"Work with the old demon to solve the needs of modern women: make money, become beautiful, and engage men." After seeing the old demon's public account with millions of fans, Dai Xianjing frowned, to be honest, she didn't like it, but she wanted to know more.
The old demon's WeChat public account has posted articles in the past
Since 2016, the theme of "women living alone", Dai Xianjing has been filming for four years. The subjects expanded from close friends to all kinds of strange girls, and Dai Xianjing took the camera to break into their home where they lived alone, talking to them, resonating, and recording their stories and emotions in the private space. After the publication of the "She's at Home" series of photographic works, more and more girls living alone actively or passively poured into Dai Xianjing's life, and the self-media person Lao Demon was one of them.
The old demon was recommended by Dai Xianjing's friend, and the reason for the friend's recommendation was simple: "She can send ten self-exposed circles of friends a day, and I want to know how she is." ”
"Originally walking on the clouds"
The 60㎡ house is well-decorated in Sihui, Beijing, and is a home shared by one person, one dog and three cats. The house was bought by the old demon in 2019, which was her sixth year in Beijing, relying on the public account to write the theme of women's growth, and hitched a ride on the self-media wealth-making express, "monthly income of 100,000". A rural girl born in 90 years in Xuancheng, Anhui Province, took out a down payment on her own.
The inspirational story of your own life is the most convincing case of women's growth. In the public article, the old demon is "rational" and "sharp", teaching girls to guard against men who have bad intentions or take advantage of them, to be economically independent, to firmly grasp the financial power of the family, and to avoid falling into the abyss because of a relationship.
"I still have a lot of loans, and I have to pay them back every month." Within three minutes of talking, the seemingly hard shell began to disintegrate. "You yourself are more cute than the article." Dai Xianjing was blunt.
She bought and renovated alone, and lived alone. As soon as I moved into my new home, my career fell from the peak to the bottom. "Public accounts are about to become serious literature." The old demon teased. But the dilemma is real - the dividend of the rapid development of the public account has become a thing of the past, the limited investment of the brand is only reserved for the head account, the epidemic, the economic situation and the rise of short videos and live broadcasts, all of which make it difficult for the old demon's content monetization ability to maintain the past glory.
"I have to work hard now to pay off my mortgage because I can't make that much money now." The income of the old demon fell back to the level of one or two thousand per month, the gap was too large, many peers have decisively changed their careers to do short videos, and the old demon stayed where he was, "there is a feeling of being abandoned by the times."
There are many reasons why you haven't been able to transform immediately, such as: trouble. Writing articles is something that can be done by one person, but to shoot a video, you have to have a team and the cost is higher. "I'm an introvert at heart, and I'm not very good at talking to people." The old demon is not only afraid of becoming a "classical self-media person" who has been eliminated, but also afraid of not being able to produce short video content. "Maybe you took ten, twenty, one month, two months, and found that there was still no improvement." The fear of failure eroded her every day.
"I used to walk on the clouds." Before the age of 29, the old demon's life went all the way up. When the tide of the times throws people to the heights, it is easy to have a feeling of "fluttering". At that time, the old demon felt that he was really powerful. But the moment of the fall came too quickly, she didn't know what was happening, she couldn't accept the facts, everything was stuck there. She always blamed herself: "Why can everyone else continue to catch up with the next wave, but you didn't catch up?" ”
For others, making a decision seems simple, but for her, everything must be considered thoroughly, "I can't do something fruitless."
Mortgage pressure superimposed on career transition dilemmas, the old demon fell into constant anxiety and depression, she has been insomnia for three years, and she can't sleep without medication.
The old demon failed to gain love and support from her native family. In the old demon's memory, her father was absent from home for many years, because of the preference for sons and daughters, and the mother always thought that she did not exist. Grandma would take care of her, but was busy with her work every day and wouldn't talk to her. She soaked in the TV alone, alone through her childhood.
Later, his father died in the year that old demon graduated from college. There was no way back, no one could support herself in times of tribulation, and for a long time, she couldn't accept it, always allowing herself to fall into the emotion of "how my life is so miserable". After the struggle, I can still rely on myself.
She likes to write, and in college she tried to write online novels and film reviews, and made some friends as a result. Her first job was at an Internet real estate company, which transferred her to Huangshan, and before long, she went to Beijing to join friends and become book editors.
Earlier upbringings didn't teach her how to get along with people. Sharing a room with a friend, one day found that the other party suddenly moved away, and also blocked her on WeChat. Later, the old demon lived with her boyfriend, who earned thousands of yuan a month, and after getting rich, the two soon broke up. In retrospect, she only remembers the two of them brushing their phones when they got home, like roommates, without any communication with each other.
The old demon was inferior, "no one loves himself", this is her conclusion, this situation is blamed on not being pretty enough. She made a fierce heart and decided to go for plastic surgery. Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, all must be straightened.
Because "the doctor's aesthetic is too old-fashioned", the first time she failed, she was not willing, shouting "uncomfortable" and "too painful", and again, the result was still not satisfied. "Why hasn't it become beautiful after the whole thing?" There was nothing she could do but sulk.
Despite earning money to buy a house, the old demon still did not get the affirmation of his family. She once took her mother, aunt and brother's family of three to live in Beijing, and found that their focus was only one: "You are 30 years old, why are you not married?" ”
When she wrote in the article that "a person's sense of security can only come from yourself", the anger grew day by day. Readers retort to her, and she will argue with them angrily. The deep sense of scarcity that had accumulated since childhood made her have a serious hoarding habit. But the trauma is still there, and the improvement of economic conditions and retaliatory consumption are also difficult to heal.
