The farce of "Qin Lang lost his homework" full of loopholes: reviewing the runaway chain of a joke

Recently, the incident of "Internet celebrity picking up primary school students' winter vacation homework in the bathroom of Paris airport", which has been on the hot search several times, has finally come to light. After investigation by the public security organs, Internet celebrity Xu Moumou (online name "Thurman Cat Cup") planned and fabricated a video script of "picking up the lost homework book of primary school student Qin Lang in the bathroom of Paris Airport", and then purchased the winter vacation homework book online and used his mobile phone to shoot relevant videos and spread them on multiple online platforms. At present, the public security organs have imposed administrative penalties on the two and their companies, and banned their accounts in stages. At the same time, in the process of fermentation and dissemination of the incident, Yang, a netizen who claimed to be "Uncle Qin Lang" took the opportunity to hype up traffic for traffic, was also subject to corresponding administrative punishments.

The whole thing itself is not complicated, in this era when traffic is king, an Internet celebrity made up an online joke to win attention and traffic, but the viral fermentation, spread and mutation of this joke soon exceeded her expectations, and she quickly lost her control, making her constantly use new lies to round the old lies. After causing a certain social impact and consuming a lot of social resources, she was punished for this. But when we review the entire chain of communication of this matter, we can still find many phenomena worth pondering.

The "smart" fun full of loopholes

Appreciating the "self-defeating" challenge and failure of human or animal cubs in the adult world is one of the eternal sources of joy for adults, whether it is a panda cub falling on his heel while climbing a tree, or a human child trying to imitate the antics of an adult, it can trigger a smile because it precisely triggers our "pride" as adults.

Therefore, from a psychological point of view, the paragraph that primary school students "lost" their winter vacation homework in the bathroom in a foreign country was still sent back by "enthusiastic adults" is quite cleverly compiled, and it also shows that in the era of digital economy, Internet celebrities have an accurate grasp of the psychological characteristics and browsing preferences of netizens.

But from the point of view of common sense and logic, this "clever" fun is actually full of loopholes. At the airport of any country, it is not possible for a staff member to casually and at his or her own discretion to hand over another passenger's lost property at the airport to another foreign passenger whom he does not know and entrust it to its original owner. This is obviously a product of the logic of the "piggybacking" behavior of acquaintances in the pre-modern environment into the context of the modern international aviation service industry.

The author has also found items in the toilets of international airports that are suspected to have been left behind by other passengers, so I was able to understand the way in which the airport handles related issues. The process is similar between different airports, which is to first politely thank you, and then inform the author that there is no need to touch the item, and later a staff member will go to confirm and register to enter the lost and found process.

In fact, this is the characteristic of the traffic era, precisely because netizens pay more and more attention to emotional value in the face of online information, rather than its truth or falsehood, so Internet celebrities only need to cater to the psychology of netizens when making up jokes, and do not need to think more about common sense and logic. Even in the comment area of the announcement of the public security organ's punishment of "Thurman Cat Cup", there are still netizens who confidently said that it doesn't matter if they are deceived, anyway, they are already happy, and they don't care about the truth of the incident itself.

Rush to get out of the game and add fuel to the fire

According to informed netizens, it is not the first time that the Internet celebrity "Thurman Cat Cup" has won traffic by catering to the preferences of netizens and making up jokes and videos. This in itself is a traffic password that she is familiar with and earns a lot of money, and her "overturn" this time is related to a large number of big Vs who are vying to get out first and add fuel to the fire.

According to the statistics of Sina Weibo alone, there are more than 20 "blue Vs" (that is, certified formal media) appeared in the communication chain of the "Qin Lang lost homework" incident, after the incident appeared on the hot search, they quickly chased hot spots, rushed to join the fermentation and dissemination process of the incident, and also used the name of attention to gag in the retweets and comments, ridiculing the party "Qin Lang".

In the era of short videos, true and false jokes are flying all over the sky is the consensus and common sense of today's netizens, and "Qin Lang loses his homework" itself is also such a joke that is difficult to distinguish between true and false. It is precisely because these regular news media, which have a certain degree of authority and have the responsibility to ensure the authenticity of their communication content, are vying to end up and add fuel to the fire, so that the incident has a certain authoritative endorsement, and it automatically has a certain filter of authenticity, which pushes the spread of this joke to a new height, and at the same time, it also makes the initiator of the joke, "Thurman Cat Cup", completely lose control over the spread.

In this difficult situation, if "Thurman Cat Cup" comes forward to admit that the joke is made up, it means that she is not only teasing netizens, but also the media. So she chose to continue lying and tried to use new lies to fulfill the old lies until they were completely exposed.

The self-cocooning "Thurman Cat Cup" was punished by the public security organs in accordance with the law, and several accounts with huge followers and daily traffic were banned, which will inevitably bring considerable economic losses, which is what she deserves to a certain extent, but this incident is also worthy of reflection by a considerable number of people.

In the era when traffic is king, in order to achieve the growth of fans, views, retweets and other indicators, many media must move by traffic and participate more in the dissemination and interaction of Internet hotspots. As for whether this hot spot is related to one's own work, whether the content is vulgar and boring, and whether the hot event itself is true or false, all of which must make way for the KPI of the work, the author wrote an article entitled "Government Affairs New Media Also Comes to "Dig and Dig"? Pandering to Low Childhood Will Dissipate Its Own Authority" to criticize it.

Participating in the dissemination and discussion of various online hotspots inevitably has the risk of triggering "public opinion". The incident of "Qin Lang lost his homework" has seriously dissipated the authority of many media, wasted a lot of social resources, and caused a rather bad impact. After "Thurman Cat Cup" was punished by the public security organs in accordance with the law, there are not a few such media. Under the biased guidance of "as long as traffic", a joke full of loopholes eventually turned into a traffic farce full of chicken feathers, which is a satire on our entire society.

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

Liu He

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin