
It is not easy to get a compliment, especially when Zhihu is just emerging, which means "a lot of dry goods and unique views". YJango wants to prepare an answer, such as explaining a professional term, it must be brewed for two or three days, layer by layer to peel off the cocoon, according to strict logic to deduce, and Xiang Mu wants to answer a question, to first read the book with the question, and then organize this knowledge into a systematic content to share.
In the preparation for graduate school, Xiang Muru spends dozens of minutes every day brushing up on zhihu, and many interesting questions about archaeology can always come into the eyes, such as "What is the most bizarre fake cultural relics you have ever seen?" "'Ghost Blowing Lights' says so many anti-theft technologies for ancient tombs, in real archaeology, is there a real anti-theft technology?" 」 These questions "open up my perspective in disguise, and I read books with questions, and one question can string together the knowledge of many books, and digest the knowledge better when answering the output by myself." This became a unique way for him to learn.
Wang Yi is an associate professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, whose research interests are theoretical physics and cosmology. He also first browsed some scientific research content in physics on Zhihu, and felt that Zhihu was very reliable, "because these articles are relatively long, the information is relatively complete, sometimes reading a high praise answer of Zhihu can understand the relevant information clearly, other platforms do not have the patience to write so long, readers may not have the patience to read."
YJango always felt that zhihu was the kind of discussion environment that required at least three thousand words to explain a question clearly, and a question could not be answered by wanting to answer, but required systematic knowledge, rigorous logic and outstanding expression, and the threshold was too high, "and when you get good feedback, you will want to write this answer more perfectly and get more likes."
He obviously feels that Zhihu's readers are different from other platform users, "just like when the teacher talks about physics, when the child finds that it is not the same as his usual cognition, he will shout in his throat, 'Teacher, you are wrong, you are not right', and Zhihu's reader comments can show that everyone has a basic cognitive threshold, and every like brings confidence to the author."
No one can resist the temptation of this approval, but they will also be cautious because of doubt.
In the past, the food blogger Tian Rice Little Brother would often use Zhihu to search for food related information, generally searching out "scrambled eggs with tomatoes, is it to put tomatoes first or put eggs first?" How should the oil temperature be determined?" At the bottom of such a question is a set of data and references, "they will turn food into a very serious thing."
He never thought he would settle in Zhihu, before he worked at a consulting company, after transforming into a food blogger on a short video platform, he quit his job to do his own content and specialize in food. In 2020, Zhihu invited him to move in. At first, he was a little worried that bloggers who came in at the same time would be questioned by users, and some people would be called unhygienic if they applied their nails to cook. When frying food in oil, the comments will specifically ask, "With rapeseed oil or peanut oil, what is 60% oil temperature?" Cut the knowledge points very carefully.
One of his videos was still caught, and the comments said that the only thing to eat and broadcast was the action of sending it to the mouth, not swallowing, and also taking a screenshot of the video for evidence. Tim's little brother suddenly understood one of the cores of Zhihu, "that is, caring about a matter is illogical and very true." He patiently made a video of the swallowing action and put it on.
Half a year of running-in, more than a dozen were posted, and one video reached more than 7 million views. At that time, he felt that he was finally standing firm in Zhihu. For a long time afterwards, he became addicted to picking and choosing comments. "It's up to you to pick something wrong." I know that everyone has picked my faults, and most of them are really faulty."
Once he stir-fry, wait for the oil to warm up and put the meat, but the meat is put into the oil, there is no immediate sizzling, the comments will say that your oil is not hot enough, how long to wait to put, there are people who are professional chefs, private messages where his approach should be corrected, and some people will send him some articles, recommend some books, how to control the oil temperature, how to save the ingredients, he writes them down one by one. "Later, I will cook more rigorously", for example, the production of the previous recipe will be written in more detail on the text, and the subtitles and recipes in the video will be written more clearly.
Wang Yi particularly agreed with that sentence: "It is often said on the Internet that if you are serious, you will lose, but only when you know it, you can win if you are serious."
Wang Yi visited the prototype of the LIGO gravitational wave interferometer at the California Institute of Technology in 2019
Another kind of joy
Xiang Muru still remembers that when he first used Zhihu, some of their art lovers had an exchange group, to share and discuss with Zhihu as a position, and the biggest honor for answering was the approval given by the leaders in the field, a high-quality answer would make them collectively go out to like, and if there were more cold and high-quality questions, they would also huddle together to answer and bring the heat of the discussion. Many excellent respondents have grown up in such an environment, and in turn, they are supporting more potential newcomers.
The joy of sharing, on the one hand, is to gain recognition, and the other side is to bring help to others. Wang Yi also answered a lot of questions about physics and scientific research at the beginning, once Zhihu held an activity called "Scientific Research Roundtable", around the topic of "scientific research is a little difficult", everyone together to graduate students, postdoctoral students to put forward some suggestions from people, Wang Yi felt that there are many college students and graduate students, wrote several articles, hoping to help them.
