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the national day holiday is another time when everyone travels intensively. here is a piece of advice: beware of xiaohongshu’s “false” grass-growing notes. for example, as shown below, planting grass looks like this——

the real scene is like this——

there is also the famous "shanghai wukang road tulips". can you believe that you have to queue up to take pictures of these tulips?

the most unique one has to be this one, "fuzhou altay"——

i was still thinking, fuzhou doesn’t have mountains with this kind of landform. the result was that i took a photo in front of a billboard, which shocked my life.

this "beijing second ring waterfall" is no less impressive:

at first, i was very confused. the second ring road in beijing is only a small area. where could this be? as a result, my imagination is still not as good as other people's creative photography skills. the answer is announced here - tao ran ting.

first of all, let me state that i have no hostility towards xiaohongshu. i still think it is one of the most practical platforms at present. whether it is to search for travel guides or other practical information, xiaohongshu has completely replaced baidu's position.

i criticize specific content of xiaohongshu precisely because i use it frequently and know what the problems are. just like why i scold bilibili, it’s because i have always been a loyal user of bilibili. only after i use it do i know what’s bad about it and only then do i hope it will get better.

now if i want to systematically learn some knowledge-based content, i go to bilibili to find open classes by famous teachers from famous schools; if i want to check some practical encyclopedias for daily life, i go to xiaohongshu. these two platforms are rare platforms with some "hard stuff" in social networks nowadays. once valuable platforms such as zhihu, since it became a recommendation platform for yan xuan gouxue novels, i no longer read them.

so i’m going to criticize xiaohongshu today because i’ve really witnessed its good times, but i’ve just watched its problems getting bigger and bigger. this kind of problem is a common problem faced by all platforms after they become bigger and stronger and become traffic-oriented: just like zhihu has changed from a practical and strict knowledge platform to a bloody and eye-catching fictional story recommendation app. similarly, xiaohongshu is also facing this trend. so it's worth discussing.

this trend is: for the sake of traffic, eyeballs, and sensationalism, it is increasingly divorced from practicality and objective reality, and has turned into a group fanaticism that blindly pursues kitsch spectacles.

in addition to the classic examples above, xiaohongshu's model seems to have become a "perpetual motion machine". every once in a while, it recommends an "internet celebrity check-in point" to people in a specific area. for example, i was in beijing recently and gave me crazy push the so-called "mount fuji in the suburbs of beijing"——

actually it’s like this——

a group of people crowded here to "check in"——

i really hate this. two years ago, i still had a lot of fantasies about xiaohongshu. i really felt that many of the contents were very useful. so during my self-driving trip to xinjiang and tibet, i planned a lot of things recommended by xiaohongshu notes. "punch-in place", after going there, i can only sigh with emotion: i have been fooled, cheated, come here...

and places like xinjiang and tibet are no better than the "urban scams" above. it takes half a day to drive to and from a "niche check-in point" here. travel time itself is very precious, so you can understand my comments on this kind of "scam" "you feel deeply disgusted, right?" i saw the words "check in" and "release film", and they all had ptsd.

to be honest, being able to shoot a blockbuster effect from a weird angle is definitely a matter of aesthetics and thinking. even if you take a picture of a normal angle and another of your "filming angle", i will teach you how to take creative photography. , how to find beauty in ordinary life, isn’t this also good? even if you say that i am a ps magic modder, then this still requires skills, and i can share ps technology with everyone.

being able to discover and create beauty in life is actually part of art. if you do a good job in creative photography, i will also give you thumbs up. but what is true is true, and what is false is false. if you come to cheat or sneak attack, and ask me to drive hundreds of kilometers to a shitty "check-in place", then i must criticize this phenomenon.

so, what is the reason for this phenomenon? let me dig into this a bit more.

i should be considered an early user of xiaohongshu. i witnessed its degradation with my own eyes and was deeply saddened. at the beginning of the epidemic, xiaohongshu saved my life: as a migrant worker in beidiao 996, i really don’t know how to cook and have never cooked before. during the lockdown period, i followed xiaohongshu step by step. when it comes to cooking, i saw that the stove was clean at that time and was used to stack books. it was really unused.

at that time, xiaohongshu was so useful, and the sisters were so eager to share that they were afraid that i wouldn’t be able to learn it. i really evolved from scratch to being able to at least support myself during the lockdown.

at that time, i was thinking: so many people wrote such detailed and comprehensive notes, not for food or clothing, but for the good poster to have a safe life. isn’t this the same as the selfless subtitle group? it is also like the tianya and tieba back then. the same goes for the various brothers and sisters who guide the careers of younger generations. this is the spirit of network communism.

