Let's Read; Traffic and Empathy#
date: September 18, 2022
slug: 5
status: Published
tags: Weekly Report
type: Post
1. A Moment of Darkness#
【A beautiful day ends with watching this video】https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ed4y127Np?vd_source=c41f00435dbf2fd946a89f19434de66b
Besides the piano, can I learn another instrument?
2. Excerpts#
In an Era of Outrage, Let's Read (New Wave Reflections)#
Today is World Book Day, so let's talk about reading. For reading, the contemporary era is both a good and particularly terrible time.
In terms of acquiring knowledge and information, it can be said that the contemporary era is unprecedentedly convenient. The ancients said that being well-read is a sign of status. In the past, books were hard to come by; you might think anyone could carry five carts of books on the road, but you couldn't even afford the carts. Being qualified to read was a status symbol. This is why the aristocratic politics in China could last for hundreds of years; one important factor was the monopoly of knowledge, especially classical studies.
Even in modern times, I see in the diary of the famous late Qing county magistrate Du Fengzhi that he extorted wealthy merchants to publish over a hundred volumes of refined rhyme books, which were not rare books but could only be considered good reference works. Bringing them back home to give away was a matter of great prestige. This was a core asset, comparable to buying a house or land. Today, even the most ordinary books like "Records of the Grand Historian" and "Book of Han" were not easily obtainable in the past. A single volume of "Records of the Grand Historian" cost fifty wen; while not overly expensive, gathering a complete set would require dozens of volumes, which was not something an average person could afford in ancient times.
Today is certainly a good era, especially with the internet, where books and papers are being massively digitized. For those with connections, acquiring knowledge is unprecedentedly convenient and cheap. Unfortunately, there was once a sharing era, but that era has now perished.
The sharing of knowledge and information is increasingly divided by various monopolistic interests, which is a prominent feature of the deteriorating Chinese internet. Just recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences publicly announced that it would stop using CNKI, which is both sad and laughable. A tool that should facilitate academic research, a knowledge base, has become a business monopolized for profit by those with connections. Not only do you have to pay to access your own papers, but even if you don't spend that money, you have no qualification to write papers.
Ironically, this large monopoly has spawned many small businesses.
As many people know, numerous unit accounts have emerged that can be used long-term for just a few hundred yuan, specifically designed to exploit public resources. Moreover, the duration of use in this black market state is somewhat unpredictable. In any case, the money is not much; if it doesn't work out, you can just switch to another one. There's no need to be overly serious; if the account is suspended, the store might not even exist anymore. Additionally, many books have long been scanned and digitized on a large scale by organized efforts; clearly, they exist in library systems, but you can't find them through a simple online search. If you're willing to spend a little money, you can easily buy them, and of course, you can also rely on various acquaintances for mutual assistance; this is the new way of doing things.
Naturally, the door hasn't been completely shut. If you're willing to put in the effort to gather information, you can still find many state-established databases, such as the National Philosophy and Social Science Literature Center, which is entirely public-oriented and provides a wealth of journal updates. Not to mention, various libraries still exist at this stage, at least for now, for free, but this free access is tightening day by day.
Ultimately, you'll find that in terms of timeliness, completeness, and convenience, the easiest way is still to spend a little money. As you become more accustomed to spending small amounts, you'll notice that the books and papers that were once shared on the internet are disappearing at an increasing rate. You will also find that places that lack sufficient background and still engage in free sharing will inevitably face targeted cyberattacks and head towards failure, while those with connections are increasingly showing signs of harvesting. A typical example is various knowledge platforms and Q&A platforms that monopolize information through apps, forming independent little circles of information. Ultimately, it's about converting traffic into commercial value.
This is not merely an issue of improving copyright awareness; it is a matter of a large background dealer and a small background dealer colluding to share the spoils, together destroying the public knowledge domain that should serve the public.
