Author | Ding Qianwen Edit | Fan Zhihui
The Internet's subculture Icon has blossomed everywhere in less than two months.
Recently, the "My Hair" imitation fever set off by Douyin blogger "idou King" has spread all over the short video, and it has attracted attention on overseas short video platforms, spanning skin color, language and gender, "My hair, left eye is used to forget you, right eye is used to remember you" This non-tonal rhyming copy, in the combination of exaggerated non-mainstream styling and tuxedos, and the strange combination of soothing light music "Track In Time", also made "idol-King" imitate under the Internet. More and more out of touch with the mainstream aesthetic system.
Interestingly, in the personal profile of idou King, he positioned himself as an "abstract blogger", and derived "abstract blessings", that is, with different light music to reshape "my hair" to complete the online blessing "order", but also for many netizens to provide memes material.
This seal also reflects that the fire of "playing terrier songs" that are not mainstream or seem to be out of common sense is actually still the result of the integration of abstract culture.
After love is like fire, my surname is Shi, and my hair is no match for Loulan language
Looking back at the past two months, in addition to "My Hair", the shouting Mai song "My Last Name Shi" created by Douyin blogger "Gu Xi" is also regarded as a product of abstract culture with the help of a more understandable "hundred family names" inspiration. This new Douyin Divine Comedy, accompanied by magical left and right card point movements and catchy shouting microphones, has swept short video platforms at home and abroad, with 2.67 billion views on Douyin alone.
It is worth noting that "My Surname Shi" is a shouting Mai BGM created by "Gu Xi" in 2022, whose "My surname is Shi, I am worth it whenever I meet you; My surname is Shi, and I write lyrics like a horse galloping", and the lyrics are also illogical and have the characteristics of rhyming and brainwashing.
However, this divine comedy did not attract attention in China after its launch last year, until overseas netizens on TikTok based on the BGM and another blogger "Wang Qiye" combined with the left and right swinging card points to avoid obstacles "My surname stone challenge", it really made this shouting Mai work from overseas to China.
At the recent Hangzhou Asian Games, "My Surname Shi" has become the "exclusive BGM" of athletes surnamed Shi and has been raised to the mainstream level, and Gu Xi has also used this to adapt other surname versions for athletes; At the same time, the nonsensical "My surname Shi" has also successively derived various versions such as Shijiazhuang version and pet version, even if its lyrics lack sophistication, but brainwashing and no logic have just formed a fast food sense that spreads extremely quickly.
In short, "fun" dominates.
And when the popularity of "my surname is Shi, my hair" is not decreasing, the blogger who claims to have graduated from the Department of Psychology of Peking University and has the national second-level psychological counselor certification "Perception Psychology Complete Yan Huide", because of bumping his face, another blogger who imitated Yang Mi out of the circle, "Three Dreams" and "Loulan Language", which was parodied by netizens with a special accent, also took the baton of the new "Abstract Icon".
Such as "good is a girlfriend, not good is enemy honey", "this is a lonely (ethical) problem", "you make people laugh", all come from Yan Huide, and later under the processing of "musician Wang Bo", who has created online divine songs such as "Bedwetting Song" and "Poor Fork", Yan Huide's live broadcast quotes formed the new hit BGM "Girlfriends and Enemy Honey", which has occupied the top of the Douyin challenge list for many days, with more than 21 million views and continues to grow.
With the participation of the head blogger pot lid, the burst strawberry porridge, the popular IP "Loopy", etc., it also made "Loulan language" from a spoof in a single circle to complete the spread of the mainstream market.
At the beginning of the year, Na Yina's "Love Like Fire" was a typical representative BGM of abstract culture surrounded by the circle.
As early as last year, Na Yina, who was constantly banned and accompanied by a large amount of black material, won the support of a group of netizens who "watched fun" because of the scolding war with netizens and anchors in the live broadcast, and this group of netizens who called themselves "Na Jiajun" even set off the cover and flip challenge of "Love Like Fire", and the salivating lyrics, earthy melody, and magical dance made this divine comedy a spoof of some netizens "borrowing music to express the mentality" to a certain extent.
It can be said that such BGMs, which can now rage in the mass market, are more or less inseparable from the "auxiliary" of abstract culture.
"Abstract culture" that penetrates the web
Obviously, these popular Douyin BGMs all reveal anti-logic, anti-serious, anti-conventional, and anti-mainstream value systems. This is also the main feature of the "abstract culture" that has been entrenched on the Internet for many years.
"Abstract culture" is still a lot of opinions, and simply put, this emerging Internet culture can be seen as a counterculture that dissolves authority, perversity, absurdity, and defies normal narrative logic. It can be traced back to the era of the live broadcast boom in 2015, with the active activity of the "6324" team of Douyu platform anchors Li Gan and Sun Xiaochuan (all of which have been banned), in the form of dirty words, symbols, dialects, etc., it was born in the interaction and secondary processing between the anchor and netizens.
