"Social Fear" and "Social Bull": Fear and Love in Social Changes
China News Weekly reporter / Qiu Guangyu
Published in the 1038th issue of "China News Weekly" on April 4, 2022
"There was a time when I didn't want others to see me or talk to outsiders. I had to wear a mask, scarf and hat even if I walked out for 10 minutes to buy milk tea. Well written. One day, the milk tea I bought home spilled when I entered the door. At that time, I was crying while wiping the table and the floor, thinking to myself: 'It's so hard to buy milk tea.'"
Sammi, a 25-year-old international student, described the most "social fear" in her life.
"Social phobia" is the abbreviation of "social phobia". It was originally a term for mental illness, which belongs to a kind of anxiety disorder. escape mentality.
Today, "social phobia" is no longer just a term in psychology, it has become more generalized, and it has become a ridicule of young people on the Internet about their state of avoiding social interaction.
This state has become especially popular among young people in recent years.
In November 2021, "China Youth Daily" conducted a questionnaire survey on "social fear" among college students across the country. The results showed that 80.22% of the interviewed college students said they had mild "social fear"; 6.90% said they had a relatively serious "social fear". phobia”; and 0.64% said that they were really medically diagnosed with social phobia.
In contrast to the phenomenon of "social fear", starting from the summer of 2021, a new Internet term called "social cattle" has become popular.
The word is the abbreviation of "social bullshit syndrome", which originated from the comment area of the funny video "Shuangxi brother supports Hongxingerke" at station B. At that time, some netizens described the behavior of the protagonist of the video yelling and shouting regardless of the eyes of others as "social bullshit." Disease", the short comment quickly gained more than 200,000 likes, and also made the word "social cow" out of the circle.
Many people who consider themselves "social fear" have a yearning for "social cattle" in their hearts.
In January 2022, a clinical trial application called PH94B nasal spray was approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation of the State Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of social anxiety disorder in adults.
The spray is said to be odorless and works within 15 minutes.
After the news came out, this new drug, which has not yet been listed, was ridiculed by netizens as an artifact that could make "social fears become social cattle" in seconds.
However, this type of treatment is more aimed at the relief of pathological anxiety disorders, and more "social phobia" is not pathological, but a cultural, self-constructed and self-named syndrome.
"Social cattle" and "Social fear" seem to be two sides of one body in today's society, and they reflect today's social life like a mirror image.
Among the "post-1980s" middle-aged and young people, the phenomenon of "social fear" and "social cattle" is closely related to economic and social changes.
The "cultural distance" behind fear
Statistical data on non-pathological "social phobic" people is a difficult problem for sociological researchers.
First, this state of "social phobia" is defined by the individuals themselves, and second, these individuals minimize their contact and contact with the general public.
Wang Shuixiong, professor of the School of Sociology and Demographics of Renmin University of China and director of the Department of Sociology, wrote an article "The Causes and Relief of Social Fear of Contemporary Young People". Quantitative research and data analysis are indeed difficult to do.
Many people who consider themselves "social fear" prefer to communicate by typing more than telephone, and some people avoid face-to-face communication, and even have "peripheral fear".
Therefore, people can only try their best to spy on the inner monologues of people who consider themselves "social fear" in the sociological sense from their own interpersonal and social networks.
However, there are still people who are willing to express their feelings.
Zhang Zeze, a Shandong girl born in 1991, is a civil servant by profession. At the end of February 2022, she recounted her 12-year "social fear" experience on the Internet, and received responses and resonance from many people.
From Zhang Zeze's case, we can see what the "social fear" young people are afraid of.
In daily social interaction, there are actually only two things that bother her the most: first, when participating in knowledge competitions and speech contests organized by the unit, she needs to show her face and express herself in public. Blank physiological response.
Second, her life is full of those "Shandong-style" wine parties and dinner parties that must be attended, and she will be on pins and needles on such occasions.
Zhang Zeze told China News Weekly that just a few days ago, she had just attended a dinner that lasted three or four hours.
Although she replaced the wine with milk tea at the banquet, she should not miss a word of toast. When the elders and leaders called her to "hold the cup", she had to hold the cup.
Zhang Zeze doesn't like these wine parties, but she has to admit that those who show a "social cow" state at the dinner table and get along with leaders and elders have more opportunities than she who constantly criticizes details at work.
A new media graphic designer living in Beijing, 38-year-old A Zhuang has similar troubles. He has a variety of hobbies in the two-dimensional world, but he does not like parties. At most, he only eats with close old friends.
