12,455 team members gathered in the "Douban Cemetery" group to browse the lives of those who had never met, and stopped and mourned for the "friendship of praise". The picture shows the creative picture. (Visual China/Photo)
After tagging 1146 movies, 766 books and 195 same-city events, the dynamic of Douban user "rogue students" stopped on February 22, 2022. In the final picture, he stands on a blue plastic stool, holding the hand of the book above his head, as if waving goodbye to the world.
A digital tombstone stood. In the "Douban Cemetery" group with 12,455 team members, The Friendly Neighbor Wang Zhige briefly summed up the life of the deceased: "I used to sell books as a business, and then opened an online store to survive. Rescue cats and dogs for a long time. Can be called righteous. Died of liver cancer. ”
In an online world based on anonymity, fragments of mental activity can piece together a person's real and complex spiritual world: a late-night like, a comment on a socially controversial figure, an accurately located photo, a data erasure attempt to "delete the dynamic"...
Occasionally, these traces act equally on reality. In 2019, Zhou Qingyue wrote an obituary for his friend Liu Xin in the "Douban Cemetery" group. A week ago, he suddenly received a private message from a stranger: "Last night, I inadvertently browsed your post in the 'Douban Cemetery' to commemorate Liu Xin, and I was shocked by this news. I didn't expect to know his departure in such a way. I was a friend of his in high school and had intermittent contact with him a few years ago. Careless me, obviously found that he had not updated the circle of friends for a long time, but he was anxious, dealing with trivial matters, and even did not take the initiative to reply to it... Thank you for all you have done, let this cyberspace have his part, give me an answer, a warning, a memorial. ”
The concept map of "Missing the Starry Sky", a social platform commemorating the deceased, allows people to upload photos and texts about their loved ones at any time on this platform. (Photo/Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
"Arrived at the most authentic him"
Missing Liu Xin, Zhou Qingyue will always think of the movie "Yokomichi Seinosuke". In the film directed by Shuichi Okita, the male protagonist, Seinosuke, represents a kind of sincere and ideal friend: appearing at an important juncture in life, "having a wonderful intersection" with you, and "changing your life with a major choice". For Zhou Qingyue, Liu Xin was a being like Shinosuke.
Liu Xinda Zhou Qingyue is two grades, and the two are studying film and television related majors at an art academy in the southwest region. At the opportunity to help the class teacher shoot a short film, the two met. In Zhou Qingyue's impression, Liu Xin is synonymous with purity and idealism — he is the kind of student who must choose the latter between a propaganda film that pays tens of thousands of yuan and a short film by artists who basically do not make money. The two are in the stratosphere in the personality map, and in the popular MBTI Sixteen personality test, both are "INFP" personalities.
When Liu Xin graduated in 2016, Zhou Qingyue talked to him about his graduation plans. Liu Xin said that he wanted to stay in Kunming first and then find an opportunity to study. Zhou Qingyue knew that that opportunity, ideally, referred to the Beijing Film Academy. After graduation, Liu Xin followed a familiar teacher to start a business and make films. The content is mostly the kind of promotional films he once despised. Zhou Qingyue did not talk to him about work in detail. One day, Liu Xin asked him how much memory his computer had. Zhou Qingyue joked that I don't sell computers. "He should have wanted to borrow a computer and cut the film." Liu Xin went back to school to do activities after graduation, and from the perspective of clothing, Zhou Qingyue could feel that the other party was financially cramped. On the Douban homepage, he laughed at himself as "the director of the Kunming office of the Representative of Shandong Farmers Entering the City".
Liu Xin did not wait for the opportunity to study. In April 2019, he died suddenly. The reason is that when socializing, excessive alcohol consumption triggered cardiovascular diseases and failed to rescue them. Seven days before his death, Douban left his last film and television short review, about kore-eda's "Thief Family".
Zhou Qingyue once heard of the "pseudo-drama theory", to the effect that on different social platforms, people show their own personality that they want and adapt to the environment. He feels that this Liu Xin in Douban can reach the most authentic him in the spiritual dimension - he likes Chinese rock and folk songs, loves movies such as "Thief Family" and "A Top Four", and is an enthusiast of Jin Yong and Gu Long martial arts novels. It was so real that a friend flipped through his account, "At a glance, you can be sure that it is definitely him."
