8 posts tagged with "Absurdity of Social Rules"

Li Mei was organizing old photos when she accidentally remembered her father's WeChat. Her father had passed away five years ago, and his voice and smile were gradually blurring, like old photos worn by time. Only the conversations in WeChat and the health articles he forwarded still retained traces of his life.

She opened WeChat and found the familiar profile picture in her contacts – a photo of him taken in the park when he was young, sunlight shining on his face, with a hint of shy smile. The profile picture was still there, but when she clicked on the chat box, it displayed "The other party's account status is abnormal, unable to view."

Wang Defa stomped his feet in front of the bank, puffing out white breath. On the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, while others were busy visiting relatives and friends, he was thinking about depositing his son Maodou's few thousand yuan of Lunar New Year money into the bank. It wasn't that he loved money so much, but Maodou kept clamoring to buy game skins. He thought about locking it up in the bank first to prevent the kid from squandering it.

But there was a long queue in front of the bank's ATMs. When it was finally his turn, he inserted the card, and the screen glaringly displayed: "Storage amount has reached the limit, service suspended."

Old Wang rubbed his frozen fingers at his workstation, exhaling a puff of white breath. On the screen, a dense array of red envelope icons was falling like a torrential rain. It was New Year's Eve, and the company had "thoughtfully" organized a "company-wide online red envelope grabbing" event, supposedly a New Year ritual to "coagulate the hearts of the people."

Old Wang stared at the screen, his fingers trembling as he clicked the mouse repeatedly. Grabbing red envelopes, something he initially thought was only popular among young people, had now become a "job" for middle-aged folks like him. He recalled when he first joined the company, the year-end bonus came in thick envelopes, heavy with real cash, not the jumping numbers and various illusory "coupons" on the screen now.

Old Wang, carrying a bulging snakeskin bag, stood at the entrance of the high-speed train car, looking like a porter who had wandered into a high-end banquet. He checked his ticket, carriage 7, seat 10F, correct. But when he reached seat 10, he found 10A, 10B, 10C, 10D, and then it skipped directly to 10F. He rubbed his eyes, looked again carefully, and there was still no E.

"Where did E go?" he muttered to himself, his voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz.

Dr. Li has been a bit troubled lately. It's not because of the hospital's performance evaluations or the endless overtime, but because of the anesthesia he's been using.

It started about half a month ago. He anesthetized a patient with appendicitis, using the same dosage and procedure as always, but the patient actually woke up during the surgery, screaming in pain. Dr. Li was shocked and quickly increased the dosage, managing to barely complete the surgery.

Old Wang, an ordinary programmer, looked forward to going home for the Spring Festival more than anything else all year. Knowing how difficult it was to snag a ticket, he opened a well-known third-party ticket booking platform early. The page was full of flashy colors, with various "Speed ​​Ticket Snatching," "Exclusive Channels," and "VIP Acceleration Packs" dazzling his eyes.

"Here we go again with this," Old Wang muttered to himself, but his hand still obediently clicked on "Normal Booking." The page refreshed, showing that there were plenty of tickets available, but the price was fifty yuan more expensive than on the official 12306 website.

Old Wang clicked on the game interface again, his fingertip hovering over the "Single Draw" button, like a bomb disposal expert about to press the detonation button. He had already drawn three hundred times today, all useless items and duplicate character shards. He sighed at the phone screen. Qin Che, the handsome virtual boyfriend in the game, still ignored him, as if he were an unreachable bubble.