I especially believe in you. There are many good people in the world, but you are the most important one. If you want to, I will always love you, and if you don't want to, I will always miss each other.
Tomorrow is the Qixi Festival, and I suddenly remembered the sentence of Wang Xiaobo's book collection "Loving You Like Loving Life". In an era when love could only be transmitted and recorded by writing letters, he made me think for the first time that the love in the book could be real in reality.
▲ Wang Xiaobo and Li Yinhe
When in 1969, the predecessor of the Internet, the Arpa Network, was born, love also became a seed of different forms with the wave of the Internet, and it grew into a new form in which the land of the Internet fell.
People who have jumped from the past era to the present may also have a hard time believing that what used to be a love letter on a piece of paper has now become a selfie.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > 1994-2006 Love: Simple words, enough expression</h1>
Looking back at this "brief history of Internet love", we must start from the 90s.
The internet has been social online for nearly 30 years, and it has also been 30 years of witnessing the change of people's love records.
The 90s was still the PC Internet era, and it was also at this time that the Internet began to take the world by storm, the interaction between people and information was changed, and people's handwritten love diaries began to become electronic versions.
The voices on the radio, the emails sent from afar, the posts that I look forward to every day, are all ways to record love.
▲ Picture from: Memory Nantong
A voice, a letter
Although radio appeared as early as the 1920s, it may be the first time we feel the flow of love in the airwaves.
It was on the high school campus, the girl who had a crush on you secretly ordered "Heart is Beating" to make you be coaxed by the whole class; it was also on the radio that you lit a song "You Are Most Precious" to the table, which became a sign of the beginning of your love.
At that time, the radio was always very close, but the likes that were far away in the sky also began to tie the network.
A piece of paper from the past turned into an e-mail, perhaps the most obvious signal.
▲ Image from: "E-Love Letter"
In 1998, Joe was the owner of a large bookstore in New York under the screen name NY152, and Catherine also ran a small bookstore called shopgirl.
Every night when the night comes, they communicate by e-mail, telling the sweetness and troubles of their respective lives, guessing what the other party looks like in front of the screen, they use their eyes to caress a sentence in the email, nervous, and expectant, and the mood is surging layer by layer. He said in an email:
I'd love to talk to you in person, this form of communication is weird, everything is nonsense. But Suffice it to say that this nonsense is more important to me than many things.
If you've read "e-Love Letters" and come back from that era, you may resonate with this beauty.
At that time, New York didn't look like Sex and the City, just the squeaks of birds in the streets every morning and the scent of daisy flowers in front of the keyboard at night.
One post, one article
However, many people really start "online dating" by starting with a post.
In 1994, China's first Internet BBS Shuguang station was launched, and Ma Huateng also set up his own BBS at that time. The emergence of BBS has allowed early netizens to enter an unprecedented online carnival.
Between moderators, between moderators, between moderators, various loves are staged in turn.
▲ Mizuki Tsinghua is the official BBS of Tsinghua University, which was once one of the most popular BBSs in Chinese mainland
There was a forum called Siege City, a girl called Water, a boy called Dust, they announced their home on the first day after the post, the next day they said they wanted to spend candles in the cave here, their love words were exquisite and noble in the post, and they could not turn several pages, but on the seventh day, Shui said that he loved it to the extreme on the Internet, and his heartache could not be sustained, so he said goodbye to the dust, and a relationship ended.
Also in the Tianya community, which was launched in 1999, there were also many such online love that now seems a bit strange, but at that time, people felt "tragic", Murong Xuecun, Furong sister, and Mingyue that year were also on fire there.
At that time, many people would even fall in love with the person who wrote it behind the scenes because of the writing of a post.
▲ Screenshot of Tianya Forum
Until 1999, the predecessor of QQ, OICQ, was born, people began to use it in Internet cafes to chat day and night, waiting for the avatars of their favorite people to flash. Later, after the popularity of QQ space, people gradually fell in love with writing love diaries on the web page, leaving their own worries there.
When the Internet gradually spread to every city, Renren, Happy Network, Sina blog have been launched, Xu Jinglei in 2006 brought a "blog trend", people in love have also followed the form of writing love chapters, each experience is a story, each love is like a novel.