Zhou Qingyue opened a post in the Douban "Cemetery Group" to commemorate Liu Xin and attached a Douban link. In a sense, he said, this is the real memorial: "Because he was a very ideal person." It is useless for you to commemorate his body, you may be more of a memorial to his spirit and his soul. ”
In her sixties, Marlene took over the Weibo "Yulanda the Florist" left by her daughter's death. That became a new fulcrum in her life. Her husband and daughter laughed at her for being "computer blind" and "stupid to use electronics," and now she can type up to a hundred words a day. Her cervical spine is not good, and "it takes half a day to rest to post a microblog."
My daughter died of breast cancer. As of July 2018, her Weibo update retains her mental journey of fighting the disease. Most of the time, the daughter shows a kind of strong and powerful. There is a photo on the top Weibo, taken on the 5231-meter-high "Bright Tomorrow Road". My daughter had heard that a professor with cancer had punched here when he challenged the Himalayas. She also came here to challenge herself. In the photo, the daughter who is suffering from illness gives a thumbs up with both hands.
Marlene's daughter is "clean and pure", and when she was alive, she was a teacher at a university in Xi'an, and the students said that they had never seen such a good teacher, calling her "angel". Marlene recalled that more than a decade ago, cooking had to be cold water, and she froze her hands cold and put her hands on the fire to keep warm. The daughter saw it and immediately ran to the mall to buy a hot water treasure and let the installer install it on the faucet. "After her father was gone, she always rushed to the front like a boy." Marlene said. Before the operation, my daughter sent her a long text message ending: "I only hate that I am not rich, (otherwise) I can leave my mother a card with a lot of money in it, and then ask my mother to build me a hope elementary school." In 2019, the book co-authored by her daughter and teacher was published, and she received 200,000 yuan in manuscript fees, and Ma Lin fulfilled her daughter's last wish and used the manuscript fee to build a "Gao Yu Hope Primary School" in Lijiang, Yunnan.
Now, she writes her thoughts about her daughter on Weibo. Each nostalgia is preceded by a hashtag #Mommy Forever.# Sometimes, when sensitive words and format errors are encountered, the post will be blocked in the background. She said that the system is cold, but her daughter's Weibo is "a sustenance" "as if after I communicate with her like this every day, my pain can get better, and I feel that the child lives in my heart."
Remembrance on the clouds
In addition to private commemorative accounts, the "Douban Cemetery" displays the accounts of the deceased of public figures.
Wang Zhige mixed with Douban for ten years, and when he was four years old, he knew the existence of "rogue scholars". In Douban, the "rogue scholar" is a celebrity, who sold books in the county town for two years in his early years, and opened a used bookstore in Beijing for four years. In the years leading up to his death, he adopted hundreds of stray animals. Selling books with a meager income, he will live sell some cat food, cat litter to make money to support.
Around 2000, the software development engineer Zeng woke up in his life and had a brief intersection with the "rogue student". In a forum on the official website of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, where "a group of middle-aged and elderly people" soaked, he became acquainted with "rogue scholars". Zeng Woken up had the impression that this young man, who was similar to his own age, had a family treasure about the publishers, publication dates, and translators of different editions of literary masterpieces. Looking for books in the second-hand book market is also very "knowledgeable", and sometimes, you can find an almost brand-new book for five dollars.
Wang Zhige had a similar impression of "rogue scholars". He told the Southern Weekend reporter that the "rogue student" in Douban presents a very "classical" image. A "bookworm". Even Zhuangzi's so-called "deformed people" do not care much about fame and fortune, attach importance to the love and righteousness of the rivers and lakes, and are willing to be charitable. But at the same time, over the years, he has also caused controversy in terms of social wording. He was amazed that in the Internet space, people can still present some kind of complex "reality". He said that mourning the "rogue scholar" at Douban Cemetery is not only mourning this person, but also remembering people's understanding of the time he spent, the emotional links created by those times, and nostalgic for a rare ideal of survival.