Especially under the popularity of "abstract studio" Sun Xiaochuan's illogical and meaningless "abstract words", it has also promoted the spread of abstract culture in the abuse and ridicule of netizens, such as the dating war with Edison Chen because of fans planting stolen insults to Edison Chen.
And these anchors, whether they are slightly crazy, can live a whole life, or have extremely obvious personality characteristics, can become abstract objects. There is no other reason, even if his behavior has no meaning and no logical support, as long as it can become "fun" and meet the behavioral logic of netizens entertaining to death, it can become an "abstract representative".
For example, Huya's former head anchor "Brother Yaoshui", who became famous in the first battle, became "Do You Deserve" when he scolded netizens live from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m., and became "whole life" material by repeating the phrase "Are you worthy" infinitely throughout the process, and was even regarded as "art".
To put it bluntly, abstract culture is the culmination of folk "whole life" based on curiosity and negative emotional output.
It is precisely because of this that even if the Go players War Eagle and Ke Jie did not show the corresponding characteristics later, they also failed to escape the fate of being abstracted because of the defeat of War Eagle and the live broadcast of chess, and finally joined in the live broadcast room to dissolve the "madness" of status to satisfy the spectators. The most typical is that the war eagle pressed Deng Ziqi to become the "goddess of tiger fighting" under the carnival of "Le Zi people", and the derived "war eagle finally won the chess, but Deng Ziqi" hot terrier.
However, in the early stage of abstract culture, many men were predominantly male, and they were criticized and resisted because they involved no taboos against women, and were also regarded as "vulgar culture". Especially under the popularity of abstraction relying on star artists, TV series lines, and second creation, abstract culture has gradually fallen into controversy in the highly prosperous development.
For example, after Cai Xukun debuted in the C position in "Idol Trainee" and gained phenomenal popularity, his hobby introduction of "singing and dancing, rap, and basketball" was revived by the second creation carnival of abstract culture supporters. Whether it is "chicken you are too beautiful" or imitation fever, it has become the group's choice to refute the pursuit of mainstream idols in the way of abstraction, dissolution and ridicule.
And Ding Zhen, who became a promotional business card in Litang with his officially stamped "wild beauty", was abstracted into "Ding Zhen at a glance", "I Got Smoke" and "Kill That Jiangsu Ding Zhen" because of his obvious characteristics such as low education level, smoking, and inability to speak Mandarin, and Ding Zhen has thus become one of the abstract representatives.
Interestingly, in order to circumvent the counterattack of abstract culture by mainstream cultural mechanisms, encrypted "abstract words" such as "answer", "Ollie" or Emoji emojis have gradually become popular, and even reverse influence the shaping of mainstream culture. Just like now, "Girlfriends and Enemy Honey", which exploded through "Loulan language", has invisibly "brainwashed" the public's aesthetic system.
It is not difficult to find that abstract culture is actually deconstructing mainstream aesthetics and values by netizens through certain memes and parodies, so as to complete the irony and confrontation of the mainstream market, and gain survival space from the catharsis and attacks of negative emotions.
Why is abstract culture popular all over the Internet?
Finding fun is the number one meaning that fans of abstract culture follow. It is not difficult to understand why BGM and Tuhi Divine Comedy, which seem to be unsuccessful, can make them "obsessed" with it, and ultimately point to "refining" for fun.
In the current Internet, with the promotion of live broadcast and short video platforms and the long-term prosperity of Tieba culture, online discourse power has gradually entered the sinking market, and the purpose of attracting audience attention and retention rate has also bred the growth of abstract culture.
Everyone can be a creator, and you can also be a monkey in a zoo.
The secularization of celebrities falling to the altar and the dwarfing of themselves have also become popular performances, coupled with the rapid development of platforms and technologies, they also provide an excellent "observation deck" for the spread of abstract culture.
Under the recommendation mechanism of big data algorithms, live broadcast platforms and short video platforms with high stickiness and fan traffic shorten the steps of creation, dissemination, and secondary creation of abstract content, and hot terriers and abstract Icons are transmitted to the public in real time, and the process of the public looking for "fun" in the network also invisibly deepens the cognition and acceptance of abstract culture.
For example, Will, who previously had great controversy in "Chinese Rap Peak Showdown 2023", his "temporary Buddha's foot" song "Temporary Buddha's Foot" was once abstracted as a representative symbol that mocked people's food addiction, poor strength, and dark box operations, and he also became a "play shouting microphone" shaped in abstract culture.
At the same time, abstraction also gives sinking users a certain right to speak online, breeds a cultural soil that is sufficient to accommodate the bottom "fun" in marginalized areas, and uses abstract content to complete self-comfort and identity identification. This kind of behavior with a certain degree of blow and ridicule also reflects that in the continuous sinking of discourse power, the public is gradually immersed and assimilated by abstract culture.
