“Don’t Bother Me Unless You are Good-Quality!” - Youzhi (優質) (Good-Quality) Discourse on Gay Dating Platform in China

ABSTRACT

Using multiple methods and qualitative research design (including analysis of online dating profiles, digital ethnography, and in-depth interviews), I examine the discriminatory nature and mechanism of youzhi (優質), a neoliberal discourse widespread on the Chinese gay dating platform “Blued.” This paper also explores how users interpret the connotations of youzhi and utilize it while justifying and normalizing the usage. My findings consider that the discourse of youzhi can integrate a variety of human qualities and generate a hierarchy with establishing an image of first-class citizens in the Chinese gay community. Specifically on Blued, the connotation of youzhi has been reframed into a one-sided, superficial variant through the site’s pre-configurated attributes and marketing promotions. This underlines the sexual and erotic capital with physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity as the currency. Given its discriminatory essence, which could risk the user’s desirability, youzhi is still widely utilized on Blued to deter the ones lacking sexual capital from contacting, promote the user’s image, and attract the ones who meet the stringent beauty standards. Based on my findings, the users rationalize and normalize these actions as solely following the logic of how Blued is configured and what it has constantly promoted.

Introduction

Along with the de-collectivization of daily life in the post-Mao urban areas (Zhang and Sun, 2014) and the market reform which helped unleash once-suppressed desires (Rofel 2007), people in China could be partially liberated from the state’s pressure and the norm of heterosexual marriage (Wong 2015) so to experiment new forms of dating practice. Among them, online dating is a prominent one that is technologically established on the ever-increasing mobile phone penetration (Cao and Smith 2023) and the world’s largest number of Internet and smartphone users (Chen and Ding 2020).

Compared to their heterosexual counterparts, queer people including gay men in China rely more on online dating to find and meet one another for anonymity (Chen and Ding 2020), because they are still facing enormous and constant discrimination and marginalization from the Chinese heteronormativity-dominated Confucian society (see Wei 2020; Wu 2003). The society is simultaneously governed by an authoritarian state that not only suppresses the voice of the LGBTQ community (Lin 2022, Wei 2010, 2022) but also stigmatizes them (see Chang and Ren 2017). In fact, the Internet has taken the place of conventional physical arenas and become Chinese gay men’s primary site to conduct dating practices (Feng, Zunyou, and Detels 2010, Jiang et al. 2019, Sun, Hoyt, and Pachankis 2020, Wei et al. 2019). It can be stated that digital technology has profoundly changed how gay men get connected (Bien et al. 2015, Feng, Zunyou, and Detels 2010), and online platforms are accordingly wielding significant power in shaping the social life and mind-set of gay people in China (Liu 2016).

Despite the possibilities created by digital space for gay dating practice in China – both sexually and romantically – the Internet is by no means a utopia. The problems within have raised academic concerns from different perspectives (Adams-Santos 2020), which include the research on intragroup discrimination and marginalization on queer dating platforms (see Cao and Smith 2023). As per Conner (2022), people on dating platforms use personal profiles to transfer offline norms of civility (Musolf 2003) onto the digital space by saying like “please say hi” or “don’t send nude pics.” Conversely and more frequently, profiles like “no fats, no fems, no Asians” discriminate and stigmatize certain users. This discrimination can be understood as deviance for violating interaction norms (Clinard and Meier 2011, Franzese 2015) and may be “justified” by the deviants (Clinard and Meier 2011: 5). In this paper, I continue to investigate this issue in the context of China by examining Blued, a location-based real-time dating gay platform (LBRTDGP). Since its launch in 2012 (Chen and Ding 2020), Blued has quickly grown into the world’s largest gay social app, providing service to 40 million users in 190 countries (seventy percent of users in China) (Hu and Li 2019, Wang 2019) and its daily active users had already reached three million in 2016 (Burke 2016.

In conducting my larger project of exploring the intragroup discrimination and marginalization on Blued, I constantly run into indignant users complaining about being offended by an expression of youzhi (優質) (good(-)quality), you (優) for short. It prevails in users’ profiles or conversations and can be used both as a noun and an adjective. The common phrases regarding youzhi are “you zhao you (優找優)” (a good-quality guy looks for the same), “fei you bu liao (非優不聊)” (no reply unless you are good-quality), and “fei you wu rao (非優勿擾)” (do not bother me unless you are good-quality). Youzhi with its related expressions is not newly emerging in the Chinese gay community. However, from the perspective of deviance and social control, its conspicuously discriminatory and objectifying nature, and the reasons behind its normalization are still under-researched.

