Depth ｜ Non-mainstream Culture： The Death History of ＂Killing Matt＂

Do you remember killing Matt? Who the hell are they? Where are they now? In 2008, killing Matt became a cultural phenomenon, but within a few years, this group was suppressed and gradually disappeared from people’s vision. In fact, they are not so-called "brain-dead, vulgar", and most of them are "left-behind children+assembly line migrant workers". Faced with a city full of strange dangers and a flowing factory life that stifles humanity, they have no education, no background and no money, so they can only choose to kill Matt to protect themselves, express their personality and find a sense of belonging in the city. Now everyone who kills Matt cuts off his long hair and goes back to his hometown to continue his hard life. Today, we are all calling for aesthetic freedom. Maybe we should also give them a late aesthetic freedom.

　

author　| Veronica (Cultural Industry Review Author Group)

edit　| Peng Xiaoyi

source　| Cultural Industry Review

The text is 7748 words in total | Estimated reading time is 20 minutes.

In the past two years, director Li Yifan took his documentary "Kill Matt I Love You" for offline small-scale screening and exchange in various places. This documentary, which started shooting in 17 years, interviewed more than 70 people who killed Matt all over China, and based on their self-reports, combed the development of the phenomenon of killing Matt, showing the life, predicament, choice and fate of this group. With the help of this documentary, many talents know what it means to kill Matt for the first time, and know that killing Matt’s young people is not "stupid" or "vulgar".The phenomenon of killing Matt actually reflects the dilemma of migrant workers’ identity behind the binary opposition between urban and rural areas in China. Even many viewers were surprised to find that "everyone killed Matt" after watching this film.So, what kind of people choose to be Matt’s killers? Who suppressed them? Why did it disappear? Do you still kill Matt? Where did you kill Matt? Why do we all kill Matt?

　

△ Source: Baidu pictures

Past lives who killed Matt.

　

What exactly does the name kill Matt mean? Perhaps many people don’t know, in fact, it comes from the English word smart, which was transliterated as killing Matt by people who just started using it. It is easy to read and has personality, and it sounds cool and annoying. Just as what they value when choosing this word is that it means "smart and fashionable". In visual modeling, it actually imitates the Japanese visual rock. Japanese visual rock band rose in 1980s, represented by X JAPAN, and they were actually born under the influence of glam rock in Europe and America.Express rebellious personality and heavy metal music style with gorgeous and exaggerated hairstyles and costumes.. Because of the high quality of their music, visual rock is no longer completely non-mainstream music in Japan, and is respected to some extent.

△X JAPAN Band, Source: Baidu Pictures

　

But China’s killing Matt, which started in about 2007, has nothing to do with rock music. There are many versions circulating on the Internet about how the killing of Matt started, and there is no way to know who is the founder. It is widely said that the founder of killing Matt was a native of Meizhou, Guangdong Province, who was born in 1995 and named Luo Fuxing. According to his account, he went out to work as a teenager, and his working life was hard and boring. He happened to see this Japanese visual style on the Internet and thought it was particularly cool. He went to the hair salon to do a similar hairstyle and sent it to QQ space, which was seen and imitated by many people. With more and more people imitating and adding his friends, he set up a QQ group and chose the word "Kill Matt" as his family name.

　

At the same time as killing Matt, there are various non-mainstream families such as bury love, Canxue and Kuangshao. In terms of visual modeling, these families all like long hair, explosive heads, bangs that cover their eyes or even half their faces, and all kinds of fancy and colorful clothes. The biggest difference between the killing Matt family and these families is that their hair must stand up against gravity.Because the shape of killing Matt is the most exaggerated, the killing Matt family is more widely known, and now it has become synonymous with all non-mainstream families.