At that time, the recorded love was a bit obscure and childish, but also a little cute, and in retrospect, it was also true and illusory.
▲ Little Red Book
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="37" >2007-2016 Love Diary: The Age of Fragments, Converging into the Sea</h1>
Since 2010, 3G mobile networks have emerged, smart phones have begun to be used, and the second stage of the Internet, the era of mobile Internet, has also struck. This is an era of information explosion, people and people's way of social interaction has been changed, and the way people record love has become fast-paced and fragmented.
Short texts, chat messages, and chat voices have become a new way for us to warm up love.
Some fragments, some feelings
When Twitter introduced a new model of microblogging in July 2006, people didn't realize how much this 140-word messaging would change our social networking in the future.
Of course, this social way of updating short texts in real time in China is not triggered by Twitter, but Sina Weibo, which was founded in 2009.
In the early days of Weibo, celebrities came to this place, and artists did not use it as a marketing tool. They boldly and arbitrarily express their opinions, fly wildly, and even reply to every fan's message.
Wu Jing's early Weibo recorded his "lonely heart". Eager for love, he expressed his chest directly on Weibo: his brothers were married and envied, Valentine's Day came to resist, and Double Eleven also comforted himself that he would not be single next year...
▲ Image from: Weibo @ Wu Jing
People also show their true selves here, delicate emotions, through those short words to detect each other's thoughts and thoughts, but also record their single or love state of everything, all feelings are full of human fireworks here.
The following year, Sohu, NetEase, and Tencent all established "Weibo" platforms. A short and fast social trend has affected everyone who is on the phone .
From crush, to confession, to love, to quarrel, to breakup, to fall in love again, get along, get married, a short text shares the bits and pieces of love, and every moment of life remains in this sea of socialization.
Some messages, some voices
It wasn't until 2011 that WeChat came, and new acquaintance social networking began.
Lei Jun's Mi Chat and Ding Lei's Yixin have joined this new track of acquaintance social networking, but in the end, WeChat is still the winner. At this time, people's love connection has also become as close as before, and the text voice message of the object in the dialog box every day has become a new recorder of love.
When we see a person who is excited, the first thought in our heads is: I want to find him (her) to weChat;
When sending out that message to the crush " Hello Jiang! I am Yuan Xiangqin of class F", the heartbeat has been pounding and the fawn is bumping up, and finally after the other party replies to "Hi", the panicked typing hands on the screen begin to tremble uncontrollably;
Even when you live with an object, 90% of the time after going out, you may be crackling and typing and publishing love bags on WeChat, and the chat records leave you with daily eating, drinking, and fun, each birthday wish, and the annual anniversary celebration...
Of course, everyone is also secretly judging in these messages: whether the number of words in the chat records of two people is more or less, you can see whether the other party cares or is perfunctory; the speed and slowness of replying to the message can see how deeply this person loves you; which day forgot to say good morning or forgot to say goodnight at night, this person will have a mystery that day...
Chat records, even let people become love detectives and love cheaters, deep in the night, often some people will carefully get up quietly, click on the green app in the other party's mobile phone, to confirm whether they are also wearing a green hat on their heads.
At the same time, in addition to words and sounds, photos and videos have also begun to open up the next blue ocean in Internet social networking.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="58" >2017-2021 Love: Anytime, Anywhere, Natural Remembrance</h1>
Now, turn on the phone, we're used to sliding our fingers through dazzling pictures, as well as short videos after short videos.
▲ Image courtesy of Unsplash
The mobile Internet in the past has continued to expand, people and things and all the content of society have begun to connect, 5G and AI have made the Internet of Things more popular, the past "wen ai" has gradually faded, and all the records of love have become more visual, simplified and instant.
For today's young people, a large number of selfie photos and videos are a new way to record love, and it is also the fastest, most convenient and most comprehensive way to record love.
▲ Vivo S10 Pro shooting
Countless photos
When smartphones were popular, people were only accustomed to recording their love lives with the rear camera of the mobile phone, but in fact, the best way for two people to record both sides together was to "jump" into the front camera together.