Literature review

At the turn of the twenty-first century, some postmodern pioneers (see Haraway 1990; Turkle 1997) extolled the Internet as a fundamentally transforming tool that could bring a truly egalitarian world, to the queer community as well¹ Yet, over time, and with the development of Web 2.0 in particular (Parks 2015), the earlier prediction has been tested too optimistic based on the findings of online reproduction and even expansion (Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019) of some preexisting offline issues such as heteronormativity, hierarchy, discrimination, and exclusion (see Conner 2019, Hammack et al. 2022, Rodat 2014, Shield 2018, Wei 2020). Also, the Internet has been proven to foster hypersexuality, superficiality, and high competitiveness, which would not happen nor get accepted in the physical world (see Lee 2019, Regan 2021, Wu and Trottier, 2021).

Queer online dating and intragroup discrimination

The studies concerning intragroup discrimination reproduced and magnified on Western queer online dating platforms are ample. One body of literature pays attention to the structural shaping force of the platform. For example, Robinson (2016) uses the concept of quantifiable-body discourse to demonstrate how body-related hegemonic norms and discriminations against obesity are generated by the infrastructure of a dating website. In addition, in examining Grindr, the most international gay dating app, Conner (2019, 2022) identifies the potential of its pre-set attributes in promoting a sexual hierarchy as well as heightening and conniving at the stigmatization and marginalization. A similar finding by Ma and Gajos (2022) in studying the interface of dating websites is that biased discrimination would be generated via website design. Another body of literature focuses on the discriminatory mechanism of discourse on dating platforms, and this is represented by multiple scrutinizations on the expression of “just a preference” (Callander, Holt, and Newman 2012, Conner 2019, Robinson 2015). However, there is still a lack of research studying discrimination on queer online dating platforms in China. Though previous studies on LBRTDGP in China discuss inequality generated by the platforms (see Miao and Sam Chan, 2020, Wang 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d), they have not touched on specific discrimination issues.

Sexual field, capital, and currency

The discriminatory act on online dating is quite intriguing because it usually is incarnated as a rejection of and/or desire for certain people. It could be regarded as offensive or impolite and accordingly jeopardize the user’s desirability, so how to manage the expression is at the core of one’s representation building in online dating (Brickell 2012).

Sexual field

A sexual field can be understood as a realm of possible sexual relationships. It is structurally shaped by cultural, social, and political institutions, as well as boundaries that regulate sexual behavior (Farrer 2010). The academic contribution of the sexual field framework is to make the questions of desire and desirability amiable and sociologically explainable (Daroya 2017, Martin and George 2006) at the level of collective life (Green 2014a).

According to Green (2011), sexual desire within any sexual field is based on a hierarchy of desirable traits, with some individuals possessing more of those than others. Traits are valued by the specific field in which they operate, which could transform individual desires into structures of desire (Green 2008, 2014a, Martin and George 2006). These structures materialize (1) in the conversations regarding who is attractive among patrons and (2) in a given site’s representations of desirability (Green 2008, 2011, 2014a). Inspired by the concept of dynamic social relations (Massey 1994), online dating platforms can be regarded as cyber sexual fields, given their affordances of virtual presence, profile curation, and preference expression by users (Brubaker, Ananny, and Crawford 2016, Green 2014a).

Capitals and currency

Sexual social structure in any sexual field is constructed on kinds of resources, and the most pertinent one is sexual capital (see Green 2008, Martin and George 2006, Michael 2004), sometimes also called erotic capital (see Brooks 2010, Hakim 2010). This capital pertains to a collection of resources, competencies, and attributes that contribute to one’s status as a sexual agent in a particular field (Martin and George 2006, Michael 2004). Additionally, the specific form of sexual (erotic) capital can be understood as the dominant currency, which is also determined by the structures of desire (Green 2008, 2014b, Weinberg and Williams, 2010). For example, Han and Choi (2018) find that the currency of race is well-recognized across various gay social locations, and Smith and Brown (2020) identify the Ideal White Male Archetype (IWMA) as the most valuable currency in their research context.