He claimed that one of the things in his life that gave him the most "social fear" was coexisting in a space with middle-aged men in their forties and fifties—even though he was considered middle-aged in terms of age.
"Their talk was showy, greasy, self-righteous, without a single word of truth. I'm a man myself, but I just hate them."
The details of Zhang Zeze's "changing wine for milk tea" became an interesting metaphor: a young man can choose to drink his favorite beverage at a dinner party, but in the larger discourse system, he must yield to the rules left by the previous generation for her .
Wang Shuixiong, a professor at the School of Sociology and Demography of Renmin University of China, used the sociological concept of "cultural distance" to summarize the phenomenon of "social fear" among young people, especially their rebellion against the traditional "wine bureau culture" in the workplace. fear.
"Cultural gap" refers to the phenomenon that in the process of social and economic development, the speed of economic and technological development is ahead, and cultural habits and social traditions cannot keep up, resulting in the separation of the two.
"Wine Bureau Culture" is an example.
For the young and middle-aged people born in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, most of them grew up in one-child families. Parents, out of good intentions, would not transfer the pressure of having to socialize to their children, and the number of their peers was not large. The method is also very different from the previous generation. The "wine bureau culture" has gradually faded among them.
When these young people leave the campus and enter the workplace, they will find that there is still a "wine bureau culture" in the society that they have little contact with in their original life experience.
This creates a conflict between their inner and outer worlds.
"The phenomenon of 'wine bureau culture' has a specific reason, because sometimes there is such a set of 'ceremonies' in society to highlight the higher status of certain people." Wang Shuixiong said.
When the next generation finds that their job opportunities, salary assessment, etc. are still in the hands of the previous generation, they have to adapt to the cultural rituals that have "fallen out" from the Internet society against their will.
It is this kind of reluctance but the need to obey that makes these young and middle-aged people at a loss.
"Social Bull" and "Social Fear" with Two Sides
Although "social fear" has risen to become a physiological problem, and even went to the hospital to prescribe medicine for this, many people still cannot see the fear in Zhang Zeze's heart.
She is a lively, talkative, and friendly woman in life. Even chatting with strangers on the road or contacting business by phone is not difficult for her. "This one-on-one communication is something I am very good at. Yes." As long as she doesn't have to show herself in public, she is like a "social cow".
A Zhuang also has his own "social cow" side. In front of a small number of acquaintances and friends, he will be as good as being sprayed with "social cow spray". He can chat, be funny, and tell bad jokes without any scruples.
But this other side of self, since he graduated from elementary school, he has been reluctant to show it in front of strangers.
And the reason why he insists on being a designer has a lot to do with the fact that this job only requires contact with relatively fixed people and does not need to expand the social circle.
Tang Xue, a self-media creator in Hangzhou and a post-95s generation, is also a "social fear" person.
A few years ago, she started making videos and writing official accounts about how she broke through this psychological barrier.
In several communication groups she has established, young people who consider themselves "social fear" compete to share their experiences. Netizens from all over the world share their work status, playing games and reading experience with strangers, and there will also be people Confess to her "being alone has serious internal friction" and "the loneliness of being alone for a long time".
In this type of communication, someone will report "feeling much less [symptoms]".
In this exchange, she helped others and partially healed herself.
Judging from the chat records, these "social fears" are actually "talkative" on the Internet, and the language is still very smooth and even playful.
It can be said that in these WeChat, QQ groups, and Douban groups that hold together to keep warm, they release the "social cow" side to their heart's content.
Today, the Douban "I have severe social phobia" group has more than 40,000 members, and another group about social phobia, "Social Fear to Get Warm" has more than 60,000 members.
These figures also illustrate from one perspective that the number of groups who consider themselves "social terrorism" is quite large.
Zheng Dandan, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, has always observed the phenomenon of "social terrorism".
In 2019, she wrote a paper "On Social Retreat". She observed that some people would choose a "retreat" behavior to protect themselves after encountering psychological difficulties in a highly competitive workplace, and actively withdraw from social competition. Not letting others judge you, this leads to a series of phenomena.
For example, these people will unconsciously become addicted to certain hobbies such as reading novels and surfing the Internet.
These phenomena can be regarded as a sequelae of the failure of competition in a society that overemphasizes competition, and it is also a kind of "social fear".
Looking into the reasons behind it, Zheng Dandan believes that the changes in lifestyle brought about by the Internet have greatly weakened traditional interpersonal relationships and kinship relationships, especially the traditional "clan" society and related rituals. It has left a lot of living space for the popularity of "social terrorism".
