Touching the night talk, every day nonsense and game-related farts, ghost things, new things.
The picture is gone again! (Photo/Xiao Luo)
A few days before the Spring Festival, a social software called "Gel" quietly became popular, and at one point it topped the list of free apps in the national App Store. I received a friend invitation from my colleague Mr. Yuan Weiteng. He shared it with me, and we shared it separately with other colleagues.
As a social software, the core gameplay of gel is actually not new, that is, virtual image + virtual social - to put it bluntly, the previous QQ chat window plus the QQ show next to it is not the earliest presentation of this kind of play? It may be that many new concepts have emerged in recent years, and people have more diverse social needs, so these software have sprung up like mushrooms.
I've tried several other new products with similar gameplay before, but I can't even remember their names now... It can be seen that even if new concepts can be used, even if the classic design ideas are already there, it is not easy to make a social software popular.
But gels seem to be different from those products. First of all, it provides users with face pinching and dress-up options, although the number is not much, the degree of freedom is not high, but the aesthetic is passable, and it can even be said to be pleasing. Secondly, its social concept is also more in line with my heart, it does not encourage users to make friends with strangers, but instead sets a limit of only 50 friends per user. In its product copy, it says that it is positioned as a "friendship apartment" in order to allow users to show their true selves in their core circle of friends.
Today I am!
Plus, it offers a fairly simple and fun way to interact. Friends who join the gel will appear in the same "square". In this square, you can see the avatars of your friends, see what they are doing and saying, and even see the approximate location of your friends themselves (if both parties are willing to open) and the battery of the phone. If you want to interact with a friend, you can simply poke the other person's avatar, the other party will receive a reminder on the phone, or you can start a conversation directly in the background chat window.
Of course, these settings are not enough to attract everyone. When I took a dip in the gel with Mr. Yuan, I also found that not all of my colleagues liked this kind of experimental social software that was difficult to classify. Teacher Chen Jing and Teacher Zhu Siqi were not interested the whole time; Teacher Feng Xinyang tried on a few clothes and said, "This is far from our Final Fantasy 14", but still changed into pink braids and JK uniforms, wandering far in the background; Teacher Yang Zongshuo named himself "Jing Guangfa" and changed into a set of white suspender pants - I don't know what the meaning is, but then he no longer logs in, "Jing Guangfa" has always stood in place in a stiff posture, like a silent and lonely lighthouse.
One of the reasons I like to "gel" is that I can observe my colleagues around me (even just a few!). How to present and express themselves when they are unrestricted, and think about whether these displays and expressions can be corroborated with their real-life personalities.
It's a bit complicated to say, for example, take Teacher Zhu Jiayin, for example, whenever I see him wearing clothes that can never be put together (such as wearing a yellow plaid shirt on the upper body, a pink striped shorts on the lower body, and a green soda can in his hand), the villain is either lying face down, with a pool of blood on the ground, or lying flat on the ground, with his hands crossed on his chest - the whole shows a kind of mourning and indebtedness. His villain usually does not speak much, just stands quietly on the sidelines, feeling that he is secretly observing; the only few times he speaks are about the pressure of work, which may be used to deter other colleagues.
But some colleagues don't seem to be intimidated at all. For example, Teacher Yuan, he is another gel lover besides me. As the youngest colleague in the editorial department, Mr. Yuan not only shows the youthful vitality that amazes the elderly in his daily life (practicing for dozens of hours in one breath until he passes "Master" with one life, and at this moment he is playing the "knife tower" during working hours), but also spares no effort to show this amazing spiritual head in the gel.
Teacher Yuan worries about only the following things every day: the manuscript cannot be written, the game cannot be finished, and the plush toys are dirty again...
Unlike Teacher Zhu, Teacher Yuan likes to try the most fashionable, beautiful and eye-catching costumes in the software, such as pink suit jackets, bright white down jackets, and the new long navy uniforms are also changed at the first time! And his little man is always so happy on screen — almost jealous pleasure you know? Not running happily, or twisting the heart, even occasionally sighing and saying "the idea of the manuscript is stuck", after a few hours of watching, the villain is already passionately creating in front of a drawing board! The bubble above the villain's head read, "There's a train of thought again!" ”
The happy teacher Yuan experienced a cruel reminder during the Spring Festival... (I poke!) ）
Ah, that's infuriating, you say? I am only 4 years older than Teacher Yuan, my heart is only 20 years old, sometimes when I see the underage prompt, I will think about whether it is myself for a second, before Teacher Yuan and Teacher Feng were recruited by me, I have always been the youngest in the editorial department - how did I get old? And in front of Teacher Yuan, I was particularly aware of my aging.
The difference between me and Teacher Yuan is very obvious in the gel, compared to Teacher Yuan's always active and enterprising young person, my little person is like any office woman who reworks in Guomao, on the surface still holds up a delicate and beautiful shell, and the spirit inside has long been dried up by life. I will spend a long time carefully dressing up my appearance - the eyes eyebrows and lips and cheeks are naturally needless to say, they are all the best looking; the clothes are more exquisite, in addition to a perfect matching clothing, I will also carefully choose accessories, from hats to necklaces to earrings to the small props held in my hand, none of which are not bold and carefully selected.
But what do I do every day? My favorite thing to do is to let go, that is, to lie on the ground in various different positions, sometimes in a large font, sometimes with Erlang's legs crossed, looking thoughtful and empty-minded, as if thinking about the fate of human beings in the whole universe, and as if thinking nothing...
If there was one moment when the gel touched me, it reminded me of what it was like to be online many years ago. When I was online many years ago, where would I think about the question of "do not be the real self"? Where do you care what others say about you? And where will other people's evaluations be as bad as today? Just be yourself! Just talk, just communicate, just share, just quarrel well - what does it matter if you quarrel? After all, no one will hurt you. You're always safe.
Now this sense of security is rare. Circle of friends group shield plus 3 days visible, neither let people get close, nor let people understand, can not speak when they do not speak, most of the forwarding is about work. But even if this is not enough, as long as you stay in the circle of friends, stay in the unlucky, troublesome circle of friends who want to delete most people but most people can't delete, you will see things you don't want to see, you have to face the torrent of information from all directions, and endure the violent emotional fluctuations that follow... Sometimes I feel like I can't be patient anymore, but after thinking about it, I decided to be patient for a while. I hate that.
In contrast, gel did make me feel warm and comfortable at one time, but this does not mean that gel is an ideal social software. In fact, in the past one or two weeks, because of the slow progress of its update, all the new things that can be played have been played, and enthusiastic teachers such as Me and Teacher Yuan have gradually stopped posting their own dynamics. I also don't think gel can solve the diseases that belong to the times, it is more likely that gels will continue to develop until those diseases come to the door and we have to migrate to the next platform in confusion... Ah, can you understand? You keep running away, from one place to another, but the thing is always catching up.
In the end, all you can say is that this world is no longer my land, just as I drift in the universe.