Avatars that make leaders lose the desire to communicate: Find yourself behind thousands of avatars

Faced with stressful work, the mentality of workers has gradually become indifferent to the world. This article starts from the perspective of WeChat avatars and introduces in detail the current situation of workers' avatars and the reasons behind them. I hope it will be helpful to you.

"When I changed my profile picture to this one, not only did my boss lose the desire to communicate with me, but my boss also didn't even want to look at me anymore."

The mental state of workers is not only reflected in the endless jokes, but also in their social profile pictures.

Recently, "avatars that make leaders lose the desire to communicate" have resonated with people on major social platforms. The characters in these avatars have dull eyes or funny expressions. Faced with stressful work, people's mentality has gradually changed from being positive and striving for the first place to being more "Buddhist" and indifferent to the world .

This group of people began to actively give up active communication with their bosses and were willing to muddle through. This mentality is of course exaggerated by the Internet entertainment, but it is also the common voice of many workers facing work.

What is more worthy of our deep reflection is that most of the "avatars" are only preserved in jokes and social sharing. Facing reality, more people still have to become the obedient and well-behaved character, jumping back and forth between the two poles of progress and failure.

Behind the avatars that make leaders lose the desire to communicate, there are more reflections of people’s insincerity at work and helplessness in life .

1. “Crazy” avatars: similar life dilemmas for workers

It is not difficult to find that these avatars all have similar characteristics - they do not look very smart. At the same time, they also imply similar life situations of many workers - they are not satisfied with their work and want to slack off every day.

Avatars are the first window of each user's personalization on social media. They not only establish connections between people and social accounts, but also reflect and shape the identity of users to a certain extent . Just like we often make fun of the "rich and powerful" avatars of middle-aged people, in fact, they are ridiculing people who are out of touch with the trend.

Avatars not only extend the space for people to express themselves freely, but also extend the real-life situation to the virtual space. Especially in the current Internet age, people may spend much more time communicating online than face-to-face communication.

Generally speaking, people prefer to use cute, handsome or good-looking avatars to show their positive side. However, avatars that make leaders lose the desire to communicate do the opposite, making their social avatars look more "dull" and "unintelligent", thus making leaders give up the idea of ​​entrusting them with important tasks.

This change reflects people's changing attitude towards life. If young people in their student years can still use the "bright future" to motivate themselves to study hard and get a good job, then young people in the working stage have already seen through the failure of their original expectations.

The contemporary working class feels endless fatigue and exhaustion from work itself. The 35-year-old age crisis, workplace discrimination faced by women, and the indefinite future promotion... These realistic difficulties that permeate the lives of every working person have caused them to begin to give up unwarranted fantasies, move towards external reflection and internal doubt, and not being disturbed may be the last gentleness they expect .

The various pressures from the outside world continue to consume everyone's mental strength. The "996" that cannot be changed is jumping back and forth between involution and lying flat. At this time, people naturally hope to have less work pressure and resist authority to a certain extent. These avatars are like a mental painkiller, temporarily paralyzing people's anxiety about reality .

But in fact, there are very few workers who can really change their avatars and go crazy without restraint. Behind the rebellion that seems to be "cool", we need to weigh more issues.

2. “Abandonment” communication: moving toward silence amidst discipline and rebellion

Why is it said that an avatar that makes leaders lose the desire to communicate is just a "happy article"?

The reason is that, although freedom extends to cyberspace, the tentacles of control also follow closely and continue to spread to social platforms . At work, the use of employee avatars by leaders has become one of the main aspects of control.

That’s why similar topics keep popping up. For example, the Weibo topic “My tutor sent me a private message asking me to change my profile picture” and the Zhihu post “What does it feel like to be asked by my mother to change my WeChat profile picture?” have attracted a lot of attention and discussion…

Faced with the work relationship of superiors and subordinates entangled with interests, due to the gap in social status, the rebellion of workers often only remains at a hidden level. Therefore, there are complaints and venting of "attacking hard on the Internet, but being submissive in reality". More workers can only feel the virtual pleasure of rebellious behavior in jokes .

