How Mocha Became the "Perfect Victim": The Myth and Cruel Reality of Station B

Text | Chaofan Liu (Master of Chinese University)

"Welcome to the desert of reality", this is the classic line of "The Matrix". In the film, Morpheus gives Neo two-color pills that he can continue to enjoy in the virtual world if he swallows the blue pill; if he swallows the red pill, he will return to the indifferent and imperfect real world.

In The Matrix, the protagonist chooses reality, of course, even if it is barren, but this is the "authenticity". In today's popular otaku culture, the attitude towards virtuality and reality is the opposite. The reason why the house people stay at home is because the reality is too painful, and they will indulge in the virtual world. Moreover, they use a new word to describe it, the other world.

Various dramas with the theme of other worlds have been on fire in recent years. In a standard other-world story template, the protagonist generally lives a very painful and negative life in the real world, and at a certain node (mostly accidents), the protagonist crosses into another world and restarts a wonderful life. It is this seemingly very vulgar routine that has won the love of the majority of the second dimension, although these dramas do not receive a lot of praise like some hegemonic fans, but the other world is recognized as the most profitable subject, and there are a large number of (mostly shoddy) otherworldly fans every quarter.

The experience of the ink tea that has been hotly discussed in the news recently is similar to the protagonist of a drama "Jobless Rebirth" that has recently been on fire. In "Jobless Rebirth", which is known as the ancestor of the other world's light novels, the male protagonist was bullied in school because of his body shape when he was a student, and because of the lack of social support, he was afraid of going out, and became a 200-pound otaku, who only knew how to stay at home and play galgame (which can be understood as a pornographic game) all day long. One day he was thrown out of the door by his relatives, and as a result of a car accident, he was reborn in another world. And Mocha, according to various news reports and B station information, on the one hand is the UP master who strives to make a living for himself at the B station, and on the other hand, he is an Internet addicted teenager who does not like to go out all day in the eyes of adults and weighs two hundred pounds.

In The Animalized Postmodern, Higashi proposes that otaku culture is based on the dissolution of grand narratives. The mainstream values of Japanese society are to work hard to achieve a better future, but the bubble economy has made everyone lose confidence in the future, and the otaku culture has grown up in such an era. Why are china today and Japan at the end of the last century not in the same situation, emphasizing the value of struggle and the so-called wolf spirit, which has led to the collective boredom of "inner volumes". It is in this context that more and more homemakers are fleeing from real life and entering the world of games and networks, "escaping shamefully but usefully"

The core of otaku culture lies in the persistence and trust of "virtual". Someone on Weibo summed up the second dimension: Even if it may be a 40-year-old uncle on the opposite side of the online chat, as long as the TA speaks with the head of the cute girl and the tone of the cute girl, then a second dimension will think that the TA is a cute girl. This is unacceptable to others, and normal people will only think that this is an online fraud.

In fact, there is no need to emphasize that fleeing is a kind of cowardice, and to some extent, the homestead has no choice. Because of the lack of sufficient social and social support, Mocha has also become a member of the virtual world. When we stand in the position of a bystander instead of standing in the position of a bystander, but empathetically stand in the position of ink tea, how can many of us not be similar otaku? Surfing in the virtual world every day, I don't want to face fierce social competition.

Modern society has produced a large number of consumerist virtual landscapes that allow homemakers to devote themselves to it. The emergence of the otaku is the dark side of the operation of the modern social machine. On the one hand, this machine encourages people to struggle, devote themselves to it and produce value for it, and on the other hand, it produces a large number of virtual landscapes, which make people intoxicated and unable to extricate themselves. It is this virtuality that harbors dangerous forces. Escape itself has a kind of self-destructive heroism, real life is painful, and the way for the homemaker to deal with this pain is to refuse, what is worth living such a painful life?

