Network, can you stay away from me?
By Lu Jinyuan
On the eve of the Spring Festival, Wuhan bus driver Xiong Xingyuan made a difficult decision: to post intimate private photos of himself and his girlfriend online. He did this not to boast, but only because he was too handsome. According to reports, every time Xiong Xingyuan drove, female fans would ask for selfies with him, and there were even fans who would only take his bus.
Seeing the growing rift with his girlfriend, Xiong Xingyuan had no choice but to post on Dachuzhi website to display his girlfriend's photo, asking the "female fans" to give them some peace. "The purpose of posting this is just to give my wife a sense of security, and also please ladies stop chatting with me!"
Of course, the post went viral. But Xiong Xingyuan's "crisis" may not be so easy to pass. A fan commented, "Xiong Xingyuan is really a good man, I admire you more."
Xiong Xingyuan's story tells us that in the Internet age, you can choose not to hype others, but you cannot prevent others from hyping you. From a small joke to mutual insults, none of it escapes public scrutiny. This feeling of being watched must be very familiar to you - welcome to "The Truman Show".
Tang Jun and Fang Zhouzi, Wang Xiaoshan and Yu Jin Yong, Li Guoqing and "Damo Girl", one after another farce on the Internet has thrilled the audience. You don't even have to figure out if it's true or false, right or wrong, as the network has already made the previously hidden "secrets" as common as shells on the beach.
You might be next.
According to Southern Network, "human flesh search" was rated as the most powerful Internet buzzword of the past 10 years by the Chinese Media Awards, known as the Oscars of the Internet. Zhang Siping, member of the Standing Committee of Shenzhen Municipal Committee and Minister of United Front Work Department, hoped that netizens would use network searches legally and not resort to cyber violence when awarding the internet buzzwords.
However, cold violence is unavoidable. As early as 2007, the rumor of the "most poisonous stepmother" almost led the parties involved to die to prove their innocence. At that time, it was widely spread on the Internet that "a six-year-old girl was beaten by her stepmother in the hospital, spitting blood all over the floor, six vertebrae were broken. Her biological father claimed it was due to the child falling herself."
Enraged netizens condemned the "stepmother as worse than beasts," "her father isn't a good person either," "why hasn't the public security department arrested the criminal suspect," and some netizens even issued an online warrant to capture this stepmother. When the "wrongful conviction" was cleared, no one cared about how the damage to this stepmother could be compensated.
The Internet brings people closer together, close enough to cause friction, produce insecurity. Then "sock puppets" came, "trolls" came, "human flesh search" also came.
One morning, you instinctively picked up your phone to check Weibo and found that your comment on a singer last night had already been forwarded thousands of times, followed by hundreds of comments, some supporting, some criticizing, some sitting on the sofa, some bringing stools. If you accidentally take these comments seriously, you will likely regret it. Things on the Internet always become more confusing the more you argue. Remember, you're fighting alone.
You open Renren.com, and every minute new shares, new moods, new pictures pop up. You click, you watch, you leave comments. You suddenly find that someone who left a footprint on your homepage actually shares 100 common friends with you. Later, you discover that you've been tricked; it's just a sock puppet of a friend.
You find jobs, schoolmates, idols' Weibo online... You buy books, clothes, home appliances online. You think the network and reality are completely boundaryless, but when you get too close, the familiar world also becomes blurry and strange. Look around, everything is fleeting.
The network doesn't need to be conservative, it only welcomes endless openness, human flesh search, Google Maps, WikiLeaks, secrets and conspiracies always need to be revealed. Can you keep your own secrets? Can you protect your private space?
The New York Times published a famous cartoon in the last century. The dog in the picture said to his friend, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This sentence is still relevant today, characters like "Xiaoyueyue" can be fabricated out of thin air, and you realize sometimes you should adopt the mindset of "better safe than sorry."
Keep your distance from the network, distance creates safety.