(Weibo topic where tutors sent private messages asking people to change their profile pictures)

But it is undeniable that there are indeed some people with courage and rebellious spirit. They respond with concrete actions, hoping that more people can see the common plight of workers, and hope that someone can abandon the "good student" mentality and see that different choices are meaningful .

Make the leader lose the desire to communicate, thus achieving a giving-up style of communication. This may be the most "rebellious" behavior that workers can do in real life. They break the traditional social consensus that good students should be obedient and know how to cater to the expectations of their parents and teachers; good subordinates should be observant, tactful, and deliberately show themselves actively in front of their superiors .

Furthermore, they have blazed a new trail in a workplace where success is paramount, prompting us to rethink an important question: What is the meaning of work?

(The good boy’s thinking after work)

From a traditional perspective, work is a social behavior that aims to create social value and realize self-value. There is nothing wrong with this, but the primary difficulty that workers in modern society need to face is that, whether for social value or self-value, it seems that we need to sacrifice our emotional value .

In other words, my avatar should be positive and optimistic, and look reliable. Only such an avatar can become the golden key to realizing value in the first place. Everything is for the purpose of creating and accumulating wealth.

But the fact is that more and more people see the invasion and alienation of work itself, so job hopping and resignation in modern society are becoming more and more common. In the contradiction between social discipline and self-rebellion, we have been looking for different options .

Most ordinary people cannot afford the butterfly effect of arbitrarily changing jobs or leaving their jobs, but the reality of life forces people to do something. So changing to a "crazy" avatar, even if it only brings a short-term pleasure, is better than receiving the boss' silence than accepting endless harassment .

3. “Bipolar” Choice: Exploring Yourself in Madness and Diligence

The above-mentioned "crazy" avatars also point to a deeper problem of the times - deconstructing and rebelling against the existing lifestyle has become a trend . That's why we see many people advocating to be new-age workers, new-age independent women, new-age students...

These new era labels are nothing more than a new lifestyle choice, but ironically, some people always want to find a new sense of superiority from them. Just like when some people are confused about the avatars that make their leaders lose the desire to communicate, many people will attack these confused people and say that they are slaves to their work.

The attacked party will stigmatize the other party as a heretic and low in emotional intelligence. In such mutual accusations, online public opinion gradually formed two completely opposite factions. This opposition sentiment also spread to real life, making us feel that there are only these two choices at work .

But in fact, the term "working people" is a term with rich connotations. The classification criteria for working people should not only include the two options of working diligently and lying down and going crazy. In between the two extremes of the classification, there is an extremely broad area for exploration .

Just like "Liang Shuang" played by Guan Xiaotong in "Twenty Do Not Understand", she constantly switches between being a workplace reorganizer and a workplace lay-down hero, adjusting to different life modes according to changes in her life situations.

If we want to better explore the vast middle ground, the inevitable path is to think about the relationship between ourselves and work, and between work and life. Only when we use ourselves as the coordinate system for judgment can we escape the shackles of determining our own attitudes based on the standards of others .

There is no high or low in work, but it is indeed an important part of finding self-meaning and connecting with society. Just like the group of people who changed their avatars to make their leaders lose the desire to communicate, they also found a sense of control over their lives in a link or aspect of their work, even though it is just a small avatar.

But being able to have your own opinions and ideas in a complex workplace and being able to face the consequences of your choices is an important manifestation of being able to control yourself.

In the face of complex and confusing times, there has never been any panacea that can cure the stress and distress we face in work and life. But when we get a little response from these funny avatars and humorous jokes, we may be able to move forward better and find the focus of our lives .

Whether we are contented or successful, I wish we can all become a more complete self.

Author: Taming the Dusk

Source: WeChat public account: "Zhizhu.com (ID: covricuc)"