He found that outside of the classroom, people often called him a fan. At the end of a graduate student interview, a classmate said, Teacher Wang, I am your fan. When I asked, I knew that I had come up. This has happened several times. Every now and then, Wang Yi was very happy, saying thank you in his mouth, thinking in his heart, "Some of my answers should still help them."
He often receives private messages, some of which ask academic questions, and some high school students or undergraduates, who ask him how he came to HKUST. What are the special offers for participating in the Mathematical, Physical, and Chemical Biology Competition? He would answer patiently.
For Su Chengyu, what can help is to inspire a group of children to dream of science. A few years ago, an editor found him through Zhihu and made an appointment with him for a manuscript "The Year of the Pig Says Pigs", which was posted on the "I am a scientist" public account, for students in the fifth and sixth grades. Later, in the 2019 Huicheng District Primary School Chinese Modern Literature Reading Teaching Competition in Huizhou City, this article was selected as an explanatory model. Teachers reflected that this article on animal science can be understood by students, and many people have a strong interest in animals.
"Later, a teacher added me ToChat and told me that the children wrote me a letter, afraid of sending trouble, so they sent a photo of the letter directly through WeChat, which was mostly about 'Thank you Brother Su Chengyu, let me know the truth about the pig'." When they saw that Su Chengyu's photo was of a young man, the teachers were surprised, they thought that the scientists were middle-aged people with glasses on the top, but the children did not have this stereotype. Another child said he was going to Shanghai to find him. "It's such a wonderful feeling, it turns out I can really affect some people."
The feeling of the little brother is more direct, and many people will follow him to learn to cook. Once he received a private message from a fan who was not sure how long to stew on the way, whether to cover the lid, whether to add water in the middle. When he saw it, it was past dinner, but people would still send him a picture of it. There are also people who follow up and think it is delicious, come to the video below the comments to thank you.
Another fan wrote to him privately, saying that he had opened a small restaurant in Beijing, and many of the dishes on it were taught in the video. "I also replied to him, 'Don't you invite me to your shop for a meal?'" Someone even asked him directly for the recipe for yellow stewed chicken, which he bought from the Internet, wanted to see if the taste of the recipe was good or not, after making it, some people said that they wanted to take the recipe to open a store.
Tim Little Brother
Middle-of-the-road
The desire to let more people see it subtly changes the way many people create the Lord, and even changes their work and life.
At 9:30 p.m. on December 27, 2021, Xiang Muru had not yet left work. He works as a content operator for an Internet company in Hangzhou. A few years ago, he was also a graduate student of cultural relics and museology, going to the field archaeology or going to the museum is the home of most archaeology students, the place of work is the village, excavation site, in the field at night generally do not work overtime, rest is also dependent on God, rain is a holiday. Having to go to work at 9:30 p.m. is the story of another world.
After writing answers and columns for several years in Zhihu, his perspective is no longer the pursuit of precision and professionalism as at the beginning, but hopes to export professional knowledge to more readers in more simple and understandable language. "Archaeology is about what evidence there is to say, but I will add some of my own ideas, it seems more popular, if I want more people to understand, there should be a trade-off." 」
Xiang Muru gave an example, the Jia Lake site found the earliest pig raised in ancient times, about 7000 or 8000 years ago people here began to feed pigs, but how do archaeologists use the bones of these pigs to analyze whether it is wild or domestic? There are a lot of reasoning arguments behind this, but ordinary users will not be particularly concerned about the pig's mandible shrinkage by a few centimeters, whether the pig's teeth have been dentiginal distortion, but more concerned about how the ancient people lived, the popular science to do is to use reasoning to restore the ancient people's food, clothing, housing and transportation, rather than just rigorously demonstrating a scientific phenomenon.
Do Internet content should also consider what users like, write popular science articles also think about the reader's interest, the two influence each other, so that Xiang Muru has been trying that balance point, when writing some popular science content related to tomb robbery, he consciously explores those familiar and interesting points of the public, such as how the Luoyang shovel is dug, how to distinguish the location of the tomb through the soil, whether feng shui is really there, and will also tell the anecdote that some tomb robbers were recruited to be technicians in the archaeological institute after the founding of New China.
Like Xiang Muru, Su Chengyu also trekked out of his own disciplinary vision, constantly learning what is a good way of popularizing science. In Zhihu, there are often magazines that write popular science articles to explain the problem of animals to children and teenagers, Su Chengyu has a sensitivity, knowing that for most non-professional people, what degree of professional knowledge application is just right, "from the perspective of the public to explain the problem, not from my point of view to explain the problem." This made his article very popular.
Judging from Wang Yi's personal experience, I know that there is a lot of space left for popular science, "When writing popular science, I think that if I am the kind of light that attracts attention, I actually don't have much praise, that is, what gets more praise is actually this kind of dry goods." Because the reader is relatively serious, sometimes the language is a little difficult to understand, a little more professional, the problem will not be very big, and on other platforms, a little more technical details will scare off many people.
