Hongjie Zhao

Nowadays, young singles in big cities often hop between romantic relationships using dating apps, transforming romance into a form of entertainment with minimal time and emotional investment. These apps replace traditional matchmakers, turning courtship into a "game" where users can easily return to the market for more options. This leads to self-commodification, where emotions are devalued and intimate relationships become transactional. In the internet age, consumerism intertwines with emotions, making love seem like a commodity. The pursuit of efficiency has impacted personal relationships, turning love into a public performance. Personal emotions, once private, are now commodified in the public domain. My work aims to provoke deep reflection on self-commodification in the era of fast-food love. Can people truly find their ideal love through the quick, transactional mode offered by dating apps?

In today's fast food culture, Disney prioritizes marketing over product quality, emphasizing quick profits through characters like LinaBell—a superficial creation of the cultural industry. This character is marketed extensively, encouraging passive consumer interaction. Art and aesthetics have become tools of instrumental rationality, as people chase mass-produced Disney fantasies, revealing societal issues of technological obedience and loss of critical thinking. To critique this, I created the brand "Dismay" and its visual identity set. I launched "LieBell," a money-sucking monster inspired by LinaBell and classic Disney characters. I sewed a LieBell figure and took it to Shanghai Disneyland to demonstrate the project's interactivity and practicality. This project aims to awaken audiences from Disney's virtual world and prevent them from becoming one-dimensional consumers. Addressing this consumer alienation can help similar industries avoid these pitfalls.