2021 is the year that esports is out of the loop again. With it, there are more fans, greater traffic, and fanatical private behaviors such as "containment" and "stalking" have gradually appeared around e-sports players.
In July last year, Liu Qingsong (ID: crisp) of the FPX e-sports club was hospitalized due to physical problems, and rumors spread for a while, and even fans surrounded the hospital.
Not long ago, the viper who had just won the S11 championship with the team also encountered a similar situation. EDG official blog called on fans to stop irrational behavior such as "following the machine" and "picking up the machine".
After experiencing many private incidents, the contradiction between the "e-sports circle" and the "rice circle" can be described as another escalation, and a "scolding war" can be seen from time to time on the real-time square of the club's official blog and Weibo hot search. Many people feel that the "e-sports rice circle" has made the current "e-sports circle" a miasma, and it is no longer the hot land it was at the beginning.
Why does everyone shout about "rice circle culture"?
It is not clear when the earliest star-chasing activities began, but "star-chasing" has always been a way for many people to get satisfaction. From the simple purchase of records to the collection of funds, from concerts, meet-and-greets and other activities to airports and hotels, after many years of development, the star-chasing culture has long been upgraded from individual behavior to collective behavior. "Chasing stars" is no longer a personal hobby, but has evolved into a complete industrial chain, investment, bottle control, fundraising, pick-up, today's "rice circle" is more like a non-governmental organization with strict discipline, organization and even financial system.
The fan economy can bring huge dividends to the market, and to some extent, it is also conducive to the spread of positive energy and the development of the entertainment industry. But at the same time, if the organization lacks supervision, it will breed chaos. Some people use the so-called "rice circle status" to mislead young people and instill incorrect ideological concepts in them, causing the "newcomers" to almost worship the idol artists they worship, thus making some crazy moves. As soon as they encounter bad speech about their idols, they immediately resort to online violence attacks. There are even idols who can retain a mess of business capabilities with the support of fans because they are good-looking.
In the absence of correct guidance for a long time, the "rice circle" has gradually become synonymous with vicious behaviors such as mutual tearing and insults, pulling and stepping on wars, provoking confrontation, insulting and slandering, rumor-mongering attacks, and malicious marketing. Under the influence of a series of bad events in the entertainment industry in recent years, the behavior associated with the "rice circle" has been rejected by netizens from all walks of life, and the e-sports circle is no exception.
"E-sports rice circle" has become an inevitable trend
Around 2000, e-sports entered China, when computers and networks were not as popular as they are now, and e-sports was still a very niche circle. Since around 2015, the development speed of e-sports seems to be on the fast track, on the basis of national policy support and the continuous expansion of user groups, capital and traffic have rushed in, and those old e-sports fans have finally gradually formed a large group because of common hobbies, and e-sports is no longer a carnival of a small number of people.
"Esports, cooking is the original sin." "If you play well, you will praise, and if you don't play well, you will scold." This simple and rough way is a principle that old e-sports fans have adhered to for many years, and the performance on the field is the only criterion for judging a player, so they do not care about the appearance and private life of the player.
If at the time, it seemed that the two circles did not have any intersection, there was a very big difference in the gender ratio of the audience and the style of the circle. But as esports got more and more out of the loop, the two began to collide, quarrel, and merge with each other.
In 2018, RNG won the championship of many large and small competitions at home and abroad, the scenery is unlimited, in the same year, IG won the first S championship of the LPL, and the continuous victory of the Chinese division made the e-sports break the circle again, which naturally attracted the attention of the e-sports circle, including, "Cloud players who have not played games, cannot understand the game, and only pay attention to the appearance or personality of the players." At the same time, the rice circle mentality of striving to "win resources for idols" has also caused the players of group e-sports projects to fall into a divisive public opinion environment. It seems that since this time, the old fans and new fans in the e-sports circle have been constantly scolding, and the "e-sports rice circle" has been constantly put out for discussion, is it to be separated from it, or to accept integration? Time has already told us the answer.
Rice circle is inevitable, because the traffic economy brought by the rice circle can produce huge benefits. In recent years, e-sports has entered the public vision, more and more mainstream recognition, more and more sponsors into e-sports, the industry's various industrial chain incomes have risen - of course, all this is inseparable from the players who strive for honor for the country, but the publicity and traffic brought by the rice circle, as well as the "hit the list", "peripheral" and "support endorsement" with the characteristics of the rice circle, have played a big role in it. Therefore, from the perspective of economic returns, "e-sports rice circle" is beneficial to the e-sports industry and will still be further promoted by capital.
Since 2020, the state has begun to regularly launch the "Clear Lang Action", and the chaos in the rice circle has eased slightly. As the e-sports circle continues to expand, the "sense of contradiction" with other circles has gradually disappeared. Now when we pay attention to the official blog of the club, we will find that the activities of the players' "business" are becoming more and more numerous, and if I allow it, we will also publish the daily lives of some players.
"Abandonment"
Although the "rice circle chaos" is gradually getting better under the rectification, the extreme behavior of violating the personal privacy of the players such as "tracking" and "containment" still occurs from time to time, which requires the club and the audience to jointly restrain and self-discipline. "Take its essence, remove its dross" is the best way to maintain the symbiotic balance between the "e-sports circle" and the "rice circle", so as to promote the industry to continue to create benefits and healthy development, which requires the joint efforts of practitioners and fans.
French social psychologist Gustav Le Pen explored group psychology in The Ragtag. To the effect that people are impulsive, paranoid and arbitrary in the group, people will use the name of the group to exude their own hostility. Just as the so-called "where there are people, there are rivers and lakes", the constant quarrels and even insults in the "rivers and lakes" in which they participate are not special cases of a certain circle, but an inevitable phenomenon after the formation of a group. Therefore, do not try to escalate the contradictions, trigger a greater scolding war, to absorb the advantages while abandoning bad behavior, while recognizing the wisdom of the group while insisting on personal thinking, I believe that the hot land of e-sports will become more and more profound.