考研英語時文賞讀（77）： 刷抖音為什么會讓人上癮？

　　摘要：考研英語作為一門考研公共課，雖然大家都學了英語十幾年，卻仍經常有總分過線掛在英語上的情況，因此英語復習不單單是單詞、做題。閱讀作為考研英語的大頭，僅僅做考研真題或許沒法滿足你的閱讀量，因此幫幫之后會不定時推出一篇英文美文，這些文章都與考研英語閱讀同源，多讀必有好處。

　　TikTok Is the Latest Reason Teens Are Addicted to Their Phones

　　抖音成為青少年沉溺手機的最新原因

　　When Holly Grace, a 23-year-old part-time singer and full-time nurse in Nashville, Tenn., first started making videos for the app TikTok, she had no idea she was any good at creating memes—those viral bits of content that have been the internet’s raison detre since millions discovered a moronic website called “Hampster Dance” 20 years ago.

　　23歲的霍莉·格蕾絲是田納西州納什維爾一名全職護士和業(yè)余歌手，當她第一次開始在短視頻應用 TikTok 上錄制視頻時，她完全沒意識到自己有創(chuàng)作“模因”的天賦，自20年前數(shù)百萬人發(fā)現(xiàn)了搞笑網站 “倉鼠群舞”以來，此類像病毒一樣迅速傳播的模因內容簡直成了互聯(lián)網存在的理由。

　　The word “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins well before the internet was being used by anyone other than a few far-flung computer nerds. He defined it as “a unit of cultural transmission,” and intended that the word sound like “gene.”

　　“模因”這個詞最早是由進化生物學家理查德·道金斯創(chuàng)造，比互聯(lián)網還只是少數(shù)幾個電腦迷在使用的時代還要早。他將其定義為“一個文化傳播單位”，并且還希望這個詞聽上去像“基因”。

　　Modern-day memes have become the lingua franca of our digital world, allowing people to communicate in an often humorous kind of shorthand. Even if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve perhaps heard of Grumpy Cat, or that dress that was either blue or white, or the “Gangnam Style” video that forced YouTube to add more digits to its view counter.

　　如今，模因已經成為我們數(shù)字世界的通用語言，讓人們以通常很幽默的短內容進行交流。即使你不知道我在說什么，你可能已經聽說過暴躁貓，或者那件連衣裙到底是藍色的還是白色的，亦或江南 Style 之類的東西。江南 Style 的視頻火到讓 YouTube 不得不將觀看次數(shù)的計數(shù)器增加到更多的位數(shù)。

　　All of them went viral, and then became memes as people appropriated them for their own uses, taking the picture of Grumpy Cat, for example, and adding a couple lines of text about one way or another that people are annoying.

　　所有這些都產生了病毒式的傳播效果，并在之后成為了模因，人們紛紛拿它們來為己所用。比如拿一張暴躁貓的圖片，再加上幾行形容人以這樣或那樣的方式煩人的文字。

　　Brad Kim, editor in chief at Know Your Meme, a website devoted to the obsessive, even academic, study of memes, says they are best understood as a cluster of ideas that people reproduce and iterate on, altering their meaning as they go.

　　“了解你的模因”網站主編布拉德·金表示，模因其實就是一系列相似的想法，人們對其進行復制再生，在這個過程中其意思也在發(fā)生變化。該網站致力于對模因進行沉迷式的，甚至是學術性的研究。

　　Originally just widely shared pictures or videos, memes have become something anyone can easily create and exchange. For Generation Z and younger Millennials, they’re a way to get beyond the limits of plain text.

　　模因最初只是被大量分享的圖片或視頻，現(xiàn)在已經成為任何人都能輕松創(chuàng)造并交流的東西。對于Z世代和更年輕的千禧一代來說，模因是一種超越了普通文本限制的存在。

　　“One of the problems of text is you lose the tone,” says Chris Slowe, chief technology officer of Reddit. “But if the meme is well known, you get a certain kind of tone and way of reading it that either helps the joke or helps get across what you’re trying to say.”

　　Reddit 首席技術官克里斯·斯洛說，“文字的問題之一是體現(xiàn)不出語調，但如果某個模因是為人熟知的，你就會感受到某種特定語調以及解讀它的方式，這或許有助于笑果，或者能夠幫助人們理解你想要去表達的東西。”

　　In other words, they’re a language of sorts, often laden with coded references or sentiments that are inscrutable to anyone born before the first Bush presidency. And certainly, being in on a joke that’s lost on older generations can be part of the allure.

　　換句話說，模因是一種語言，這種語言充滿了各種隱晦說法，或是在第一任布什政府之前出生的人無法理解的某些情緒。當然，能夠參與這種上幾代人無法理解的笑話也挺吸引人的。

　　(全文共374個詞，華爾街日報)

　　?重難點詞匯：

　　meme  模因；大腦模仿病毒；文化基因；彌母；表情包

　　moronic  adj. 低能的；遲鈍的

　　transmission  n. 傳動裝置，[機] 變速器；傳遞；傳送；播送

　　lingua  n. 舌；似舌的器官

　　shorthand  n. 速記；速記法 adj. 速記法的

　　appropriate  adj. 適當?shù)?；恰當?shù)?；合適的 vt. 占用，撥出

　　obsessive  adj. 強迫性的；著迷的；分神的

　　iterate  vt. 迭代；重復；反復說；重做

　　inscrutable  adj. 神秘的；不可理解的；不能預測的；不可思議的

　　allure  vt. 引誘，誘惑；吸引 n. 誘惑力 vi. 誘人，吸引人

　　?幫幫提示：考研英語同源外刊美文賞讀匯總