Self-representation and profile

Actors in the sexual field would manage to generate sexual capital through three dimensions of self-presentation: physical appearance, affect, and socio-cultural styles (Green 2008, Levine and Kimmel 1998), in ways of “giving” (e.g., spoken messages) and “giving off” (e.g., nonverbal cues). In online dating platforms, this process would resonate with and get amplified by intermediary features of reduced nonverbal cues and asynchrony (Hobbs, Owen, and Gerber 2017, Wu and Ward, 2018), which could enable users to engage in selective online self-presentation (Walther 2007) with greater control in crafting image (Walther 1996). Thus, online dating has become a productive area for scholars to scrutinize online self-presentation (see Blackwell, Birnholtz, and Abbott 2015, Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs 2006, Hobbs, Owen, and Gerber 2017), and user profiles especially attract the attention of cyber-queer and cyber-feminist academia for their uniquely high editability (see Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019; Hancock and Toma 2009, Toma, Hancock, and Ellison 2008). As Gonzalez and Meyers (1993:131) note, “Personal ads thus provide researchers with an intriguing source of information about self-presentation strategies, relationship goals, and contemporary social definitions of what is attractive or desirable, and about gender stereotypes as well.”

Youzhi discourse in China

The discourse of youzhi – also used as an alternative to zhiliang (質量) which is literally translated into quality – started to arouse academic interest since Wu and Trottier’s (2021) examination of four dating apps used by Chinese gay men. They argue that youzhi/zhiliang has both a narrow and a broad definition, which respectively relates to one’s appearance solely and aspects of human capital as a whole. Later, in Zhao, Liu, and Li’s (2022) investigation on “Zhihu,” an alternative cyberspace to LBRTDGPs for gay dating in China, they discover that youzhi/zhiliang act as a criterion for gay men to compare the users’ “qualities” on different platforms. However, neither research touches on the discriminatory mechanism and deviant nature of youzhi, especially in personal profiles on Blued.

The current research

The current literature indicates that there is a hierarchy with discriminatory behaviors in the LGBTQ community, which is complicated and exacerbated by features of digital communication and is normalized and justified by users. However, it remains unclear what the situation is on Chinese gay dating platforms. Hence, based on the theoretical framework of sexual capital and dramatological self-presentation, I investigate youzhi on Blued in the “important dimensions of deviance” proposed by Clinard and Meier (2011: 6) – “what it is, how to define it, which causes explain it, and what social groups can and should do to reduce it.” The research questions are formulated as follows:

1. What does youzhi mean in the Chinese gay community, and how does Blued shape the definition(s)?

2. Based on what kind of mechanism and to what extent is youzhi a discriminatory discourse?

3. In the context of Blued, how do people normalize and justify their usage of youzhi?

I have organized my findings, followed by the methodological section, by answering these questions and explaining how this study contributes to existing knowledge on online interaction and discrimination.

Research methods

Digital ethnography

For this project, I conducted digital ethnography (Hine 2008) in Chinese cyberspace for 10 months (from 2022 to 2023). During the process, I primarily engaged in participant observation and ethnographic fieldwork on Blued. Inspired by the walkthrough method developed by Light, Burgess, and Duguay (2018: 3) to examine the “technological mechanisms and embedded cultural references,” I analyzed the platform at two stages: (1) registration and entry; and (2) daily use.

Registration and entry

In the first stage, inspired by Liu (2016) and Regan (2021), I collected documents produced by or about Blued, including the advertising materials from the App Store product page, products per se, and its company websites, as well as the news reports about Blued. Then, I conducted qualitative content analysis on the data.

Daily use

In the second stage, I downloaded the application and created an account, taking detailed field notes on the attributes and features of Blued, such as its functions, design elements, hot post notification, and official push content. I also kept records of my interactions with other users, noting my impressions and gathering firsthand knowledge of what the participants were experiencing. In my observations, I paid attention to user interactions, noting patterns and common features in profiles (Conner 2022). My own profile displayed a face picture and personal details, including age, height, and weight. I also mentioned that I was studying Blued. Simultaneously, I collected 200 profile screenshots expressing the discourse of youzhi from Blued and then examined them with content analysis.

Lastly, ethnographical work was expanded into other queer online spaces, including Baidu Tieba, Douban Group, Weibo, Zhihu, and public gay chat groups on WeChat. I entered these platforms purposefully searching and gathering user accounts that identify and report discrimination on Blued.

