How to understand the rice circle culture: Is it an island of "enclosure sprouting"
Recently, fans of KUN, a new traffic star who debuted from Idol Trainee, made a mistake. The reason is that the number of Weibo fans in KUN has exceeded 7 million. He sent a Weibo saying, "How about dyeing black hair as welfare?" After Weibo was sent out, the netizen "@ I’m Chen Hongyu" forwarded it and said, "Why do some people on this planet think that dyeing their hair is a welfare for others? God XX is crazy. "
Although the netizen’s spit is not friendly enough, it is estimated that he did not expect that he would be so seriously bullied by fans in the future. Some fans searched for photos of this passerby and his school "civil aviation university of china", and they were crazy about @ civil aviation university of china. Even some fans have entered the extreme state of "scolding whoever they catch". For example, some netizens just commented on the netizen’s Weibo, and they were also insulted by fans. In the end, @ I’m Chen Hongyu, who couldn’t resist the fierce attack of fans, sent two Weibo apologies in succession, stressing that he meant no harm, just teasing, "Please forgive me, fans and friends".

The essence of rice circles: the collective possession of idols by fans
What is a rice circle? In fact, it is the abbreviation of fan circle and fan group. Fans of a certain star together to form a group is a rice circle. In this circle, those who have money contribute and those who have no money contribute, and everyone does his or her job. Some people are responsible for taking photos, retouching and distributing pictures, some people are responsible for video editing, some people are responsible for judging, some people are responsible for forwarding and data … Fans invest a lot of time, money and energy just for a common goal: to make their idols better and redder.
To understand the rice circle’s unrepentant dedication to idols, we must first start with the characteristics of idols. In any developed entertainment industry, people in the entertainment industry can be divided into two categories: those who eat by strength and those who eat by face value. We call the former an actor/singer, and the latter a star. In essence, the entertainment industry is a consumer market, artists are commodities, and fans are consumers.
For an actor, his commercial value lies in his acting skills and the quality of his works, such as Li Xuejian, WU GANG and Qin Hao. They don’t have many crazy fans. Their excellent acting skills guarantee the quality of film and television dramas, and producers, TV stations and audiences all recognize them. The general audience will generally not know more about them than the text of the film and TV series itself.
For idols, it is not the case. Idols have no works, or they are only works. Some idols have nothing but a pair of beautiful skins. Why does he get the love of so many people? Because idols belong to fans, all his popularity depends on their support. Fans buy his records, watch his movies, buy his endorsement products, forward his Weibo, control the negative rumors about him on the Internet, create traffic for idols and strive for more performance opportunities because idols give fans an illusion: my success depends on your support bit by bit, and you are honored with any glory that belongs to me; I belong to you, I was born to meet your needs.
In Japan and South Korea, where the entertainment industry is highly developed, actors/singers and idols have long been different occupations, and they each have a strict training system. Actors don’t need to maintain "personal design" because he speaks by works, but idols have the requirement of "personal design". His smiles and every move must satisfy the fantasy of fans. Sh? Sakurai, a member of Tian Tuanlan, a Japanese national, explained "What is an idol" and "Idol is a profession selling dreams", which is right.

Nine percent of the "occasional practice" returned to China and hundreds of fans ran to pick up the plane.
Therefore, the essence of rice circles is actually a brand-new idol-fan relationship, and the essence of this relationship is the collective possession of idols by fans; The essence of idols is "to provide fans with an imaginative intimacy". Some scholars further define idols as a "database that provides imaginary materials about intimate relationships". Based on the data in this database, fans can choose and customize the image of idols themselves. Some people are "girlfriend powder", some are "mother powder" and some are "sister powder". But no matter what kind of powder, idols have become the carrier of some kind of intimate relationship.
It is in this sense that the fan welfare given by idols has been given different connotations. To outsiders, it’s no big deal for an idol to take a selfie on Weibo, say "good night" and dye his black hair, but for fans who are in imaginary close relationship with the idol, it’s "welfare", what’s important is daily companionship, which is to please others and is no different from falling in love.
Crazy rice circles: how to polarize rice circles
The emergence and development of rice circle culture has indeed brought many positive effects to the entertainment industry. For example, it has changed the traditional star-making mode, given fans more power, and is more conducive to the iteration and update of idols in the entertainment industry. However, the KUN fan incident has also become a microcosm of the crazy rice circle. On social networks, we often see one after another cyber violence caused by fans of some idols.
Fans support idols out of love, of course. The question is why this love has repeatedly evolved into cyber violence against others.
This is related to the reception of rice circle information and the closing and homogenization of values. There is an "information stratosphere" effect here That is to say, when receiving information, the audience always pays attention to information that is consistent with their original ideas, attitudes and values, or that they need to care about. At the same time, they will actively reject or avoid information that is inconsistent with their own ideas or has nothing to do with themselves: the direction of information flow is similar to that of the stratosphere. For rice circles, the information they receive every day is all about the good things of idols, and they are very wary and exclusive of all kinds of negative news about idols. This has led to the so-called "blowing with closed eyes" phenomenon, which means that no matter what idols do or how they do, fans can praise the sky.