however, individual users can "generate electricity with love", but if the platform wants to become bigger and stronger, it must comply with the capital game. no platform can remain in the small and beautiful stage, and must be responsible for profits, financial statements, and shareholders' meetings. this is the root of the “fall” of all platforms.

under the transmission of such pressure, the operating strategy of the platform will inevitably change. this change is to pursue more and more traffic and prosperity in data reports so that it can better decorate itself in the capital market.

as a result, this kind of pressure was finally transmitted to the user side, because the platform traffic support became more and more utilitarian, leading to the phenomenon of "bad money drives out good money" among users. no one read the content that was stable, and everyone became more and more the more they pursue kitsch and sensationalism, the more they reach the stage of "fraudulent notes".

what’s more, as people become more and more immune to this kind of “scam notes”, xiaohongshu even once appeared with titles such as “xx will definitely avoid lightning” and “xx will never come back in this life”, attracting you to click on it. it’s still the same old routine of “fraudulent notes”, which is very annoying.

what's more, this kind of sensational content attracts most of the traffic. those who write seriously and honestly can't even hear the sentence "good bloggers have a safe life", so "bad money drives out good money" the historical process is completed.

this problem is not a problem for xiaohongshu and his family. zhihu is the most obvious, and it saddens me the most. zhihu used to be a dry content platform with “truth-seeking” as its soul, but now it relies on fictional stories that can’t be more false to make money. i am not opposed to platforms making money. i know that only platforms that make money can provide us with channels to send things. but zhihu directly sold its soul and gave up its most precious wealth and characteristics in the internet era. it is difficult for me to understand.

xiaohongshu has its own unique problem, that is, it is a platform driven by the "spectacle of consumerism". the early era of "practical notes" has long passed. only content in the "visual wonders" category of tourism will win the favor of the platform.

to a certain extent, xiaohongshu is really the “white area” of the internet, much more “white” than other areas. for example, everyone has seen my "mao xuan" article a few days ago. it can be successfully posted on weibo, douyin, zhihu, and bilibili. it only has a little red book saying "violation", and it also it's a shame to call it a "red" book.

i went to find customer service, who threw four words at me: healthy operations.

several years ago, when xiaohongshu was not so strict, i serialized mao xuan's reading notes on it. the data was very good. at that time, i started from scratch and it was purely natural fermentation. as a result, it continued to be serialized, and as it continued to be serialized, it started to be included. it was not all included, maybe one article was included every three or four.

but the articles selected by mao are all connected. i numbered each article, and then a bunch of readers asked why that article was not updated. every time they asked, i had to explain that it was blocked. don't blame me.

later, i got so annoyed that i simply stopped updating. i have always complained about mr. jia and chen rui, but never mind that mr. jia or chen rui still let us read mao xuan. we still have to pretend to show off, but xiaohongshu is just pretending.

and this, i can't think of it even if i try hard. why is it illegal? unbelievable.

the above part is actually about two points: the common problems of all platforms after they become bigger, and the special case problem of xiaohongshu platform’s operating tendency. let’s analyze the third issue, which is a contemporary and deeper issue.

regarding the phenomenon of xiaohongshu’s “fraud notes”, i thought of a metaphor: the “colonization” of the real world by virtual images. this can actually be summed up in a simpler and clearer word: landscape.

long before xiaohongshu, when moments became popular, a very similar phenomenon had already occurred. it's just that the circle of friends is relatively closed, and there is no way to spread it across the "circle", so there are not as many outrageous examples as xiaohongshu. i wrote an article at that time: "when you are staring at your circle of friends, your circle of friends is also staring at you":

in the 1960s, french thinker guy debord proposed landscape theory. the word "spectacle" comes from the latin words "spectae" and "specere", which means spectacle, spectacle, being watched, illusion. although it is generally translated as landscape, we must always pay attention to the meaning of "illusion".

landscape can be expressed as an objective scenery, or it can refer to a subjective and conscious performance and show. to understand it in layman’s terms, landscape is a kind of falsehood that is divorced from its essence, a representation constructed by capital. in postmodern society, everything can be represented as a "displayed picture."

in postmodern society, capitalism no longer needs to exploit the hunger and deprivation of workers, so it has become a top priority to construct landscapes in the era of overproduction to stimulate people's endless desires. debord called the invasion of spectacle into our world "another opium war." borrowing the reproduction of drug-like ideology, the original "total labor" becomes a "total commodity", and consumption defines your life and value. and life.

in this way, the landscape uses "rhetoric of images", "visual meaning" and "speech methods full of temptation and provocation" to create numerous "pseudo-realities" and "pseudo-essences" based on "reality" and "essence". the existence of such a spectacle has turned reality and essence into illusions and falsehoods, turning the cart before the horse.

