Empty-nest youth refers to young people struggling in big cities. They live alone far away from their hometown and relatives, lacking emotional sustenance and family life. The pace of life is getting faster and faster, the social life of young people is getting less and less, and the lack of real social circle makes it easy for the Internet to become a kind of redemptive sustention. When we talk seriously about sex, we’re also talking about emotions.
1
When the word “empty-nest youth” appeared, Da MAO just stepped out of the state of “ant tribe”, and before he could become “Phoenix man”, he was framed by another concept, which made Da MAO feel depressed. Like sun Wukong, who was just learning the ability, he thought that he could somersault thousands of miles, but he did not escape from the palm of Buddha.
In Da MAO’s room, a double bed takes up more than half the space, and the rest is filled with books of various colors. Such a small room would eat up a third of a month’s wages, leaving little to eat and drink.
Beijing is very big, but the place that big hair feels to be able to go besides the unit is this small abode, although have all sorts of activity, but the individual character is shy he always fears to dissolve alone after the party alone loneliness. Not to mention, every day to squeeze himself into the crowd crowded subway to work, has made him tired, finally a little free time, just want to be alone.
However, when he couldn’t sleep suddenly and didn’t know who to find for a drink, Da MAO felt lonely. Although he had made a full plan for himself, from watching movies, reading books, listening to music to learning to draw a guitar, when he couldn’t sleep and was depressed, he could only feel the pain like doing exercises in high school.
At some point, he began to pour out the “social platforms” that, unlike WeChat, QQ and weibo, smelled of hormones.
It is probably because of these platforms that he doesn’t care whether he is single or not, because his physical and psychological emptiness can be solved in “there” anyway.
“If a person says he is lonely, he is describing a state. If a person says he is lonely, he is describing a need.” Heavy hair will do a lot of things he likes in the lonely state, but he also has a lot of lonely needs. At this time, those colorful social platforms become the way to meet the needs.
In the field of mass social and acquaintance social, there are enough existing products to provide complete functionality and a relatively strong relationship chain. But that’s not all people socialize with today.
In the era of traditional social networking and Internet social networking, people tend to focus on the topic of sex in drunken jokes or online banter. With the advent of mobile Internet, da MAO, an “empty-nester youth” who stays at home between work and life, has a secret social place.
2
Arlene didn’t want to fall in love, but sometimes she felt a sudden void. This year she was 27 years old, and the second year she drifted away. After graduation, she stayed in Beijing to fight with her college boyfriend, who moved in with her boss and eventually left her, leaving her disappointed in the so-called love. After being single for half a year, walk out from brokenhearted gradually, do not want to fall in love again easily however.
But the sudden emptiness of the night, like a sudden opening in her body, made Arlene feel uneasy.
But what troubles Her most is that in Beijing, no matter at work or in life, she has a lot of pressure, but she can’t talk to her friends and colleagues, which often makes her feel blocked.
Once he joked with his best friend A Zi, “It’s so difficult in Beijing, the physiology and the heart are a hole.” Her best friend suggested a dating platform for her and said vaguely, “Be careful with this.”
This is a social platform that speaks of “booty call freedom”. Female members are free, but submit photos showing their bodies, while male members are required to pay a hefty membership fee. It reminded Arlene of a quote she had read earlier: “Women tend to have more choice in social networks. Curiosity, self-expression, comfort seeking and desire trading are the main internal drivers in the sex-related dating world.”
This may seem like a good way to describe the platform, but that’s not necessarily the case.
The pace of life is getting faster and faster, and the social life of young people is getting less and less
The social platform recommended to Arlene was invited to join by an insider and received a “commission”. Ah Zi thought commission was a bad word, but couldn’t think of a better one. “I either trade money through this platform, or it’s a subsidy,” she repeated. But she quickly added, “But I understand why people would choose to trade for money.”
Three years ago, She said, her second book had just graduated. “That salary was not enough to live on.” Thus, several so-called “aid exchanges” were carried out in this way.
“It’s all part of life,” she said, lighting a slender lady’s cigarette. “Aid sex, or a legalized red-light district abroad, I think it’s understandable. I know why it’s banned in China, but can it really be banned?”
“What Spa doesn’t have some content? Isn’t a man selling his time and his health by fighting to the death?” Violet put out her cigarette, turned, and began walking around the bedroom in her gauguin shoes. “Which do you prefer, angel or devil?”
She went back to the social platform she had recommended to Arlene, which was set up by a group of overseas returnees she had met in a bar and found “quite interesting” what they were doing. At the extreme, they feel, “booty call gets emotional, and if the other person doesn’t want to, the emotional person is accused of being irresponsible.” .
To attract male members and get funding to set up the platform, they went around inviting women who were sexually open.
That’s how Violet was invited. Male members of this platform are divided into several levels. The premium members can get subsidies for Them. When they have demands and other premium members accept the offer, the platform will subsidize the hotel, transportation, makeup expenses and other items for female members.