It should be particularly noted that this situation is not unique to our country. Rather, it can be said that in the past few decades, due to the relatively slow development of capital, the monopoly of knowledge in our country is not as severe as in foreign countries. In many developed regions, books, especially those with academic value, are more expensive, while popular entertainment books are relatively cheap, which itself reflects a social orientation. This is not a good thing for respecting knowledge.
The sharing of knowledge itself is a manifestation of social fairness and broad progress. Including the rapid updates and easy access of various e-books can certainly be seen as an imperfection in the copyright system, but it can also be viewed as a remnant of our past, reflecting the vitality among the people. Initially, they only focused on the sales of new books, which was understandable; later, they began to strengthen copyright protection, which is also justifiable. Finally, they monopolized and charged for public domain books; how should we interpret this? With economic development and the unrestricted growth of capital, through pervasive erosion and destruction, society is silently transformed, even to the point of transforming people, making it a breeding ground for its continuous proliferation.
For a long time, our social atmosphere has had its shortcomings. The prevailing attitude of prioritizing money has greatly polluted our social environment and cultural undertakings. The so-called various cultural trends are mostly based on shallow popular culture, while the promotion of deep reading is almost negligible. Cultural undertakings often haven't even grown before being harvested and destroyed by commercialization. Not to mention, our lagging and stingy construction in the public service sector.
In our cultural industry, the copyright protection system does not respect true originality; instead, it operates around the profits of businesses, resulting in no positive impetus. The result is a situation where, on one hand, the mature public knowledge services left over from foreign countries have not kept up, while on the other hand, the noose of knowledge monopoly for profit is tightening, and a large amount of bad currency is driving out good currency. What seems to be a prosperous and easily accessible public knowledge domain is increasingly deteriorating and fragmenting.
Fragmented knowledge obtained through encyclopedias and short videos is actually unreliable. However, under the heavy pressure of social life and the influence of popular culture, people are easily satisfied by fast food, consuming their limited energy and gradually losing the ability for deep reading. Learning and thinking are replaced by entertainment; this is akin to modern society using cheap sugar and fats to create a seemingly bloated middle and lower class, appearing to be well-fed but actually malnourished.
Acquiring knowledge has become difficult, which is already a challenge. Alongside this is the emergence of various information cocoons and information pollution. These two are interconnected. Due to monopolies, people's channels for acquiring knowledge and information are limited, and through various media platforms, a large amount of low-quality information can bombard them, packaged in a way that, combined with consumerism, completes the transformation of individuals. A typical example of this is across the strait, where the entire society has formed a strong information cocoon, making it difficult for individuals to maintain basic discernment amidst such layers of packaging. The ultimate result is the formation of confused individuals who unconsciously follow along, thinking it is natural. This is precisely a common situation in contemporary Western society.
It is precisely because we are in such a commendable yet lamentable era that I believe it is even more worthwhile to advocate for deep reading. This kind of reading is not to satisfy a fast-food curiosity but to cultivate the ability to analyze problems and delve into topics. Therefore, occasionally reading some academic books is beneficial. They will intuitively present research methods to you, not only enhancing your understanding and integration of knowledge but, more importantly, helping you grasp a way of thinking and an attitude.
In our era, compared to mere knowledge, the more important value of reading is perhaps the shaping and perfecting of one's worldview and methodology. We are currently in an era where the old system is increasingly decaying, the new system has yet to take shape, and various contradictions are prominent. No one can stand outside the whirlpool of the times; being carefree is not an option.
In such an era, facing the difficulties of reality, from left to right, everyone will propose their own programs, and various platforms will continuously give rise to outrageous claims. Learning without thinking is perilous; thinking without learning is dangerous. These currents of thought rise and fall, endlessly emerging, and those passionate, confident claims often have the greatest appeal and incitement. In such fog and inducement, if one cannot discern correctly, it can lead to confusion and even missteps.