In-depth interview

To supplement ethnographical data, I conducted 20 semi-structured one-on-one interviews with gay men who had used Blued for over six months. I recruited interview participants using guanxi (關係) (Kriz, Gummesson, and Quazi 2014, Zhao, Liu, and Li 2022), convenience-based snowball sampling (see Denzin 1978), and public advertisement on both queer-oriented and generic social media. I obtained ethical approval from my workplace to conduct the research and informed all participants of my role as a researcher. My interviewees’ ages ranged from 18 to 35. Their educational backgrounds ranged from high school to PhDs, but the majority held bachelor’s degrees. The average duration of my interviews was approximately 90 minutes. Eight long-distance interviews were conducted over audio chat; the rest were conducted face-to-face. Interviewees’ names have been replaced with English aliases with the closest meaning to protect their privacy.

The interview questions began with the interviewees’ general user experience on Blued, for example, their use frequency and purpose. They were then asked about the function of personal profile, the profile content they had created, and the kinds of profiles they encountered on Blued. Lastly, questions regarding youzhi in profiles were asked, including their understanding of youzhi, their assessment of its discriminatory connotation, and their usage of it on Blued.

All the interview data were processed in sequence via recording, transcribing, coding, and analyzing, and all audio recordings were stored on a local laptop, which was deleted after the transcriptions were completed. All Chinese materials used for writing were appropriately translated. With the data, I conducted a reflexive thematic analysis and coded them in an open, organic approach, using MAXQDA. The coding process took three stages; first, I closely read the transcripts and established initial codes, and then I explored the interrelation among these codes and grouped the relevant ones into larger categories. Lastly, I decided what themes ought to be generated with these categories.

The combination of these methods contributes to the validity of this research by triangulating the data (see Denzin 1978) with what was observed as an insider participant, what is documented about the issue, and what members say happens (Adler and Adler 1987).

Definition of youzhi on blued

There was more than once when my respondents referred to the ambiguity and comprehensiveness of what youzhi stands for. Often, at the very beginning of the interviews, they would say, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure,” or “It (youzhi) stands for a lot of things.” But as my ethnography continued, by collecting more personal profiles containing this discourse, while jogging respondents’ memory and encouraging their narrations, I discovered two types of definitions of youzhi on the LBRTDGP of Blued: one with specific verbal context; the other lacking verbal context yet confined rigorously by the attributes and marketing strategies of Blued as the backdrop. This double definition reflects two types of hierarchical desire and desirability existing in fields with each infrastructure and patron base (Green 2014a, 2014b).

Youzhi with verbal context

Like the broad definition of youzhi discovered by Wu and Trottier (2021), youzhi with verbal context connotes an aggregation of diverse human capitals with a new Chinese gay hegemonic masculinity (Kong 2020) as the dominant currency. For the profiles themed around youzhi with context, the typical examples are “[I’m] okay with casual sex if you are in good shape, [and I] welcome youzhi guys;” “[I’m] especially not into effeminate [guys], [and I’m] into slightly muscular, outgoing, and masculine bottoms. You zhao you (a good-quality guy looks for the same), and it’s okay to be just friends. There is no need for [anyone who is] effeminate, ugly, aged over thirty-five or under 175 [cm] in height to text me. Directly send your photo(s) to me, and I’ll reply if you’re suitable [for me];” “No sexual promiscuity, [and] you zhao you” or “You zhao you, [and I’m] an overseas returnee with a master’s degree. [I’m] financially independent. Don’t contact me unless you have a bachelor’s degree.”

The verbal contexts endow the youzhi discourse with extensive connotations ranging from physical attractiveness, cis-gender performance, and monogamy to educational qualification/cultural capital and economic capital. These explanatory and supplementary verbal contexts largely echo the Chinese gay hegemonic masculinity of “[Being] straight-acting (cis-gender), possess a well-built gym body (physically fit and healthy), devalue activism and embrace domesticity (non-radical or subversive), engage in coupled relationships (monogamy), and indulge in a consumption lifestyle (middle-class status)” (Kong 2020: 1008). This connotation is not exclusive to Blued but is widely recognized in the Chinese gay community. However, it has experienced a variation in the context of LBRTDGP Blued.

