Pointing out Douban, where did they go wrong?

I haven't been to Douban for a long time. It was only yesterday when a wave of "war of words" broke out about "Douban Movies" that I started to pay attention to this interest community product again, which had over 100 million users in 2012.

The viewpoint against Douban Movies is very clear, namely: there are two reasons why domestic movies (especially "City" and "The Ferryman") have poor box office and bad reputation:

• First, this community called Douban has fostered a group of "black-hearted users" who "blacken for the sake of blackening";
• Secondly, these "black-hearted users" worship foreign things and cannot stand seeing good domestic films. They want to kill "excellent" domestic films such as "A City" and "The Ferry" in the cradle.

In short, fundamentally speaking, the Chinese film industry has been ruined by the pro-Western comments of you "black-hearted users". As for the movie itself, that is the business of filmmakers. What do you "outsiders" know?

Of course, in addition to Douban, Maoyan also suffered. As an "outsider", I am not clear about the interests involved, nor do I know how to professionally analyze the pros and cons of Douban's rating system. But today, as a movie lover with basic aesthetic taste, we all have to play the role of "Doumou friends", otherwise there will be too many "good movies" with "10 points", and we will always not be able to control our "pockets".

From a psychological perspective, when we use the knowledge in our minds (most of which is vague cognition) to judge the external world (objective and accurate knowledge) , errors often occur due to short-term memory overload. Errors can be divided into two categories: mistakes and errors. In essence, the opposing comments should be attributed to "errors", namely: they do not understand the atmosphere and environment of the Douban Movie Community at all, and have different understandings and evaluations of the objectively existing community culture.

The spoof by the media person "Xuemang" on Douban was used as a case study and is a good example. According to their logic, shouldn’t “HolyShit” be translated as “holy shit” in the video game circle?

Causes of Error

Coming back to us "black-hearted users" ourselves, the reason why Douban Movie Community has been enduring is that, in addition to Douban's good community operation mechanism at the product level, this community also meets two psychological needs of us "black-hearted users": peeking and seeking recognition.

Our pursuit of pleasure from Internet products is largely driven by "voyeurism". WeChat Moments has over 100 million active users per month. We use Moments to "peek" into other people's lives, information, and other people's opinions of ourselves in order to construct a perfect mirror self. Live streaming further amplifies this psychological need. We watch others eat, sleep, and play games , and imagine that we have experienced similar lives.

In comparison, Douban's level is shallower than social products and live broadcasts, but it also directly points to our curiosity and voyeurism about popular movies. Although most people seldom review a movie directly, a high rating makes us look forward to the movie, and a low rating allows us to enjoy the fun of complaining (especially when authority is subverted and classics are deconstructed) .

This has formed the unique culture of Douban Movie Community itself. Just like when we kill the first unit in e-sports, the e-sports circle calls it "first blood". The movie community also has many unique code words, such as self-deprecating about fictional movies and spoof ranking of Douban Movie's 1-star movies.

In addition, we are constantly seeking recognition in community-based products. On a certain website, this is broken down into interest terms for each UGC; on Weibo, this is reflected in the value orientation of the big accounts we follow; and in Douban's movie community, this is summarized into everyone's appreciation of beauty and complaints about ugliness. Compared with praising something together, complaining about something together can more easily bring community members closer together and form a sense of group identity.

Therefore , it is a huge mistake to deny the culture of film reviews and attribute the failure of the film industry to us "troublemakers" without having a clear understanding of the psychological needs that this kind of film community brings to users.

The cause of this mistake is largely due to the disconnect between the system and its internal and external aspects: lack of understanding of the rules (lack of understanding of subculture rules) , lack of knowledge (lack of knowledge about the causes of the film community) and memory failure (memory failure about why the film industry is not developing well) . These three factors constitute the main reasons for the incorrect criticism of Douban's film review culture.

Danish engineer Jens Rasmussen divides human behavior patterns into three categories. Among them, the rule-based pattern is called the "if...then..." pattern, but it is often mistaken for a simple superposition, leading to behavioral errors. Analogous to the editorials on this incident - if you give bad reviews to domestic films, then the film industry will not develop well. Apparently made this mistake as well.

However, leaving aside the three causes of the error, the criticism of the act of film reviewing itself is also a simple "regressive judgment", as if they, representing the system, are fully aware of the events involved (the relationship between the development of China's film industry and Douban film reviews) , and that it was foreseeable in hindsight, but it was completely unpredictable and unpredictable beforehand. In fact, this kind of post-hoc explanation can hardly support their judgment on the causes of the poor development of China's film industry.

A simple wish

All movies have two eternal themes: desire and memory. In it, we are constantly searching for the life we ​​want and a figure that is almost similar to the perfect self in our minds.

In fact, judging the quality of a movie is a very subjective thing, just like many English people don’t like "Brave Heart" because they think it is "treasonous" at all, but in the hearts of most people in other regions, it represents the expectation and yearning for freedom. Some people were not interested in "V for Vendetta" at all, thinking it was too imaginary. However, after the ban was lifted in China, some people saw a different interpretation of the film.

As movie lovers, we judge the quality of a movie (we generally give high scores to foreign movies and low scores to domestic movies, and this phenomenon does exist). Often, after watching the movie, we beat our chests and ask ourselves, "Why can't China make such a good movie?" This change in mentality is just like us constantly scolding the Chinese national football team. It reflects our simple wish to "wake up" domestic films and make them surpass European and American blockbusters.

From the perspective of national character, the Chinese people are very critical of their own things, but once they go abroad, they cannot tolerate any criticism of China by foreigners. Some people think this is a bad habit, but I think it is not ugly, but rather a bit cute.

Finally, many people, like me, although they don’t use Douban, have stepped forward to become a “Douban friend”. I believe that like us, they are not black-hearted users, but a group of people who hope that domestic films can get better and better and make us proud to give them five stars on Douban.

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