On the subway after get off work, the elevator's rising space, and a little free time, either using vibrato or watching variety shows, entertainment takes up all the free time. This state is very much like the world of "The Value of 15 Million" in the British drama Black Mirror. Enterprise giants make entertainment products, and the bottom people buy virtual entertainment videos by riding bicycles to earn points instead of watch money.
Very similar to our lives, these entertainments are all virtual, non-physical and do not need to be shared with others. This kind of entertainment has increasingly become our present life. We always talk about entertainment until death (hereinafter referred to as variety shows, vibrato short videos and other virtual entertainment methods) as a warning bell. But in my opinion, entertainment is more appropriate.
Title 01. Entertainment Addiction
We should also start with the reinforcement theory of the behaviorist Skinner, which believes that behavior itself can strengthen the production of behavior.
This theory comes from Skinner's "Skinner Box" experiment, in which he put a hungry mouse into a special box he made. The mouse wandered aimlessly in the box at first, and when it accidentally touched a pole several times, it would respond with food.
As a result, the mice learned to obtain food by pressing the rod, and the food is the reinforcement of the act of learning to press the rod.
At the same time, Skinner also found that the strengthening effect of indefinite and indefinite ratio is the best.
In "Skinner Box", he designed a variety of correspondences between food and pressing rods. The first is to provide food every time you press, the others are feedback of food at a certain interval or the number of fixed pressing rods, and the remaining two are to provide food irregularly and irregularly. Experiments have proved that the latter has the best strengthening effect. This irregular and indeterminate reinforcement method is often considered as a mechanism of gambling addiction, because the profit in gambling is irregular, and people are susceptible to the occasional increase in profit and cannot stop gambling.
Similarly, in the process of refreshing Douyin, users will never know when they can see a short video they like. This is an indefinite and variable ratio strengthening process. Therefore, Douyin has a mental opium. The'famous name'.
Coincidentally, this addiction mechanism is often applied to entertainment products: it is used to trigger the user's repeated behavior-action-reward-investment rules to educate producers of entertainment products. The entertainment addiction of the masses is the success of the producers.
Title 02. Time poverty after addiction
"It is human nature to be addicted to something." American scholar David Courtlet said in "Five Hundred Years of Addiction." In reality, according to statistics in March 2020, the average daily usage time of Douyin users reached 36.04 billion minutes. A simple estimate based on 400 million daily active users means that the average person spends 90 minutes on Douyin every day.
According to the 10-hour working hours per capita, the leisure time of social animals is almost spent on Douyin. The more real active data of Douyin users is concentrated at 9-17 on weekends and 19-23 on weekdays. In other words, outside of workdays, even weekends are also spent on Douyin.
The original lack of time has been seized by entertainment products such as Douyin. In addition to working on vibrato, what can be used to improve personal abilities? Everyone's time allocation is a zero-sum game, and the time needed to improve self-skills is quickly wasted and consumed, and can only continuously consume one's own vitality in repetitive work.
By the age of 30, his skills have not improved, his body is going downhill, and he can only be eliminated by the employer. If you lose the 10,000-hour rule, you will also be part of the 30-year-old layoffs.
And this kind of virtual entertainment, is it whistling? In the novel "Beauty New World" written by Huxley, there is a substance called "whisking". "Half a gram is half a holiday, one gram is a weekend, two grams is a glorious Eastern travel, and three grams is a groggy eternity on the moon."
When you are empty and bored, you can eat half a gram of numbness to make you happy; when you are depressed and painful, eat one gram of numbness to relieve your sorrow. Does Douyin look like Whoosh? Laughing at Douyin, emptiness, boredom, depression and pain, turn on Douyin, everything disappears.