Over time, they fell into the "information cocoon room". The information that fans are exposed to every day seems endless, but in fact, they are trapped in an island that can only accommodate the praise of idols, and it is difficult to accept any heterogeneous information. This will not only lead to the narrowness of individuals, the loss of individual judgment, and the misunderstanding of the real environment, but also may lead to the polarization of views and the polarization of network groups. This is why many rice circles are like a hedgehog with fried hair, stabbing people everywhere. Where there are bad reviews about idols, they must think that someone is deliberately framing idols. They must act quickly to fight back, and a vast network of violence has happened.
Moreover, rice circles, as a kind of "group", also have some group characteristics. Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist, pointed out in Mob that once you join a group, individuals will become impulsive, reckless and extreme. The reason and mechanism of this earth-shaking change lies in that once an individual joins a group and takes action, first of all, he/she will feel unprecedented power, and the crowd has overwhelming power, and the individual will feel this power immediately after joining the group, which is completely absent when everyone exists in isolation; Secondly, the individual’s sense of responsibility disappears rapidly, because he/she will feel that his/her responsibility is dispersed to a large number of people, and it tends to be zero for him/her personally; Third, in a group, members’ knowledge level, reasoning ability and value orientation are very different. Because of the huge number and short time, it is completely impossible for members to have a rational debate. Only by conforming to the belief of the greatest common divisor of the crowd in knowledge level, thinking ability and value orientation can the group take action, and these beliefs of the greatest common divisor are inevitably simple and primitive.
Le Pen’s analysis of the disadvantages of groups is quite obvious in rice circles. Many rice circle fans are younger, generally under the age of 18. Their values are immature, their thoughts are not rational enough, and they can easily become reckless, impulsive and violent under the noise of the group, and they lack accurate prediction of the responsibility and consequences of their actions. This leads them not to solve conflicts calmly and rationally, but to join the group and become a violent member, trying to reverse the trend of public opinion by various extreme methods.
Rice circles are not original sin, but don’t forget the original intention.
As a profession, it is normal for idols to give up some personal privacy and accept public evaluation, because all these are the attributes of this profession itself. However, in the deformed rice circle culture, idols can only accept public praise, and no bad reviews can appear. Whoever gives bad reviews to idols must have ulterior motives. Another important reason for this cognitive dislocation is that fans always unconsciously bring the imaginary intimate relationship between him and his idol into the public sphere.
Fans treat idols as lovers and relatives, and set a set of strict code of conduct in the rice circle, such as not discussing any news that has not been officially announced, not accepting bundling and gossip, and not spreading photos of private trips. This kind of boxing love is understandable. The problem is that fans can abide by it as much as they like in the rice circle, but they are not qualified to ask other passers-by in the public sphere to abide by it. Idol is a lover in the eyes of fans, but in the eyes of passers-by, he is an ordinary entertainer, a gossip, a talk about capital and an anecdote. This is like your Xiong Haizi. You can be a treasure, but you can’t ask other people in society to be tolerant of him everywhere.
Paradoxically, fans think they love idols, and they do not hesitate to launch cyber violence in order to maintain the image of idols. As everyone knows, their actions are just smearing idols. After the fan incident in KUN, there was a lot of criticism on the Internet. Many passers-by said, "Now I have no desire to know anything about KUN". "Fans’ behavior, idols pay the bill", a common saying in rice circles, is still the unchanging truth that summarizes such incidents. It is not so easy to establish the goodwill of idols, but it can easily be defeated by the actions of fans. This is actually the risk of the idol profession. How much you rely on fans also means how likely you are to be bitten by fans. Idol will always be fettered by fans. Although it is easy to gain popularity, it must be ready to accept the consequences at any time.
The crazy behavior of some rice circles may make some people who have never been to idolize feel disgusted with the existence of rice circles, and think that rice circles are synonymous with irrationality, ignorance, brain damage and violence. In fact, there are many rational and sober fans in the rice circle. They like idols, but they just "sprout from the ground" in the rice circle and will not bring the rules of the rice circle into real life. We should criticize the madness of some rice circles, but we should not stigmatize the whole rice circle-otherwise, it is different from those irrational rice circles.
According to Yang Ling, a fan culture researcher, people think that bored and empty people will need idolize to fill themselves, but in fact, the role of idols is far from filling the vacancy, and he/she can inspire fans to find a better and more meaningful life. Yang Ling said: "I chased the stars myself. This experience prompted me to study for a PhD, and I began to pay attention to a brand-new research field. I published some research results, met many scholars in related fields at home and abroad, and even had the privilege of accepting an interview with Professor Henry Jenkins, a big cow of fan research. Idolize can be said to have changed my life. "
For many people, joining the rice circle and becoming a fan of an idol is because they have an imagination about "beauty" in the idol-"beauty" is a word that many fans use repeatedly when describing idols. Yang Ling explains "beauty" in this way: "People who have both" beauty "and" good "are extremely rare in real life. Fans have pinned their hopes for a more perfect and free utopia on people they think are’ beautiful’. In the final analysis, stars and idols are just intermediaries, and they let fans enter another transcendent world from the earth. What fans ultimately want is pleasure, recognition and a sense of belonging. "
Therefore, compared with "if it’s not my race, its heart will be different" and "fighting in the south and fighting in the north", don’t forget that "beauty" and "self-sprouting in circles" are the personal accomplishments that rice circles need urgently.