How did the magical and brainwashing "Love Like Fire" trigger a communication frenzy?

It is not new that earthy songs become popular. Recently, "Love Like Fire" has become a big hit with the help of short video platforms. Not only did the song become popular, but it also brought many Internet celebrities to fame. Then, with the secondary creation of netizens, it began to move towards an increasingly intense dissemination carnival. What kind of Internet phenomenon is this? Let's follow this article to find out.

"My heart is beating because love is like a raging fire; you are laughing because I am the crazy one." While Li Ronghao's "Wumeizijiang" is caught up in a controversy over popular songs, another internet hit "Love Like Fire" is becoming more and more popular thanks to Na Yina's offline performances and the secondary creations of netizens.

With its dynamic rhythm, popular and straightforward lyrics, and Na Ye-na's magical and brainwashing performance, this "earthy" divine song swept all major platforms. Netizens exclaimed: "The first time I listened to it, I was like, what the hell is this? The Nth time I listened to it, my heart was beating..."

(A promotional poster made by netizens for Na Yina)

Tujia songs are not uncommon. From the popular Tujia songs in the past few years to the popular Douyin hits, most Tujia songs will disappear in the ever-changing Internet after a brief period of glory. However, "Love Like Fire" has continuously evolved into a new topic in the netizens' tap water and secondary creation carnival.

Some people criticized this song for being vulgar, cheap, and sensational; but if you open the comment section of the song, you will find that many netizens are vying to make use of the meme and cheer for it.

After enduring heavy criticism and viral spread, "Love Like Fire" vividly demonstrates today's Internet ecology. Under the spotlight of the Internet platform, the audience, Internet celebrities and live broadcast platforms have become accomplices of this absurd drama.

1. Tacky Love is like Fire? A Modern Deconstruction of Musical Values

In recent years, there have been many songs that have become popular with the help of short video platforms. Whether it is a catchy Douyin hit or a classic song that has been processed at twice the speed, short video platforms have undoubtedly loosened the golden standard for judging the value of music .

On the one hand, some Douyin hits, though mocked as being tacky, have earned enough traffic and attention. Many of the top ten hits of the year on the 2021 Tencent TMEA Music Festival list are Douyin hits; on the other hand, it is increasingly difficult for good music works to gain a foothold in the ever-changing Internet era and gain the living space they deserve.

Unlike traditionally released songs, the popularity of "Love Like Fire" did not come from an orthodox music platform, but rather from the fact that the anchor "Na Yina" promoted it during a live broadcast and used a funny and off-key performance to attract a large number of onlookers. This unconventional approach made it a hit with the help of online live broadcasts and the help of netizens.

(Top Ten Hot Songs of the Year at Tencent TMEA Music Festival 2021)

The dissemination mechanism of "Love Like Fire" is similar to that of many popular online songs. They all have simple catchy melodies and catchy lyrics, and with the help of a large number of short videos with this as the background music, they have achieved blanket coverage on all platforms. As a result, even if you have never formally heard some songs, you can still hum them naturally .

Singer Wang Feng once described this type of music as "functional music." Different from the songs created by traditional music, these songs are more based on the logic of industrial production, using the most brainwashing melodies to occupy the eardrums of the public.

Secondly, short videos deepen the connection between divine songs and videos. For example, when we hear "Mi Xue Bing Cheng Tian Mi", various video images of the Snow King will naturally emerge in our minds. People increase the intense pleasure and memory brought by examining the object from the dual dimensions of hearing and vision .

(Various secondary creations of "Love Like Fire")

In addition, many netizens have made secondary creations based on "Love is Like Fire", thus deriving new consumer products such as the lyrical version of "Love is Like Fire", the rock version of "Love is Like Fire", and the ghost version of "Love is Like Fire", thus adding fuel to its secondary dissemination.

Different individuals re-deconstruct the musical value of "Love Like Fire" in their own way, giving it new labels, and thus finding new audiences. Everyone is glued to the Internet, just waiting for a certain vertical category to find themselves. The era when the masses are the audience is obviously over, and everyone can hand in their own derivative answers on the panoramic land of the Internet.

Behind this song, the value symbol of music and the subject symbol of the singer itself form a close complementary relationship. It is Na Yina's praise and attention on the live broadcast platform that has evolved a new trend.

2. The popular Na Ye-na? A trendy rebellion in marginal culture

Internet celebrity Na Yina, a Douyin anchor, originally pretended to be "Russian Nana", but her true identity was eventually exposed by netizens and she was banned. After a period of transformation, she finally became a top star among sexual minorities with her funny accent and dual labels of being similar to Gu Ailing.