Therefore, in such an era, it is even more important to have a clear perspective, to have one's own stance, and to possess the ability to analyze and think critically. Where does this ability come from? It comes from theoretical works that have been proven by past experiences and have guiding value. This kind of learning is not particularly enjoyable; deep thinking is exhausting, a form of labor that requires mental and even physical effort, rather than simply a pleasurable satisfaction. But this labor is necessary, just as healthy food nourishes our bodies, healthy thoughts will nourish our spirits.
Thus, in these days, I believe we should read both "Mao's Selected Works" and contemporary new materials. In facing current difficulties, we should draw faith and experience from the past. The development and contradictions of our contemporary society are remarkably similar to those faced during the New Democratic Revolution. In the face of enormous internal and external challenges, we must unite all progressive forces to resolutely fight against seemingly powerful reactionary forces. In this regard, we cannot detach ourselves from the modern backdrop, becoming antiquarians clinging to the past. We should pay attention to the latest theoretical trends and new governance ideas both domestically and internationally. Only by organically combining the two modes of thinking from the past and present can we better see the path forward.
On this day that encourages everyone to read, we should recognize that reading is not merely a simple pleasure; it is also a transmission of human experience and thought. It can be a form of hard work and even a tool for struggle. It is precisely because we have such a tool that we can better navigate the fog of the times and find our direction forward.
Traffic and Empathy (New Wave Reflections)#
On public account platforms, as long as you follow the trends, achieving a reading volume of 100,000 is not difficult (although we don't have many articles in total). For example, if you write about the pandemic, a reasonable critique, analyzing data and logic, etc., could also reach 100,000 reads. It doesn't have to be outrageous, but to achieve over 100,000 likes, which means a reading volume of at least several million, most of it is related to amplifying panic, anxiety, empathy, anger, and other emotional incitements. Recently, there have been many such articles in the friend circle.
The last time this scene occurred was probably at the beginning of 2020 when the Wuhan pandemic was at its worst. Everyone should remember the various 100,000+ articles flooding the friend circle at that time, filled with various pills and incitement, directly leading to many netizens experiencing political depression under the intense bombardment of negative emotional information. Many newly emerged public accounts became traffic giants thanks to this type of article (this is something we naturally cannot catch up with).
Recently, I observed that some articles that have gone viral in friend circles have reading volumes exceeding one million, and most of them are still these types of emotionally inciting articles. The basic routine is to summarize various chaotic information, whether true or false, spread online after the lockdown of Shanghai, and there is basically no rational or logical analysis or criticism; they simply use extreme vocabulary, amplifying events and empathy rhetoric to connect various unrelated issues, bringing extreme anxiety and anger to the audience. I won't give specific examples; they just pollute the eyes and mood.
Flipping through, many of these accounts are new accounts. The most impressive one I saw yesterday had only published two or three articles, and the latest one was entirely composed of various screenshots of online information, with hardly any text. It entered the 100,000 reading club simply because of a catchy title. Of course, this article did not receive thousands of rewards like others because articles composed entirely of images cannot open original certification and thus cannot receive rewards. Even so, the traffic revenue generated from such an article is still quite considerable.
Just like in many fields where ordinary people cannot grasp the nuances of speculative opportunities, there are always many individuals in the self-media field who are extremely sensitive and adept at manipulation. The public account platform is different from other content platforms; without a strong recommendation mechanism from the platform and without other traffic interventions, a new public account with few followers has a certain probability of its articles becoming 100,000+ in a short time. However, achieving over a million reads in a short time cannot be said to be impossible, but the probability is very low. It must have some very key diffusion nodes, meaning this phenomenon is more likely to occur in self-media matrices, MCN organizations, and other content accounts, as only they have enough weighty diffusion nodes.
After being presented to a large number of users through diffusion nodes, their carefully designed eye-catching titles and inciting words can then be spread multiple times, making it a natural process. Individual users have different motivations for sharing and liking certain articles, but from a group perspective, content involving anxiety, panic, empathy, and anger is always the easiest to be shared.