"Why doesn't my mother love me, why doesn't a man love me, why doesn't anyone love me?" She felt as if she were hostile to the whole world. Some unintentional hurtful behavior will be over-interpreted by her, and aggression will grow in intense anger. The room was filled with items that were not needed. At the same time, the old demon blackmailed his mother.
"Why doesn't anyone love me?"
The old demon tattooed the names of his father and grandmother on his body. After they died, the old demon felt that she still had to grit her teeth and face everything alone, and she decided to wash off the tattoo.
The old demon thought that maybe one day he had some serious illness, or had a car accident, missing arms and legs, but after thinking about it, he found that it really got to that point, and there was really no one to take care of himself.
She has been on a blind date, two hundred people eight minutes blind date that kind, more than two hundred men and more than two hundred women, each face to face chat for 8 minutes, after the meeting the two parties first handed each other resumes. At that time, the old demon's income had not shrunk significantly, so she filled in the "annual income of 500,000", which attracted the side eyes of the men on the scene.
"They asked what you did and how could you make so much money?"
She quickly gave up. There, the men's requirements for girls are: academic qualifications 985 or 211, only children, parents are urban hukou and have pension insurance, expect women to have a low income, more emphasis on the family.
The old demon was "shocked": "You only earn 200,000 yuan a year, and you also require that the woman's income is not very high, what will you eat and drink when you get married in the future?" ”
The partner in her mind is not just a person who lives together, but can establish some kind of bond. But that seemed too difficult, in the middle of a sea of people, not knowing where to find one like that.
She once suspected that the reason why life is so painful is because there is no such man as a lover. But that idea was quickly overturned by her. 'If you're just waiting to meet a strong team-mate, it's a very passive thing and I can't accept that I'm useless in this situation.' The old demon said.
The old demon has always been pessimistic, and even feels that he "may fall under the overpass anytime and anywhere to give people a film." But on the other hand, she couldn't tolerate losing herself.
In the two years at the peak of his career, the old demon rationally maintained his flexibility. She observes the changes in users' taste preferences, understands the pressure that readers are under in a specific economic situation, and can accurately judge the social situation, which will make "everyone's enthusiasm for inspirational texts gradually enter a period of exhaustion." She transitioned the content style from "hard" to "soft sweet" in a timely manner.
In an interview with reporters, she was very determined: "The big man who does a good job, his foothold is the audience rather than himself." As a content producer, she must constantly think about how to make herself liked and how to be welcomed by more readers.
But now that flexibility was gone for her.
"Before, people paid attention to me because I was a small town girl, came to a first-tier city, struggled all the way, had a good result, and bought a house." The old demon's output stopped at the stage when she bought the house, "as if a TV series had ended".
For a long time, she didn't know how to write it. In the past, everyone paid attention to her, just like watching a reality show, and had many expectations for her. But now, she suddenly stopped, life is missing changes, what can she present?
She was tormented by entangled competitiveness and fear at the same time. Stuck in a trough, she was forced to slow down and start turning to a psychiatrist. When you are excited, you feel that you have countless thoughts and endless energy, and when you are depressed, you often can't get out of bed for a few days. The old demon was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and maintained a basically normal life by taking medication and regular check-ups.
She approached her friend and tried to figure out what she had done wrong. She apologized, but she didn't understand the explanation. She read books and struggled to understand intimacy, to try to understand human growth.
"It wasn't until this year that I suddenly realized what he meant by what he said to me." The old demon said that whether it was with friends or boyfriends, every day after work, she was immersed in her own talk and never paid attention to each other's needs. Waiting for her to finish talking about "me, me, me", her friend wanted to talk to her about herself, but found himself being left behind. The old demon realized, "He may feel very chilled. ”
Clear considerations do not resolve inner conflict. The old demon was driven to write down his own confusion. She once fell into self-doubt: "Readers will say why are you always nagging about yourself?" She knows what readers want, they want drama, and all of her efforts to 'explore inward' are static.
But she finally accepted her confusion, and the frozen problem began to thaw.
"Why doesn't anyone love me?" Does this question really hold? She finds herself controlled by a sense of deprivation, judging whether the partner likes herself enough based on whether the other person is "all about me", always asking for attention, encouragement and affirmation from the outside world, but lacking the ability to give.
Living in a turbulent and violent, angry and hurtful environment at a young age, she had to learn to shield herself to adapt and protect herself. There is a reason why she does not know how to get along with people, and to understand this, she no longer feels self-pity, but feels fortunate - it is this shield that makes her break away from the life path of rural girls who get married early and have children, and get all the current possibilities.
She realized that after her income increased, she became more aggressive, "I will feel that I make more money, why don't you listen to me?" That was the desire to control that she used to see in her mother, and now it was stuck in her body.
She doesn't force herself to continue to output content that doesn't match her current state of being. She began experimenting with sitting in front of the camera, a fresh way of getting attention, jerkily and awkwardly holding up books that had influenced her, about intimacy, about female growth.
"Many people lack a lesson on how to love themselves and love others." After spending some time with the old demon, Dai Xianjing had a deeper feeling about this.
Every woman who lives alone is in that unique space, dealing with her own dilemma. "Living alone is a way of self-observation for an old demon at a turning point in his career." Dai Xianjing said: "When we run fast, the pause is precious, and the lack of love does not stop her courage to find and identify herself. ”
They went to Jingshan Park together and met a silver-haired grandmother happily playing the accordion.
"When I'm old, I want to be like her." The old demon said.
There is still a long way to go. (Source: Tencent News)
Written by | Qingzhou Photography | Dai Xianjing Editor | Miri Produced | Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
Producer| Yang Ruichun Editor-in-Chief| Zhao Hanmo Responsible Editor| Li Jia Operation | Zhang Zhen Lv Chen
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