△ Source: Baidu pictures

On-line, the killing Matt family has established countless QQ groups, large and small, which need to undergo strict examination. For example, it must be seen that the applicant’s hairstyle meets the anti-gravity standard of killing Matt. In QQ group and QQ space, people who kill Matt all over the world communicate with each other.The latest hairstyle informationShow your new look, discuss your life, or find a partner, find a job, or even find a place to stay if you have no money. ……

△ "QQ space is the warmest place", documentary "Kill Matt, I Love You"

　

Offline,The most concentrated place to kill Matt is Guangdong., especially the shipai in Dongguan. Because in fact, most of the people who killed Matt were a new generation of migrant workers after 1990s and 1990s, and their work destination was the assembly line factory. In Dongguan, Shantou, Zhongshan and other cities in Guangdong, there are countless such factories. In 2008 and 2009, on the stone rafts, factory rest days, in the streets, parks and skating rinks, boys wearing low-waisted tights with fan heads and girls wearing ultra-short jeans and fishnet stockings and smoky makeup with loving heads can be seen everywhere. Their entertainment is very simple, such as visiting the park, chatting, skating, taking selfies, and bragging about their new styles in groups on the street.

△ Source: Baidu pictures

　

However, just because the public thinks that their modeling is "shocking", earthy and does not conform to the mainstream aesthetics, from the beginning of 10 years, killing Matt, who has never caused substantial harm to society, began to be attacked from online to offline. Hackers captured or dissolved their QQ group and post bar; Fake killing Matt is wearing a wig to harass the public or do some self-blackening, and taking video photos and posting them online to stigmatize killing Matt (in fact, self-blackening is not killing Matt); The factory didn’t restrict their hairstyles at first, but later began to require them to cut off their long hair and dye it back into black hair, for fear that they would scare older people. In the same year, the state put forward "resolutely resist vulgarity, vulgarity and kitsch", and the society set off a new "moral movement", and killing Matt was also included in the rectification target. Whether because of the spontaneous rejection of the people or the resistance of the state and mainstream media, killing Matt began to decrease gradually.Around 2013, killing Matt almost disappeared from people’s sight.

△ "Being black is not killing Matt", source: documentary "Killing Matt I Love You"

　

In 2016 and 2017, on the platform like Aauto Quicker, a number of accounts mainly shooting rural non-mainstream dances and laughing at themselves. With long hair and colorful tights, they created a large number of "earthy" video works with the rural environment as the background, which triggered the so-called "non-mainstream Renaissance". Some of the creators behind these accounts used to kill Matt. They returned to the countryside from the city and didn’t have a skill, but found that many people on the Internet were willing to watch them for fun, so they made videos and broadcast live to earn living expenses. Some are more professional short video production teams, imitating and even spoofing Matt.

△ Documentary "Kill Matt, I Love You"

　

Aauto Quicker is a big stage of grass-roots culture, in which there is no lack of vulgar behavior and bad behavior to win the attention of the content, and many accounts with the theme of killing Matt are full of such content, causing users’ disgust. In 2017, Aauto Quicker banned a number of accounts involving pornography, violence, political inaccuracy and vulgarity, which was called Aauto Quicker Net Action, including many illegal killing Matt accounts. However, after this clean net, even the "original" killing Matt who did not violate the rules was gradually unable to rely on video and live broadcast to make a living.

　

Nowadays, whether in the offline world or the online world, we rarely see the real killing of Matt.

Why kill Matt?

　

Thirteen years later, when we look back at this social and cultural phenomenon that happened in 2008 and caused a heated discussion in the whole country, what can we find except that our youth is gone and we once again lament that their shapes are weird and not mainstream? If we say that in 17 years, the people who really killed Matt in the online world made live broadcasts and made videos to make a living and allowed the public to make fun of them like watching monkeys, then why did they choose to kill Matt in 2008? How do they see themselves?

　

In fact, as mentioned above, in 2008, all the people who chose to kill Matt were the new generation of migrant workers after the 1990s and 1990s. Most of them come from remote and backward rural areas in southwest and central provinces. Before they became migrant workers, they had another identity: left-behind children. At the end of Kill Matt I Love You,Many people who killed Matt mentioned that they had been separated from their parents since childhood, and they longed for affection and a complete family.The family is poor, parents leave home to work, and rural education resources are poor. With many elders and peers around them leaving the countryside for cities, the rural environment is more monotonous, and big cities have become their imaginary exports.

