In a recent dialogue, scholar Xu Jilin explores how younger generations are reshaping emotional expression and community-building in the digital age. Over his four-decade academic career spanning intellectual history and public discourse, Xu has increasingly focused on understanding youth psychology—particularly their retreat from grand narratives toward fluid, emotion-driven connections.
Xu identifies two defining traits of contemporary youth culture: the primacy of "being understood" and the rise of "companionship" as emotional anchors. This generation favors lightweight, transient relationships—embodied in trends like "light-asset friendships," "buddy culture," and "treehole empathy"—that prioritize emotional resonance over deep commitment. These mechanisms function as psychological self-preservation in an accelerated world.
The phenomenon manifests most vividly in 2.5-dimensional spaces blending virtual and physical interaction. Concert venues, anime conventions like Shanghai's CP2025SP and BilibiliWorld (BW), and cosplay events have become new spiritual hubs. Xu terms these "molecular communities"—small-scale yet intensely bonded groups that generate remarkable cultural output. Here, emotional transactions form what he calls a "new emotional economic ecosystem," where fans willingly invest substantial resources to cultivate shared experiences.
This shift reflects deeper structural changes. Unlike previous generations who derived meaning from ideological frameworks, today's youth construct personalized "abstract worlds" through digital immersion. Platforms like Bilibili and Xiaohongshu enable hyper-specific interest tribes that function as micro-utopias. The explosive growth of concert economies—exemplified by Shanghai's dual 400,000-attendee events for pop group TNT and BW—reveals an existential craving for collective "field immersion."
Xu draws parallels to historical responses to existential voids. While May Fourth intellectuals like Lu Xun confronted nihilism through resistance or optimism, contemporary youth navigate it via participatory escapism. However, he cautions against romanticizing these adaptations. The emotional sustenance derived from virtual communities often fails to translate into real-world resilience, leaving underlying anxieties unresolved.
Shanghai's emergence as China's "anime capital" exemplifies this cultural transformation. The city's commercial pragmatism and historical "sensationalist" tradition—traceable to 1930s modernist literature—have made it fertile ground for 2.5-dimensional culture. This ecosystem thrives on what Xu describes as Shanghai's inherent "magical realism," where diverse subcultures coexist like a digital-age version of its multicultural Republican-era past.
Looking ahead, Xu sees potential in algorithm-enabled niche communities that grant marginalized expressions unprecedented visibility. Yet he questions whether these fragmented emotional economies can evolve into cohesive cultural frameworks. As artificial intelligence begins reshaping creative production, humanity may stand at the threshold of entirely new cultural paradigms—possibly beyond our current comprehension.
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