Just like the "terrier music" "Girlfriend and Enemy Honey" created by Yan Huide's accent and outrageous language logic, it is just a "joke" in the eyes of many netizens, but the ridiculous creative explanation of "the enemy's secret is enemy honey" has become a key point that can support high-frequency transmission.
In this process, the frequently mentioned comments such as "Peking University graduated at this level" and "psychological counselors are fraudulent" are also a kind of irony for the "Peking University" and "psychological counselor" certifications posted by Yan Huide, and even more through abstract play memes to achieve the reinforcement of the "harlequin" image of Yan Huide, and get pleasant pleasure under the bottomless ugly standard.
The continuous expansion of youth subcultures has also made abstract culture a pan-entertainment carnival under deconstruction. The most intuitive point is that abstract culture does not rely on content to influence the audience, but the audience is deconstructing the existence of content as "abstract" and promoting the output and spread.
For example, "Poor Fork" that came out of the circle earlier is to reconstruct and integrate the "golden sentences" spoken or embarrassing or funny by many artists such as Guan Xiaotong, Chen Xuedong, Zhu Dan on different occasions, and finally this atypical music that includes speeches on hot topics appears. Under this deconstruction, abstract culture allows a large number of users who do not know these stars at all to obtain a certain happiness in communication, and in a sense, it also makes celebrities obtain corresponding traffic dividends.
But at the same time, abstract culture is not centered on Icon, and the validity period of this traffic changes flexibly with the public's carnival to find the next Icon. In other words, the deconstruction of the masses' vigorous abstract creation has made abstract culture a postmodern cultural phenomenon that can be decentralized and find its own "cultural master", with a high degree of freedom.
However, the dissolution of non-mainstream culture such as abstract culture is also due to the subcultural nature, which can only be close to the mainstream market, but it is difficult to obtain comprehensive recognition by the public.
However, with the approach of the mainstream market, just as rock, quadratic, rap and other content need to retain a certain originality, such as dead wall, Diss, etc., the mainstream is also affected by the negative values retained by abstract culture and the strong context of resistance. For example, "Love Like Fire" was exaggerated on Station B as "the first female Vocal Nana New Single in China" on Station B, mixed with abstraction in the mainstream context of the Chinese music scene, and equally mocked the "lack of quality" between Harlequin Icon and the Chinese music scene.
On the other hand, this meme culture of "everything can become a terrier" has also greatly given the public the ability to diverge in creation. As mentioned above, the birth of abstract words is the "new language" that appears in the battle of wits and courage of the majority of netizens, constantly avoiding risks, Loulan language, Guo language and even business Yin can be regarded as the representative of abstract language, and deeply affect the mainstream of the general public's life language, such as "Yesmola", "Xiang Ray" and so on have been successfully popularized under the drive of the official and non-government. This playful carnival also led to the formation of subtle equality and free cultural equality between all classes.
Now, three years after the pandemic, meaningless abstractions are also becoming more and more proliferate under the spiritual needs of audiences desperately needed to find an outlet. Therefore, since this year, we have frequently seen abstracted amateurs and celebrities become subcultural icons, or a large number of ignorant and unreasonable abstract words have impacted the serious language system, and the public's self-expression has gradually appeared in an irrational and amusing attitude.
This unconventional freedom also means the uprooting of the authority of group consumption, which further aggravates the carnival nature of abstract culture, such as the abstract blessing payment order of idou King, which also makes it continue to ferment in the public opinion field.
epilogue
Interestingly, in 2019, a large number of netizens saw the rise of abstract culture as a reproduction of the hippie movement.
But from a subcultural point of view, the rise of the American hippie movement popular in the 60s is a social practice of young people's counterculture, advocating freedom, anti-war, and eager to establish a new way of life, while abstract culture is more like contemporary young people using the Internet to vent negative emotions, escape reality and even release malicious trash cans, in essence, abstract culture is still a "popular meme" that exists in deconstruction.
Even if through the connotation of "abstraction", young people, especially young audiences in the sinking market, have obtained an outlet for "deviant" resistance, but in essence, abstract culture is still regarded as a "fun" full of vulgarity, ruin, and bottomless in universal values.
Especially for the music market, this is not something to be admired and encouraged. The traffic effect brought by abstract culture that started with "fun" has affected the spread of more and more low-quality and pale content "meme songs", and has also invisibly dragged the public's aesthetics and music quality, and excellent music works are becoming more and more rare.
Just as it was originally dominated by curiosity, this kind of symbolic carnival that is out of practical meaning will also be garbage for the industry. After all, the popularity of the abstract play terrier Divine Comedy is just a flash in the pan that can be replaced at any time.
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