　

△ Documentary "Kill Matt, I Love You"

Many of them followed the older people in the village to the coastal cities when they were thirteen or fourteen. Under the age of 18, primary school or junior high school education, basically can only work in assembly line factories. However, cities do not have as many opportunities and fun as they think. Cheated deposit, repetitive work of at least 12 hours a day, extremely low salary that is deducted if you are not careful, no friends, no entertainment, no money to spend in the city center, two or three days’ holiday a month ….. Before the "factory people" of the Internet giant cried 996, these assembly line workers had already entered 996 ten years earlier.

　

After the senior high school entrance examination, the author was asked by his parents to work in the factory in the name of earning pocket money. The intensity of 12 hours a day, completely mechanical labor and night shift rotation is completely beyond the reach of a 14-year-old adolescent. The author only persisted for half a month, and in fact, few assembly line workers can persist in this work for a long time. Because no matter in terms of economic returns, physical health or spiritual satisfaction, this working mode is a great torture and loss to people. China’s economic take-off since the Millennium, the myth of "Made in China" and the rapid urbanization process are based on this to some extent.

　

This depressed work and living space, combined with the environment in the first decade of the Millennium and the self-reports of killing Matt in the documentary, the author believes that the reasons why the new generation of migrant workers chose to kill Matt in those years are complicated, including internal psychological needs, their own conditions or external environmental reasons, and the two are intertwined.

　

From the perspective of internal psychological needs,First of all, it is the need for self-protection.

　

Cities are more complicated than they think. Compared with the countryside, there are indeed more opportunities in the city, but there are also more dangers and deception lurking. When preparing the documentary, Director Li Yifan hopes to contact more Killing Matt for interviews, and wants to buy the assembly line factory videos they recorded before from them. Luo Fuxing, the "godfather of killing Matt", suggested telling them that interviews or selling videos are "no deposit", because many people who killed Matt were cheated by factory owners or seemingly kind strangers when they first arrived in Guangdong. Therefore, it is necessary to have these four words to eliminate many concerns about killing Matt. Therefore, in fact, they really need to look cool and annoying, and make themselves more "shocking". Without any other capital and power, they can only use their own bodies.

△ "You will feel safe", documentary "Kill Matt, I Love You"

Therefore, it is not unreasonable for them to take a fancy to the Japanese visual style. This style blows the hair as big and long as possible, and the short person can be at least 5 cm taller because of the hair; Liu Haichang can only see half an eye, which increases the mystery; Red trousers, smoky makeup, rivets, tattoos, fishnet stockings and platform shoes enhance personality, aura and strength. They need and can only show the city people that they are fashionable and have their own ideas, and they are not timid and can be bullied casually. It can even be said that although they know that the style of killing Matt is not the mainstream of the city, they are no longer completely rural people, at least half of them are already urban people. City people should not be so fond of bullying city people, they imagine.

　

Secondly, it is the demand for individuality, ego and freedom.

　

Maybe some people will feel angry and puzzled. They all work in assembly line factories. Why don’t those who have been suppressed for a long time after 70 s and 80 s play killing Matt? Why do they like to be maverick after 90 s?

　

In the first decade of the Millennium, great changes have taken place in all aspects of China society, and the facilitation of network media communication has also started from here.Children born in the early 1990s are in their teens when mobile phones and computers become popular.As mentioned earlier, some rural children drop out of school at this age and follow their fellow villagers to the city. Young people are eager to be wonderful, and the internet and the city provide them with many fresh stimuli and information. Compared with the previous generation who also worked in factories, the new generation of migrant workers’ desire for individuality naturally germinated.

　

The assembly line does not need individuality, and even tries to stifle humanity and freedom. The more repressed they are, the more eager they are for individuality, freedom and self-expression, the more they try to "deviate". To become a Matt killer is to try to find some unique selves and the possibility of not being the same screw by transforming one’s appearance and expressing one’s personality outside the assembly line, even if it is only during the only three-day rest day in a month.

　

People who don’t like to kill Matt’s style can think that this aesthetic is outdated and unsightly, but as long as the behavior of killing Matt’s group is within the legal scope, everyone should probably respect their freedom. As Li Yifan said, aesthetic freedom is the most basic freedom. When there is no other freedom, aesthetic freedom should be the simplest and most accessible freedom, and it should also be the freedom not to be kidnapped and tried by others.