With the continuous rise of the internet celebrity economy, more and more people are joining the ranks of internet celebrities. At a time when the threshold for content creation is getting lower and lower, individual internet celebrities are increasingly relying on vertically classified audiences and looking forward to breaking out of their original specific groups.

Early Internet celebrities, such as the well-known Sister Furong and Sister Feng, attracted attention with their bold and outrageous images and outrageous remarks, and became popular on the Internet. These exaggerated symbols cater to the psychological needs of netizens to ridicule and pry into private space on the Internet.

At this time, Internet celebrities often use the conflict between their individual image and group cognition as a memorable point for social discussion. They gain topic discussion by doing things that do not conform to the mainstream social values ​​at the time.

But looking at it now, the emergence of Sister Furong and Sister Feng also symbolizes the conflict between grassroots culture and elite culture at that time. There is no difference between the two, but the times chose the elite's right to speak in public opinion.

Today, Na Yina is different from the conflicting relationship between an individual and a group. She is more like an identity representative promoted by a group. By using her internet celebrity identity, she has achieved cultural exchanges between different groups.

Sexual minorities took the lead in spreading "Love Like Fire" on multiple platforms. The magical music and Vogueing dance moves further deepened people's visual understanding of the song. Soon after, more people combined the song with other cultural symbols in a nonsensical way.

(Early spontaneous promotional dance for "Love Like Fire")

Just like the common materials in the ghost animal area of ​​​​Bilibili, classic dramas such as "The Legend of Zhen Huan" and "Wulin Wai Zhuan" have become shared cultural resources that can be played collectively without any threshold. Different groups have gained a carnival of shared culture from it, and the co-creation and sharing of cultural experiences has temporarily erased the differences between different groups.

In today's increasingly popular media environment, different groups have more rights to speak out and create. People's social mentality has also changed from looking up at the big screen to looking at the TV at eye level, and now looking down at the mobile phone screen.

The audience watching the live broadcast looks down at the objects on their phones and has the power to give them meaning. Therefore, we can find that the videos related to "Love Like Fire" are full of comments of various colors. Many of them adopt a posture of resisting deep thinking, using simple words to dissolve the sublime, in order to show their own uniqueness and humor.

Internet users try to take control of various cultural landscapes with an almost rebellious attitude, but the fact is that each of us is just a participant in a larger landscape, jointly constructing the Internet as a playground.

3. The Colosseum of Crowd Innovation? The Group Encirclement of Platform Algorithms

The popularity of "Love Like Fire" also proves that the essence of Internet celebrities is the game between individuals and social media. The different spiritual needs of netizens and the commercial interests of various algorithm platforms have constructed the media landscape of Internet celebrities.

Whether it is the absurd and funny live broadcast room of Zhang Dada recently, or the various shopping live broadcast rooms that were held before, they all imply that the development of media platforms has led to a new creative logic, from refined processing to original presentation, from the carefully edited short video bloggers like Papi Jiang to the wildly growing live broadcasts of all kinds.

In this process, we are like the audience in the ancient Roman Colosseum, while the Internet celebrities are bathed in the spotlight of the platform, harvesting "flowers" or "rotten eggs" from the audience. But whether it is flowers or rotten eggs, as long as there is traffic, the platform will become the biggest beneficiary.

Therefore, when we watch the live broadcasts of Na Yina and others, we often fall into a contradictory state: everyone envies Internet celebrities, but everyone seems to hate them. This contradictory mentality started with people's dissatisfaction and resistance to the rustic culture, but in the blink of an eye, everyone was attracted by capital and returned to the vicious circle of "consumer culture", and it became worse under the stimulation of the flow logic of technology.

Finally, we have to face a realistic problem: this carnival game has never ended, it just keeps looking for new hosts and repeating vulgar spiritual products. So, where is the way out?

The fact is, facing the cacophony of social media, it is impossible for any of us to stay out of trouble. We in the audience and the influencers on the stage have witnessed and participated in online hot spots time and time again.

(Netizens and anchor "Great China Nana" jointly created the live broadcast landscape)

Perhaps the only thing we can do is to remain tolerant and vigilant towards different cultural groups. We can watch Na Yina’s live broadcast for entertainment, or feel the “other self” of Papi Jiang’s videos. There are also a large number of Internet celebrities in other regions, providing new hot topics for our cultural life, and also ringing the alarm bell for our cultural life again and again.

Laughter and thinking never conflict, but in the ever-changing cultural torrent, we should expect that there will always be people who resist replacing seriousness with jokes and refuse to use jokes to undermine authority.

Just like the song "Love Like Fire": "You are laughing, but I am the crazy one."

Author: Tame Mu

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