Editor's Note: No stem can escape irony, just as no grandeur can escape deconstruction. Dog head emojis, "huh" and WeChat come with [smile] emoji meaning changes, which is the prototype of the original yin and yang emoji or Internet buzzwords. Why is the end of all Internet buzzwords yin and yang weird? This article will interpret and analyze this, which is worth a look.
Friends who often soak in the Internet should not be difficult to find such a phenomenon: a period of time after the occurrence of social hotspots is often a period of rich Internet language. At this stage, not only do the typists grow faster, but the enthusiasm for stalking, secondary creation and quarrels is also extremely high.
For example, now, no matter which social media you go around, you can find the wisdom crystals left by netizens in the recent surfing melee. Among them, the most essence, the most emblematic of contemporary vocabulary, and the most emblematic expression of the Internet ecological environment is the so-called "yin and yang weirdness", or irony.
The Social Network (2010)
On the Internet, discussions about the interpretation of online language can be traced back to dog-head memes a few years ago, as well as the famous "huh" and weChat with [smile] emoji meaning changes. Around that time, the buzzwords and memes on social media gradually broke away from the principle of "what you see is what you get" and began to gradually move towards the ironic logic that everything can be yin and yang.
First, I have nothing to say, only yin and yang
Before discussing "why irony is so common on the Internet", we first need to define what irony is in everyday context.
A relatively simple explanation is that irony/yin-yang weirdness is an expression that uses words, emojis and emojis as the carrier, plays with stems, anti-strings and jittery as the content, and aims at ridicule, spitting, self-deprecation and mutual ridicule. It pays attention to the shortest length, so that "what I say on the surface is completely different from what I actually want to say" has a verbal effect, and it is usually better to have a light attitude and a civilized speech. The key to the whole operation is the user's grasp of the art of satire.
Servant of the People Season 1 Слуга Народа (2015)
The prevalence of irony is closely related to the emotions we have when we go online. For a variety of reasons, the Internet is not a place to speak calmly and well, with opinions, positions, and sentiments occupying most of the timeline, and even the remaining part that can be called "facts" is difficult to get the treatment it deserves.
Back in 2016, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics conducted linguistic analysis of millions of Weibo posts. They found that anger is the most spreading and influential emotion on social media. Thinking about the last chicken feathers of every public discussion, and any topic that can lead to battles between different circles, you can roughly assess what kind of mental state most of these people who surf every day are in.
The Twelve Chairs (1970)
Human anger is outward and actionable, and its aggressiveness breeds the desire to speak out loud. In other words, if you think, "Oh how everyone is so angry," it may be more than that. Emotions are not born or disappear out of thin air, and the current situation of "going online is to raise the bar and watch people raise the bar" has never been the reason for a single party, but the Internet users, platforms, real life and force majeure together.
Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)
The biggest contradiction in today's Internet language may be the contradiction between the growing yin and yang weirdness of netizens and the speed of iterative buzzwords that cannot keep up with this expression need. As for the overload of information that everyone has been shouting for a long time, it is only a compensatory effect of this contradiction that cannot be resolved.
Language carries emotions and further stimulates emotions, which is why there is usually no result on the Internet, and in the end, it can only delete posts, block or fail to do so. But our language itself is grossly depleted and flattened, especially in an age when buzzwords are tedious like repeaters, sensitive words, and taboos, but there are more and more, and the possibility of an ordinary person wanting to talk about something online without any worries is actually quite slim. In short, in an environment with limited expression, irony is the only language secret weapon that ordinary people can use, but we usually use it to attack each other.
Play Time (1967)
"My speechlessness to you can fill the whole universe"
If you're not one of the ten-level linguists who are proficient in Internet black language, you're bound to go through some "what is this talking about" mental journeys in the process of surfing the Internet:
The same smiling and squinting emoji can express happiness, hehe, and "Angry, oh, but I still have to keep smiling"; a question mark may be an ordinary question, but the three question marks are used together to become "Do you listen to what you say is human"; "ah yes" means "yes", but "ah right right" means "not a word is right"... Similar examples abound.
