This year, we are all tired of judging ugliness

The popularity of the culture of ugliness on the Internet remains high. There are ugly cultural relics from Sanxingdui, popular ugly things on Taobao, and ugly cats that have received thousands of likes. There is even an "ugliness-awareness" alliance base on Douban - the Ugly Things Protection Association Group. "So weird, so weird that people want to take a second look", "The ultimate tacky is trendy", these voices often appear in the bullet screen and comment area.

Although only 200 days have passed this year, I still can't help but say: This year, we are almost tired of judging ugliness.

So what makes people obsessed with ugliness? Why do we sometimes feel refreshed when we look at ugly things? Why are we attracted to "ugly things"? This phenomenon is called the Pandora effect in psychology. The psychological mechanism of the Pandora effect is people's curiosity and rebellious psychology. In simple terms, "if you don't ban it, you won't do it. The more you ban it, the more you do it."

Simply prohibiting something without explanation will make it have a special attraction that is different from other things, and people will involuntarily shift more attention to it. Psychological research shows that exploring the unknown things in the world around us is a stable need with biological significance formed by humans in the long-term evolution. When people come into contact with relatively new things in the outside world, they will have multiple psychological reactions: First of all, fear, at this time, people's psychological safety mechanism will be triggered, prompting the activity of the human body to increase significantly, so as to be ready to deal with danger at any time.

At the same time, a curiosity will arise, which is similar to fear, and the body's activity level will be significantly increased. Therefore, curiosity is often accompanied by a sense of excitement. This curiosity can greatly stimulate individual interests, guide behavioral tendencies, and then tempt us to open "Pandora's Box". In daily life, many of our interests and behavioral orientations are the result of this curiosity.

Rebellious psychology refers to a psychological activity that occurs when the objective environment is inconsistent with the needs of the subject, and it has a strong resistance emotion.

The behavior of ugliness appreciation is largely derived from our biological instinct of curiosity and the subjective needs of rebellious psychology. Why is the culture of ugliness appreciation so popular? The hierarchy of needs theory proposed by American psychologist Maslow divides human needs into five levels from low to high like a ladder, namely: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs.

The appreciation of ugliness largely satisfies people’s need for respect:

1. Respect for others - empathy and altruism The slogan of Douban Ugly Things Protection Association is, "Ugly things gather together, happy and joyful, without caring about other people's eyes." Beauty attracts pity, and ugly things also need love.

We are judged by the eyes of others every day. Liking ugly things is a kind of empathy. When we see ourselves being treated poorly in ugly things, altruism arises: when we empathize with people in need, we put ourselves in the position of others and experience events and emotions in that person's way.

When we show care and acceptance to ugly things, our need for respect is met. This need for respect can make people full of confidence in themselves, full of enthusiasm for society, and experience the usefulness and value of their own lives.

2. Respected by others - social approval and self-disclosure Another important source of daily ugliness is rustic videos. Dong Chenyu, a lecturer in the Department of Journalism at Renmin University of China, once defended the name of rustic videos in his Douban column. He said: "Ugly videos meet the cultural needs of a group that has long been ignored by the mainstream. This group may be a group of young people in third- and fourth-tier cities, or even in rural areas. The mainstream aesthetics of city dwellers may be out of reach for them." Fei Xiaotong wrote in "Rural China": "From the grassroots level, Chinese society is rural. It has a glorious history that grew out of the soil, and it will naturally be bound by the soil." Previously, due to the social status quo of urban and rural development and the cultural discourse power held by capital, popular culture could not make its own voice, and the general public was missing and obscured in the mainstream cultural field.

Everyone hopes to have a stable social status and that their abilities and achievements can be recognized by society. Social approval refers to the need to be appreciated and accepted, and the belief that culturally acceptable and approved behavior can satisfy this need. Tuwei videos provide a window for satisfying this need. When faced with some ugliness spread on the Internet, people will feel safe and confident to reveal themselves, revealing the most real, secret and original parts of their hearts, thereby gaining pleasure and satisfaction. At a time when cultural discourse power has returned to the hands of ordinary people, popular culture, with its unique aesthetic system and value orientation, is launching a powerful impact on mainstream culture.

3. Self-esteem - downward social comparison Of course, the reason why earthy videos can be so widely circulated on the Internet and have such a great impact is not only because they meet the needs of social approval of some people, but also because some people get self-esteem and self-superiority by comparing with people who are worse than themselves. This kind of comparison is called downward social comparison. When people encounter negative life events such as failure, they tend to make downward comparisons and maintain their subjective well-being and positive self-evaluation by lowering the reference point of self-evaluation. Therefore, downward comparison is a coping mechanism for coping with stressful events and maintaining mental health, and it has a good adaptive function. However, some studies have also noted that the direction of the impact of social comparison on adolescent behavior and psychology is not stable and fixed; White et al.'s survey and research also showed that frequent downward social comparisons will make individuals regard self-consciousness as an object, leading to more and more frequent downward comparisons, accompanied by negative emotions and behaviors such as guilt, blame, jealousy and lying.

