E-sports have occupied our life a lot. While digital revolution altered life style of human beings, the way we shop, chat, date, do politics and consume culture, sports also leads a dramatic change. Traditional sports, football, for example, though is still popular, was stolen a lot of fans by E-sports. As Matt Fernandz claims in his article “professional competitive gaming on the rise, Over watch shows Olympic potential,” that “The land scape of sports leagues and the Olympics continues to decline, the new frontier of E-sports continues to grow in popularity and revenue,” for these years, more and more teenagers joined this trend, and E-sports, like other competitive sports, also shows an interesting graph for humanity.
Recently, IG, Invictus gaming, one of the gaming club in China, won he championship of League Of Legends 2018. Everyone in China was fall into a dramatic passion. Sentences and articles of “Congratulation to IG”, has been tweeted over missions times. However, I noticed in my Wechat group, what is interesting is that only 20 percent of the population was fans of IG before they win the game, and what astonished to me was that only 20 percent of the population was real fans to LPL, which is one of the region of LOL championship. Only these 20 percent people is actually know the teams, team members, and team styles.
Another observation was that on Youtube and Bilibili, video websites, several days before IG won the tournament, most videos of LOL was about RNG, which was another team in LPL, and which has won a lot of champions in other tournament in 2018. RNG owned a great amount of fans as IG in recent days. However, one night after RNG lose to G2, and IG won FNC, most fans of RNG turned to be fans of IG. It seems to be general that people love better team since it is a competition. But there are actually changes of how long people would take to love something, or someone. People are too easy today to love something, and they are, as well, too easy to lose their passion.
Why would people take less time to love?
A. People prefer to see external sides to others.
2 years ago, I engaged on a questionnaire in my high school about what students use to judge to their idols. The result shows that more than 60 percent of people take more attention on appearance, current achievement to evaluate their idol, and only 5 percent or less pays more attention to life stories, and experiences of their Idol. In high school, where people may not grown up, external sides of human, like appearance, takes the most attention to students.
“People always got more ‘like’ when they tweet their own photos and less or no ‘like’ when they tweet something they love, their interests, and what they think to certain events,” I once saw this in an article, criticizing the low value of our internet, “since people take less attention on insight thinking, they are usually more likely to pay attention to what you look like, what you act like instead of what you really love and interested in.” Children were born to be educated by science and facts in which their parents are more likely to want them to be practical, for example, their children ought to learn skills, languages, and instruments. College, of course, wants students to be specific with specific interest and skills. The world is becoming more and more practical and fast-development, teenagers, in order to have a better life, get used to the rules of the world. Examinations to themselves, therefore, is not that much than in the past, causing that people in nowadays take few attention on internal side of human. It’s not easy to know the inner sight of someone, but it is easy to see how people look like. This is part of the reason.
B. People are wealthy enough to love and the world provides more lures to attract people.
When I was talking to my elder sister with this topic, I took my parents as an example. They were all communist, and at the time when they were young, political situation was not that relax as ours, but there were also idols, and sports teams. They supported the party all their lives, and when we had a conversation about idols, they talked about theirs, and both of them, loved only one or two actors, through out their lives. “ Compared with the last generation, we become fickler” I told her, and she responded me that “ for their generation, do you think they have that much things to love? They were pursuing a better life at that time, when our country was starting developing economy.” Sure, when material culture exceeds to our basic desire to them, entertainment would be created, and since lures and things that attract people are there, it is not difficult for people to fall in love with it.
It is not one hundred percent sure that material progress equals to progress of well-beings. Progress in economy provides people a better life, but it imprisoned people to physical enjoyments, in which it prevent people to think, to consolidate their internality.
C. Moral restrictions was replaced by free will, and it is less valuable compared with it was in the past.
It is not that fall in live with something or someone quickly immoral, but there is a connection. As people stop examining themselves, there would be no space for them to think about morality. Religion, for example, I always regard religion as a missionary of ethics and morality. People believe in the god, and the way for people to be closer to the god was through Jesus, by acting moral, and do good things to help others. The belief kept people to think for whether their action is appropriate or not. However, since freedom is quite emphasized in nowadays, and people, who define this freedom in another way, in which they would do whatever they want if they didn’t do any thing that is defined immoral by the law, were not likely to think about their action as people in the past.
What this trends may affect our future?
“There are two ways to wither the cultural spirit, one Orwillian- the culture becomes a prison, the other Huxley – the culture becomes a farce.” From Neil Postman in His book “Amusing ourselves to death”, Neil warned to people if culture, everything we are thinking about, becomes amusement, without internal thinking about the nature, and people themselves, cultural spirit is ruined. The trend of how people look E-sports just illustrate this- no thinking to internality, no moral restrictions but a so-called freedom.
To be practical, this phenomenon also contributes to low marriage rate in recent years, that is, people are not willing to marry. It is easy for people to love, and it is also easy for them to lose their passion. Marriage needs a constant passion, and effort to operate, and since teenagers becomes fickle, they are not willing to be with the same person for a long time. “ I was thinking that marriage is happy for me, and I wish I could dedicate my life on it,” my brother once told me about his experience, “ But I found it is not that easy. It is not easy to find a love. You love someone, and you were thinking that you could do anything to her, and after a period, after this sudden passion blew away, you would realize that it is not that simple to find a true love. We don’t want to give in and, like our parents, find someone they don’t love to marry and live with whom you don’t love for life. That’s why marriage becomes difficult to me.”
This event of E-sports, draws a vivid picture of human nature, and how the changes of society changes our ideology. As far as what I could see, people in nowadays are easy to love things, and they are easy to lose their passion, not only for development provides more lures, but also for that people take more attention on external side of people, and that free will is misunderstood. This event also shows trends of social issues, like low marriage rate, and devalue of culture.
Bibliography
1. Matt Fernandez, march 2018, professional competitive gaming on the rise, Over watch shows Olympic potential https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/esports-video-games-olympics-1202709110/
2. Neil Postman, 1985, third edition, Amusement ourselves to death.