The chaos in live streaming frequently touches the bottom line. Where is the audience’s lower limit of acceptance?

Live streaming offends the overall value orientation of society, so it has been regulated. Regardless of the effect, at least it will not be blatant and reckless, which is progress. From this perspective, the implementation of the new regulations can be said to be a bucket of water to cool the false fire of live streaming, or a warning to those who are blinded by profit. In short, it is beneficial to both the public and the private.

But the dregs of entertainment that have ruined the standard of the live broadcast industry will not disappear completely, because it is more realistic to hope for luck and find loopholes in supervision than to give up the sweetness they have already tasted, and more importantly, they are confident that there is still a market. This is also the fact. We frequently criticize the unscrupulous and bottom-line content of live broadcasts, but the audience still watches and rewards in batches. Why does the chaos of live broadcasts continue to touch the bottom line of public morality, but has not yet broken through the audience's acceptance limit?

The anchor has no bottom line, so what about some of the viewers?

What is morality? What is the bottom line? Although people have different understandings, the ethical scope generally recognized by the public is the basic morality of a society. On a higher level, it involves the country, family and interpersonal communication. On a lower level, it is the nature that distinguishes humans from animals, such as kindness and compassion. However, the profit-oriented live broadcast platforms are weakening this moral benchmark in an entertaining way.

Yesterday, a news report about a live cremation was exposed, which caused an uproar in public opinion. As the old saying goes, the dead are the greatest, which means that no matter how many right and wrongs there are in life, they should disappear with death, and future generations should not make arbitrary comments. This is respect for the dead and awe of death. However, let alone criticism now, a live broadcast has made the entire ceremony entertaining, and has attracted countless outsiders to point fingers at the dead and the last form of the dead left in the world. If the host's behavior is unethical and profit-driven, then aren't those who watch and comment also entertaining the life and death of others? Isn't the concept of the dead being the greatest suitable for the values ​​of modern society? Although some ancient rituals or concepts have become formalities now, once the forms are lost, how can the culture be preserved? It has to be said that this kind of weird live broadcast is making people forget to think about the value of the event itself and forget where the bottom line of entertainment should be touched.

This also confirms a development trend of online live broadcasting: the more bizarre the content, the more attention it will attract, and the more it will stimulate the anchors to think hard, use all kinds of tricks, and even risk their lives. The source of its motivation is attention. If there are no viewers, this kind of live broadcast will naturally disappear. Therefore, the root cause of the chaos in live broadcasting is not just the anchors, but also a group of people who lack value judgment and lose themselves under the influence of diversified entertainment background.

Live broadcasts of self-abuse or animal abuse may target people who have a tendency to abuse but are afraid to do so. This content satisfies their hidden psychological state in disguise. Live broadcasts of poking a hornet's nest may target people who like to watch the fun and watch others commit suicide as an outsider. This is their own bad taste. In any case, this has impacted some moral standards. The audience thinks that this is the host's own will, so they give up the value assessment and emotional connection of this behavior. Isn't this another decline in the moral bottom line? Just because watching is not illegal, should the audience abandon judgment and make no choices?

But do viewers really like these programs and watch them? What kind of spiritual satisfaction do they get from them? What kind of psychological state do they have to choose them without knowing why?

Psychological Analysis of Live Broadcast Audiences

Mentality and purpose vary from person to person, but a glimpse of the whole picture can reveal the whole picture. By analyzing a representative group of people, we can understand the general psychology of the viewers to a certain extent.

According to the "2016 Mobile Video Live Streaming Analysis Report", those born in the 1990s have become the main driving force behind the explosion of live streaming among the entire population. Their love of sharing, socializing and interacting has contributed to the rapid explosion of the live streaming industry. As the main force that uses smartphones most frequently, they have the time and energy to watch all kinds of live streaming content. Combining the personality characteristics of those born in the 1990s can analyze their main psychological activities when watching bizarre live streaming, and further explore the mental state and value orientation hidden behind them, and also reveal the potential psychology of audiences of other age groups.

According to the personality characteristics of the post-90s generation summarized by China Youth Daily, it can be seen that there are several obvious characteristics that make them prefer live broadcasting and have a strong acceptance of content. The first is anti-loneliness, which also determines their love of socializing and interacting, so the fresh form of live broadcasting can suit their taste. The second is love of performance. This can easily be extended to the importance of a sense of presence, and even showing off is an important way to brush a sense of presence, which is extremely obvious during the live broadcast process. Watching live broadcasts based on novelty, and rewarding for a sense of presence in the process of watching. The more money you give, the more favor and gratitude you get, which in turn stimulates your own psychology of showing off. Moreover, the premise of this frequent occurrence is very likely that they cannot get a sense of presence in real life, so they indulge in the virtual network of relationships built by live broadcasts.

