As if overnight, the concept of "meal replacement" has been quietly integrated into people’s daily life. From the endless advertisements of meal replacement food to social media, "Isn’t that a meal replacement?" "Generation here! It’s time! " A series of tacit discussions, etc … inevitably make people feel confused. Is the existence of "meal replacement" to fill the stomachs of fitness people or to fill the brains of fans from all walks of life? According to the group standard of Food Substitution issued by the Nutrition Society of China, the original meaning of "Food Substitution" is "a kind of energy-controlling food specially processed and prepared to meet the nutritional needs of adults for one or two meals during weight control". Because it has the function of "replacing dinner", it is named "meal replacement". When it is expropriated by fan culture and idol fan culture, it has a new meaning, that is, "there are similarities with a certain CP relationship or idol set, which can make fans get compensatory satisfaction."
To give an inappropriate example: In the TV series "Deep Rain", the heroine’s father, Lu Zhenhua, married nine concubines, each of whom was like his first girlfriend, "Pingping". Obviously, in Lu Zhenhua’s view, these nine women are just "Pingping’s" meal replacement ".
As a common consumption pattern within the sub-cultural community, the "meal replacement" activity that fans and idol fans are keen on naturally cannot be as "hardcore" as Lu Zhenhua, but is mostly based on literary works (or excerpts from works), news reports, cute pictures and various online jokes. For example, the "txt", which was quite popular more than ten years ago, refers to the txt document formed by fans of some idol groups searching around for novels whose hero image is close to their favorite idols, and then replacing the names of characters with the names of idols in batches. Such documents are usually equated with "real person fiction" (RPF for short), and spread in the fan community on a small scale through QQ group, network disk and other channels. Later, with the strong rise of social networking sites such as Weibo, the channels for fans to ingest "meal replacement" were gradually broadened to various literary BOTs (social media accounts that regularly publish excerpts of literary works), cute bloggers and even news media. For example, some GIF pictures of cats and dogs frolicking are often regarded by fans as "meal replacement" of "home CP" mode and forwarded passionately.
Let’s not discuss whether this kind of behavior is appropriate or suspected of infringement. Generally speaking, "meal replacement" is actually a strategy to provide "spiritual food" for fans of the above-mentioned sub-cultural communities when the output, materials and information of related works (including original works and fans) are relatively scarce, so that they will not "starve" or "cut their own legs". In addition, as mentioned above, the phenomenon of "meal replacement" is by no means new. It has existed for quite a long time. However, the concept of "meal replacement" itself, as a vivid and creative title, did gradually spread in the last year or two.This leads to another intriguing topic. According to John Fiske’s related exposition in The Cultural Economy of Fandom, the productivity of fans can be divided into three areas: symbolic productivity, enunciativeproductivity and text productivity. Among them, symbolic productivity mainly means "creating the meaning of social identity and social experience from the symbolic resources of cultural products". Fiske’s example here is the attempt of Madonna’s fans of pop music to construct their own sexuality outside the patriarchal desire system; When this kind of "meaning created by symbolic productivity" is shared by fans in a face-to-face and oral way, it constitutes a kind of "declarative productivity", which is mostly manifested in various forms of "fan talk" within the fan community. As for text productivity, as the name implies, it refers to the ability of fans to create literary and artistic works (such as fan fiction, fan video clips, etc.) around "objects of fandom" (which can be novels, TV dramas or idol stars).
Since the paper was published in 1992, many expressions in it obviously failed to fully consider (and it is difficult to consider) the influence of the internet media environment on fan culture, such as the "main position" of "fan conversation", which has already been transferred from offline to online. In addition, in order to support their idols, fans of idol stars repeatedly "forward" and "control and comment" on social media, constantly creating "data productivity" of new media data traffic for major network platforms, which is also a new phenomenon that cannot be ignored. In the past ten years, from "Fan Amway" comparable to professional marketing companies (recommending the behaviors of favorite TV dramas or idol stars to netizens by editing fan videos and writing promotional copy) to overwhelming "fan list/fan comment", the "text productivity" and "data productivity" contained in fan culture and idol fan culture have been paid more and more attention by relevant enterprises and platforms in the field of Internet cultural creativity. Although it has also produced some negative factors, its great influence is beyond doubt.
However, as Fiske analyzed (and supplemented by this article), even the most concerned, systematic and recognizable parts of fan culture are undoubtedly its text productivity and data productivity, but the symbol productivity and declaration productivity, especially the declaration productivity manifested as "fan conversation", are actually the construction of the whole fan culture. However, for a long time in the past, "symbolic productivity" and "declarative productivity" were like a silent river, which was difficult to be captured figuratively. No matter inside or outside the fan community, they failed to get the attention corresponding to their volume.
Obviously, it is a typical form of "symbolic productivity" and "declarative productivity" to extract common materials in daily life, establish contact and explain with one’s favorite intimate relationship mode (referring to the CP loved by fans) and ideal intimate relationship object (referring to the idol loved by idol star fans), and form a wide discussion at the same time. But in most cases, its specific form of expression is just a few chats on social networking sites, "Look at this, isn’t it my CP?" "Does this cat look like I love beans?" , it is not enough for outsiders. It is precisely because of this that the naming of "meal replacement" has become a crucial turning point, which makes this daily activity, which has existed silently for a long time in the field of fan culture and idol fan culture, finally be perceived, paid attention to and spoken, and thus become more and more concrete and visible, more and more recognized and imitated by fans, and gradually internalized into a methodological consciousness, thus gaining unprecedented influence.