In the past two years, Liu Wanlin has managed the "Cyber Cemetery" group. The "Douban Cemetery" requires that those who are remembered must have a Douban account, and the "Cyber Cemetery" group is open to more people. A member of the group who remembers his father here said that his purpose of coming to the "network cemetery" is simple: "I want to let the people in the group know that there is such an optimistic rural father who has existed, there is no tombstone in front of his tomb, I just want to have a network trace in the group." ”
In 2021, Song Zhi came to the "Cyber Cemetery" group with a similar purpose.
A year or two before her mother's death, she was in a very bad state: manic, delusional about being killed, and sometimes losing her temper with her family. The mother had inherited hypertension at a young age, died with almost no signs, hemorrhage in the brainstem, became comatose, died, with an interval of less than 24 hours in between. She speculated that her mother's death was perhaps due to the unauthorized use of antihypertensive drugs, or simply "choosing to say goodbye to the world." A few months before her death, she said, her mother voluntarily cancelled a bank card that had been used for more than two decades.
That was eight years ago. My mother died, no QQ, no WeChat. In the past two years, when she wanted to talk to her mother, she entered her mother's used mobile phone number on Alipay. The number has been cancelled, the phone cannot be called, but the Alipay account left by the mother can be popped up. Alipay chat without adding friends, the opposite avatar is a typical piece of gray in the middle-aged group. She shared with the avatar the fragmented and everyday fragments of her life: "It's been snowing lately. "Spring ×× blossom." Sometimes when I go to climb Jingshan Mountain, go to the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace to see the scenery, I write in the input box: "Today I went to ××, and I remembered that I went with you when I was a child." ”
The relationship between Song Zhi and his mother is not as close as that of ordinary mother and daughter. Song Zhi remembers coming home from school when he was a child, waiting for the bus and meeting his mother, the two basically did not communicate the whole time, so they stood separately. Got out of the car and walked home one after the other. She still can't forget a look: when she was three or four years old, when she was bathed, her mother suddenly looked at her with a particularly strange look, with a little "cramped and uneasy with strangers." She felt that her mother may not have inherited a ready-made mother-daughter relationship from her original family. For her, how to get along with her daughter is a difficult task. In the past few years, It was difficult for Song Zhi to think of impressive fragments of parent-child interaction, even if there were longer and deeper dialogues.
A few years ago, her mother was a vague shadow in her memory.
In the past two years, Song Zhi has entered a stable relationship. The girlfriend is a "paying" personality, and the original family values sons over daughters. Talking deeply with his girlfriend, Song Zhi can always feel the similarity of his girlfriend's experience with his mother. She remembered that her mother had read a lot of Books about Sanmao when she was young, and she might have longed for the love between Sanmao and Jose. At the beginning of marriage, parents are happier than ordinary families, and most of the mothers are silent, but there is a father around, always gushing. Later, she was born, and the feelings between her parents seemed to have faded over time. She regretted that she had been "too low in emotional intelligence" and had not been able to help her mother. In the past two years, her desire to try to re-understand her mother has become stronger.
For the past two years, she has often searched for her mother's name in search engines. "I was particularly anxious to get something about her from various sources." But trying never yielded anything. The search action is like a subconscious, never interrupted.
"Re-understanding" opens the valve of memory. The trivial past, which I couldn't think of in previous years, began to appear in my mind.
My mother worked as an administrator in a shopping mall and was usually introverted, silent, and sensitive. When she was a child, her mother always took her to the Ditan Book Market to buy books. In a large open space in the Temple of Earth Park, second-hand book sellers and publishers were huddled together, and the crowd was bustling. Song Zhi was only half the size of an adult, and her mother led her forward. For many families, it was a very ordinary picture, and Song Zhi regarded that scene as evidence that her mother loved herself. She said that the original family brought pain to the mother, and reading is the mother's way of feeling the beauty of the world. The mother handles the parent-child relationship clumsily, and she is implicitly passing on this beauty.
Song Zhi is still very sorry. If her mother had contacted social platforms before she was born, tried to share her inner feelings, and even communicated and resonated with others, would her "life change somewhat, and her life trajectory be different"?
What is the living?
In 2021, the death of the B station UP master "Mocha Official" has aroused public concern. Nowadays, this "commemorative account" officially recognized by The B station, under the last dynamic, has poured in more than 200,000 mourning messages. After this, some UP masters who included the accounts of the deceased appeared on Station B. They record the UIDs, time of death, and reasons for their deaths, proving that they have truly existed in the online world. The revised "UP Main Memorial Hall List" has been updated to No. 294.
