"I was bullied, the school bully slapped me 800 times, I didn't accept it, after school, I asked him in the small garden, he slapped me another 800 mouths, and I obeyed."
Such a scene appeared in the so-called funny short video on a social platform. A girl squeezed her eyebrows and made her eyes, and used exaggerated actions to perform that she was "sucked" by the school bully, and achieved a funny effect through the "contrast" of actions and plots. In the comment area, some netizens commented, "This is the episode I support the school bully the most" and "I would have asked him to slap you 1,600 mouths if I knew it".
Watching these short videos full of jokes, Zhang Xin (pseudonym), a first-year graduate student at a university in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, felt very uncomfortable. She has had the experience of being bullied, "Bullying is a very serious matter, and it shouldn't be played like this."
A recent interview with a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" found that there is a trend of entertaining campus violence on the Internet, and some people even use campus violence to attract traffic. On the short video platform, "school bullying" has become a "source of inspiration" for some creators, and new stalks such as "I was bullied", "campus dad pro" and "American school bullying" have appeared frequently. In addition, the current popular micro-short dramas are also full of school bullying plots, including many scenes such as parents "fighting violence with violence" after discovering that their children are being bullied.
A number of interviewed experts believe that entertaining school violence is not only easy to hurt the victim again and make the perpetrator more unscrupulous, but also easy to make netizens ignore or even resist the relevant requests for help, which urgently needs to be rectified in accordance with the law.
Comics: Li Xiaojun
School bullying becomes a funny meme
It must be curbed and channeled
The reporter searched for "I was bullied" as the keyword on a short video platform, and the entry "The school bully pumped my mouth 800" will be automatically displayed. Click on the entry to see that many short video bloggers use this line, and some bloggers will superimpose "tricks" on the basis of the lines - exaggerated double role-playing, magical background music, "outrageous" bullying reasons, etc. There are also merchants who use the plot to display their products, with the text "I was bullied, and the school bully smoked my 800 mouths to rob me of my velvet black silk".
In this way, "I was bullied" became a "funny stalk" that netizens on the short video platform came to when they opened their mouths. And school bullying is not the only one that has been "played into a meme" on the short video platform.
"Replace your broken headphones and broken mobile phone, use them, and use them if you want to use them!" Under the gloomy background music, a "big sister" walked up to a timid and introverted girl, slapped headphones, mobile phones and other electronic products in front of the girl, pulled the girl's hair, and said these words in a fierce tone. Later, another "big sister" threw other things at the girl with the same violent tone and movements, and the girl accepted it all with a very reluctant expression.
This is a "new type of school bullying" on a short video platform, and some bloggers have made it into a "Lian Geng series". In this type of video, the bully will throw all kinds of "good things" to the bullied person in a bullying way, forcing them to use them, so as to form a "reversal".
In the comment area, only a few netizens thought that this was an entertaining school bullying behavior, and said that "entertaining school violence is not good". More netizens said that "being bullied must be very happy" and "be brave enough to say 'yes' to the new type of school bullying", they jokingly refer to this type of bully as "boss" or "dad", and call this new type of bullying "school daddy".
In the comment area of a short video of "Campus Daddy Pro", a netizen commented that "she should be given some American-style school bullying". The "American-style school bullying" it refers to is another "new stalk" that has exploded on the short video platform.
The stalk of "American-style school bullying" comes from a funny video abroad, in which two foreign youths use hip-hop dancing with provocative words, which is full of contrast and funny. This also caused some short video bloggers to have a "sensitive sense of traffic" and immediately imitate it.
A short video blogger with 420,000 followers started an "American-style bullying" column. In the column series of videos, she wore heavy makeup, played the role of a "hard to mess with" campus bully, gestured to the camera "hand and foot", and said in a contemptuous and mocking tone while rolling her eyes: "This is our territory, you are not welcome here." The reporter noticed that this kind of "American-style bullying" video has a maximum of 94,000 likes.
"I've seen a lot of these videos, and these people may want to be funny when they make short videos, but I feel very uncomfortable." Zhang Xin said that the experience of school bullying is unbearable, and in her opinion, school bullying should not be spoofed, "so that more people will imitate bullying and then say it is a joke."
Xiao Wang, a victim of school violence, was beaten by multiple people at the door of the school cafeteria, and that experience caused him a lot of trauma. As an adult, Xiao Wang established a "tree hole" for victims of campus violence on the Internet, which became a space for many victims to vent their complaints, and many of them expressed their dissatisfaction with making funny videos of campus violence.
