Awaken the love of "Generation Z" in the spring

Once upon a time, the pursuit of love and companionship, the search for the other half of life, seems to be no longer a "common sense" ideal, in recent years, "wise people do not fall in love" and other Internet buzzwords can be seen everywhere, resulting in an impression that love is no longer the "just need" of life. As everyone knows, buzzwords rely on exaggeration to beat the position, and the cocoon effect created by fashionable words just obscures the silent majority of the people who still yearn for love in their hearts. Contrary to the negative argument of "love lying flat", Youku's "Tree Hole Bullet Screen Report" pointed out: "Post-95" bullet screen senders are very fond of the keyword "I love you", the platform bullet screen area stages 3 million times a year "confession", 170,000 people have a good night with a love pulse, and the bullet screen area of the variety show "The Man from Strawberry Planet" has even become a netizen wish pool, and there is no shortage of happy cases in which crushes confess their success.

Judging from the new trends of online literature and art at present, the young group's youthful love attempts have attracted more and more attention. In the spring of 2022, Youku's "I Have Never Been in Love" and "We Who Won't Be in Love" have won high attention, which is a new exploration of "love enlightenment" in communication.

Aim for the "Generation Z" love first experience

"Generation Z" refers specifically to the population born between 1995 and 2010, an intergenerational group born and raised in the information society and is a veritable "Internet native". The growth and living environment determines that they are highly dependent on mobile Internet terminals, and various "netizen generation" habits make them both broad and rapid when they receive information, and the backward wave is terrible in independent learning knowledge and self-planning; however, the relative lack of offline direct interpersonal communication experience caused by "netizens" and "home-based" also makes "Z generations" who think they have "social fear" abound.

Nowadays, this group of people has gradually entered the youth stage, when these 20-something youths are brilliant, it is the time to know Shaoai, but compared with previous generations, it shows a large area of "low love rate" phenomenon. The causes of this phenomenon are complex, but the superficial alienation of young people from social interpersonal communication does not mean that they are also careless about emotional content products, on the contrary, they are the main group of people watching such dramas.

Nowadays, the emotional dramas of the network platform have entered the industrial development stage of market segmentation and track segmentation, such as "Goodbye Lover", "Semi-mature Lover", "Let's Fall in Love" and other love variety shows, which are carried out heterosexual communication observation for people of different ages and different emotional experiences, and explore the ways of communication between men and women in various situations, each with its own focus. In the context of this format, combined with the zero experience of "Generation Z" love, the sensitive drama creators have let the "Generation Z" love experience enter the audience's field of vision, variety show "I have not talked about love", the drama series "We Will Not Fall in Love" and other works, innovatively emphasizing the first love feelings and "the first step in love", paying attention to the "Love Little White" group in the "Z Generation", guiding and encouraging the love Xiaobai who has no emotional experience to bravely pursue love, triggering a new round of hot discussion and benign social effects.

Spreading the "Enlightenment of Love" in Film and Television Works

In the past, many emotional dramas emphasized the observation of love, basically defaulting to the participants as more mature emotional pursuit individuals, and the guests led the audience to observe and discuss their way of handling emotions, although they had the role of reference and education, but did not pay special attention to the psychological state of the love enlightenment stage. At present, the "Z generation" has a low love rate and zero love experience as the growth stage, precisely because they do not know how to face this specific psychological state, do not know how to take the first step, compared to other dramas, "I have not talked about love" and "We who will not be in love" can be called accurate observation and effective dialogue.

When the variety show "I Have Never Been in Love" initially selected ordinary participants, it received more than 40,000 application forms, and the enthusiastic registration of young people exceeded the expectations of the main creators, and the results of the registration form also highlighted the fact that in the minds of "Generation Z", the concept of love is not as old-fashioned, outdated and even "dangerous" as described in the cynical Internet pop memes, young men and women are not completely meaningless about love, eager to try but mixed with too many subtle concerns.

In this variety show, several "Generation Z" guests who have never been in love have contributed a large number of famous scenes that reflect the social "embarrassment" of the opposite sex - how difficult is it to take the first step in love? The boys and girls seem to be hiding in their own small mussel shells, afraid to open themselves to try, and the degree of entanglement not only surprises the older and more experienced guest observers, but also makes the audience in front of the screen scratch their hearts, and the young audience with a similar siege mentality shouts "the other me in the world" (the other me in the world). However, it is this kind of situation display that allows young audiences to have the illusion of self-reflection in the mirror, so that the variety show provides a valuable "sense of learning", the guests are not static, but really grow in the situation provided by the show, every time they make up their minds to try bravely, seemingly a small step, but will produce ripples of positive feedback, which is a great encouragement to all young audiences.

The urban love theme drama "We Who Won't Fall in Love" is the same, the fictional characters are very realistic about the initial state of love, such as default love is difficult and consumes energy, not as solid as the sense of achievement brought by work; people with strong life ability and rich inner world seem to have their own hobbies, and do not need the company of others; people who focus on rational thinking seem to treat love as a form, delay in making decisions, but ignore the attraction of intuition... However, the above-mentioned seemingly self-justified idea of "fear of love" will not be broken when warm companionship, heartfelt support, sincere trust arrives, the hero and heroine in the play win in sincerity and open-mindedness, in the bumps to get along frankly, do not worry about calculations, before being lovers, first let down their guard and be friends, these all provide a very emotional positive energy for young men and women in reality to get along with the example.

Featured social spaces create a love imagination

Variety shows are different from objective and realistic documentaries, even reality shows, which require "interventional observation", but this intervention is achieved through clever spatial arrangements and social link design, rather than deliberately influencing the choice of the protagonist. Detaching from the complicated daily life situations, setting the characters in spaces and situations that are convenient for precipitating feelings and prompting them to face their emotional needs is crucial for emotional content products.

On the one hand, the cross-section of the group portrait selected by the above drama comprehensively covers the typical characteristics of many aspects of the current young group, and the characters are very grounded. The male and female guests in "I Have Never Been in Love" can make the audience think of similar characters around them. On the other hand, the heterosexual communication space set for them by the creators is very special, such as a beautiful natural environment, an enclosed space for vacation, and so on. This is not a simple landscape display, but a clever use of audiovisual cues to guide "Generation Z" out of the house, in the embrace of nature to temporarily break away from the temptation of the network and the virtual world, into the physical public space that requires collaboration and communication, to express themselves bravely, and to establish relationships with others. The "love imagination" presented in this way is very different from the atomized lifestyle of the individual represented by the Internet. The Internet sometimes seems to help everyone connect, but in fact it promotes a closed-door and isolated lifestyle, and the "love petri dish" that emphasizes the coexistence of physical space in the program condenses a consensus about love. Face-to-face communication certainly requires costs and thresholds, but this kind of warm companionship is irreplaceable by electronic virtual space.