YJango feels that pure academic things cannot be accepted by the public, pure entertainment things have no value, and he knows that he can actually undertake translation work from academic to the public, and do some popular science content with a serious and rigorous attitude and an interesting and relaxed form.
Xiang Muru's new book "Watching the Archaeological Site"
There is always an answer
Leaving the academic environment and going to an Internet company, Xiang Muru did not stop updating Zhihu. "I don't particularly dwell on this identity, for example, archaeologists can only answer the content of archaeology, and my answer must follow different life stages and points of interest." 」 Recently he plans to do audiobooks, do courses. The next column is still being written, and the theme is a national treasure that has been lost overseas.
And Su Chengyu is evaluated as a clear stream in knowledge, and he can always see the simplicity of animals here. Sometimes he sends a snail that eats very well, a tree shrew that loves to eat spicy and drink, and a giraffe that walks smoothly. "Everyone will smile, and the haze of the day will be swept away." If you do not answer that question in 2014 on Zhihu, if you choose to continue to study for a doctorate or enter a company when you graduate from graduate school, Su Chengyu's life situation may be very stable, go to a breeding research institute, do not have to worry about eating and wearing, but then you will regret it, because it is not what you want, for yourself, science is still the most important. Accompanying words is always to sit on a cold bench, but also need to continue to persevere.
When he goes out to do activities, he is often introduced as a popular science author, a magazine editor, and finally a zhihu respondent. In his opinion, he prefers to use the identity of the creator and insist on writing long articles, but also in order not to let his answers be reduced to the information of a related question. In his view, in the impetuous era, short videos compete for attention, but long texts have irreplaceable parts, the information density of long texts, the efficiency of acquiring knowledge is the highest, and knowledge is precipitated by long articles. And the video has GIFs that sometimes distract people, the text will make people more focused, and all the senses will be invoked on this carrier, and people will become calm.
Even a netizen who has never seen Zhihu lives in the context of Zhihu's participation in shaping today, and many people inadvertently use the concept of Zhihu invention. This is the meaning of knowing. It is a platform where a small number of people still write, read, and discuss long texts. The meaning of long text writing cannot be replaced by short videos. A society needs public discussion that helps us shape the community.
Wang Yi has more than 70,000 followers, and there are many active people. An article quickly has hundreds of likes, and a little bit of writing will be thousands in a few days. Other circles are not very clear, he feels that in the scientific research circle, there is no decline in attention, and the atmosphere of zhihu has not changed much. "Maybe it's easier for researchers to calm down and read long articles."
Every day, Wang Yi was busy from morning to night, engaged in scientific research and teaching, and sometimes he could not think of answering questions. But I know that I still have to brush for a while, which is a habit that has been developed since 2015, and it is a window that must be opened in front of the computer. Look at the email first, then look at the new research article, and then look at the knowledge, "there will be a lot of vision to supplement."
Recently he saw a question, what is the most disgusting function you have ever seen? He drew a function, this function can write six words, that is, "you have seen the most disgusting", this answer became the first place of likes, he felt a little skin, life more taste, that day is very happy.
Some people say that an important reason for liking to read zhihu is that the respondent will always treat the curiosity of the questioner with the most cautious and serious attitude, whether these curiosities are not marginal - such as eating a small spoonful of black holes. Why haven't you excavated the Mausoleum of The First Emperor of Qin? And if you don't really like the discipline of geography, normal people should not think about whether the Jade Emperor lived in the stratosphere or the troposphere."
Not long ago, Zhihu released the third quarter of 2021 financial report, disclosing that Zhihu's monthly active users have reached 101 million, breaking through the 100 million mark for the first time, and the scale of active respondents in Zhihu exceeded 53 million.
To put the curiosity of hundreds of millions of people, the emergence of a large number of popular problems, will make the old bloggers have a pan-entertainment, small circle of broken feelings, but with a "question must answer" and serious and responsible attitude, data, analysis, combined with history, the core of knowledge has not changed, those more grounded problems in daily life can be professionally answered.
For example, during the rainstorm in Henan, the "Rainstorm Self-Help Manual" written by the respondent @ Zhen Haoyuan has aroused the attention of the whole network and has also been praised by CCTV; for example, when asked whether it is possible to predict the trend of the epidemic in the next three years, the respondent @ taking pictures is a poor gang After consulting various domestic and foreign materials, it still summarized a few general possibilities and answered the question of the difficulty coefficient of five stars.
When purchasing pillows, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine orthopedics and traumatology at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine made an evaluation, using a medical equipment worth 15 million yuan and engineering equipment worth 1.5 million, using magnetic resonance technology, from a number of different dimensions, to make a very professional evaluation of 7 pillows. A simple snail powder can also turn over countless answers that can be called "heartbreaking" evaluation snail powder on the knowledge. Someone personally ate the local snail powder in Liuzhou, or bought 112 packages of different brands of snail powder in one go, to select the best six models, each of which can be called a scientific research evaluation talent. "Dry goods help you save money, knowledge is money!" 」
There is always a more reliable answer, "This may be the irreplaceable place of knowing.".