It is also in this sense that ink tea has become a victim of an era. Looking at Mocha's experience and performance before his death, the image of an otaku jumped on the paper. I don't like to go out, play with the computer all day, and I am eager to make money through the videos I make, but where is real life so simple? The bottom anchor wants to achieve self-care for himself through his own ability, which is basically impossible. For Mocha, even if the fans soar after death, there can be resurrection in the game, but in reality, there is only one life.

People escape into the virtual because of the difficulties of reality, and the consequence of doing so is that real life will be worse. Taking virtual as a hobby may also be acceptable. But if you take the virtual as the whole of your life, you will inevitably usher in a tragic end.

As a UP master of a B station, Mo Cha's fans before his death were only a few hundred, and it is unlikely that he can maintain his life by relying on the support of these people, not to mention that he still has various diseases. Previously, it was reported that the technical power of the video editing of Mocha is actually very high, and it is regarded as a "big god" general figure by everyone, and he released the AMF (Anime Music Video, with a song of anime mixed cut video) on the B station.

Station B used to be a place with a high concentration of otaku culture, after all, the name Bilili comes from the nickname of misaka Mikoto, the heroine of the anime "A Scientific Super Electromagnetic Cannon", which is a famous two-dimensional Bible and the treasure of the town station of Station B. It's hard to see a website in China that thoroughly implements the love of an anime character (often referred to as the "kitchen"): the source of the coin system is because Misaka's big move is to throw a coin, and the LV1 to LV6 rating system is directly taken from the anime's superpower level system.

It can be said that Station B itself has built a large virtual space and is the culmination of the postmodern spirit of contemporary China. While celebrating that Station B is more and more standing in the official and mainstream vision, the "back wave" brush screen, the New Year's Eve party brush screen... Station B is finally out of the circle, but at the same time, there are also many people lamenting that Station B is going to the second dimension, no longer the previous Mikufans (the predecessor of Station B, literal translation is Hatsune Future fans), lamenting that the quality of the bullet screen is much lower than in previous years.

Rather than saying that Station B is a virtual system, it is better to say that real life has gradually entered the unreal, and virtual life has begun to colonize real life. When the "back wave" begins to talk about their lives, just by creating people and making money by shooting videos, almost everyone will think that this is a career worth investing in. But what the "back wave" did not tell everyone is that almost all content production industries are winner-take-all models, and there is nothing decent about the low-level cultural workers.

Mocha obviously does not realize this problem, being an anchor and UP master is an industry that needs luck, even if there is a skill, can make a good video, but it is not hot, it is not to increase fans, this may be because of bad luck. Ink tea is the back of this carnival and virtual era, and Station B creates a myth about the main profession of UP. This set of virtual systems masks the code behind the system, masks the cruelty of competition, and masks the difficulties of real life. What Mocha did not see was that if he wanted to make money from this, he needed economic costs and time costs, and he needed to wait for the algorithm to have a sudden favor one day, but he couldn't afford to wait, and the disease had already found him in real life one step ahead.

We all know the name Mocha, but what kind of person is Mocha? Ironically, we find that we never really know this man, that all the misfortunes of his life seem to have become a symbol, and that we cannot even accept his inevitable diversity as a human being. Mocha has been portrayed as a "perfect victim", his family does not care about him, B station deletes his number, and even after death, he will be hacked and not repay the money. But are we right to have such sympathy? Virtual technology facilitates communication, but it erects a wall in everyone's heart.

Perhaps, we do not look at him from an equal perspective, to pay attention to his misfortunes, to tolerate his perfection and imperfection. The versions of the stories of various ink tea circulating on the Internet, no money to treat the disease, abandoned by the family, or borrowing money and not paying it back, not listening to the advice of their parents, etc., may be the real ink tea, he is a poor child, maybe not so perfect, but he is still worthy and needs us to empathize.

"We can already rely on technology to enter outer space, but we still can't enter a person's inner universe."

(The article represents the views of the author only.) Editor-in-charge email: [email protected]. ）