[The Beauty Economy: 20 Cruel Truths]
1. Entry Ticket: Good looks aren't the upper limit, they're the bottom line for survival.
2. Hard Currency: Beauty is the only universal asset that transcends class, language, and intelligence.
3. Premium King: Any mediocre product, with the added label of "beauty," immediately gains a premium of over 300%.
4. Illusion Tax: All tipping, bidding, and payments are essentially paying an "illusion tax."
5. Emotional Anchor: Consumers aren't buying the person, but rather the "ideal self" or "perfect lover" projected by that person.
6. Male Beauty Selling Point: Male beauty now sells "security" and "being watched."
7. Female Beauty Selling Point: Female beauty now sells "longing" and "sexual tension."
8. Industrialization: All "genuine feelings" and "pure desire" are backed by precise scripts and ROI calculations from MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks). 9. Depreciation Rate: Physical attractiveness is a rapidly depreciating asset; once its bloom is over, liquidation begins immediately.
10. Substitutability: The internet has no shortage of 18-year-old faces; you'll always be someone's "lower-tier substitute."
11. Power Compensation: Humble laborers buy a power illusion of "controlling others' lives" by consuming physical attractiveness.
12. Dimensional Reduction Attack: Emotional value is devastating to functional value (e.g., IELTS teaching assistant vs. underground idol).
13. Class Illusion: Beauty makes the lower classes mistakenly believe they have a ticket to the top, when in reality, they are mostly just "consumables."
14. Harvesting Loop: Creating anxiety (beauty standards) → Providing the antidote (cosmetic surgery/products) → Showcasing results (harvesting traffic).
15. Self-Pleasure Scam: Many so-called "self-pleasuring consumption" are essentially still catering to the public's judgment of "pleasing others." 16. Occupational Cost: Those who sell emotional value long-term will eventually lose the ability to perceive genuine emotions.
17. Depersonalization: In the eyes of capital, you are not a person, but a string of attractive, traffic-generating code.
18. Prisoner of the Algorithm: Your charm does not depend on you, but on who the algorithm wants to make "famous" today.
19. The Ultimate Luxury: Companionship is cheap, but "willing compliance" is the most expensive luxury of this era.
20. The Price of Sobriety: Those who see through all this often don't earn this money; those who do must learn to "play dumb."
