Face pinching master with a monthly income of 45,000 yuan, the first batch of "workers" in the meta-universe

 Do you think the word "human design" is derogatory? If you answered yes, chances are you're not Gen Z (born 1995 -- 2010).

In the "post-80s" and "post-90s" view, people set is false; For the post-1995 generation, the persona is real. It's the part of me that chooses to present myself to others, including the imaginary part.

Chatting with my colleague the other day, she told me that the post-00s even have a word -- "self-set", that is, their own set and requirements for themselves. Many post-00s have an "ego", such as the "ego" of the daughter of a colleague, who is a girl with purple hair.

Now, there are professions created for others, too. In the social meta-universe known as Soul, they have a name for themselves: face pinchers. Ro, Wen, one of Soul personality Mall's popular face pinchers, earns nearly 45,000 yuan a month just for pinching faces.

Soul has an interesting system. In order to combat "appearance-level socializing" and encourage spiritual empathy, it doesn't allow users to upload photos as avatars. Instead, it uses its own face-pinching system to create images of itself. But the system is highly customizable, with the eyes alone coming in 64 shapes and 44 colors, and can be manually adjusted for size and position. Therefore, many "disabled" will choose to directly go to the personality mall to buy the face pinching division has completed the work. At first glance, this pinching facial looks a lot like QQ Show, or facial Meng and ZEPETO, which became popular two years ago. But there is one fundamental difference -- the creator economy, in which platforms provide open systems that are easy to pick up and use, created by players, and monetised.

The creator economy is seen as an important symbol of the meta-universe. Roblox, the first meta-universe stock to be listed in the United States, is based on this system. On Roblox, there are over 20 million experiences (games), most of which are created by users themselves.

Since launching in late June 2021, Soul has signed up about 80 face pinchers from its users. On average, 7,000 to 8,000 avatars are uploaded in personality mall every month, all of which are named and priced by face pinching masters themselves and released after system review.

These heads are usually divided into three price brackets of 180, 300 and 420 Soul coins, which are equivalent to about 30 yuan, 50 yuan and 70 yuan. There are also special "limited avatar", each issue is limited to 10 to 20, priced at 14899Soul coins.

According to Official data from Soul, the average avatars buyer spends 43.8 yuan, with users buying them 53 times at most. Consumers aged 18-27 (Generation Z) accounted for 50.4% of the total. The second is 27-35 years old, accounting for about 40%.

According to su ning financial institute released consumer finance research center "generation" Z "groups consumption trend, Z generation are keen on" people set spending "is fundamentally due to" who am I "" who I want to be", a lot of generation Z are keen to try different styles of outfit to use, or consumption of different brand products, To experience different ways of life. Kneading face division "Ro, hear" experience just confirms this point.

He told us that many customers who come to him for a custom avatar often choose a style that is the opposite of their real life. Introverts, for example, prefer bolder and more visually striking profile pictures.

Xing Xing is a 29-year-old woman. I followed her Soul account at 3:30 p.m., and two hours later, when I went back to her page, SHE had changed her profile picture. According to her, she has a new avatar every 2-3 days, which is obviously a bit of an underestimate.

And all of her heads are from Caocao Gai Gai.

Guy guy is slang for Soul. Caocao Gaii, as she calls him, is one of the first face pinchers Soul has signed.

In real life, "Provence's biggest lavender fan" is a 31-year-old photographer who plans weddings. For him, face-pinching on Soul is more like pure artistic creation, where creative ideas that are limited in real life are allowed to flow freely in the virtual world. Through the superposition, occlusion and deformation of the existing materials in the system, face pincher can design head pictures far beyond the category of "face", such as figure back, exotic animals, artistic scenery.

It only takes an hour for a mature face pincher to create a new avatar. Art takes longer to create, but people are still willing to pay a relatively high price.

The theory that labor determines value is the backbone of traditional economics, but in the virtual world, vast quantities of digital goods have no direct linear relationship with labor, such as the creation of a skyscraper at the flick of your finger. The "creator economy" is upending conventional economics.

People buy digital products more based on the recognition of the value of the product -- the value is jointly assigned by the buyer and the seller. Just like you appreciate the "style" of a face pincher, you are willing to pay for his work, and the face pincher will also create for you. It's more like the logic we use for luxury goods or art.

Xiao Xing and Caocao Gaii have formed a customer relationship similar to that of luxury goods. Every three or five days before Soul launched, the face pincher would send her his own portrait of Star. Little stars are also accepted, with each head costing 30 to 300 yuan. "I especially like caocao Gaigaizhi's head picture. His style is unique and different from others."

According to Xiaoxian, each avatar reflects a user's inner state: "Even a pure white avatar can read a lot of information."

Xiaoxen, a psychological consultant, creates a group chat room every weekend called "Analyze your personality by looking at your profile pictures".

It must have been one of the hottest rooms of the night, with people using virtual avatars to hide their real selves, yet expecting to feel "seen through". On the night I accidentally walked into the room, one girl broke down in tears after The cat analyzed her profile picture.

With this "diversion", xiao Xiao has received a lot of attention and paid counseling. In 2021, Miaoxiaoxian earned more than 200,000 yuan from psychological counseling through Soul, more than the losses suffered by offline studios deeply affected by the epidemic.

It is precisely because today's young people pay more and more attention to the realm of the spiritual world and are willing to consume things representing self-exploration such as "human design" and "self-design", so that the proportion of identity determining value becomes larger and larger, and "creator economy" is likely to become the basic rule of the meta-universe. Just like the relationship between little star and face pinching artist, it is not only a consumer relationship, but also a mutual recognition of values. That's probably why face pinchers were among the first "workers" in the metaverse.

Create one or more personal devices for generation Z, so that they can experience the present moment without repetition through the renewal of their own identity, activate the desire of users to create in the new environment, transform themselves in the identity of consumers and creators, and build their own meta-universes.