Why is the Internet irony becoming more and more difficult to understand and more and more circumvented? On the one hand, of course, it is because contemporary language is broad and profound, and there are too many small circles and black words, but on the other hand, it comes from the defects of text communication itself.
My Uncle Mon Oncle (1958)
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggested that textual satire often has comprehension biases among recipients due to the lack of clues such as expression, tone, and context. To do this, people have to use bold, italic, emoji, spaces, etc. to help pass.
A study of Twitter labeled #sarcasm (satire) also mentioned that such tweets often use more exaggerated exclamations, or a contrasting combination of "positive wording with negative situations" (which is actually the basic routine of humor), which over time becomes meme and meme. Some studies have even suggested that sarcastic tweets can be more "positive" than others. This means that the more cute the seemingly uninspiring emojis or virtual characters, the more likely they are to be made into yin and yang weird memes, because the offensive effect is longer than simple insults.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who first coined the term "deconstruction," argued that the essence and responsibility of deconstruction is "to confront illegitimate dogmas, authorities, and hegemony." When you realize that the power of the individual is unprecedentedly small, deconstruction has meaning, it can dissolve everything with our opposition and contempt, pierce the grand and challenge the impermissible with a non-violent and uncooperative attitude.
Under this consensus, irony, as a high-context style that combines graphics, deconstruction and irony, not only carries the wit of word games, but also allows users to obtain a kind of "code-to-code" fun. If you click on a Weibo, you can judge within five seconds who is a friend in the entire forwarding chain, who is irony, who is playing with the trend, who is pretending to be a string, congratulations, you master not only the yin and yang weird qi, but also the most metaphysical and sinking part of the entire Chinese virtual world.
La vita è bella (1997)
Third, concise yin and yang weird, basic vocabulary introduction, send you
In order to help deepen everyone's understanding of the Internet language in Jane, we have excerpted 12 high-frequency words in ironic literature, giving some interpretations in order of difficulty from low to high. It should be reminded that they are only a very small part of the vast ocean of literature on the Internet, and the following interpretation is for reference only. Of course, we also welcome wild satirists to share their experiences.
1. Ah this
The extremely convenient version of "Ah, this" means "because I was too surprised/embarrassed/stunned to choke on my words". As for whether it is "what this thing" or "what should I say about this" that follows, it all depends on the free will of both sides. The key is to be concise and concise, and to achieve the effect of speechless emotion within two words, similar to "spraying".
Office Story Служебный Роман (1977)
2. Well said, don't say it next time
It is also the standard first-largement and then sentence suppression style, focusing on the sudden dissuasion after the praise of the first half of the sentence. The "say" in the sentence can be replaced by any other action, such as "This song is sung well, don't sing it next time" and "This movie is well made, don't shoot it next time", and the elegance of the twist is second only to the similar use of "pink delicate, how old are you now".
3.（
Originally from the quadratic circle, the meaning now gradually becomes "inner os" and "state cues when speaking". It can be used alone or with both parentheses to indicate that there are words in the words / stop talking / make a joke / blacken yourself, etc., such as "I am so happy ahha" "Bet that if I lose, I will wash my hair upside down (no"). Because it is easy to use and flexible, it is now a daily language with a fixed usage level.
奇爱博士 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
4. Let's just say that there is no possibility
A kind of detour reminder, the subtext is actually "Are you mistaken", the scene is similar to the already deflated "xxx to understand", but more playful than the latter's flyer-style tone, and the use is quite extensive. As for whether it is a sincere explanation or a malicious ridicule in the specific context, it basically depends entirely on what is followed in the second half of the sentence.
6. How long have you been in this situation?
The euphemism of "Do you have a problem with your head" is mostly found in the comment area of various confusing speeches. A similar usage is "How many years are you going to sentence xxx there?" "This year's Spring Festival Gala is not you and I don't watch" and so on, can be divided into the category of "not too hurtful and insulting".
