Behind the abnormal consumption brought by Chinese idol culture

This video has attracted a lot of attention in China recently. In the video, a group of workers are pouring milk drinks into the ditch. Behind them, there are tens of thousands of cases of milk waiting to be poured into the ditch. This absurdity stems from a Chinese talent show "youth has you 3", in which people vote for their favorite idols and finally choose nine people to become an idol group. In order to vote for the stars they like, consumers need to scan the QR code to buy the voting rights. However, the QR code is printed on the bottle cap by the merchants. If they want to vote, they have to open the bottle cap. However, the milk deteriorates overnight, which is why the picture in the video above appears. Businesses make rules for the program group, and fans can get extra voting opportunities by buying the designated milk drinks. That is to say, the more milk they buy, the more votes they have. According to statistics, fans need 3.5-5.4 yuan to buy the right to vote once, and the latest number of votes of the top nine players has exceeded 56 million, which means that they have purchased about 200 million yuan of milk, and the two billion yuan is the business income of the enterprise. This allowed the company to grow against the current downturn in the milk market, and its turnover has been soaring. This matter was finally well solved under the control of the government.

 

In recent years, in China, the voting culture of fans has become more and more abnormal. The reason behind this is also inseparable from consumerism. Capitalism pays attention to the potential of youth market and constantly creates stars to satisfy the essence of youth idolatry. On the one hand, with the rise of the Internet and mobile Internet, fan culture begins to show the characteristics of individual dominance. On the other hand, the intervention of capital makes entertainment idols appear brand. In the entertainment star industry, the concept of "character setting" was born. From this point of view, stars are not only real people, but also false. In front of the camera, they hide their true appearance and pretend to be a perfect image to satisfy the fantasy of fans. Capitalism is selling this perfect fantasy to fans. In order to get more income, they constantly induce fans to consume and let fans buy milk to vote. However, they don't care how much food waste and resource loss this competition system will cause. In the eyes of capitalism, there are only benefits. This kind of market situation also leads to the commercial capital to pursue the "idol value maximization" in the short term. After the stars are popular, they use the sales volume of advertising endorsement and various derivative products to make fans consume quickly. As Neil Boltzmann said in his book‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’（2009）, media has a decisive influence on the center of cultural spirit. There is no difference between the essence of idol culture and advertising culture. In ‘ways of seeing’（2015）, johnberg said that the essence of advertising is to create charm, and so is the essence of stars. Idol culture takes the subtle relationship between stars and fans as an opportunity to persuade and please consumers and induce them to consume. Idol culture, as a new vitality of capitalism, continues to reap consumers' wallets. But for consumers, it is just a beautiful dream of nothingness. People who fall into the dream have already lost the ability to appreciate themselves and become followers of idol culture.