2023-06-22 | No Stalker No Life

Let’s be honest. I am really a fan of peeking into others’ life. Not voyeurism, I have to make it clear. I am not interested in others’ privacy, but in how others live their life.

I am fascinated by how they spend their time, how they feel about their life, and what they are willing to share with others.

Or more specific, I somehow clicked into a random user who shared many life slices on the Internet, and I was simply amazed by the fact that he actually has so many things to share. That really exhilarated me, and I was like, just overexcitedly pacing back and forth in my room; or a child who has just found a new toy, but have to resist the temptation to play with it immediately.

I am pretty grateful to these authors, for they delighted a stranger who have never had the chance to meet them in person, in a rainy night. Life, is a precious art form, while many fail to appreciate it. I am definitely not a good appreciator, and I am not prepared about suprises I would encounter in my over-regulated life. But the fact that I am still able to admire others’ life, is something I should be grateful for.

Okay, let’s list their name down here to prevent me from accidentally or delibreately clearing my browser history, or my memory.

As you can see, wherever they post their life slices, on WeiBo, ZhiHu, or their own blog, I will find them. This is simply because I am not intended to search for them, but I am just clicking random links and accidentally bumped into a really, really interesting person.

I am not a stalker, but I am a fan of life slices. Life slices, a term suggested by Copilot, refers to fictions featuring massive amount of life details, which is a universally acknowledged genre in all art forms, including literature, film, and even games. However, it is also rarely discussed in depth, because it is so common that people do not even notice it; at the same time, it is dramatically difficult to produce a good life slice, more dramatic than a drama with complex plots and twists. (To be clear, some work features both interesting life slices and appealing plots, but it is not my focus here.)

But why fictional life slices? Don’t we already have noticed plenty of inspiring life slices in real life? Yes, they are great, but I will never check back. I don’t have to, nor want to. The fact that they have enlightened me is enough; the content is not what really matters. If I check back, some memories will be ruined, nullifying the premise that I was pretending to listen to the others’ sharing their life, not and will never interact with them AS IF THEY ARE REAL PEOPLE - yes, although they ARE real people and their life slices are factual, I instinctively treat them as fictional characters, because when I read these words, I was loaded with the preset to appreciate them as a work of art.

And that’s where the topic grows into in-depth discussion:

Fictional lifes and real lifes are essentially different.

Fictional lifes are designed with specific purposes. It does not mean the author has to explicitly convey his intention - if something makes you cry, it is usally a tragedy, but not necessarily. It can be the very opposite, where things become too good to be true, and you are crying because you are so happy - and here comes the difference: some authors intentionally make you cry, while some do not. Your tears might be the result of the authors’ intention, or actually your own interpretation mixtured with your own life experience or even your mood at the moment. Therefore, if some concidence decides your feeling towards a work at a specific “moving” moment, it can be pretty hard to reproduce the same feeling again.

But reality? Real lifes can also be designed, by the person or someone else. But, well, let’s rephrase that: real lifes can be continued with convincing reasons which makes it look like carefully designed.

What does continuous mean? Life slices fictions, as its name implies, only depict a number of uncontinuous life moments, or events. It never tells you what happens between these events, or what happens after the story. This is not a problem because you don’t have to waste time on the repeated, boring, or even meaningless parts of life. You can just focus on the interesting parts, and that’s what makes life slices so appealing. But you are a reader full of imagination. Your wild thoughts will attempt to fill the gaps between these events and add color to afterstories. You still use life slices to design the story, but you are in charge of the details - you no longer needs to admire the author, but you are the author. Even though all these fragments won’t add up to a complete story, you are still and even more satisfied, because your logic is not restricted by the author’s intention.

Both fictional lifes and real lifes should follow human logic. Unexpected events can occasionally happen. In fictions, natural and human calamities are designed with specific purposes, while in real life, they are just random. But in both cases, they are not the focus of the story. The focus is always on the characters, and how they react to these events. So, these events don’t need to follow human logic, but the characters do. And that’s where the divergence emerges:

• In fictions, the characters react in a way which appears to follow human logic. But actually, with the authors’ intention in mind, the characters are actually following the authors’ logic. The events are carefully designed to make the characters react in a way that the authors want them to change, and they just react seemingly naturally but factually artificially. Authors do care about the characters, because they are always the core of any story. They want to create distinctive characters, make them change gradually, and end up achieving something with a different personality.
  • But author don’t care about the characters’ life, because they are not real. They are just a tool to convey the authors’ intention. Even in the most character-orinted fictions, say, the love comedy, the characters are still a tool. The authors want to make the readers laugh, to feel fulfilled (although, as argued above, if you feel a strong crush when reading life slices, it can be your interpretation but not authors’ intention), and to feel the characters’ love (usually the most emphasized feeling, even though it is indirect). Author carefully design their lifes to achieve these goals, but still, the author does not need to worry the actual consequences of the characters’ actions, since the story will just progress (or never progress) as the author wants.
  • Behinding the creation lies a logic link: author wants to create for some motivation (for money, fame, dream or just for fun), and the readers also want to read for some motivation (for relaxation, inspiration, or just for fun). The authors and readers then signed a contract: you give me time and I return with the feeling you prefer. And the substances exchanged in this contract are the work. Characters, though being the core of the story, are completely dependent on the work. Without the work context, they are worthless bunch of words or pixels, literally nothing.
  • Characters and work are just mediums. Essentially, the focus is what the author wants to convey and what the reader expects to receive. The exchange is wrapped in a story, and the characters are “the medium of the medium”. Readers perceive the second order emotions from the characters. You don’t feel characters’ emotion directly, but you feel the emotion the author wants you to feel, and the characters are just a tool to convey that emotion. Though what makes the circumstances comprehensive is that, as I have repeatedly emphasized, your interpretation takes the decisive role in the emotional output. But still, the author has achieved what he wants, and does not need to care what you readers really think (though many of them do care on social media, but that’s another story). - Then what about you? Do you actually need to remove the disguise on the fiction stories and care about the authors’ factual motivation? No.
  • In short: fictions are designed reader-oriented instead of character-oriented. Some categorizes this opinion as pragmatism. But, if fictions are not shared, does it even has any meaning? Authors can claim that they only create for themselves. Truly self-oriented creation, however, is equivlent to disrespect towards the readers. If you don’t care about the readers, why do you even bother to share your work?
• Real lifes differ from fictions fundamentally. You or someone else design your life. You have to consider the consequences before actions, because it is your own life that cannot be rewound. You simply cannot save and load. And even though you have more possibilities compared to restricted, partial lifes in fictions, your time is very limited. You cannot return to the same “life fork” again and again, and will have to choose one of them.
  • Or you’d prefer to escape from reality? That’s also a choice, only building up regret in your conscience. The continuity of real lifes work here. You cannot skip in real lifes. That’s where the fantasy breaks. The boring, repeated, meaningless, or even painful parts will torture you, simply because you are alive as a person, and you have to be responsible for your life. Escape is probably the worst choice since it implies you don’t want to be responsible. But the consequences will teach you a lesson. Many will end up never reconcilling with their past, and that’s why they are so regretful. Well, I am somehow regretful too, but I am still trying to find a way out of the repeated failures.
  • You don’t need to be fully in charge of your life to reflect on your life. If you avoids the subject, it’s merely an excuse. To demonstrate this, let’s continue the example of love comedy. Be honest and admit that you really wants a love comedy in your life. (If you actually don’t, think of other concepts bothering your life.) But you don’t! That’s because you have become an expert in excusing yourself. If you do care about your life, why don’t you step out? Do not make excuses. You are not a character nor reader, but an author. Fantasy, the concepts you utilized to fill the gaps in fictions, is useless in real lifes, because currently you are the only audience of the life theater. If you don’t share your feeling with others (either in explicit or implicit way should work), they will simply never notice your desires and expectations.

Okay, let’s summarize the differences between fictional lifes and real lifes:

The article grows too long so I have to stop here. This topic is probably still worth diving deeper, but to transform myself from a suspicious stalker to a inspiring talker is not as simple as I have expected.

Many ideas burst when you brainstorm about the topic. However, when it turns to writing a blog to convience yourself and others, it is entirely different. Most of the thoughts are ill-formed or even unrelated, and you have to organize the correct ideas into a coherent structure. During the composition of this short argument, I have failed to persuade myself for three times, and finally settled down with this version.

• Initial draft quantifies the time and feeling on life slices, and concludes that past life are just life slices and thus nothing different from fictions. That’s evidently absurd, but only when I find I cannot continue the topic with this premise did I realize the issue.
• Second draft focuses on the Applied Behavior Analysis, but fails to be connected to the topic.
• Third draft goes back to the difference between fictional lifes and real lifes, but then I argued real lifes does not require logic, which is also absurd. Some of real life events are seemingly logicless because not everything about the person involved is known to the audience, who tends to conclude with very little information. And some accidents are just happening by chance, which does not follow human logic.

In this version I found a way to avoid these two issues, by shifting the focus from the events to the characters. And that’s only the first step of logic link. The focus then moved to the work and finally the author, and I finally found the correct way to conclude the topic. Work is created by people for people, and so does real life. But your identity changes from reader to author makes everything different.

Let’s conclude with a joke. As you are already an university student, you no longer expects a love comedy with JKs. Instead you are curiously looking forward to JDs.

But wake up from that good old dream. The only JD accompanies your university life is JD-GUI.