△ "Feel the power of her personality", documentary "Kill Matt, I Love You"

　

Third, the need for recognition and belonging.

　

In addition to protecting themselves and expressing their individuality, adolescent rural children who are almost helpless in the city are also eager for companions and a sense of belonging, whether it is friendship, affection or love. In the documentary, a girl killed Matt and said, "As long as you play with Matt, you are a family." Even when the killing of Matt gradually disappeared and only appeared on the online live broadcast platform, many former killing Matt did not hesitate to brush gifts for the killing Matt who made the live broadcast. Some even brushed 5,000 yuan a month because they knew that they were not easy and felt like family whenever and wherever.

　

The killing Matt family is really like a big family. Members have given each other a high sense of identity and belonging, and they are relatives and friends. By sharing the identity of killing Matt, they confirm each other, and by confirming each other, they realize or strengthen their self-identity. In addition to affection and friendship, it is also an important reason to gain the recognition of the opposite sex by playing cool and handsome. People who play killing Matt will only become lovers with the opposite sex who also play killing Matt. Even if the other party suddenly stops playing killing Matt, the ending is to break up immediately. It can be said that hairstyle means a cultural identity, which means who shares a set of aesthetics, values and worldview with himself.

　

△ "Because you want to be concerned" and "I need others", documentary "Kill Matt and I Love You"

　

The above are some of the more important internal demand reasons, and in terms of their own conditions and external environment, they choose to be Matt-killing, which is also influenced by the following factors.

　

First of all, their economic level is very limited.

　

Many of us will laugh at their cheap and low-grade clothes, but it is indeed affordable consumption for their extremely low economic level. "Deviant" also needs capital. When there is nothing, the body is the biggest capital, and the economic cost of transforming the body is relatively low, although many people who kill Matt become poorer because they play with their hair. In addition, although cities are diverse and rich, in fact, regions are clearly marked according to the level of consumers. Killing Matt knows that many high-end places can’t afford them at all, so many people almost always stay near the factory, that is, suburbs or villages in the city. It’s not so easy to broaden one’s horizons in the city. Luo Fuxing said that he didn’t dare to look up at those tall buildings for a long time and felt very inferior. With limited economic conditions and limited horizons, killing Matt is the aesthetic consumption that can best reflect their personality within their power.

　

Secondly, the existence of information cocoon room.

　

Although the network has brought a lot of distant information, everyone will gradually form a network information cocoon, in which they almost only see the people and opinions they recognize. In 2008, although there was no mechanism to push according to personal data at that time, the people put into their QQ were mainly people who were close to themselves. For those who kill Matt, because many peers around them are playing with their hair, taking selfies and using Martian, gradually, they really think this is a trend, and they really think these shapes are beautiful and cool.

　

Besides, fashion is also time-varying.

　

Although fashion is always in reincarnation, what elements and styles can become a temporary trend depends largely on the economic, social and cultural status of the people who choose these elements and styles. Therefore, fashion is always a kind of imitation behavior, and regions with lower economic and cultural level tend to imitate regions with higher level. The phenomenon of killing Matt not only reflects that China is keen to imitate Europe, America, Japan and South Korea in fashion, but also clearly reflects the fashion time difference between urban and rural areas in China.

　

In the first few years of the Millennium, the mainstream fashion in the city was bright-colored hair and tight-fitting colored pants. Killing Matt can be said to be an exaggerated variant of urban fashion that was a few years late in the suburbs. They tried to enter the city by imitating the shape, but they were told that the tickets they used had already expired for many years.

△ "Super Girl" in 2005

　

To sum up, we can see that the formation of the group of killing Matt and this cultural phenomenon is not only due to the desire of a group of people who are in aesthetic decline to gain eyeballs, but a group of adolescent new generation migrant workers who have no power, trying to fight against the assembly line life through aesthetic freedom, to fight against the danger of the city or to integrate into the city. Reflected in them,In fact, it is the spiritual dilemma of this generation of migrant workers, the antagonistic pattern and gap between urban and rural areas, and the fact that cities rely on this group to achieve economic take-off but ignore the living conditions of this group.

　Where is killing Matt now?

　

What are you doing now after killing Matt?