One victim left a message to Xiao Wang: "I really don't understand why our nightmare has become someone else's tool to play and be performed with a smile." ”
"Some people may not know that a lot of school violence escalates step by step from 'small fights'. For example, at first, it was just nicknames and snatching snacks, and it slowly developed into destroying personal belongings, insulting, and finally developing into punches and kicks. Xiao Wang said that the perpetrators were both boys and girls.
Cai Hailong, deputy dean of the Institute of Education Policy and Law at Capital Normal University, found that most of the scenes of violence that children are exposed to come from animation, video and other media, and they will subconsciously imitate these violent behaviors, and such videos will have various demonstration effects and trigger some new school violence. In his opinion, short videos have strong sensory stimulation, and if they are not curbed and guided, they will have a huge impact on children with immature physical and mental development and lack of self-control.
Interpret and portray strange classmates
Negative orientation cannot be ignored
In addition to playing "campus violence stalks", the series of videos of "Spit Wonderful Classmates" are also sought after on some short video platforms. Most of these videos are in the form of one person playing multiple roles, and they interpret various contradictions on campus from the perspective of "spit complainers".
The reporter searched and found that many bloggers used "those strange classmates" as the theme and role-played the strange behavior of their classmates as the plot. In these videos, the so-called "wonderful classmates" were labeled as "unloving", "indecent" and "immoral", and even accused of "having sexually transmitted diseases". In the comment area, netizens also stood on the side of the accusation almost "one-sidedly", complaining about the various behaviors of the "wonderful classmates".
There are also a few netizens who question the authenticity of the video content posted by the blogger because it is "too bizarre", and the blogger claims that the content is all from the real experience of fans.
The reporter entered the blogger's fan group and found that the "real experience" mentioned by the author came from fan text contributions. In the fan base, fans will publicly post the deeds of the so-called "wonderful classmates", and the blogger will adapt the text submitted by the fans into a video script and post it on his account. For the authenticity and reasonableness of the content, the blogger will not verify it too much.
"When I see these videos, I am reminded of my experience of being bullied." Zhang Xin told reporters that she had swiped a similar short video of "complaining about classmates". In the video, she saw the plot of "Wonderful Classmates" who were evaluated as "having princess disease", "loving vanity", and "one set behind the surface" because of a misunderstanding with the people around her, and was isolated by her classmates. "It's like the dilemma I faced when I was bullied at school. I think that the person who is complained about in reality may not be as 'weird' as it sounds, but I still can't help but substitute myself, and when I see the sarcasm of the video and the comments of netizens, I will suspect that I am the one who is wrong. ”
Zhang Xin feels that this kind of complaining video portrays the "wonderful classmates" as heinous, and most of their final endings are labeled with various labels and "avoided" by the people around them, "Isolation, exclusion, insults and other bullying behaviors seem to become a matter of course, because the people who are complained about are 'too weird', but many of the reality is that these so-called 'weird' are bullies expanding and even spreading rumors".
In Zhang Xin's view, short videos magnify the "wonderful classmates" in reality, while bullying behaviors such as verbal insults, labeling, and isolation will become a means of rationalization because of the wide dissemination of such videos.
Cai Hailong believes that some behaviors are transferred to so-called funny videos, which are considered to be spoofs, when in fact such behaviors actually occur on campus, and misguidance will have a demonstration effect and trigger new school violence. The entertainment of school bullying will cause the perpetrator to no longer feel guilty, so that there is no pressure when committing school violence, and it is easy to subtly change some people's cognition and attitude towards school violence, and no longer regard it as a very serious violation of humanity, so we must be wary of the negative orientation effect that this kind of video may cause.
Bullying into a micro-short drama routine
Even accompanied by bloody images
When a girl was ostracized by her classmates because of her poor family, the school bullies repeatedly dragged the girl to the rooftop and beat her, forcing her to kneel and other movements, and threatening, "If you don't do that, we will go and smash your mother's fish stall." The girl was humiliated, but she endured everything for her mother......
When the girl was abused to the extreme, there was a "big reversal" in the plot - the girl's mother was actually a rich man who hid her identity by selling fish, and she had a very high "status in the rivers and lakes" in the city, and "reappeared in the rivers and lakes" because she found that her daughter was bullied. When her daughter was bullied again, the girl's mother gathered a group of subordinates to suddenly appear, and after revealing her identity, she countered violence with violence and subdued her classmates who had bullied her daughter.
Such a jaw-dropping plot has become a routine for some micro-short dramas. The reporter browsed a number of related micro-short dramas and found that they mostly use "×× of Rebirth" as the title of the play, most of which contain elements such as children being bullied, parents being "big guys" hiding their identities, parents taking revenge on their children, and children being "reborn", pursuing cool drama effects.
