The masters are still orphans: the young people who are closer to the Internet and the farther away from society

Once teenagers with no professional background and no life experience indulge in their illusory grand narratives, it is easy to abandon their studies because of their natural habits of opposing orthodoxy and defy authority, and become self-righteous and actually ignorant "network big understanding". (People's Vision/Photo)

The rapid development of Internet communication technology and its related theories has brought us into an unprecedented communication environment. Although the center is still the center, but the pyramid of discourse power and the boundaries between the left and right are increasingly blurred, the emergence of social media to give individuals unprecedented desire to express and express the power, good at text expression has become a self-media blogger and public account writer, sports-loving has become a fitness blogger and online coach.

Especially after entering the "live broadcast era", with the help of video, a more superficial, more direct, and more sensory stimulation communication method, "performance" has replaced "expression" as the main way of self-display, and the natural beauty has become a beauty blogger and a beauty anchor, a natural humor has become a satirical hand and a funny anchor, and even "can eat" can also be mixed up. They have gained huge economic benefits with the help of huge traffic, and the income of the head anchor is no less than that of the first-line stars. When the sixth grade students of primary school unabashedly told reporters that the profession they most wanted to engage in in the future was "game anchor", we had to admit that the Internet "national performance era" has broken through the entire society from top to bottom.

Among these performers who eat "by their ability", there is a category of people who are different, they rely on their ability to "think", or more precisely, they hope to win a space of their own in the Internet age with ideas that they consider valuable. People who don't know much about them are easily reminded of a subcultural group in the pre-Internet era, "Minke". Now people generally no longer believe in the bottom inhuman myth of "there are masters in the mountains, masters in the folk", because in the tide of the market economy, any truly valuable theories and technologies will be quickly put into the market application test.

As a result, civil sciences have generally shifted from the natural sciences to the social sciences. Especially in the field of international relations and related geopolitics, because there are many variables in its research methods, and it is affected by complex international political factors in reality, it presents an external representation of "unpredictable", so that all kinds of civil sciences in the new era believe that this field does not need professional background and deep academic accumulation, but only needs the "look" of God's perspective to draw a number of insights that are difficult to reach in the ordinary world, so they flock to the world and make a lot of theories.

In addition, another reason why the new era of civil science particularly favors international relations and geopolitics is that this field is very different from the natural sciences - its views and theories are difficult to test and falsify in the form of natural science, and once all kinds of speculation based on imagination happen to be "confirmed" by the actual trend of international politics, the civil sciences of the new era are encouraged and trumpeted.

This kind of conjecture and nonsense has in fact completely departed from the basic methods and principles of social science research, and its essence is the ancient weft and physiognomy. But in the final analysis, the fundamental motives of these "masters" of the new era and the "folk science" of the old era are still different. Although the old folk sciences superficially despised orthodoxy, what they longed for in their hearts was still mainstream recognition and acceptance, and their ultimate goal was to defeat the gatekeepers of scientific research institutes and get a chance to dialogue with authorities, although their theories were often absurd, but their motives were relatively simple.

The masters of the new era have made excellent use of the discourse empowerment and the wave of peaceful power in the Internet age, easily obtained the opportunity to "compete on the same stage" with authorities, and skillfully used the atmosphere of the rise of populism in the whole world, using "Internet public opinion" to easily smooth the "professional gap" between themselves and authorities, skillfully using Internet techniques such as stealing concepts, self-deconstruction, and playing with terrier wits, and easily "defeating" on their own battlefield "Internet" Once a high authority. They do not have the ideal of entering the house, so they do not look up to the humility and cowardice of authority, but instead play to their anti-intellectual expression advantages. All of their theoretical self-confidence comes from a ridiculous reality: "On today's Internet, as long as you dare to say it, some people dare to believe it." ”

In the traditional Internet portrait, the "master" is often a middle-aged and elderly man with strange behavior and unpredictable speech. However, in reality, behind the few middle-aged and elderly "masters" who have successfully become "top-notch", there are thousands of young and even juvenile "masters", which do not have a professional academic background, and even lack of basic real-life common sense and experience, the fundamental reason why teenagers are keen on "night watching the sky" is that the "new era masters" are derived from the realization consciousness in the "Internet gene", since people love to watch and can be realized at dinner, then why can't "ideas" be realized? Since as long as you dare to say it, some people dare to believe it, so why can't "dare to talk nonsense" become a password for traffic and wealth?

In an interview last year, when the minors interviewed were asked about their future life plans, they bluntly replied that their ideal was to make a food broadcast, because they could enjoy food and get wealth. These teenage "masters" think the same way.

Once teenagers with no professional background and no life experience indulge in their illusory grand narratives, it is easy to abandon their studies because of their natural habits of opposing orthodoxy and defy authority, and become self-righteous and actually ignorant "network big understanding". At the same time, these illusory words are essentially seriously disconnected from real life, and those teenagers who are keen on "key politics" on the Internet often have no enthusiasm for society in reality, and even develop the vices of self-isolation, good and bad work, unwilling to engage in practical work, and become otaku who chew on the old. After many years, these teenagers who should have become pillars will realize that they are not Internet masters who have achieved nothing, but internet orphans in the "era of national performance".

(The author is a university teacher and historian)

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Liu He