Although this situation exists in various countries in the internet age, compared to other countries, our country has reached a point where quantitative changes have produced qualitative changes in this regard. Our country not only has the largest number of internet users globally but also has a uniquely developed self-media industry. Moreover, due to historical and cultural reasons, the enthusiasm for public discussion and participation in keyboard politics among ordinary internet users in our country may also be the highest in the world. This has led to an extreme and distorted prosperity in the traffic industry in our country and has also resulted in far more complex online public opinion issues than in other countries (of course, this is also related to our country's historical development stage and position in the global system, so I won't elaborate further).
For example, readers can imagine, according to the "mountain" and "grain of sand" rhetorical patterns summarized in my article a few days ago, if the situation were similar to that of our self-media industry, how much traffic big accounts would emerge in the past two years from the various bottomless operations and the large number of infections and deaths in Western societies? However, the reality is that this situation has not emerged in large numbers in the West; the head traffic of these topics is still concentrated in media platforms, professionals, and politicians.
Since the large-scale popularization of the internet, the traffic benefit mechanism surrounding internet information has far matured compared to the real feedback function that internet information should have on the real world. For example, the concept of empathy, which is one of the most basic and important emotional mechanisms in human society, is often manipulated in the current public opinion arena of the internet, where various deliberately manufactured topics, identity symbols, and logical traps trigger people's fragmented empathy. Such empathy is often at odds with the real lives and class interests of ordinary individuals. As we mentioned earlier, empathy is also one of the easiest means to gather traffic. The phenomenon of fragmented, symbolized empathy in the public opinion arena replacing the genuine empathy of basic social subjects is also one of the signs of the social fragmentation we often discuss. We will later discuss the phenomenon of empathy in internet public opinion in separate articles.
Although I also consider myself part of the self-media, I have always been quite averse to behaviors that incite anxiety and panic to gain traffic. Although in the traffic era, we also have to work hard on titles every day; we cannot let our hard work go unnoticed due to title issues, as that would make it impossible to continue. However, we have always been clear about where the boundaries lie. I firmly believe that the behavioral standards of self-media, big accounts, and various individuals with a certain level of attention and voice on the internet cannot be the same as those of ordinary internet users, because media equals power, and discourse power in the internet age is a significant form of power, especially for those with many genuine followers who are trusted by some people, as they possess a representative power.
The vast majority of ordinary internet users spend most of their time in their internet lives unnoticed and unremarked upon. This is a fundamental inequality in the internet age. Even in the algorithm era, theoretically, everyone has the opportunity for high exposure, but that is also fleeting and completely different from those who have a fixed fan base. Since there is power that ordinary people find difficult to obtain, there must be corresponding responsibilities and constraints. In public opinion, making comments, criticisms, and arguments, even if incorrect, falls within the realm of public discourse. However, using one's influence to instill anxiety, anger, and panic in ordinary people, creating topics that provoke division and conflict to gain traffic benefits is clearly a behavior that crosses boundaries.
Of course, such things are actually very difficult to effectively constrain. We can only remind everyone to avoid being surrounded by negative internet information for extended periods in daily life, as this often leads to varying degrees of creative and depressive emotions for ordinary people, which does not help in solving problems or living well. Reducing the intake of fragmented information and engaging in systematic reading and thinking can alleviate anxiety.
After all, traffic belongs to others, but life is one's own.
3. Technical Aspects#
- This week, I restructured the cloud disk, switching from olaindex to alist (the v3.0 update is really useful).
- I built an online bookstore (Talebook) and moved the books from the library to the cloud.
- ACE Studio officially entered public beta in July; I just tried it out this week, and the results are quite good. I plan to try to arrange a complete song when I have time.
4. Reading Progress (Currently Reading)#
- Reading "Tao Te Ching"
- "Vulgar Latin Course"