Written at the forefront, this article does not make a moral evaluation of labels, but talks about the universality and importance of labels in society.
1. Zhu once’s Rolex
The lives of the rich are often so unpretentious and boring. In “In the Boring Life of Zhu Dan”, as long as the “Rolex watch” appears, the girl who was asleep in the coffee shop will have eyes bright, the originally honest and honest guy will shudder all over, and the originally unpretentious blind date will immediately enter the bathroom. The gorgeous makeup shows people, the clothing store clerk who had dismissed him immediately nodded and bowed to salute him. Rolex watches are a label of wealth. It symbolizes that Zhu once has the power to manipulate the lives of others in his world.
2. Tags are everywhere
Our society is full of labels. When you meet people from the Northeast, you feel that the other party has a good drinker, and when it comes to Sichuanese people are all spicy. Seeing that the car in front is a female driver, you feel that the road killer is far away. Mention of Jiangnan girl is gentle and virtuous; Capricorns are workaholics, and when it comes to virgin men, they are guinea pigs. Labeling is a simple, effective and quick way to understand and summarize external knowledge summarized in the process of human evolution. Information is transmitted efficiently in the form of tags.
We keep labeling others, and at the same time we are being labelled by others. When I was studying, I had the labels of Xueba and Xuezhu. When I arrived at the university, I had labels of 985 and 211. After working, I had labels of regions, industries, and even companies. It was even more obvious during blind dates. The house car was the label. , Even the zodiac signs and constellations are labels; when we change jobs in the workplace, our resume is a combination of labels. This A4 paper records our life, birthplace, age, school, work situation, a small piece of paper, length Limited, we can only peel off the vivid self, leaving only some labels on it.
3. Labeling is inevitable
(1) Human cognitive resources are scarce
The main reason for labeling is that compared with massive amounts of information, our human ability to process information is too limited. Information overload, people coming and going, people we meet every day deal with too many things, many people quietly lie down in our address book, even if only one or two keywords are used to remember a person, it takes a lot of money Energy. Things are complex, but cognitive resources are scarce, and the brain is used to consume the least energy to process information. Labeling is a good way to save cognitive resources and can quickly classify people and things. The background color of the label is “efficiency”. Although it is not accurate and sometimes even very different, it does not matter, because we will spend more time and energy to understand the people who are important to us, and we will not only put one or two labels on them. In other words, just because those people and those things are not important to us, we don’t care whether the label truly represents the thing itself.
(2) People exist on the Internet in the form of tags
In the digital age, the real world is rapidly being digitized, and each of us is also being digitized. But our worldview, our dreams, our behavior, our thinking about life, the way we work hard, these constitute a complete part of us, but it is difficult to be digitized. So we on the Internet are made up of some tags, scattered in this boundless ocean. These tags will form our user portraits, which will be recorded by Internet companies, and the content will be accurately pushed to us through algorithm recommendations. If there is no specific label, not only can we not see, we can’t even be seen.
If it has the right to be seen, it can also reap the likes of distant places. —Quick Hand “Seeing”
(3) Society is rolling in
Our world is rolling in. The internal volume can almost be called the 2020 vocabulary. Most people can feel the oppression of the industry and the company’s involution. In those reckless times, everyone grew up savagely. Heroes don’t ask where they came from. Opportunities are everywhere. People don’t need labels, and the society embraces them with open arms in a friendly manner. But in the economic downturn, resources are limited, and the supply side exceeds the demand side. I used to say that undergraduates were not easy to find jobs, so they all went to graduate school. After the graduates graduated, they found that the graduate students could not find a job. People are labeled one by one so that the other party can quickly screen. As the internal volume continues to deepen, personal label classification will become more detailed. Yesterday I chatted with a friend from a large factory. He said that they are recruiting students under certain tutors in certain schools; and those investors who have been in the field of science and technology for many years are also facing the fact that college majors are not engineering. The background dilemma is entangled in whether to go to a doctor of engineering.
4. Labels are far more important than we thought
(1) The label is a door between us and the world
Many people say that good-looking skins are the same, but there are no interesting souls. But the reality is that there is no good-looking skin, and who wants to take the time to understand your interesting soul. When interacting with strangers, the label is the skin, a door between us and the world. The quality of the label largely determines whether others are willing to spend more time to understand us. Many people think that they don’t meet their talents, but if there is no label or medium, who can know your talents. Even Du Fu, he was not well-known when he was alive, far less than Li Bai’s beauty, and even poorer in his later years. He wrote so many poems that have been passed down through the ages in his life, but he was only discovered and recognized after his death.
