Text|Xing Yanyan.
More and more young people are beginning to buy "emotional value" for themselves online.
The "tree hole listening" service, which is looking for someone to accompany and complain, has seen a surge in sales on e-commerce platformsThe "Einstein's brain", which claims to automatically grow to the brain after being photographed, has sold 100,000+ and has even been selected as one of the top ten products in 2023After placing an order, the merchant will send a "buzzing" "virtual mosquito" to the designated social account, and the sales volume has also reached 1 million+;In addition, there are also scolding the love brain, "good luck spray", "transfer koi", etc., all of which have a lot of sales.
On the e-commerce platform, there are a variety of virtual emotional goods.
These virtual goods, at first glance, are very absurd and nonsensical, and the main focus is "one dares to buy, one dares to sell". After all, buying Einstein's brain has a long brain, and in the eyes of many people, it is somewhat brainless. However, the impressive numbers seem to remind people that more and more young people are starting to pay for their emotions through virtual goods.
In fact, everyone knows that virtual goods can't really solve their actual problems and difficulties, but why are there still many people willing to believe and place orders?But it's because they provide a valuable emotional value.
In chatting and interacting with strangers, people's small emotions that have nowhere to be placed in real life can be seen, accepted, responded to, and understood. Even if it's just for a moment of happiness and satisfaction, when the pressure is released, there is an outlet for emotions. Don't underestimate this kind of catharsis, people often need such emotional value when dealing with inner problems.
In fact, emotional value was originally a marketing concept, which refers to the difference between the emotional benefit and the emotional cost perceived by the customer. Today, it has been generalized to a sense of ability, the ability to make people feel good with words.
Not long ago, "emotional value" was included in the "Top Ten Popular Words of 2023" by the editorial department of "Biting the Text and Chewing Words". This also indicates that unlike the personality traits that people tended to endure and suppress and have hidden emotions in the past, today's young people are paying more and more attention to the observation and release of their own emotions, and they are eager to communicate deeply in an intimate relationship without losing independence.
However, due to the influence of electronic culture in the Internet age, offline interpersonal relationships are heavily dependent on technology, which inevitably deepens the sense of group loneliness in the virtual world. At the same time, more and more young people choose to work outside their hometowns, and the fast-paced life and the constantly compressed social space also amplify the sense of individual drift to a certain extent. Perhaps, as the thinker Hannah Arendt put it, "atomized individuals" – they may be very closely aligned, but at the same time isolated from each other.
Therefore, the desire for sincere companionship, the importance of emotional healing, and the pursuit of a higher level of psychological needs for a better life have become the emotional needs of more people. When public sentiment shifts into willingness to consume, virtual goods have the potential to become a business. As a result, some young people who focus on their emotional needs have begun to spend money to please themselves, paying for happiness, satisfaction, and ritual.
However, whether people place orders for temporary fun or for real feelings, when the acquisition of emotional value needs to be satisfied through consumption, it will inevitably bring a deeper thinking. That is, in real life, how can people's emotions be better soothed?Does the subconscious of buying virtual goods also contain a kind of avoidance and defense against interpersonal relationships?For young people who need to grow, are there more benefits to be gained from more authentic interactions with people?
In fact, different people have different opinions on whether emotional products can alleviate mental internal friction. But in fact, everyone understands that emotional products themselves do not have any peculiar effects, but are just a process in which personal emotions are projected onto a concrete object and then reflected back to the self. Who can really hope that a problem solution can be bought for a few cents, a few dollars?Most of them are just "spend a little money to buy a happy life".
Therefore, there is no need to worry too much about young people becoming dependent on such virtual goods that provide emotional value, and even if it does have a positive effect on problem solving, it is just a self-redemption and effort of young people themselves.
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