Just like today's young people dare to use the "social fear" mask to say that they want to "cut off the relationship", complain about the various behaviors of relatives as soon as the Chinese New Year arrives, and oppose traditional blind dates because they don't like to communicate. The same is true.
Zheng Dandan gave an example. As a "post-70s", in the age when she was growing up, if a woman didn't get married and didn't like to socialize, then she was not only facing social pressure, but more importantly, in reality, her Life will be seriously affected, such as carrying briquettes and installing light bulbs, which will cause life problems for single women.
But now, with all kinds of social service software and social networking software, almost all such matters can be outsourced. When people find that these trivial things can be solved through technical means, they will have more tolerance for people who do not like social interaction.
She feels that nowadays, it is a good thing that people can speak out loudly that they are "social phobia", and labeling themselves a generalized "social phobia" is a kind of relief and freedom brought to individuals by social progress.
"In the previous society, if you had no social connections at all, it would be very difficult to live. Besides, there are many people who are not socially unsocial, they are socializing in other ways. This person looks shy in the real world, but in the real world In his community, he is active."
Script killing, games, group chat
Refuse to socialize ineffectively, as Internet natives, the post-95s and even post-00s are actually more adaptable and more self-consistent than the post-80s and post-90s.
The state of "social fear" is actually commonplace for them.
They can even create some of their favorite scenes: through video games, script killing, two-dimensional activities, etc., they can freely create their own language, regardless of the requirements and rules of the previous generation.
In the face of these emerging social fields that are completely inaccessible, the previous generation has nothing to do with them.
For these younger people, "social fear" and "social cattle" are a background color in a character that can be persisted.
At this point, the post-80s and post-90s are even more envious of the ability of the post-95s to switch freely between "social fear" and "social cattle".
Zhang Zeze envied those post-95 colleagues for their free and easy careers: they either completely accepted or completely rejected the wine bureau culture, without the hesitation of their generation.
Work is a means of earning a living for them.
"What's serving the leaders, what's the dinner? They don't take it seriously."
Sammi, born in 1995, felt that she was introverted since she was a child and was born with "social fear". During her growth, she often transferred schools and studied abroad for a good educational environment. The partners around her were always changing, and she could not form a stable friendship.
Many of her peers around her have similar problems.
As an adult, she developed ways to expand her social circle.
For example, she successfully organized several unfamiliar girls to carry out "script killing" activities, and the participants' reactions were very enthusiastic.
Wang Shuixiong, a professor at the School of Sociology and Demographics at Renmin University of China, found that participating in activities such as "script killings" would indeed help the "social terror" crowd.
These "script killing" scripts are not completely life-like. They are usually set as scenes of fantasy dramas and inference dramas, which do not exist in real life, and young people can get better social experience from these virtual environments. You can gradually show the communication state that is more suitable for this kind of scene.
However, he also noticed some hidden problems with this type of activity.
For example, if the "social phobic" person wants to develop deeper interpersonal relationships that must be met and communicated, these activities are still not sufficient.
In addition, some people may become addicted to the more virtual type of activity "script kill", and they may stay in the fantasy of the relationship.
"It seems that it is enough to keep communication on the fundamentals, which may bring new problems."
As described in the famous sci-fi movie "Her", the story of humans falling in love with AI in the future world, and it is difficult to hold hands with real people, is also happening among the "social fear" crowd.
Designer A Zhuang has encountered such a problem. Currently single, he is active in love affairs, and has also met a few girls, but he has been too lazy to meet and only likes "online chat".
"It's strange that you don't like to meet when you're in a relationship? But I don't know why."
How to inject reality into this virtual interaction, preventing people from switching back and forth between real and virtual emotions, causing greater discomfort?
Wang Shuixiong suggested that it is better to do some "emotional intake" in these activities, and find ways to inject real emotional energy into them and connect them with real human emotions.
Some young people are indeed gradually getting out of "social fear" in real exchanges.
In the past, Sammi would use "social fear" as a mask to resist the elders' "social dinner", but after a while, she found that this kind of dinner is also beneficial. It is a real process of exchanging information, and gradually no longer rejects it this occasion.
Zhang Zeze began to work hard to overcome her "social fear". In fact, it was not that she could not adapt to social interaction at all. Before that, when she first started working, she went to the grassroots township to exercise, and her ability to communicate with people improved a lot at that time.
"This kind of contact is real, and it is much more meaningful than those wine bureaus."
(Sammi, A Zhuang, Zhang Zeze, Tang Xue are pseudonyms.)
"China News Weekly" Issue 12, 2022
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