When Yu Fei first heard this news, he felt delighted, but soon, a worried expression appeared on his face.
“Wait, that’s not right. This thesis might not necessarily change public opinion, and it could even backfire.”
“I’m sure Handong University meant well, but this could potentially be exploited by the anti-Tenda alliance.”
Cui Geng, confused, asked: “Why do you say that?”
Yu Fei explained, “We’re talking about an undergraduate thesis. The requirements aren’t that high to begin with. Even the most exceptional outstanding thesis can only be so impressive.”
“Forget undergraduate theses—even if you showed doctoral or postdoctoral dissertations to ordinary people, how much would they understand? Those looking to pick faults will find ways to criticize regardless.”
“At this point, the anti-Tenda alliance just needs to find a few academic experts to thoroughly scrutinize Mr. Pei’s thesis, examining it under a microscope until they find some vulnerabilities.”
“Then, they can use these flaws to systematically continue attacking Mr. Pei’s academic abilities, and even question Handong University’s fairness and reasonability in selecting outstanding graduation theses.”
“In other words, if Mr. Pei’s thesis is merely written to the standard of an excellent undergraduate student, that’s completely insufficient.”
“Previously, the anti-Tenda alliance has attacked Mr. Pei on many fronts, but they’ve mainly focused on how he barely passed most of his exams with minimum scores. While this has had some impact, it hasn’t been significant—after all, everyone knows Mr. Pei is incredibly busy, and merely passing unimportant exams doesn’t damage his image.”
“But a thesis is different. A graduation thesis represents the concentrated thought of a graduate. If there are any vulnerabilities in this area for opponents to exploit, we’ll be in trouble!”
After hearing this, Cui Geng smiled. “So that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Your concerns make sense, but don’t worry. After reading this thesis, you’ll realize your worries are unnecessary!”
“With this thesis, those with ulterior motives will find it extremely difficult to pick out any flaws.”
“And don’t underestimate Handong University’s professors. Do you know who Professor Kong is? He’s an academic titan! Would a thesis approved by him be mediocre?”
Now Yu Fei was even more curious. What kind of thesis would be so difficult for critics to find fault with?
In Yu Fei’s view, to achieve this, three conditions had to be met.
First, the thesis couldn’t be overly profound or difficult to comprehend. It needed to be understandable to ordinary people; otherwise, it would naturally fall into the predicament of being too sophisticated for popular appreciation and get trapped in complex theoretical disputes with scholars who had ulterior motives.
Only by making it comprehensible to ordinary people could it gain a broad popular foundation.
Second, it needed strong constructiveness and a certain depth. It had to propose ideas that others hadn’t put forward before, making everyone feel enlightened.
Otherwise, people would definitely say the thesis was merely rehashing others’ wisdom, copying previous experiences. More seriously, some might directly accuse it of imitation and plagiarism.
Third, the thesis also needed abundant empirical evidence, using facts to silence those wanting to find fault.
Theories without empirical support are just castles in the air. Many humanities theories end up with situations where both sides have reasonable arguments, and nobody can convince the other. Once in this situation, no advantage can be gained.
However, if one side has very successful examples supporting their argument, the situation becomes completely different.
But Yu Fei also knew these requirements were too high—definitely not something an ordinary undergraduate could achieve.
The first two points were already contradictory. How could a thesis be both comprehensible to ordinary people and have constructiveness and depth? Achieving this balance was no easy task.
The third point was even more difficult. Combining theoretical research with practical results meant reaching a state of unity between knowledge and action.
For an ordinary undergraduate, this was virtually an impossible task! But if the person in question was Mr. Pei, there might actually be hope.
Yu Fei couldn’t help feeling more anticipation and immediately clicked to view Mr. Pei’s thesis.
The title of the article was “Theory of Creation and Dissemination of Popular Literary Works in the Internet Age.”
Seeing this title, Yu Fei couldn’t help but draw in a sharp breath.
The scope was enormous.
Mr. Pei was truly Mr. Pei—taking a commanding position and starting with such a grand title. A strong sense of confidence simply radiated from it.
The structure of the article was clear, without too much preamble. After the abstract and keywords, it directly entered the main topic.
The first part of the article analyzed the current predicaments facing popular literary works in the internet age.
There were mainly three predicaments: the disconnect between traditional literary works and ordinary citizens, the invasion of Western cultural works, and the impact of fast-food culture and placebo entertainment models.
So-called popular literary works are meant to face ordinary citizens. They should satisfy the demands of ordinary citizens, express their voices, and at the very least be works that ordinary citizens enjoy while conveying simple yet excellent values to people at the grassroots level.
However, many creators of traditional literary works, having been disconnected from social trends for a long time, find it difficult to understand the true cultural demands of ordinary people, especially young people. Their content remains stuck in past eras, and to some extent has even shown tendencies of being detached from the masses.