Youzhi in the context of Blued

During the interviews, all my sources agreed that youzhi without verbal context on Blued solely – or at least mainly – implies physical attractiveness. Such as what Gogol said:

The first impression that jumps into my mind about what youzhi [lacking explanation] represents is a good-looking guy in his twenties or early thirties at most with a height of over 180 (cm), a well-built gym body, and a sizable penis for a top or a bouncing butt for a bottom.

For the reasons behind this oddly specific pictorial interpretation, my informants propose two major ones: the hookup ambiance and the ideal beauty, both produced and reproduced by the pre-set attributes and the marketing promotion of Blued.

Hookup ambiance

For the pre-set attributes, Blued copies its Western predecessors’ design (Grindr and Jack’d) (Miao and Sam Chan, 2020), integrating physique-orientated information collection (Wei 2020), geolocation information, along with online co-situation and instant messaging which drastically accelerate the interactions, into the product. These together contribute to a casual-hookup-oriented atmosphere (Blackwell, Birnholtz, and Abbott 2015; Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019; Licoppe, Rivière, and Morel 2016; Yoe and Fung 2018). Besides, its trait of visual-centeredness, typically embodied as functions of photographic profiles and personality tags (one-fifth are to describe appearance), has also been proven effective in prompting hookup culture (Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019; Cummings 2020). Lastly, commonly shared by dating apps, the characteristics of fun have also been fabricated into Blued, which include “temporality, lightness, and escape from seriousness and duties” (Lee, 2019: 5). These also resonate with the hookup culture and sexual pleasure (Bogle 2008, Lee, 2019). Consequently, Blued even is stigmatized as “AIDS Blued” for its prominent ambiance of encouraging one-night stands (Wang 2023: 7). Surrounded by this ambiance, Blued users are quickly socialized with its “game rules” (Five) and naturally link youzhi lacking verbal context to hookup-oriented sexual capitals.

For the marketing promotion of Blued, due to its cooperation with Chinese national HIV/AIDS prevention propaganda (Miao and Sam Chan, 2020, Wang 2019), Blued often has welcome pages and pop-up notifications of health education on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It also has pages promoting and selling related prevention products. These marketing strategies further contribute to Blued’s image of a hookup breeding ground.

This is verified by King’s response:

Blued is totally a hookup app, and basically, everyone using it knows this. It’s not just people on it talking about sex non-stop, but the app per se. You can always see these [HIV/]AIDS-related things there. […] I feel that this app is way too convenient for getting laid. With just a little clicking and scrolling, the people sharing the same [sexual] need and geographically nearby would appear on the screen.

King’s words support what I observed on Blued that its attributes and marketing promotions create a hookup ethos. He adds that the ethos is unavoidable and easy to identify, and how widely people get socialized by it.

Ideal beauty

For the pre-set attributes, Blued is designed to quantify human bodies by gathering and showcasing one’s age, height, and weight, which leads to straightforward comparisons among bodies and the establishment of supreme ideal beauty that is based on a set of oddly precise and specific standards (Robinson 2016). Besides, there are six tags of body types for users to choose for self-labeling and expressing preference: “pian shou (偏瘦)” (slightly slim), “yunchen (勻稱)” (well-proportioned), “rouzhuang (肉壯)” (strong), “jirou (肌肉)” (muscular), “wei zhuang (微壯)” (slightly strong), and “pian pang (偏胖)” (slightly fat). Half of the tags are used to describe physiques of muscularity, and the rest stress the standard body shape without much deviation, which is disproportional with the ratio of body types in real life. This design logic can also be identified from the user’s cartoon image function (see Figure 1): all four body shapes are very muscular, much more than average male bodies. Illuminated by Goffman’s (1959, 1963) dramaturgical framework, these features can be understood as the setting of a sexual site, or a piece of thematical sign equipment, which reflects particular structures of desire (Green 2008). Moreover, attributes such as following and being followed on Blued clearly and intuitively present how popular a user is. Combined with the visual-centeredness of Blued, users attribute popularity to the (re)presentation of certain types of beauty. Typically, the ones with many followers display an alignment with the physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity, and they are regarded as examples of the most desirable body type. Green (2008) defines them as fronts of patrons in a sexual field, which also contribute to a particular structure of desire.

Figure 1. The function of the user cartoon image of Blued.