In these short dramas, "violence" becomes the main line. Whether it is in the plot of children being bullied at school or parents avenging their children, violent acts such as beatings, pushing, slapping, and pulling hair are presented in great detail, even accompanied by some bloody scenes.
This kind of micro-short drama often wins the attention of netizens because of its exciting plot and "happy" ending. The reporter searched and found that even if this kind of micro-short drama is paid to watch, it can also get a good number of playbacks, such as a "rebirth" series of school bullying revenge dramas with as many as 188,000 views on a single platform.
Cai Hailong believes that whether it is a short video or a micro-short drama, some creators do not pay enough attention to school violence fundamentally, which makes them violate the mainstream values of society and use school bullying as a traffic meme. They also realize that school violence is the focus of social attention and a social contradiction, so they seize this point to create and cater to the mentality and preferences of some teenagers.
Xiong Bingqi, president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said bluntly that some film and television works and Internet jokes are now glorifying school bullying that hurts others as a prank. For some minors, they can't tell whether the content of this short video is a "joke" or a real one, and some students may feel that they are spoofing or playing a prank when they engage in school bullying.
"Pranks and bullying are actually very confusing in reality." Cai Hailong recalled that he had communicated with many homeroom teachers and principals of primary and secondary schools, for whom it was still difficult to effectively and accurately identify school bullying and pranks.
"From the perspective of external behavior, sometimes the performance is the same, and an important point to distinguish between the two is the background of the behavior, the social relationship between each other, and the consequences caused." Cai Hailong said that to clarify these aspects, teachers need to actively intervene in children's lives. From the perspective of minors, it is also difficult to grasp the boundary between prank and school bullying, and if some short videos are intentionally edited, spliced, and staged, it will make some minors' perception of prank and school bullying more confusing, and it will be more difficult to effectively define the boundaries of behavior.
Platforms should strengthen review
Guide the creation of a video appropriately
Posing for videos of bullying in schools to entertain bullying behaviors. This is one of the six key links in the two-month "Qinglang · 2024 Summer Minor Online Environment Rectification" special action that began in July this year and was deployed nationwide for a period of 2 months.
"This shows that the mainland has taken more precise steps in the protection of minors online, and paying attention to the entertainment of school bullying also reflects the precise governance of relevant departments." Cai Hailong commented.
Cai Hailong told reporters that the key to moral education is to spread the mainstream culture and the correct view of good and evil, but the short video of entertaining school bullying behavior entertains the wrong things and dissolves the judgment of right and wrong, good and evil that students should have formed. In addition, it links wrong behaviors with the "happiness" of watching videos, so that when children face these behaviors, they turn moral judgments into simple physiological reactions, "which confronts or dissolves the rule of law education and moral education that we should have, and subtly erodes some people's cognition of school violence."
Yao Jinju, a professor at the Law School of Beijing University of Foreign Chinese, suggested that for minors, it is necessary to avoid falling into an "information cocoon", which leads them to see a large number of "school violence memes", so that their thinking is restricted, and they think that it is the norm. Therefore, the use of algorithmic recommendations should be strictly restricted for links involving minors.
In the opinion of the interviewed experts, according to the "Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem", the so-called "campus violence meme" belongs to the governance of vulgar short videos, but such short videos are often in the gray area of the boundary between "illegal" and "immoral", and it is difficult to unify the identification standards, which brings difficulties to content supervision. Therefore, typical examples of relevant penalties can be published on a regular basis, and the boundaries of the reasonable creation of short videos can be gradually clarified.
"Some short videos play a role in instigation, such as putting new bullying methods into these so-called funny videos, and one of the biggest characteristics of minors is imitation. Therefore, the platform should immediately remove such videos. Pi Yijun, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, has long been engaged in research on youth issues, and he believes that the platform should actively improve the level of information technology, establish a professional team to receive reports from netizens and conduct evaluations, and remove relevant videos from the shelves in a timely manner after verification.
In Cai's view, this kind of governance is difficult, but not impossible. This kind of video has some rules and routines, such as music, pictures, plot and other elements are similar, and the platform needs to improve its technology to judge from the relevance of this type of video and strengthen supervision.
"It may be difficult to regulate the relevant platforms in one step." However, it should be made clear that platforms have the obligation to review and take down short videos that contain school bullying, Yao said.
"Parents should actively guide their children to think about and analyze the negative impact of such videos, and tell their children how to identify and deal with school violence when it occurs around them." In Yao Jinju's view, after managing the online environment, including the entertainment of school bullying, minors should also be told "what can be done", which is the "root cause".
Author: Zhao Li, all-media reporter of the Rule of Law Daily, and Lin Mingqin, intern