27th Liberation Book List | "Internet celebrity check-in area": Internet celebrity check-in area has become a "social currency" spirit | Internet celebrity | Check in
Online red card punching place refers to a place that is widely popular and rapidly popular on the Internet. As a tipping point with huge online and offline traffic, it helps to develop commercial and cultural spaces and promote urban image. At the end of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum ignited the Spanish city of Bilbao. Today, in the deep use of Internet scenes, especially in China, where short videos are developing at a high speed, the unique "online celebrity clocking places" are everywhere. From Wukang Building to Xujiahui Academy, from "Anaya" to "Wenheyou", the phenomenon of internet celebrity check-in has attracted more and more attention. However, on the one hand, Xiaohongshu, Station B, and Tiktok are highly sought after by Generation Z, on the other hand, adults and gentlemen are dismissive of them, and there are few works on how to deeply analyze and interpret this phenomenon. "Internet celebrity check-in spot: creating a unique experience space" has filled this gap at the right time.
Compared to advanced scholars who are not familiar with the trend of the world and ordinary people who lack theoretical literacy, the author has received certain academic training and personally participated in the planning and design of internet celebrity check-in places. He is able to combine theory with practice to decode the phenomenon of internet celebrity check-in in a simple and easy way. Although this book is not yet perfect, it opens up research in this field and can be considered the most sensitive and approachable discourse in the field of vision.
This book is divided into two parts. The first part combines case studies to interpret phenomena in a multidimensional context, while the second part extracts 10 ways and paths to create a popular check-in spot. The author does not shy away from it, and his main point of view is drawn from German sociologist Leckwitz's "Independent Society: Modern Structural Transformation", pointing out that the check-in area of internet celebrities is a unique experiential space during the social transformation period, and the uniqueness it reflects is often associated with keywords such as aesthetics, emotions, scenes, humanities, art, knowledge, fashion, technology, IP, and personification that represent future consumer trends and individual freedom, which is a manifestation of the transition from "normal life" to "good life". The most thought-provoking aspect of this is the author's belief that the popular check-in spot for internet celebrities is a "social currency" commonly used among emerging consumer groups.
When decoding the phenomenon of internet celebrity clocking in, the author borrowed Malcolm Gladwell's "The Trigger Point" to summarize the three rules of the outbreak of pop: the individual character rule, the adhesion factor rule, and the environmental power rule; Jonah Berger's best-selling book "The Legend of Madness" summarizes the six principles of madness: social, monetary, motivational, emotional, public, practical value, and story; And concepts such as Florida's "creative class", Bourdieu's "social capital", Clark's "comfort items", Reese and his daughter's "positioning" and "visual hammer". The author finally extracted 10 passwords for internet celebrity check-in locations from long-term observations: beauty responsibility, scene collage, knowledge exploration, emotional resonance, artistic innovation, fashion empowerment, technological empowerment, personality enhancement, "holy land parade", and cultural shaping.
For ordinary readers, after reading this book, when they see young people eagerly checking in to a certain place, they can use the phrase "this is them earning social currency.". But this book inspires us to further reflect on how internet celebrities check in. On the one hand, people can reconcile with the phenomenon of internet celebrities from a simple life perspective, and local governments can even focus on creating high aesthetic scenes through the tips in the book to generate "tourism gaze", develop regional economy, promote regional image, attract high-end talents, enhance urban soft power, and further think about how to turn internet celebrities into long-term celebrities, turn places with atmosphere into places with memory, and brew valuable industries. On the other hand, on a spiritual level, we must also see that seemingly exclusive spaces actually obscure another form of standardization.
Although this book is relatively fragmented in theoretical exposition, it can guide us to extend our reading and thinking. For example, by combining Fevre's spatial theory to analyze how the representative space of internet celebrity check-in places is produced through multi-party collusion, by combining Debo's landscape theory to reveal how contemporary people's inner separation and loss of their true existence and true desires are caused, by combining Baudrillard's consumption theory to decode the deep situational control of "desire for others", and by combining Slotedeck's "sphere" theory to trace how the "crystal palace" construction system erodes into individual life circles. In a world full of uncertainty, young people need to find an internal "spherical" space for themselves, in order to construct a sense of self security, identity, and boundaries. Internet celebrity check-in places may be such an ideal "bubble" like space, from which certain spiritual signs of new consumer groups in late modern society can be found. The uniqueness it promotes precisely reflects the Chinese style of mass life, and it cannot help but give people another kind of thinking.
Lu Chao, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press
