Youth culture of self-mockery

Bodily memes and economies of affect in China’s online space

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21790258
AutoresJunqi Peng (0000-0002-6683-3174, China Agricultural University, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Páginas1-17
Data de publicação2025-08-21
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoChinese Journal of Communication (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1754-4769 • E-ISSN: 1754-4750
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17544750.2025.2547982
OpenAlexW4413415039
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas32

This article provides a general picture of the decade-long self-mockery culture in China’s online space, unraveling its generative mechanism in the mediascape from both macro and micro perspectives. On the macro level, it historicizes the emergence of three emblematic cases: diaosi (dick hair), sang (grieving), and tang ping (lying flat), highlighting the central roles of digital media and the attention economy while teasing out the evolving affects and consistent threads, including the recurring theme of the body. On the micro level, the article probes into the agency of actual meme users, employing focus group discussions and interviews. It discovers their varied interpretations, practices, and motivations while uncovering the performativity, contradictions, and transformations of emotions embedded in the memetic articulations. The article concludes by proposing a dual-economy model, in which the affective economy interacts with the attention economy and operates at both the macro level of cultural production and the micro level of everyday communication

China · Cyberculture · Media studies · Political science · Social media · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Communication · Computer Science · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Humor Studies and Applications · Music History and Culture