The "UP Main Memorial Hall" has set up a QQ group, and many UP owners who commemorate the accounts of the deceased are managed in the group. Kang Weichu is one of the managers and the operator of the B station account "Alien Perception Division". In the group, the "UP Main Memorial Hall" is responsible for summarizing and collecting the account information of the deceased, and Kang Weichu makes a memorial video. There are now 263 accounts of the deceased in the commemorative video.
Many times, a friend of the deceased account owner comes to him and tells him about the deceased's life. Convichu wrote a brief epitaph for it. He said the people behind more than two hundred accounts constitute a microcosm of society. "There are all kinds of circles, celebrities, programmers, firefighters..." Kang Weichu has seen many anti-cancer accounts, dynamically presenting a certain law: "At the beginning, I said that I had cancer." Do chemotherapy and feel good on the first day. Discharged. By the end, it got worse and worse, and the emotions shown by the account became more and more depressed. (Finally), 'I am his or her family member'. obituary. ”
Several operators of similar accounts also formed groups. Sometimes, when someone in the private message or comment area reveals suicidal tendencies, they post a UID in the group to remind the volunteers in the group to help guide and explain. After summarizing the lives of more than two hundred deceased people, Kang Weichu was more positive about life: "You never know whether your life will end tomorrow, next year, or a hundred years later, but you can grasp today, you can do more things today." 」 ”
More often, Song Nuan silently examined the shadow cast by the death of his loved ones on the living.
She is the operator of the "Miss the Starry Sky" platform, a cloud platform to mourn the deceased. In 2018, inspired by the movie "Dream Quest", the entrepreneurial team began to envision a kind of memorial platform similar to "tree hole", where relatives and friends of the deceased can express their memories of him or her at any time. The team is in Wuhan, experiencing the epidemic in 2020, and many friends have lost their loved ones.
Song Nuan told the Southern Weekend reporter that the existing user group of "Missing the Starry Sky" can be roughly divided into three categories: one is the middle-aged parents who have lost their children; one is the middle-aged people who lost their parents when they were very young and have not yet had time to fulfill their filial piety; and the other is the young people who grew up with their grandparents and have deep feelings with their grandparents. "Parents who have lost their children, the frequency of using these platforms is very high in my opinion, and they can account for 30% to 40% of the total active users. This group loves to express (thoughts of children), and I remember a user who clocked in for a hundred days and sent it every day. ”
Sun Yun does not belong to these three categories. More than two years after her elderly mother died, she still has difficulty digesting the grief, and at one point it was so severe that she needed to be hospitalized.
Before his mother's death, Sun Yun was more than three hundred kilometers away from his mother. Sun Yun and she agreed to make a phone call every day to report safety. This has become a common practice. Every day when he returned home from work at noon, the first thing Sun Yun did was to plug in his headphones, call his mother, and talk from cooking until he finished eating. The mother sometimes hurt her, saying: "It's more than 12 o'clock, go to sleep on the couch for a while, and go to work in the afternoon to send children without dozing off." Once Sun Yun was busy forgetting, at eight o'clock in the evening, his mother called and asked, "Why didn't you call today?" ”
On the day of his mother's death, at more than seven o'clock in the morning, Sun Yun went to the unit to routinely call his mother. I tried four or five times and it didn't work. She was in a hurry and called her uncle. When the uncle arrived, he saw his mother lying on the edge of the bed, already gone.
In an interview with the Southern Weekend reporter on this day, Sun Yun clearly remembers that it was the 831st day after his mother left. Qingming Festival is coming, and during this time my mother always falls asleep. She had heard the old man say that the living could not communicate with their dead relatives in their dreams, but she was not. The day before the interview, at four or five o'clock in the morning, Sun Yun was half dreaming and half awake. She saw her mother again. The mother made a blouse over her head and said to her, "Don't think about me anymore, don't think about me anymore." ”
(Except for Ma Lin and Gao Yu, the names of the people appearing in the text are all screen names or pseudonyms)
Southern Weekend reporter Pan Xuan Southern Weekend intern Wang Ruixue