For the marketing promotion of Blued, its official promotional messages usually contain keywords or descriptions of bodily features and gay hegemonic masculinity, for example, the buzzword “tiyu sheng (體育生)” (student majoring or specializing in athletics). Blued also tends to recommend streamers aligning with this ideal beauty on the homepage of its live streaming section like Figure 2. Consequently, the physical aspect of gay hegemonic masculinity – which mainly highlights the attractiveness of a well-built gym body – is well recognized as the most valuable currency in the field.

Figure 2. The first page of live streaming on Blued.

In summary, like the narrow definition focusing on one’s appearance (Wu and Trottier, 2021), the youzhi without verbal context on Blued can be regarded as a one-sided variant emphasizing sexual capital with the currency of physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity. The LBRTDGP of Blued, like all the other artifacts, is not neutral or free of value (Miao and Sam Chan, 2020, Winner 1980): It does not simply reflect or convey youzhi but converts youzhi through its designs which act as social norms in shaping interaction (Chun 2006; Connell 2005; Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019). As for the relationship between these two types of youzhi, it is illuminating to focus on some informants’ discontent with the circulation of youzhi on Blued. For example, King said:

This (Blued) is a platform to release our usually suppressed [sexual] desire, and everyone using this app is kind of a [man] whore, including me, so why [do these people] use something like youzhi to differentiate who’s nobler or more ethical. I don’t understand, and I wouldn’t say I like it.

This comment reflects that the moral parts of broadly-defined youzhi, namely monogamy and anti-promiscuity, contradict the prevailing hookup ambiance of Blued (Zhou 2018). Furthermore, based on some responses, youzhi could still be understood as one-sided and sex-oriented under the Blued’s backdrop, even with specific verbal context. This kind of comment again suggests hookup ethos’s influence on Blued with its powerful socialization.

A polite uncivil discourse: the discriminatory mechanism

Though starting from an investigation of the discriminatory essence of youzhi, with the expansion of the data pool, I was intrigued that not all respondents feel it is offensive, hurtful, or discriminatory. For example, according to Hurricane’s response, “you zhao you (優找優)” (a good-quality guy looks for the same) is a reasonable way to express sexual preference and desire based on an equivalent exchange. Compared with other blatant swearing, humiliation, or even intimidation in profiles, youzhi seems neutral and even polite to him. It is not uncommon to witness such justification of youzhi as a value-neutral and prejudice-free expression of personal desire and a “wanting somebody like me” kind of homophily (Dasgupta 2022, Mowlabocus 2021). However, more people feel offended by youzhi and apprehend it as discriminatory language merely spoken in a seemingly polite manner (Mowlabocus 2021).

To examine its discriminatory mechanism, I compare youzhi with another discursive myth suzhi (素質), which could also be loosely translated as “quality,” and I argue that youzhi is a derivative of suzhi. Suzhi was a legacy of state-political rhetoric and has significantly impacted Chinese society, including the LGBTQ communities (Bao 2011, Ho 2009, Rofel 2007). Its essence has evolved from a rigid and innate trait to a more adaptable attribute that can be gained and enhanced through upbringing, education, and training (Wei 2020). Subsequently, the social hierarchy born from suzhi prioritizes personal success and adaptability in a neoliberal market and governmentality (Yan 2008). Some scholars followed Bourdieu’s path and rendered suzhi as a local variant of “class-structured and class-structuring human capital” (Wei 2020: 102) in “expectations, taste, educational attainments and consumer consciousness” (Anagnost 2008:509). Regarding suzhi circulating in China’s queer community, previous studies use it to investigate the disparities in economic and cultural capitals in the off-line world (see Kong 2011, Rofel 2010) and stratification by class and locationality between urban and rural areas (Ho 2009). More recently, some scholars argue that suzhi has gradually lost its prevalence and impact in almost every aspect of society, except for education and public etiquette (see Chan 2021, Wei 2020), of which the latter is also recognized as civility (Zhao, Liu, and Li 2022) or moral quality (Tao, 2022).