But on the other hand, she says, “Everything is just a commercial game. It’s like high heels. You just play when you’re young and you get tired and you take them off.”
3
Maomao feels that online communication is very different from face-to-face communication. “I can’t see the other person’s expressions, I can’t hear the other person’s tone, I can’t feel the other person’s body language,” he says.
In various platforms that rely on language and writing to communicate, Da MAO often has misunderstandings with others. He often regards thumb up as attention and appreciation, and simple reply as sincere communication. However, the distortion of network language and the flood of emojis often make him feel that he is not communicating with people, but trapped in the algorithm of machines.
Often after an hour or two of talking, he only feels tired and empty.
Maybe that’s why live streaming is so popular now, Da MAO thought. It seems that there is no nutritional interaction, but because it is a “face to face” communication with tone and body expression, it gives people a pleasant sensation of being paid attention to. He also heard people around him joke, half-truthfully, that “the only thing you watch is to flirt with the screen.”
But Da MAO has always been fond of live broadcasting, feeling that “it is obviously teasing each other, but it is disguised as daily communication”, let alone a host facing hundreds or even tens of thousands of people, he is just one of so many desires.
MAO calculated that “the money spent on various platforms that are essentially dealing with hormonal problems would be better saved up and paid for membership on a more straightforward platform.”
He soon found a platform that was “straightforward enough”. With a maximum fee of 70,000 and lifetime membership, the platform will tailor female members to male members and provide them with female members in demand as soon as possible.
According to his consumption level, Da MAO chose the cheapest member, 2,899 yuan, and for a year, he was randomly recommended to two female members per month.
But to Da MAO’s dismay, female members would either close or ignore him as soon as they heard he wanted to make an offer. I went to customer service to complain, and the response was, “this is a dating platform, not every female member comes to booty call.”
“Wasn’t it clear when I first paid my membership fee that this was a free booty call platform?” Customer service patiently told him, “saying booty call is free is not the only purpose of booty call.”
This makes heavy hair feel depressed, because he does not want to fall in love through this platform, since do not want to fall in love, but also a false set, will really want to do things hidden and tucked, one side let heavy hair feel false, one side let heavy hair feel after girls know the truth by emotional injury is very bad.
“Don’t worry, people know what they’re doing when they come to this platform. Sometimes routines are necessary, just like people are sexier with clothes on, while naked people have no desire at all.”
Big MAO can’t argue with that.
As soon as da MAO heard about “booty call on booty call, why do we have to set a routine”, he was disgusted. He was a college classmate of da MAO and now works as a market researcher for a social APP company.
More than once, Da Sui told Da MAO, “If you go around asking for appointments frankly, you won’t be able to find the right girl.” But Big Hair is stubborn, said that perseverance is victory.
Before I contacted this job, I was disgusted with this hormone-dependent social APP. Because I could not find a suitable job after graduation, I had to start from this company bravely.
But after joining, it was fun, and the income was good, so I stuck with it. But when it comes to talking about the job, it’s easy to get the cold shoulder.
“Young people like us, from the same income and background, are pushed forward every day and are working themselves to death.” “But that little thing in your body that doesn’t exist is actually accumulating, waiting to explode, which is why while there are already so many social apps out there, there will be more to come, and variations to consume young people’s hormones.”
Then he added, “in the case of maomao, it is to think of things as too simple, as if human beings are complex love affairs in addition to straightforward booty call. In fact, human beings are animals hovering between sex and emotion, or, in other words, people are willing to consume a mixture of sex and emotion.”
4
At midnight, Arlene and her friends came out of the bar. The half-drunk friend stopped to open a stranger dating app on her phone, picked out one of the people who greeted her, and said into the voice receiver: ‘Can you come over and buy me a snack now?’ A few minutes later, a taxi pulled up to the side of the road. The two men shook their phones at each other.
Arlene watched her friend get into the car and tried to say something, but they had already disappeared into the night.
Arlene, who had called the taxi, felt tired and opened the software. Since joining the dating platform, Arlene has been recommended to about three male members a month, passing when she’s lonely. But by the end of the four months, she was sick of the conversation — it was routine.
Up until this point, she had approved a friend request called Da MAO
“Hello.” Arlene, who was drowsy in the taxi, did not reply.
“Call me hairy. I’m not here to fall in love.”
The words made Arlene’s eyes twitch and her face turn black.
“I mean, I’m just here for the platform’s slogan.”
“Oh.” Arlene replied, feeling relieved that this was the 16th guy the platform had recommended, and that she had finally met a guy who didn’t follow the same formula.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll sleep.” Arlene typed the words, turned off her cell phone and told the taxi driver to call her when she was there.
“This is the eleventh girl.”
In the sixth month after joining the platform, the 12th girl recommended by the platform to Da MAO failed to pass his invitation, while the girl with the ID of Rabbit tooth passed through at one o ‘clock in the morning, and then said she was sleepy. I wonder if I will reply tomorrow.
