The Eldest Uncle, the Second Uncle, and the Fiancé
In recent days, I have been busy all day with the trivialities of life and earning a living, hearing little about world affairs. While communicating with friends, I heard about the eldest uncle from Jiangxi, the second uncle from Hebei, and the fiancé from Beijing. I couldn’t help but grumble a few words.
An important topic of reform is property rights reform. Movable and immovable properties have all been transferred from public to private ownership. Some people accumulated a lot of wealth in the wave of property rights reform and completed the family’s primitive accumulation. Although the Zhou family in Jiangxi is not extremely wealthy, they can be considered brave enough to stand at the forefront of the tide, accumulating a lot of wealth for Zhou Jie’s generation. Some people, after the big wave passed, picked up some shells on the beach to support their families, raised a college student and then sent him to CICC to be a corporate slave, relying on an income below the industry average to marry an ordinary girl who hasn’t seen the world. Some people drifted with the tide of the times, and at the end of the property rights reform, they still had nothing, were disabled, lived in the old house left by their ancestors, and lived on odd jobs without a fixed income. The previous generation either knew how to make a fortune in silence, or were oppressed by life and had no time to care, and they rarely spoke out on the internet. On the other hand, the next generation coincidentally mastered the traffic password of the virtual world. They put the long-retired eldest uncle, the second uncle still making a living in the village, and the 996 fiancé on the internet to be exposed to the sun and roasted.
The previous wave of online heated discussions about the wealth gap was mostly about Boss Xu’s reception plan and Boss Ma’s yacht, mostly about capitalists being rich and heartless and living extravagant lives. Later, after a wave of common prosperity and the discussion of the “killing pigs theory,” the bosses quieted down. In this wave, online public opinion targeted small individuals. If it causes major harm to individuals, Weibo, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu must bear the main responsibility. Without platforms acting as the driving force behind the scenes, the content posted by numerous small accounts that usually have little to no traffic, even if human lives are at stake, cannot have traffic, and it is even less likely to become a hot spot of public opinion. To gain traffic, platforms treat the stories of small individuals like human blood buns.
The reason why platforms can accurately find hot spots one by one and detonate them is that they have grasped the current social emotions. The complex situation and the environment full of internal and external troubles have made a large number of corporate slaves who could have worked 996 and delivery guys who had takeout to deliver lose their job opportunities. The internet has become the best place to kill time, and hot events have become the most attractive tittytainment. But there is an important problem to be wary of. These people are not just killing time on the internet; they also want to vent their emotions. Attacking and slandering strangers and getting to the bottom of the matter like a political examination are their favorite tricks. So for the likes of Zhou Jie who master the traffic password, whether it is to pick up girls, show off wealth, or consume suffering, please think twice before posting your friends and family on the internet.
Published at: Jul 30, 2022 · Modified at: Dec 12, 2025