Clockwork Orange (1971)
7. XX warning
Evolved from red card warnings, it is now closer to "a well-intentioned hint that someone's words and deeds may lead to certain unfriendly remarks", which is almost on the spectrum of neutral and friendly forces. The subtext is "I agree with what you say, but I also know that there will be a lot of people going to refute you", which is basically equivalent to "the landlord/floor owner holds up", "XXX has 30 seconds to reach the battlefield" and "don't ask, ask is XX".
8. The mobile phone of the subway elderly .jpg
The acronym for "the old man squinting at the phone screen on the subway". Because the archetypal expression looks like a disgusted face, it is often used to express the attitude of speechlessness, spitting, and having nothing to say, but usually points not to one of the two parties to the conversation, but to a third party who is talking together. Using the same principle to create "is this a butterfly.jpg", "woman roaring cat .jpg", etc., a few words can achieve the visual knee-jumping response of "why can you send pictures".
Tin drum Die Blechtrommel (1979)
9. Pertinent
Originally the evaluation of the famous online review style "Old Hu Body" by fans and audiences, it is now used in reverse to connote those sophistry arguments that seem to be reasonable and based on each other, like a small editor body, and can sometimes be used to praise those paragraphs that imitate the pertinent body. In the same way, there are "thank you for the invitation", "in the guest", "the pattern is open", "do not blow no black", "the reason behind the heart is heart-warming", etc., all of which belong to the praise that is used too much to make people disgusted, and finally degenerate into criticism.
One of the commonly used emojis on Weibo, the emoticon name is "[too happy]". Unfortunately, this smile that looks like a soybean looks really suspicious, and it was quickly used by Weibo netizens who are good at divergence as a standard expression of yin and yang weirdness, similar to "smiling on the face and giggling in the heart of mmp". After the usage spread, emoji with similar meanings such as "[cute]", "[longing]", "[calling]" also all deviated from the painting style. Not only that, but those classic cute/angry/surprised expressions have now also risen to become a part of all things that can be ironic.
Bird Metamorfose dos pássaros (2020)
10. Jimei
The harmonic sound of "sister", originally a common name among young female netizens, was gradually used to refer to this group, and at the same time developed a subtle irony. In the same way, there are "taro mud bozhizhi peach peach", "absolute child", "storm inhalation", "beauty lying flat", "yyds", etc., which essentially belong to the large-scale cos scene of "repeating what a group often says, and making sentences becomes a play terrier".
11. Nin
As we all know, the more harmonics and morphological words in the network stem, the higher the irony component. Originally an honorific "you", after being deformed into a similar pronunciation of "Ning" in some subcultural circles, the original seriousness disappeared. Text substitution stems account for a high proportion of Chinese memes, from mild cute ridicule (Dongya, Bald, Cha Rice) to personal attack-level abstract words (彳亍口巴), and the risk factor is of course gradually improved.
Modern Times (1936)
12. Spaces, "", #
The first two full-angle input methods from the Japanese steam wave period can be seen as a joke about the "any sentence can be used as a book title" ethos of Japanese light novels, and the latter is a topic symbol on social media. They all gradually take on the ironic nature in the process of dissemination. For example, the same text, compared to "what is this doing", "what is this doing", and #this is doing#, it is clear that the latter two have a sense of "although there is only one sentence to complain about, a thousand words in this sentence are enough to write a book".
Finally, in the face of constant bad news, we wish you all the will and ability to speak well while understanding all the yin and yang weirdness.
Resources:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3017596/anger-spreads-faster-on-social-media-than-any-other-emotion
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303358623_Figurative_Messages_and_Affect_in_Twitter_Differences_Between_irony_sarcasm_and_not
www.qdaily.com/articles/51423.html
Author: Cat Three; Editor: Waffle; Public Account: NOWNESS Now
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IfdNth2-d6igtEZRKLZiBg
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