Digital Fortune

Old Wang was a senior programmer in the "Fortune to Every Family" project team at a tech company. Simply put, this project was about digitizing and smartening traditional Spring Festival red envelopes. This year's task was particularly heavy, as the company aimed to completely abandon paper red envelopes and achieve the grand goal of "end-to-end digital red envelopes."

In the office, the sound of keyboards was like the low moans of the winter wind, and everyone's face was etched with the weariness of overnight work. Old Wang pushed up his thick glasses, and the dense code on the computer screen looked like ferocious monsters. The slogan "Fortune to Every Family" was shouted loudly, but he only felt like a cog in the machine, being endlessly cranked.

This year, the digital red envelope gameplay was updated, no longer a simple "grab," but rather matching "personalized blessings" based on "user profiles." Old Wang's responsibility was to precisely push "exclusive New Year's greeting emoticons" based on big data. For example, if a user liked cats, a cute cat would appear on the red envelope interface; if a user loved fitness, a muscular man's New Year's video would be pushed. The more Old Wang worked on this seemingly "thoughtful" design, the more he felt that something was off.

On New Year's Eve, Old Wang finally got off work. When he returned home, his parents had already set a sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner, waiting for him to come back. He sat down wearily, and various New Year's greetings messages kept popping up on his phone. His parents took out the "digital red envelopes" they had prepared earlier, asking him to scan the QR code.

"Son, this red envelope, you see, it's quite convenient," his mother said happily.

Old Wang scanned the code, and the phone screen flashed, displaying a page with a plump pig holding a gold ingot, with an animation of "Congratulations on Getting Rich" in the background. Old Wang looked at this "personalized blessing" that he was so familiar with, and a strange feeling of aversion suddenly surged in his heart.

"Mom, this... this blessing, is it for Dad? Isn't he a pig?"

His mother paused, then quickly picked up her phone to check, "Huh? How could that be? On your dad's phone, there's a rabbit holding a dumbbell! It says he should be healthy and exercise more."

Old Wang frowned, opened his own phone, found the "Fortune to Every Family" app, clicked on "personal information," and saw that the gender was male, age 35, hobbies: fitness, zodiac sign: Taurus, preference: cute pets. This information was clearly his!

"I've never registered a fitness tag!" Old Wang muttered, suddenly realizing something, "Mom, you guys didn't fill in any personal information, did you?"

"Fill in what? We old folks don't know how to do that, we just logged in directly with our phone numbers, didn't fill in anything!" His father put down his chopsticks, looking at him with confusion.

Old Wang picked up his parents' phones, compared them repeatedly, and found that the red envelope interfaces of all family members displayed blessings that were "completely unrelated" to them. His grandfather, who liked Peking opera, received a hip-hop-style emoticon, and his grandmother, who liked tea, received a rock-and-roll-style blessing. The entire family's "personalized blessings" were like an absurd joke, mismatching everyone's preferences.

He opened his backend again, carefully checked the code, and suddenly discovered that the system did not push blessings based on the information filled in by the users themselves, but based on the "location" of the user's phone number. His parents' phone numbers were both registered with their hometown's ID cards, and the representative animals of their hometowns happened to be pigs and rabbits, respectively. His account, because it was registered in Beijing, pushed a "fitness cat" that the system thought was suitable for "Beijing" tastes.

Old Wang felt like he had been slapped hard in the face, and the immense sense of powerlessness made him dizzy. What big data and intelligence were all about, was just labeling and instrumentalizing people. The so-called "personalization" was just the machine's self-righteous "personalization."

"Oh right, Old Wang, the digital red envelope you transferred to me today, I haven't opened it yet, let me open it and see what kind of blessing it is?"

His father's voice interrupted his thoughts. Old Wang stared blankly as his father opened his phone, and on the screen, there appeared a middle-aged man wearing a programmer's plaid shirt and black-rimmed glasses, with a dazed expression, who said in a mechanical voice, "Happy overtime, keep up the good work!"

Old Wang felt completely collapsed, he felt like a puppet manipulated by data, forced to perform one ridiculous play after another in this huge absurd theater.

He put down his phone, sighed deeply, and suddenly laughed. This was really a good sign, at least in the new year, he could live like a real pig, carefree.