Therefore, further reflection on the occurrence and popularity of the phenomenon of "meal replacement" is undoubtedly the deepest motivation for its natural universality, convenience and democracy. Just as "meal replacement" (original meaning), as a product of modern food industry, can provide enough nutrients for the target users accurately and conveniently, "meal replacement" (derivative meaning) is also committed to leading fans from all walks of life to bypass all unimportant details, which are inexhaustible and universally applicable (the same meal replacement material, such as an excerpt from a literary work, can often be regarded as "meal replacement" by countless fans). This is almost the same as the concept of health management and nutrition management of contemporary urban youth. In addition, the emergence of the concept of "meal replacement" also reveals the most democratic aspect of fan culture and idol fan culture: it dispels the order within the fan community of the above-mentioned subculture according to the specific technical threshold (the level of writing and painting, financial and material resources, access to internal materials, etc.), and provides a more equal and full participation path, as well as the best strategy to maintain high activity and participation for a long time.
This leads to another fact worthy of attention, that is, since fan lovers and idol fans are often satisfied by "meal replacement", in fact, for some reason-perhaps because of large demand or picky taste-their "appetite", that is, the consumption demand for fan culture and fan culture, is far from being satisfied by the current cultural consumption market, especially the Internet cultural consumption market.
Based on the above discussion, we can draw some conclusions about the culture of "meal replacement": First, "meal replacement" is a "symbolic productivity" and "declared productivity" that has existed for a long time in many online sub-cultural communities, but has just been captured, named and widely concerned; Second, although it has always been neglected, it actually constitutes the main part of the daily activities of fan culture and idol fan culture; Third, because it is quite universal, convenient and democratic, and it can best respond to the consumption needs of fans, the vitality and influence of the phenomenon of "meal replacement" in the fan culture and idol fan community is far from being exhausted.Then, can we predict that in the future, meal replacement will become a fan culture phenomenon with the same importance as "text productivity" and "data productivity" such as peer creation, ranking and evaluation? The answer may not be a simple affirmation.
Let’s go back to the question raised in the previous article about whether the behavior of "meal replacement" is appropriate or constitutes infringement. It is not difficult to see that "meal replacement", as an activity that inevitably involves "misappropriation of materials", will inevitably offend the owners of materials and their fans in the process of operation. "txt" is such a product wandering in the gray area. Even if this kind of replacement/dissemination of txt documents will not be judged as infringement (small-scale, non-public dissemination, non-commercial), if it is accidentally leaked, it will definitely cause controversy and even conflict. In addition, just recently, because a large number of "meal substitutes" have poured into the comment forwarding area of Meng Chong bloggers, there are not a few netizens who are disgusted with this, which has caused certain negative effects.
It can be seen that the "meal replacement" activities carried out on public platforms such as social networking sites, while bringing joy to people, are always accompanied by various risks. Where is the future of "meal replacement" culture? An idealized design is that a group keen on "meal replacement" activities may, after a series of frictions and conflicts, negotiate with fan communities with different attributes to reach a boundary and bottom line acceptable to all parties, and finally form a code of conduct specially formulated for "meal replacement" activities, and presuppose that most fans know and abide by the above norms.
Of course, it is better to do less of this unrealistic daydream. Pessimistically, this lively "cyber water table" may eventually slowly withdraw from the social media where people come and go to QQ groups, fan forums and other relatively private venues. Taking groups and sections as units, we have formed a friendly relationship of feeding each other and exchanging rations, which continues to be the cornerstone of fan culture and idol fan culture, silently affecting the entire cultural production and the ecology of community communication. In this way, everything seems to be back to the original point, but in fact, once the concept of "meal replacement" appears, those "symbolic productivity" and "declared productivity" that have been captured and described in detail will never be able to return to the original vague and marginal state. In other words, from now on, as long as people have a little understanding of fan culture and idol fan culture, it is impossible to turn a blind eye to the existence of "meal replacement". Our basic knowledge about fan culture and idol fan culture has been changed forever.
If the original god game fan illustration works are optimistic and open, then the "meal replacement" culture may have the opportunity to gradually evolve into an independent branch belonging to fan culture and idol fan culture. Similar signs include sporadic discovery of "headless jokes" written by fellow authors, such as short and disoriented novels, essays and even poems. With a simple "head-changing" operation, this kind of "headless segment" can become a common "meal replacement" material among many fan communities. In addition, on some social networking sites, a large number of accounts dedicated to publishing "meal replacement" materials have emerged. The common content is still nothing more than literary works, cute pictures, lyrics or various "headless jokes". The advantage of this is to provide a relatively independent activity space for the fan community who are keen on consuming "meal replacement", and to be isolated from real literary lovers, cute pet lovers or music fans to avoid conflicts.If the development trends of the above two different dimensions can be carried forward smoothly in the end, then, centering on the "meal replacement" activity, it is enough to form a "meal replacement material database" containing a large number of "headless paragraphs", excerpts from public literary works and open source pictures. Then, with the special "meal replacement" material publishing accounts, groups and theme sites as the position, an active "meal replacement" cultural fan community will be gathered. From this, we may further look forward to a new ecology of fan culture and idol fan culture with different internal mechanisms and forms of expression, which is easier to obtain and has no excessive participation threshold.
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