This article is from WeChat official account:Knowledge Network (ID: covricuc), author: Zheng brother, the first map from: “* to his first season in the world” still
“After all, we cannot indulge in the cycle of creating things and declaring things cyber-death, but we must learn more from it to reflect and return To real life, to seek deep meaning in creation and sharing.”
“I am the Tanabata Toad booked for you by your relatives and friends!”
“I’m calling now!”
“Lonely and alone…”
On the annual Qixi Festival, it is not a magpie that is popular, but a repeater-like frog.
(The lonely widow frog’s widow)
Whether it is a “lone frog” or a “Chinese Valentine’s Day Toad”, their sudden appearance is accompanied by a set of highly homogenous and nonsensical game rules: add friends-introduce this frog-directly open-lonely and lonely. After a set of procedures, it is all for “mocking” you who are still single on the Qixi Festival.
Just when the ridiculed person is still puzzled, the widow frog has already become a hot spot for this year’s Qixi Festival, and has evolved into a network service with clearly marked prices. While orders continue to rise, many users have also chosen to act as free labor, dressing up the image of a widow frog and participating in this activity that does not know where it came from and where it is going.
(General process of lone frog)
This new generation of subcultural memes, created based on the “sad frog” that was previously popular on the global network, has also become the raw material for the second and third creations. For example, the “not alone” bird was born in response to the lonely voice of the lonely frog, and chose the extremely evolved Good(solitary)day frog and so on.
(weibo topic)
(Not a lone bird)
However, this frog, which is a smash hit on a particular festival, has also attracted a lot of controversy.
Some netizens believe that they are being “harassed” by successive widow frogs when they are extremely depressed, causing their mentality to explode directly.
(Netizen’s comment)
Some netizens feel that the meaning of the word lonely and widow has a certain negative meaning and should not be used to joke or ridicule, especially on the Qixi Festival.
(Netizen’s comment)
Of course, whether it’s a kind joke or an unintentional farce, the sudden explosion of the widow frog gives us the thinking,It will definitely not just stop at the word “lonely and widow” that cannot be moved by iron.
A group of “frogs” rise together: a subculture flash mob with no purpose
If you want to have an in-depth interpretation of the widow frog, you might as well think about why it can stand out and become a subculture symbol that everyone chases and fights for.
The popularity of the widow frog is highly related to its own image and special time node. The image of the widow frog is the sad frog that has long become a frequent visitor to most people’s emoji collectors. This anthropomorphic frog with a slightly heavy taste and sad expression in its original life has gradually evolved into a self-deprecating existence after countless spreads. It is often used by netizens to express tired feelings and unloving, hardships, etc. Emotions.
At the same time, the frog’s “呱呱” and “lonely widow” sounds very similar. With the development of network subculture, netizens’ joking interpretation of traditional festivals is no longer a vassal of mainstream values. Instead, it has gradually gained an unshakable place in the resonance of word of mouth. For example, the Qixi Festival, the original intention is that lovers will eventually get married, but after the joking interpretation, it becomes another existence that is anti-love and anti-dog abuse.
(Lonely and widow frog prototype: Sad Frog Pepe)
It is this reverse interpretation that has built a platform for emotional communication for the popularity of widow frogs. As a result, a widow frog with its own sad emotions and a broad audience base was created logically and became a spokesperson for the sadness of single dogs on the Qixi Festival; the image of widow frogs selectively interacted with each other. During the Qixi Festival, the self-deprecating emotions deliberately amplified by netizens were grafted.
No threshold in content and zero requirements in creation, so that such a newly born subcultural image can be continuously incorporated into audiences of different circles and different tastes in the shortest time. The continuous addition of free labor force also puts this in the gorgeous background of Qixi FestivalThe carnival took it to the next level.
In addition, the commercial sense of smell has also captured the rich investment potential of this subcultural product itself in time; a large-scale and customized widow frog companion service has also emerged.
(Commercial operation)
However, the success of the widow frog is not so much a subculture carnival, it is more appropriate to describe it as a subculture pop-up. Like many previous events, we don’t know why it was grafted to the Qixi Festival, or who initiated this event for what purpose. It has no unified center, no core leadership, no strict order structure, and even its goals are diverse, no one can tell.
But the interesting thing is that all participants can’t help but follow the fixed process of “Hello-I started-Lonely xN”. In this way, the widow frog unconsciously realized the “discipline” for the participants. Even if it did not clearly announce a strict program of action, everyone is assisting this unseen structure along this invisible structure. Action to the end.
Perhaps it can be said that what the formation and popularity of lone frogs reflect is actually an attempt to integrate society across circles. As a media product, the uniqueness of the widow frog is that it not only reflects people’s behavior and mentality, but also deliberately develops and tries to cultivate special behaviors among the audience, and achieves the attraction and reorganization of different groups of people.
(User’s active participation)
This is especially reflected in the “frogs” who provide services for “loneliness and widowhood”; whether they actively participate or are employed by an organization, their behavior is essentially breaking the circle, with the help of “widowhood frogs” The anonymity and sub-cultural disguise given to engage in dialogue with other people of all kinds and identities, and this is often an action that is difficult to achieve in reality based on “strong connections” in social relations.
Therefore, things like “talking and chatting and being with the frog”, “talking and chatting and breaking into an unknown circle”, this is originally based on the friendly interaction caused by the strong connection between friends. After inserting the “lone frog” as an intermediary, it expanded to the level of the weak connection of strangers, thus realizing the mutual integration of strong and weak connections, and piercing the bubble barrier.
(Lonely and widow frog emoticon package)
We can also say that by shaping new cultural objects and encouraging new behaviors, that is, widow frogs and their buying and sharing behaviors, they have verified the “presence” of decentralized audiences and further helped them Seek integration and unification.
The audience was fully mobilized while receiving the service, and actively participated in this flash action to break through the barriers and create a new cybertotem.
Lone “frog” is difficult to sing: the depth of boredom beyond creation and destruction
When the holiday is over, the widow frog may not be able to escape the fate of entering the cyber grave. We said earlier that the media achieves social integration by creating and cultivating this new cultural object, but judging from the troubles caused by lone frogs, the situation is not as optimistic as we thought.
Obviously, this high-speed, large-scale image production can attract most people’s attention-remarks “>, Author: Zheng brother