(2) Labels can reduce transaction costs
Transactions have costs, interactions have costs, and even communication has costs. There are costs hidden behind every behavior in our lives. For example, when applying for a job, many people can’t even pass the resume level. It’s because you are not good at it. No, it is more likely that HR is not familiar with your company and school. Even if you are excellent, he doesn’t have the time and doesn’t want to spend money on it. To verify this matter, he is more willing to recruit people he knows. Labels can reduce transaction costs, because most of the time people make decisions with limited information. Obtaining all the information is costly and time-consuming. At this time, labels can reflect more information. To a certain extent, labels represent the common cognition of society, and the overall cost of social operation is greatly reduced under the effect of labels. In a society with such a high trust cost in China, good labels can give trust. Qingbei students, middle-level BAT, and university professors have certain currency value in society.
(3) The label is also reflexive
Labels are reflexive. Good labels will bring more good labels, and bad labels will attract more bad labels. To give an extreme example, once a person comes out of prison, once he is labeled as imprisonment, it will be more difficult for him to be accepted by the society, and it is also difficult for him to find a job. The hardship of life and the coldness of interpersonal relationships will further deteriorate the situation. , Thus bringing him other bad labels. The Matthew effect is even more obvious in our investment industry. Large platforms are easier to invest in good projects, and in turn it is better to raise funds; while small platforms cannot invest in those mature and good projects, they can only go forward with higher risks. As a result, it bears higher risks and the probability of failure, and the high risk of assets further restricts its fundraising, and eventually die silently. To a certain extent, labels guide the flow and allocation of social resources, and resources in turn help labels realize themselves.
5. The middle-aged crisis caught in the label dilemma
We hate being labeled by others, but we must learn to label ourselves. The sooner you realize the importance of labels, the sooner you can act. When faced with choices, we must consider the continuing impact of labels on our future lives. When you are young, fearlessness is higher than the sky, and it is easy to underestimate the role of labels. When we realized the importance of labels, we found ourselves in a dilemma. Those important decisions that were made back then, some were based on intuition, some were emotional, and some were thoughtful and self-righteous. These decisions will label us accordingly. Most of us are not premature, and elders who don’t have wisdom around to show us the way. The path of life is figured out by ourselves step by step. It was only until middle age that he realized that he was covered with mediocre labels. These labels make us unable to struggle, because even if we hate our own labels, once we tear them off, we are nothing in this society.
6. How to save yourself after being labeled mediocre
(1) Make yourself a label
A great person does not need other labels to add color to himself, he can become a label himself. Jobs, Musk, Jack Ma, Ma Huateng, Ren Zhengfei, Zhang Yiming, Zhang Xiaolong, Wang Xing, Shen Nanpeng, Zhang Lei, etc., their name itself is a label. If you are not willing to be mediocre, then follow the footsteps of these predecessors to find the answer.
(2) Find industries that are still growing wildly
Find those industries that are still growing savagely, and supply is less than demand during the rapid development of the industry, and no label is needed. Choosing a optimistic and interesting subdivision track may open a new world for yourself.
(3) If there is a chance to go to a better platform, try every means to get in
If you can’t beat them, then join them. The road for middle-aged people is getting narrower and narrower, and the tolerance of society is also decreasing. If there is a chance to go to a better platform, I will try my best to get in. Tear off the old label and attach the new label to let the label better help you fulfill your dreams. You don’t need too many labels, but they must be more distinctive, and the more people who identify with them, the better the effect of the label.
(4) More mixed circles, create opportunities for others to understand you
The value of the label is mainly reflected in the insufficient information. If you want to break out of the shackles of your ordinary label, you need to go to the chaotic circle. It at least creates the conditions for others to know you and understand you, so that your information will not be distorted. . Some time ago, my brother drove a senior in an industry from Hangzhou to Shanghai, just to get those two hours of exchange opportunities.
(5) Go to a good school and read another book, preferably Tsinghua University
In addition to reading to allow classmates to have time to understand each other, what is more important is that your identities are the same. They are all students. This eliminates the differences in status and labels in society and makes the relationship between each other relatively pure. These classmates come from different industries and may bring new clues and opportunities to your career. Of course, it is best to go to Tsinghua University and Peking University. Not only is the quality of the students good, the label itself is also hard currency.
(6) Actively speak online
Human behavior in the real world is difficult to quantify and track, and the information and tags stored on the Internet are mainly passive. You might as well take the initiative to speak on the Internet. It can be in the form of text, video, sharing your thoughts, or recording your feelings, but you must control these content and tags yourself. When others want to know you, this allows them to easily get more information about you.
(7) Hold your thigh firmly
What most people don’t want to admit is that they really don’t deserve those good labels. If you are ready to lie down after recognizing this reality, you might as well hug the noble person next to you tightly. After all, putting a good label is just to make your life better. People around you don’t need to know you through those labels, and long-term understanding also has the foundation of trust. God will always give you one or two noble people in your life, find them, embrace them, help them, part of their resources will spill over to you.