Whether it's hanging out with an object, interacting in life, or improvising daily routines, people are used to snapping a selfie and leaving those happy moments in the camera.
The popularity of selfies is inseparable from WeChat, Weibo, and the emergence of multiple social platforms such as Douban, Xiaohongshu, Instant, and Soul. This allows people to constantly use various forms and tricks to record love, recall love, and show love on these platforms.
The technology and function of the front camera have the most direct impact on selfies.
In the past, selfies or pixels were low, or there were fewer functions and insufficient applicable scenes, and in this era of appearance and vision, the front camera also began to upgrade rapidly.
A clear and natural selfie is very important - so now the mobile phones on the market are constantly upgrading the front camera, many of which have reached 30 million pixels, take the mobile phone industry's earliest insight into the public selfie needs of the company Vivo, their recent new vivo S10 series, the front main camera pixels even reached 44 million.
Its front-facing lens also features AF autofocus for a couple's selfie sharper, while an additional 8-megapixel 105° ultra-wide-angle lens allows the front-facing shot to be more wide and realistically restored.
▲ Vivo S10 Pro Shooting - Natural Soft Light Portrait
It's also important to be able to record love at every moment — not only the day, but also the night, after all, for today's young people, the night may be the real day.
Therefore, mobile phone manufacturers are also constantly updating the selfie technology under the night scene. Continue to take vivo S10 as an example, its "full-scene night portrait" function, can let people in a variety of nights can be photographed brightly: under ordinary night, the built-in ultra-clear algorithm of the lens can make you and the object instantly brighter; in the polar night environment, turn on the bipolar night soft light, people can also brightly record beautiful moments until sunrise when walking by the sea at night.
▲ Vivo S10 Pro Shooting - Full Scene Night Portrait
When selfies become a way of life, it also carries more expectations – such as more filters, more styles, more beautification features.
As a result, a variety of photo apps began to emerge in an endless stream, but the fastest and most direct way is that the phone itself has these functions.
In fact, now, the mobile phone has also come with a more interesting, updated, more fun selfie play, such as beauty can be more real and natural without marks; filters can be European and American or Japanese, but the island can also be pastoral; the style can be sometimes fresh, sometimes retro, sometimes advanced, sometimes gentle, and even can become a comic style...
▲ Vivo S10 Pro Shooting - Pop Comic Effects
Now open the album again and snap – a few thousand selfies.
Countless videos
In fact, the frequency of selfie videos of couples is now comparable to that of selfies.
Because, now the most popular social platform, absolutely indispensable to the short video app place.
In 2017, when Douyin came out, the number of users of this short video app grew rapidly, making men, women and children addicted to it. At the same time, Kuaishou, founded in 2011, has transformed into a short video community, and now it is on a par with Douyin, popular in the north and south, and the B station founded in 2009 is also becoming more and more popular, becoming the Z generation's favorite video platform, and the vlog of couples' daily shooting can be seen everywhere on these platforms.
▲ Image from Shutterstock
Now, people also pick up the mobile phone selfie video anytime and anywhere, vivo S10's latest front camera can not only support 4K 60fps, giving people more editing space in the post, and just like taking pictures, selfie videos now also support background bokeh.
When people pick up their phones, they are no longer just simply recording love material, but also more pursuit of the effect and quality of selfie videos.
Video shooting also has more rich filters, vivo S10 can even perform HDR ultra-backlit video shooting... The power of these selfie videos is getting more and more powerful, making selfies a part of our lives.
▲ Vivo S10 Pro shooting - background auto bokeh
From the natural soft light portrait of the selfie photo, the full-scene night portrait, the tide play beauty shot, to the multi-functional ultra-clear shooting of the selfie video, it can be said that the vivo S10 recorded the most natural look of love.
When we record love with better selfies and videos, those vivid moments are like being taken directly from life. When we relive the past, they happen as if they were right in front of our eyes.
Looking back at the past 30 years, everything has changed, and the way love is recorded has undergone several huge changes.
But whether it's an email or a post, a message or a voice, a photo or a video, what remains unchanged is that when we record, we can always find the shadow of what we once loved in any form.