under the ideology of consumerism, many commodities are endowed with various auras such as identity, symbol, fashion, honor, value affirmation, etc., while real life without such commodity landscape is devalued as poor, backward, outdated and unworthy.

debord developed marx's theory: the relationship between people in industrial society has been alienated into the relationship between things - and further alienated into a virtual visual picture in the post-industrial era. the landscape has become "the dominant mode of people's interconnection from beginning to end." . the fundamental reason for the emergence of spectacle lies in the self-separation of contemporary capitalist social reality: essence is no longer important, “all living things have become representations.” “in a society where modern production conditions are ubiquitous, life itself appears as a huge accumulation of spectacle. everything that exists immediately is transformed into a representation.”

the most typical manifestation of "landscape" lies in the separation of essence and expression, or that expression embodies a false essence. debord borrowed feuerbach's philosophical framework and accurately summarized the characteristics of today's landscape era: "images are better than physical objects. , the copy is better than the original, appearance is better than reality, phenomenon is better than essence.”

in the landscape world, the real world is reduced to images, but images are elevated to real existence. a very simple example, when we post photos of ourselves on social networks, we always like to make more or less beautiful pictures. this image becomes the "landscape" of your own appearance.

over time, both you and your friends on social networks will regard these photos that no one even recognizes as you, and what you look like is no longer the primary issue. this is what debord called an "inverted world" - spectacle has replaced essence and become the new essence - the reason is that everyone is pursuing spectacle, and it no longer matters what the essence is.

however, this unimportant prerequisite lies in the landscape of social networks. once you are separated from this large landscape environment, the so-called "death offline" is a "counterattack" from the essence (your own appearance).

the theoretical content is too boring, so i won’t go into details. friends who are interested can read that article specifically. in order to make the article complete, one final question must be addressed - the question of "what to do" - how do we defeat the "world of spectacle"?

i have answered this question many times, especially in the ai ​​era - an era where ai technology can create landscapes, this question is becoming more and more urgent. in short, it is to call for the return of people’s [independence] and [subjectivity] through [art].

the [art] here is a broad art, an [art] that everyone can participate in, integrate into daily life, and shape what makes people human.

i said in the article "landmarks like "nanluoguxiang" are the greatest harm to a city":

this was the practice of western marxists in the 1960s. at that time, the sages of the frankfurt school, in order to oppose the all-pervasive erosion of capitalism, established the "spectacle international" organization, imitating the name of the "comintern" and opposing the spectacle world created by capital.

lefebvre, a core member of landscape international, put forward the slogan: "making daily life art" - deconstructing and criticizing the false desires constructed by capital and landscape, and liberating people's true desires to present people's truer nature.

integrate art into life, let creativity and speculativeness return, use the creativity of art to deconstruct replicable landscapes, and construct our lives, to build positive and authentic living situations, to call for the return of "essence", and to use the guns of the past to the class struggle of gun versus gun was transformed into an artistic "revolution of daily life."

the need for beauty is one of the basic needs of human beings, and the creations of capital are generally ugly and cheap copies, which lack the existence of "beauty", so "art" in daily life is needed to make up for the missing beauty.

in its famous "situationist manifesto", landscape international pointed out: the absence of contemporary social philosophy and the loss of critical and independent thinking have blinded people to a false consciousness and voluntariness, so false landscapes dominate the world. therefore, we must call for the return of philosophy in daily life, use the essence of art to influence life, and launch a profound, extensive, and cultural revolution in the entire society.

the concept of "artistic revolution" was inspired by the great theoretical concept of "cultural revolution" proposed by communist leaders in the far east during the same period. physical revolution requires spiritual revolution as well.

let me give a simple example to illustrate the importance of aesthetic literacy. capitalism will produce batches of assembly line products, and consumerist brainwashing will interfere with the public's aesthetics. for example, the big logo of supreme is an ugly thing, but it is wrapped in a fashionable and trendy symbol, which makes men and women whose aesthetics have been disciplined they flocked to it.

many consumerist tricks are reinforced in repeated chanting rituals, and people regard them as conventional things: as long as it appears, it is right; as long as it is constantly displayed, it is good. at this time, you need to tell the truth like the kid in "the emperor's new clothes": he has no clothes on! for example, i am going to say today: printing a big logo on a white t-shirt has no beauty or design at all, and it is very expensive. this is a piece of shitty fashion. it is extremely low.

therefore, in the era of widespread consumerism and alienated labor, the return of individual subjectivity is to oppose capitalism and commodity fetishism.