The popularity of earthy videos has caused people to worry, and this worry is not without reason. In the era of traffic, countless people are willing to sensationalize in order to attract attention, and countless more people get pleasure from ugliness and curiosity. However, this is a deformed pleasure. Over time, it will have a significant negative impact on people's behavior and psychology. Being addicted to earthy videos is not "ugliness". In a sense, it insults the word "appreciation" and the word "ugly". Looking back, let's think about what "ugly" is. What is the criterion for judging ugliness and beauty? To talk about ugliness, let's first understand what beauty is. Beauty includes both the external material form of the aesthetic object and the internal organizational structure of the aesthetic object.

We can usually tell at a glance that some people's faces are more beautiful than others. This is because our brain has a schema for the external form of beauty. Schema is a network of knowledge and experience in the human brain, and is a specific image with a certain generalization. Based on the main sensory organs of aesthetic form - vision and hearing and their comprehensive application, aesthetic form can be divided into three categories: visual aesthetic form (shape schema, color schema), auditory aesthetic form (rhythm schema, melody schema), and comprehensive aesthetic form (proportion schema, symmetry schema, harmony schema).

They are one of the foundations and prerequisites for people to analyze, create and appreciate specific aesthetic forms in the face of various aesthetic objects. For example, there is an average criterion in the harmony schema: in a sense, the most average face is the most beautiful. Here, "average" means that all parts are moderate. The eyes and nose are neither too big nor too small, and the lips are neither thick nor thin. Of course, a face that meets this standard will never look ordinary, but will give people a stunning feeling.

This is consistent with our daily intuition. For example, the average of the four faces below is more beautiful than the four original faces.

Of course, aesthetics is not just about external beauty, we also emphasize internal beauty. Internal aesthetics is generally divided into the categories of aesthetic subject (such as beauty, aesthetic concept, aesthetic taste, aesthetic ideal, etc.), aesthetic object (such as beauty, sublimity, humor, funny, tragic, comedic, etc.), and aesthetic creation (such as art, realism, romanticism, typicality, artistic conception, etc.). The aesthetic feeling of art is gradually generated and developed in the social practice centered on material production labor, so the aesthetic path of mankind is not achieved overnight and unchanging.

For example, in ancient times, being fat and strong was considered beautiful. This was because oil and protein were relatively scarce at the time, and having more fat gave people a clear survival advantage and social status, so being fat and strong was gradually defined as beautiful. In modern times, the social structure has changed, and everyone's time freedom and health are linked to wealth and social status. Obesity can also lead to a variety of chronic diseases that consume a lot of cash flow, so obesity was once defined as ugly. This is a typical proof that social changes affect the judgment of beauty and ugliness. What makes people feel ugly is not the external characteristics, but the social judgment standards behind it are also very critical factors.

Ugly appreciation——breaking psychological stereotypes and improving creativity

The aesthetics of ugliness also has some positive meanings.

As mentioned above, beauty is often a kind of schema. After long-term and repeated practice, artists often form an aesthetic mindset and image mindset. The concept of mindset was proposed by Soviet psychologist Uznaty. In the process of social practice, people develop certain habits, behaviors and personality tendencies while acquiring a lot of knowledge and experience. These habits and tendencies constitute a state of psychological preparation and psychological tendency before carrying out a certain activity. Mental set often appears in people's perception, memory, thinking, behavior and attitude. Mindset is a kind of mental set.

The so-called mindset is the route, method, procedure and pattern of relatively stable and stereotyped thinking tendency formed in repeated practice by following the experience and laws of thinking activities accumulated in previous social practices. The positive effect of mindset on people's psychological activities is that it helps thinking activities to proceed quickly, agilely and effectively; but it often restricts creative thinking activities, making it difficult for people to break through the old framework or lack flexibility, and even distorts the reflection of real objects. The appreciation of ugliness can cultivate the development of creative thinking, and we can get inspiration from "ugly things". These "ugly things" do give people a very shocking visual and psychological feeling, but in terms of color matching, material and line processing, they all reveal careful design, just seeking the effect of novelty in appearance, not really to make people feel ugly.

From this perspective, ugly things that can attract people's appreciation are not ordinary.

Besides, the human evaluation system is complex and contains multiple systems. The social aesthetic standards are constantly changing, and standards are often the most non-standard thing. From this point of view, ugliness and beauty are not opposites, but interdependent. As the saying goes, "When everyone in the world knows that beauty is beauty, then it is ugly; when everyone knows that goodness is goodness, then it is not good."

The appreciation of ugliness represents the young people's rebellious consciousness against mainstream and elite culture. If aesthetics is instinctive, then the appreciation of ugliness is reflection. As a spontaneous self-expression of the masses, the appreciation of ugliness culture has undoubtedly broadened the cultural boundaries and enriched the connotation of aesthetics.

(Editor: Gao Peiwen)

References

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