According to a fan, "In the online world, as long as you spend money, you are the king. This is a feeling you will never get when watching celebrity videos. The female anchor will interact with you all the time, calling your name in front of tens of thousands of people, saying thank you and so on. You can't experience that kind of satisfaction." Therefore, this psychological condition is probably applicable to any online live broadcast of any content.

What is more important is the combination of entertainment spirit and rebellious spirit. The rebellious spirit makes the post-90s generation have a strong voyeuristic mentality, especially in peeping at extremely hidden and non-popular content. This interest makes them, who have unstable values, more willing to get satisfaction from such content. Moreover, they have a strong entertainment spirit, which suppresses their sense of moral responsibility and leads to the indiscriminate absorption of content. Moreover, the post-90s generation grew up in an era of popularization of the Internet and mobile networks. The presentation of massive information makes them more receptive to new things.

Another common mentality among viewers is that since the anchor is willing to make his or her privacy or that of others public for entertainment, why can't I spend money to enjoy this kind of entertainment when I'm bored? Even if it's against morality, it's the anchor's responsibility, so what does it have to do with me? Based on the idea that the responsibility is all attributed to others, many people do not think that their behavior is consistent with the anchor's approach. Some people even watch this kind of live broadcast while criticizing the anchor's treason from a moral high ground.

In short, adding fuel to the fire will only stop the fire.

What does entertainment to death reflect?

A person's psychological activities are more likely to reflect his or her mental state, and a popular entertainment method of an era can reflect people's current value choices and mental outlook. What can we see from the chaos of live streaming?

First, entertainment to death causes the cultural spirit to wither.

Neil Postman mentioned in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death that all public discourse is increasingly presented in the form of entertainment and has become a cultural spirit. All cultural content has willingly become a vassal of entertainment, without complaint or even without a sound, "and the result is that we have become a species that is entertained to death". In fact, the background of this state is the popularity of television, and now the information revolution of the Internet of Everything has intensified the trend of universal entertainment. Almost anything can be ridiculed and indulged in the form of entertainment, and we enjoy it. Some live broadcasts are like this, with no filial piety, no benevolence, self-respect and self-love have become a joke, and only empty talk of freedom that disregards morality is left.

According to Postman, there are two ways to make the cultural spirit wither. One is to make culture a prison, and the other is to turn culture into a stage of entertainment to death. Postman believes that the latter is becoming a reality. In a "brave new world" of entertainment to death, "people are not suffering because they replace thinking with laughter, but because they don't know why they laugh and why they don't think anymore." To a certain extent, entertainment spreads culture, but it changes the original meaning of culture in disguise. It can be said that entertainment is gradually replacing culture. In this culture similar to some non-nutritious and unscrupulous live broadcast content, we treat many serious topics as entertainment and laugh them off, but don't think about the value connotation behind them, nor do we think about why I watch this content. Thinking becomes a burden to entertainment. Once entertainment turns politics, business and spirit into a childish and superficial mentally retarded culture, thinking may gradually fade and disappear for some people.

The second is the alternative spiritual emptiness in the context of diversity.

The degradation of thinking has made our choice of entertainment unscrupulous and without boundaries, but the more choices we have, the more it shows the spiritual emptiness. In the era of mobile Internet, many people have a common feeling that the final result of aimless entertainment may be nothing, which also shows the lack of their own selection criteria and value orientation. The same is true for watching the weird content of live broadcasts. Satisfying one's own bad taste may be the main purpose of this behavior, and in the process, I will not think about what value such content will bring to me. Unless you are interested in studying the external manifestations of sleep quality, many outsiders cannot understand what the attraction is. In this way, entertainment itself conceals value judgments, or they lack value judgments, which is the main manifestation of spiritual emptiness.

Just as Huxley worried about cultural acquisition, the reason we have lost banned books is because no one is willing to read anymore, because culture has become vulgar garbage in the indulgence of desires, and because people have lost their freedom because of entertainment. For this kind of live broadcast platform, both the anchors and the audience are indulging their desires indiscriminately. In the long run, curiosity will only turn into a desire to peep, not a desire for knowledge, and imagination will only be wasted in fantasies, not a driving force for reality.

Youth and restlessness should be vented to more valuable places so as not to become victims of entertainment; perceptions and ideas should be touched by reality so as not to become puppets of the virtual world.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.