Many intellectuals consider themselves superior, viewing ordinary people as ignorant and difficult to educate, while considering art as elegant and lofty.
Consequently, these traditional works have become increasingly disconnected from the demands of ordinary citizens.
Meanwhile, the invasion of Western cultural works has caused ordinary people to be increasingly influenced by Western values, gradually deviating from traditional Chinese culture.
The Western world, with its powerful cultural industry production capacity, has created many seemingly excellent works. But are the values contained in these excellent works necessarily correct? Are they necessarily flawless? Not necessarily.
In recent years, more and more people have realized that the values contained in so-called Western blockbusters are becoming increasingly distorted, increasingly deviating from humanity’s simple and genuine emotions, and particularly at odds with the traditional cultural heritage passed down through generations of Chinese people.
And the conveyance of these values often harbors some secrets that cannot be openly discussed.
Besides this, the impact of fast-food culture and placebo entertainment models has also created enormous obstacles to the development and dissemination of popular literary works in the internet age.
The so-called fast-food culture was originally a neutral term. People need to consume nutrients, and fast food can provide convenience and inexpensive satisfaction—originally a very normal cultural phenomenon.
But when fast-food culture develops excessively, it becomes an unhealthy state.
It’s like when people get tired of home-cooked meals and occasionally eat fast food—that’s harmless. But if it completely replaces daily food, with every meal being fast food, various diseases will eventually come knocking.
The cultural industry is the same. Occasionally watching fast-food culture for simple entertainment is certainly not a problem. But if a person’s spiritual life consists only of fast-food culture without deep thinking, then their spiritual world will definitely be barren, and over time, problems with their thinking will certainly emerge.
What’s more frightening is that fast-food culture, as it continuously develops, transforms into the placebo model!
These creators and producers of placebo culture fill people’s lives with entertainment and sensory-stimulating products, using direct, quick, and cheap entertainment modes to divert their attention and dissatisfaction, allowing them to indulge in low-grade pleasures from which they cannot extricate themselves. This gradually causes them to lose the ability to think about real problems, and even completely lose the capacity for learning and long-term planning!
These three situations are clearly content that must be vigorously avoided and fought against in the creation process of popular literary works in the internet age.
If this series of problems is not resolved, then the cultural field will inevitably experience increasingly severe fragmentation.
Literary creators begin to separate from the masses, creating content that only functions within a small range of spiritual life, unable to have a positive impact on the world and actual society.
With the continuous invasion of Western values, traditional values are subverted, and those defending traditional values and those accepting Western values begin to become increasingly incompatible.
Even in many fields, intense friction will erupt, with ideological conflicts evolving into real-world conflicts.
And those low-grade entertainment and placebo model entertainments will gradually sweep across the entire grassroots cultural entertainment market, causing the masses at the bottom to lose the drive to think and improve.
As such, different groups of people will become increasingly fragmented due to factors such as social class, environment, values, and other elements, turning into groups that cannot understand each other, thereby further strengthening the information cocoon effect.
This will obviously induce very serious and frightening consequences.
Therefore, based on this predicament, the thesis then proposed the necessary factors for the creation and dissemination of popular literary works in the internet age.
First is content rooted in traditional cultural foundations and the general public’s cultural demands.
In the internet age, popular literary works cannot completely detach from traditional cultural foundations, nor can they deviate from the public’s cultural demands. They must always create from the perspective of ordinary citizens. They cannot fall into the predicament of being too highbrow and blindly self-indulgent, nor can they become accomplices to the invasion of Western values and the severance of traditional cultural inheritance.
Only by meeting the requirements of the times and satisfying the demands of ordinary citizens can one fulfill the mission assigned by the era.
Second, the works themselves must possess a certain timeliness, trendiness, and even foresight.
Merely reflecting the times is not enough; excellent literary works must also possess a certain trendiness, and even foresight, anticipating problems that might occur in the future and issuing warnings.
This isn’t being overly anxious about potential dangers; it’s preparing for future contingencies!
Finally, in terms of presentation, these works must be concise and sufficiently eye-catching.
Many literary works with profound content fail to have widespread influence precisely because their emotional expression is lengthy and difficult, making it hard to arouse reading interest in ordinary people, or even to attract attention.
If a work cannot attract the attention of as many people as possible, how can its influence be enhanced?
For serious works, this is certainly not an issue. Serious works are naturally highbrow, and understanding them requires high literary attainment.
But for popular literary works in the internet age, if they cannot achieve this, they cannot be considered excellent works.
Because the mission of popular literary works in the internet age is to spread positive values to ordinary people. If others cover their ears and refuse to listen, how can you accomplish such a mission?