Written by (作者): Vincent R. Vinci 魏文深
Photos by (图片来源): posiegrenadine.blogspot.com
The May 4th and New Culture Movements were unprecedented steps in Chinese history, leading to a new birth of ideas – spurred on by a wider acceptance and surge in Western thought and philosophy – that led to many of?the political movements that shaped China as we know it today. Due to the turbulent times and revolutionary movements following the May 4th Era though, this flowering of thought was extinguished. Today, China is a prime?example of the theory of what some call post-postmodernism, the heir to postmodernism born in the internet savvy 2000s, an era whose youth are seemingly devoid of a willingness to cooperate towards a meaningful or righteous cause. China’s youth are an extreme, products of a society obsessed with reacting to what’s current, born of the current use of the internet as a means for the glorification of the receiver of information, not the author. Instead of powerful movements like the May 4th Movement, young people in China are so caught up with their own online worlds that there is no willingness to care about a cause that can make a difference.
Postmodernism is a form of thought expressed through the arts, literature, architecture, and criticism born in the late 20th Century that found irony in the structure of modernism and posited that truth was relative and fragmented, favoring the individual. In a departure from modernism, postmodernism questioned the confines of?reality, allowing people to challenge what was and what could be. In high school and college I was taught that postmodernism was a driving force in contemporary society, but many researchers and critics have been arguing for some time that postmodernism has been replaced by something far more fragmented in nature than its predecessor. The most cited work on the topic, “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond” by Alan Kirby, argues that this new mode of criticism was born from new technologies that restructured the relationship between the author, reader, and the text to the point where readers, or receivers of a piece, can form their own unique opinions or critiques and spread them about the internet for their 15 minutes of fame.
In other words, we are living in a society that has let the relativity of truth go haywire to the point that all works of art, literature, journalism, are done solely for the entertainment and individual interpretation by the recipient. Nowhere is this more evident than China, which has taken the use of mobile and smart technology to the next?level. As with other countries, comments on news stories, videos, and anything online are endless. There are instances though, where these comments have taken center stage. One Chinese video site reportedly changed?things up so that users’ comments on a specific video scroll across the screen while it plays. This way, users are forced to focus on the comments of other users rather than the video itself.
Other instances of the power of the comment can be found in online news reports, where the voices of netizens are constantly used to add a new level to the story. How Chinese youth react to social problems and issues is?quite similar to the reactions of Western youth as well. Causes are so diverse that anyone can follow or be against anything, even if a call to arms or boycott over something is face value only, not the real thing. Indeed, whenever?such causes present themselves, due to the speed of all things popping up all the time on the internet and our newsfeeds, its easy for people just to forget about it, eager to comment on something new, to let their voices shine for a second only to be drowned in the vast ocean of cyberspace. Thus, there is a divergence in youth that grew up in the 80s and 90s in China. Those in the 80s were more in tune with what was happening around them, seeing the need to rise up, but today, this is squashed, as with more things to distract them at a given time, today’s Chinese?youth don’t really have a common goal or cause to stand behind.
Couple this fact, this obsession with what’s new instead of a focus on the greater good, with the immediate editing and eradication of certain topics, and we can see how distractions can immediately curtail such positive movements. This isn’t to say that some people have and continue to legitimately try to stand up for various?groups and who fight against the ills present in contemporary society, but since these stories are easily replaced by what’s new and trending, the word can only travel so far.
五四运动和新文化运动在中国都是史无前例的，它们促使了新思潮的诞生（西方思想和哲学被广泛接受和推崇），引发了一些政治运动，正是这些运动将中国塑造成如今的模样。由于五四之后的动荡时期和改革运动，这场思潮最终受到压制。如今，中国是所谓的后-后现代主义理论最好的例子，后现代主义的继承人出生于21世纪的互联网时代，这一代年轻人似乎缺乏从事有意义或正义之事的意愿。出生在一个互联网的主要用途是满足信息接收者而不是作者的荣耀的时代，身处于一个沉溺于对当下事件作出即使反应的社会，中国的年轻人正处在一个极端的状态。与五四运动之类的大型运动相比，现在的中国青年更愿意沉迷于网络世界，而对国家大事漠不关心。
后现代主义是20世纪60年代以来在西方出现的具有反西方近现代体系哲学倾向的思潮，涉及艺术、文学、建筑等诸多领域，认为真理是相对的、主观的、因人而异的。后现代主义与现代主义背道而驰，质疑真理的定义，允许人们挑战既有观念。尽管高中和大学的课堂上把后现代主义称为社会的驱动力，也有一些研究人员和评论家认为后现代主义已经逐渐被解构主义所替代。作为被引用最多的代表性作品，阿兰·科比的《后现代主义的死亡及余波》认为，这种评论的新模式源自新技术对作者、读者和文本之间关系的“重建”，现在读者或者说信息接收者可以形成自己独特的观点或评论，为了短暂出名的目的而在网上大肆散播。
换句话说，我们生活的社会过度解读了真理的相对性，认为所有的艺术、文学和报刊作品只是为了娱乐和接收者的个人解读而生。在中国，手机和智能科技的使用提升到了另一个高度，这种现象比在其他任何地方都要显而易见。与其他国家一样，人们对新闻报道、影像资料以及网上任何东西的评论是无休无止的。也有一些实例显示这些评论已经占据了关注的焦点。据报道，一个中国视频网站作了些改变，使用户评论在播放视频的同时以弹幕形式出现，通过这种方式迫使观众将注意力集中于用户的评论而不是视频本身。
你也可以在网上的新闻报道中找到其它能证明评论的强大功能的例子，网民的呼声总是能为报道添加新的色彩。中国青年对社会问题作出的反应与西方青年很相似。起因是如此的多种多样，以至于任何人都可以支持或反对任何事，即使对某些事的支持或反对只是表面文章，并非出自真心。事实上，由于网上和各类媒体推送的任何信息都是不断更新的，人们很容易就会把它们忘到脑后，转而去评论新的事物，从而让自己的呼声得到片刻的关注，然后再一次石沉大海。因此，中国的80后和90后之间存在一些不同。80后更关心他们周围发生的事情，知道什么时候该发出反对的声音，但是现在，随着每个时间段内都有越来越多的事情让他们分心，中国青年已经失去了能让他们团结一致的共同目标或事业。
与此同时，随着一些话题的快速出现和消失，我们可以看到这种对于新事物而不是更有养分的信息的痴迷分散了年轻人的注意力，让他们无心致力于积极的运动。这并不是说人们不得不一直以正当的方式维护各类弱势群体和贫困群体，但既然这些报道会很快淡出人们的视野轻易被更新鲜热门的内容所替代，所有言词都不过是昙花一现。