news

some young people seem to particularly like "ugly things", and some "ugly things" have bucked the trend and attracted the attention of many people. recently, blind box wearable armor has become a new favorite among netizens, attracting a large number of netizens with its rough and ugly appearance, "guaranteed to be ugly" and "upgraded version of ugly armor"... "ugly armor" has amazing sales, and tens of thousands of viewers gather in the relevant live broadcast rooms.

many young people said that these products can provide emotional value. but it is worth noting that some netizens are quite interested in abnormal and vulgar things, from confusing speech and demented behavior to ugly appearances and fake poses... some short videos of spoofs, foolishness, and ugliness have spread in people's lives with the help of new media, and have quickly reached the youth group.

promote beauty through ugliness.in the "ugly" short videos, some works directly face prominent social problems and the falsehood and hypocrisy in human nature, attempting to help people face up to the ugly phenomena in life with a strong sense of reality and ugliness, and then establish correct values. for example, the short video group "three green onions" composed of three rural uncles, in front of the old house built of rammed earth, three old men with black faces roared, got angry, and laughed, daring to uglify themselves to reveal the ordinary and simple truth of life.

can't tell the difference between beauty and ugliness.the problem of "aesthetic ugliness" is not only a formal problem, but also reflects the distortion and deviation of ethics, social norms, spiritual cultivation, etc. the "inability to distinguish between beauty and ugliness" in short videos is the infiltration and transfer of irrational emotions and erroneous values ​​of artistic subjects (including creative subjects and recipients) by the creative subject through the output of disharmonious content. the "road to fame" of many internet celebrities started from attracting netizens' attention because of their weirdness. they created an aesthetic ugliness persona, and used crazy and vulgar behaviors to uglify themselves and gain attention, forming a unique "aesthetic ugliness traffic" and "aesthetic ugliness economy" on the internet.

ugliness is beauty.in the virtual network, "ugly aesthetics" has gradually deviated from the traditional aesthetic category. a large amount of content production takes ugliness as beauty, which has led to the alienation of "ugly aesthetics". the alienation of "ugly aesthetics" in short videos is specifically manifested as: the alienation between the creative subject and the receiving subject; the alienation between content production and content consumption. the root lies in the alienation of cultural views and values. internet celebrities such as "medicine brother" and "teacher guo" adhere to the creative logic of "ugly as beauty", and attempt to create short video hits with non-nutritious cultural output and meaningless expression of social values, and eventually fall into the quagmire of ugly aesthetics and cannot extricate themselves.

in the first half of 2024, in order to increase his followers, self-media blogger yuan pretended a beverage was urine and drank it in front of a doctor in the laboratory department. he was administratively detained by the public security organs in accordance with the law for filming vulgar videos, and his related accounts were also banned by the online platform.

creating a personal image under the eyeball economy.the media economy is essentially an attention economy. in his article “the attention buyer”, michelle goldhaber proposed that in the internet age, information is in excess, while attention is a scarce resource. therefore, in order to gain attention and win attention wealth, people will live more and more openly and have less and less sense of shame. in recent years, many “internet celebrities” have become famous by making themselves look ugly and earning high incomes, which is a reflection of the reality of this media economic model.

aesthetic deviation under entertainment to death.most users who watch ugly videos do so out of curiosity, and the trend of entertainment to death has led to the erosion of mainstream social values ​​and aesthetics.in the process of entertainment, the audience unconsciously blurs the boundary between beauty and ugliness. the conditioned reflex of sensory enjoyment replaces the rational criticism and reflection on "ugliness", which leads to aesthetic deviation.although there are also voices of criticism and abuse among the audience, in the current era of "only traffic determines heroes", opponents of "ugly aesthetics" join hands with supporters and silent people to become the soil for cultivating "heroes", making the so-called online personality have the rationality and value of existence on the internet. the audience's numbness and following the trend will only lead to more "clowns" dancing for profit, stirring the audience's heartstrings in more bizarre ways, and even causing "ugly aesthetics" to roll back and follow suit.

the 54th "statistical report on the development of china's internet" recently released by the china internet network information center shows that as of june 2024, the number of internet users in my country will be nearly 1.1 billion (1.09967 billion), an increase of 7.42 million from december 2023.the majority of them are teenagers aged 10-19 and the "silver-haired generation". among the new netizens, entertainment and social needs are the most likely to motivate them to go online. among the internet applications used for the first time by this group, short video applications account for 37.3%.when the wave of "ugly" short videos hits everywhere, it is very easy to overwhelm and distort the aesthetic tastes and value judgments of young people, and even make them blindly follow the trend. behind this ugly carnival lies the exchange and collision between mainstream and non-mainstream cultures. in the era of social media, young netizens worship these ugly images and degrade their roles in the process of social interaction.self-mockery and self-deprecation ultimately use ugliness to resist elegance, intending to deconstruct and replace the original aesthetic standards。

such vulgar performances that break the moral bottom line are fundamentally different from the funny and humorous clowns in dramas. clowns use their talents to show the ridiculous and hateful aspects of social life, which has obvious ironic and warning effects. however, the vulgar performances of some internet celebrities deliberately promote ugly, ignorant, and barbaric values, and take "being proud of ugliness" and "being beautiful in ugliness" as value orientation. performers gain the recognition of the audience through deliberately dressed up "distorted" images. they not only obtain excessive social rewards and economic capital through performances, but also sell vulgarity as a value to the whole society. even the spread of some vulgar behaviors is quite popular.

some netizens believe that such anchors deliberately act ugly just to attract attention and there is no need to make a big deal out of it. however, short videos are not only an entertainment platform, but also a window to showcase social culture. if we allow all kinds of ugly, dirty, and vulgar phenomena to become popular, and regard those who are good at these ugly performance "skills" as consumer idols, and regard "ugly" performances as a value standard recognized by society, it will inevitably have a huge impact on the bottom line of social civilization. there is a view on the internet that:"online videos of people pretending to be crazy and stupid to cater to the public's appreciation of ugliness seem to be clowns challenging the public's values, but in fact, the public is just appreciating clowns to satisfy their own sense of superiority, using people as mere tools to consume and trample on them."thought-provoking.

© produced by people's forum new media