Heavy hair to find a few customer service, said each appointment is not successful, the other side sent more than 20,000 words of “flirty sister routine guide”, Heavy hair glanced, felt a sense of weakness. “If everyone follows these patterns, wouldn’t it be all fake online?” Each of us cloaks our purpose in a variety of colors, and takes what might be said honestly by others as a cover for our true purpose.
At this moment, Da MAO is staring at the ceiling, wanting to jump out of the virtual society of the network.
He once read an article about an experiment: he registered two different accounts, one for a man and one for a woman, on the same social platform. He used the male account to greet 30 women and received only 2 replies a day. The female account was greeted by nearly 50 men in one day.
Why are women the dominant force in social life? Heavy hair. It may be that men have a stronger need to “socialize with the sexes” and tend to be more outwardly visible. In this trend, men on social networks tend to court women, and women can choose among many men whom they like to communicate with.
Hormones of empty-nesters
The hangover made Arlene feel her brain move inside her skull as if she were stepping on cotton. At four o ‘clock on Sunday afternoon. Arlene was the only one left in the three-room, one-hall rented house. The neighbors who shared the room did not know where to go. The room on the left is occupied by a couple, and on the right by a local girl from a Beijing suburb who returns home every weekend.
Arlene wanted to open her phone and order takeout, but saw a message from the man with ID “da MAO” last night, “I’m not here for a relationship, but I’m not just here for booty call either. I mean, just to be clear, don’t be disappointed to find out that you’re not in a relationship, but you spend emotional time, that’s not interesting.”
“What’s so interesting?”
After sending this message, Arlene thought, what’s the point of living? Oneself at the outset stay in Beijing is to want to fight for a few years together with the boyfriend, then have a family, still insist to stay in Beijing now, it is to want to prove to that person oneself also can live very well at first, can come out from brokenhearted hind, why still stay?
5
“Be to play bai, which have so much truth.” Look down at the beautiful son of the phone have a build nothing to say, “what things ask out why, you are not tired ah, I listen to all tired, want to play, don’t want to play don’t play.
Miko has just graduated from college and works for a public relations company in charge of medical affairs. On the subject of virtual social networking, she showed impatience as two or three social apps switched between each other on the screen, only to find people staring at the phone, slamming the screen off, taking out lipstick and a mirror and starting to apply it.
One side of The Arlene immediately round up, “Little beauty is very good, is more straightforward.”
“I don’t understand why it’s so easy to ask questions about social software. It’s supposed to be fun. You have to ask questions, add meaningless things, or get yourself into trouble because it’s so boring.” Meizi “snap” shut the small mirror, the things in the hand to the red small leather bag a plug, said “I go, you slowly chat”, on the five or six centimeters high leather boots “clunk” out of the door.
It’s six or seven degrees in early January in Beijing, and Miko is wearing nothing but a brown, over-the-knee trench coat with a summer-like look underneath, her boots just above the knee showing her shiny thighs.
Arlene shrugged. “That’s how Miko is. She has plans, too. She always says that if she gets tired of playing this year, she will stop playing, become a good girl, work hard and fall in love seriously. But all she wants now is to have a good time.”
It’s like the beginning of Trainspotting: “To choose life, choose a job, career choice, choose the family, the fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, CD players, electric can opener, choose good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, choose low interest loans, select a house, choose your friends, choose casual wear and matching luggage choose instalment, three piece suit, with his mama a series of cloth, choose DIY, also suspect you do on Sunday morning, choose sitting, watching the mind numb, let the heart broken quiz program, fuck your mouth full of junk food, finally the whole people decay in the end, It’s just embarrassing to have a bunch of selfish bastards in a miserable home, to bore yourself, to choose your future, to choose your life, but why would I do such a thing? I choose not to choose life. I choose something else. Why? There’s no reason. There’s heroin. What else do you need?”
I think Miko knew that. She would say, “There’s no reason. There’s social software.
6
“What’s so interesting?”
The mobile phone ding Dong, attracted is reading the big hair, scratch open the mobile phone, see “rabbit’s tooth” this reply, he froze, finger on the virtual keyboard of the mobile phone, but a word did not output.
Yeah, what does it mean?
‘Are you there?
“In.”
‘Why don’t you talk? Arlene typed as she ate her takeout. She did not know that heavy hair was in a daze just as she had been lying on the bed.
“Because I don’t know what to say.”
Arlene could not help laughing. She felt that he was an interesting man, so they started to talk about the topic of “what is the meaning of living”.
Now they were sitting in front of me, holding hands and telling me how they knew each other. I couldn’t help asking, “What happened next?”
“Then? They’re together.”
I think they could tell more legendary stories, but in the end they just said the above content, but this is the characteristics of this era, they put themselves on the Internet because of the dissatisfaction of reality, and when they find the reality opens a door, they will not hesitate to leave the virtual society back to reality.
But thirty years ago, this story would not only be legendary, but no one would believe it was true.
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