We Are Stuck on The “Web” and May Become the Prey…

Social life in the twenty-first century is evolving more efficiently than ever before, and everything changes almost instantaneously. Often, just as we are getting excited about something new, another new product comes along and often leaves us dumbfounded. In some ways, the 21st century is an era of internet-based development. In recent years, the most talked about subject is the increasing power of self-media.

At the beginning of this century, when the great era of the internet first appeared, many people had different imaginations about the future, but many could never have imagined that one would enter into the present age where "everyone is a publisher". Self-media life has become a part of our lives, where everyday life is divided into two, half based on traditional reality and the other half influencing each other in a binary way of the online world. The early development of internet life was concentrated in developed countries such as USA and Europe due to the requirement of technology. Facebook was established in 2004, from then on people's habit of having online communities was gradually cultivated. in February 2005, YouTube was officially established, opening the window for the development of personal media channels. in 2010, Facebook started its social platform Instagram, once again, opened up a new dimension in the relationship between people and the internet. But based on the facts of the development in the past two years, it is said that "the real force driving the development of new media is in China."

The company's successful internet product Douyin is a global hit, and later derived from the overseas version of "Tik Tok", which is also popular among young people around the world. The huge traffic control of Jitterbug easily attracts the attention of many people. It has attracted a lot of people's attention. But in fact, the development of China's self- media did not originate from Douyin, but from the public number in 2016. The public number is a content dissemination channel based on the soil of WeChat, which is mainly based on text and images. The operator creates, edits, typesets and publishes the content. The cycle of this process is usually one day, and only by doing daily updates can it attract traffic persistently. The development of text-based self-media is changing the monopoly of the central voice in mass communication step by step, and the portability provided by the Internet gives all people the opportunity to run their own "cultural publications" to convey their thoughts. A lot of head public numbers have emerged over time, with a single day reading volume of 10w+. But people's demand for culture and entertainment has always been expanding, and though text content is rich obviously, but it is no longer enough to satisfy people. As pace of everyday life is getting faster and faster, all timeline is shortened and all people's attention is being constantly deprived by various factors. Tiring people crave more dopamine, so under such demand, short video was born. Since it is highly relevant to needs of the times, it quickly occupied the market heights as soon as it appeared.

The app has a variety of built-in editing templates and special effects presets. Users only need to face the same difficulty needed to take pictures with their phones to play short videos. "You can find anything and see any life on Jitterbug," says one Jitterbug user. Short videos take advantage of the contemporary people's inflated desire for expression and solve the multiple restrictions such as time space technology. With the content of both sound and picture special effects and the uninterrupted replacement of new content by just sliding down, such a short video mechanism has undoubtedly become a dopamine maker that cannot be left in daily life nowadays. Short video has officially opened the era of universal self-media, and everyone is a bit online. We have a distinctive image of the Internet, and every voice is like a butterfly vibrating its wings, affecting everyone online.

Products that catalyzed by times fit the characteristics of the times , but time is always changing, and so are we. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said "One cannot step into the same river twice. " Human culture will always coexist with development and revival , but will never repeat the past. With the information explosion in contemporary society and people's over-reliance on online life, we automatically claim dopamine by swiping up and down, and the expected length of content is shortened time and time again . This is followed by the negative pressure caused by the information load, the alienation of real-life people, the gradual loss of thinking capacity, and attention to become a rarity. So where is all this leading us? We are in the best of times, and also the worst.