　

Except for some Sha Matt, who still has long colored hair, who make a living through live broadcast and video shooting, most Sha Matt who has cut off his long hair has returned to his hometown or hometown city. Some of them grow bananas in the countryside, some move bricks on the construction site, and they are eloquent in sales. Those who master a craft work in a hair salon or beauty salon, and those who are better off have their own hair salon or fast food restaurant. Others continue to work in factories in coastal cities in Guangdong.

　

Luo Fuxing, who claimed to be the godfather of killing Matt, tried to revive the killing of Matt. He still lives in Shipai, Dongguan, and has become a barber. At the same time, he has opened personal accounts on various social software to share classic or newly designed hair styles. He also opened a three-day Matt-killing experience hall in Beishangguang, and some netizens will come here to experience a Matt-killing hairstyle. In his comments on many social platforms, many netizens have no choice but to feel "sorry for my family, I am bald" and "envy the leader’s hair", while others still express their incomprehension and even disgust at killing Matt.No matter what the attitude of the public is, it is difficult to reproduce the once-popular phenomenon of killing Matt by one person’s cry.

△ Luo Fuxing’s video number

△ Netizen’s message on Luo Fuxing’s Douban account

　

However, the "spirit of killing Matt" has never disappeared, and even today it is becoming more and more common, so that in fact, today’s young people all "kill Matt".What is the "spirit of killing Matt"? The author believes that it is actually a desire for individuality and freedom in a highly instrumental and utilitarian modern world.As sociologist Max Weber said, the modern world is an "iron cage" established by instrumental rationality, and everything is best "impersonal". People should strive to be a tool without personality and irrational emotions to promote the development of the country, society and cities.

　

Also after 1995, although they didn’t become "killing Matt", those children who were born in cities or came to cities for study and employment through the college entrance examination are now faced with: a high-pressure and risky living space, a working mode of working with their eyes open and sleeping with their eyes closed, and perhaps they can’t achieve the involution of class rise with all their efforts, and the cruel mechanism of being quickly eliminated if they lie flat, and strive to earn money in order to be a stable house slave.

　

And these young people, don’t they all try to express their individuality and declare their uniqueness through aesthetic freedom, clothing, make-up, hairstyle, jewelry and other appearance shaping, even if they just dress up beautifully to drink coffee and watch exhibitions and take photos on weekends, to breathe the fresh air outside the iron cage?

　

Even, in terms of exaggerated costumes and imitating other countries’ fashions (such as French, Japanese and women’s group style), today we are doing something almost the same as killing Matt.

　

△ Many French wear and share in bilibili.

　

We should be as tolerant of killing Matt as we are of ourselves. In an era when everyone is trapped in an iron cage, aesthetic freedom is indeed the most basic, accessible and even the only freedom. If as individuals, we can’t change the cage for the time being, then at least we can respect the aesthetic freedom of others.

tag

　

After a lapse of thirteen years, when we re-recognize the cultural phenomenon of killing Matt, we can see not only the survival and spiritual dilemma of the group that killed Matt, but also what China city has neglected in the process of modernization, and we should also see the predicament that people are facing today, so as to prevent a group from being suppressed and aphasia from happening again.

　

References:

1. Li Yifan: "One seat" speech "But there is no wonderful killing Matt, only killing Matt with extremely poor life", in 2020. Li Yifan: The documentary Kill Matt I Love You, 2019.

2. Wang Bin: "Differential Manufacturing and Stigma Construction under the Background of Rapid Urbanization-Further Discussion on" Killing Matt "Group", published in China Youth Research, 2015.

3. Zhang Le, Chang Xiaomeng: "Sociological Interpretation of" Killing Matt ",published in" China Youth Studies ",2014.

4. Zhang Shuli, Zhang Yanqiu: Perspective on "Killing Matt": Paying Attention to the Spiritual and Cultural Needs of the New Generation of Migrant Workers, published in Journal of Social Sciences of Jiamusi University, 2014.

5. Sun Letao: "Catch" Kill Matt ",published in China Clothing, 2014.

6. Sun Tianpan: "Kill Matt": an existence that needs to be understood, published in Southern Metropolis Daily, 2013.