But in my opinion, it is more like a painful acceleration remote control. The pain will soon end, but the skills have not improved. It can only be lowered and lowered in the type of work (such as designing food delivery, programmers as Didi drivers). Just like most people in the black mirror, if they don’t work hard, they can only earn income from riding a bicycle to being a cleaner (high-level and low-level jobs are set for film and television dramas). But in real life, time poverty is not enough, and thinking poverty after entertainment is even more driving people into the abyss.
Title 03. Poverty of Thinking after Entertainment
When Bozeman wrote "Entertainment to Death", he continued the "media is epistemology" developed by Canadian communication scientist McLuhan's "media is information" theory, which further proves that entertainment can plunge people into the thinking of the poor.
The popularity of new media will eventually control culture. Take the current media Douyin as an example, where short videos are concentrated. It is often said that you can learn on Douyin, but some vague and out-of-context noun concepts are popularized. Fragmented knowledge can not solve practical problems besides creating anxiety.
On the other side, written books have once again become more marginal cultural objects. And Douyin, which occupies the center of 400 million people, is as low as its universal value. Of course, for entertainment creators, the more the better. But for the individual, there is nothing more than exacerbating lack of thinking.
How powerful is the thinking? A documentary about the wealth gap between brothers born in the same family-"Rich Brother Poor Brother" illustrates this problem. Brother David lives in a dilapidated RV and earns living expenses by doing odd jobs everywhere. The older brother Ivan started his own business at the age of 21. He started from a small business and became a multi-millionaire. He has a mansion and also entered the political arena.
At the same time, because David was poor, he often came into contact with the extremely poor. These people tend to think extremes and hold a negative attitude towards everything. David, who is stuck in it, has also become more and more extreme, thinking that "it is all the fault of society", and then continues to fall into a sinking vicious circle. On the other hand, Ivan's wealth accumulation has risen step by step, and the people he has contacted have a broader vision. At the same time, he brought new knowledge and information and realized a virtuous circle.
In the program, after Ivan took David to attend several rich gatherings, David's conversation and thinking patterns also changed significantly. However, if you are in the Douyin environment, whether you update knowledge or iterate information, it is unlikely to be implemented in your virtual entertainment world.
According to the addiction model, the more invested, the more agreed. That is to say, the longer you invest in Douyin, the more you will agree that Douyin can bring you benefits, such as gambling can make you rich. So much so that minors now generally believe that the first step to become rich is to become an internet celebrity. Now it is no longer knowledge that changes life, but entertainment that changes life. It is completely a portrayal of the world of black mirrors. The way to change poverty is to become the person in the video.
04. The Vicious Cycle of Busy Poor People
According to statistics from relevant departments, the working hours of young people are more than 10 hours per person, not counting the commuting time spent on the subway. And they are the new generation of "Poor Busy People" who are busy working every day but still unable to live a wealthy life, according to the definition of Japanese economist Takashi Kadura in the book "Poor Busy People".
After a day of repetitive work, when I get home, my only entertainment is virtual entertainment. This type of virtual video entertainment method represented by Douyin has become the easiest way to reach, the lowest cost, and the highest value of happiness.
The busier the poorer, the poorer the more you need entertainment.
And opening the Pandora's Box of Douyin, time has been eroded, thinking has been damaged, and wages have continued to stay at a low value, circulating infinitely among the bottom population. Why are they getting poorer and poorer? The answer is obvious.
Conclusion
To solve entertainment to the poor, all in one change. It can start by quitting Douyin and changing media perception. If you know that your rising problem is because of too little learning, then you must force a time every day to read and learn skills. If you know that your immediate problems are never planned, then start learning to plan and act.
In short, learning is always the beginning of change.
The pictures are from Photograph.com and movies and TV dramas.
I hope that today’s sharing will be helpful to you. If you have any questions about cloud computing and website building, you can privately trust me. I am Bei Ke, a master's degree in CS (Computer Science) from Cornell University, and a serial entrepreneur. I am currently working in the R&D team of Alibaba Cloud AI intelligent website construction technology as a senior algorithm engineer. Welcome to pay attention.