Though the exact term of suzhi is obsolete to a certain degree, I argue that youzhi inheriting its logic, is gaining popularity in queer online space. Like suzhi, it is connected to neoliberalism, and its meaning is ambiguous and comprehensive so that it can incorporate various human capitals (Robinson 2016). Specifically on Blued, youzhi is shaped by post-modern/hypermodern liquidity (Gottschalk 2018, Bauman 2013a, Bauman 2013b) as well as platform features and marketing promotions into the one-sided, superficial version which highlights the (re)presentation of sexual capital and hegemonic masculine beauty as discussed above. From then on, the ostensibly neutral information (e.g., height, weight, size of genital, muscles, grooming, and facial appearance) generated and collected on Blued was organized by youzhi with its implied good-/bad-quality dichotomy, to form a clear-cut Chinese gay hierarchy. Thus, an image of first-class citizens, under the title of youzhi, in the Chinese gay community has been established. This reduces the worth of human beings to their market value, a process of objectification also witnessed by Wu and Trottier (2021). It underlines and reproduces the hegemonic ideals of gay beauty while constantly ostracizing and stigmatizing the ones failing to follow one or more of these standards. And like the nature of suzhi examined by Kipnis (2007: 390), this hierarchy functions in an intricately engineered and vicious paradox “by speaking explicitly about class without using the word class,” which makes it even more challenging to be rebutted or subverted.

In using Blued, without intentional search, one could hardly miss expressions of youzhi by scrolling the main interface. Then, he would be interpellated by it into a good-/bad-quality dichotomic self-questioning, and due to the strict standards of the ideal beauty on Blued, which most people cannot reach, the interpellated one is likely to be humiliated and offended by being categorized as bad-quality (which will be demonstrated in detail in the following sections). Just as CY said:

What bugs me is that they (the youzhi users) are not simply uttering a personal preference but making a judgment on everyone in such a condescending manner. […] We ought to be equal, right? But somehow, I became less worthy than them. However, though I feel offended by it, I can do nothing about it. I used to report it to the customer service of Blued, but they chose to ignore my complaints. [about youzhi]

Given this quotation, youzhi is beyond a way of expressing personal sexual preferences, but a discourse through which an objectifying dichotomy with rigid standards is constructed. Those who cannot meet the criteria would be discriminated against by being classified as bad quality. Despite the discriminatory nature of youzhi, people using it could get away from reproaches probably because of its neutral wording; for example, Blued chooses to ignore the related complaints for not violating its community rules against swear words.

Instead of criticizing, some discriminated users on Blued internalize youzhi criteria and align themselves with them by investing sexual capital with the currency of physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity. The most representative example is bodybuilding. Most respondents recognize the reward of owning a well-built gym body in the gay dating market, and some of them manage to use bodybuilding to gain a more advantageous position in the youzhi hierarchy. In this scenario, the discourse of youzhi has been reproduced and fortified.

Normalization of youzhi as filtering, self-image-promoting, and attracting discourse

As discussed, the discriminatory nature of youzhi discourse is recognized by or leastwise sensible for the Blued users, so the normalization and popularity of youzhi become more puzzling. The questions are: why do people risk damaging their desirability by using a discriminatory expression, and how does this act get justified and normalized on Blued? Based on my participant observation and interviews, I found three reasons people use youzhi in their profiles: to filter out undesirable users, promote one’s image, and attract the most desirable ones. And these purposes are normalized by alignment with Blued’s pre-set attributes and marketing promotion.

“Menkan (門檻)” (threshold): filtering discourse

As the biggest gay dating platform, Blued has a vast number of users with great diversity and different social goals (Miao and Sam Chan, 2020). Against this enormous amount of data, users share a common sense in using the filter feature to locate the “right person(s)” quickly and accurately. As one of the most-used free functions on Blued, it screens people who appear on one’s homepage based on age, height, weight, sexual role, distance, and figure type, and often, the ones short of sexual capital with the dominant currency are thus “erased.” This process is what Conner calls “silent discrimination” (2019:7). The filter feature is designed to be convenient and efficient, and constantly promoted by Blued, for which the users are more than allowed but encouraged to wipe out undesirable bodies and “cleanse” the cyberspace (Robinson 2015: 321). Consequently, for some people, no matter how long they stay online on Blued, there is barely anybody taking the initiative to contact them because they are excluded from most homepages. They are Blued users, but to a certain extent, they are invisible to the Blued world. Hence, these largely excluded users may resort to another core feature of Blued, the location-based real-time chat, which is also free and unlimited, to contact as many people as possible. They see this proactive or even aggressive action as compensation for their lost visibility and dating chances. Subsequently, to deter or persuade those lacking sexual capital with the dominant currency from contacting in this way, some people express youzhi - or “fei you wu rao (非優勿擾)” (do not bother me unless you are good-quality) to be more specific – in their profiles. As Five said:

[Using youzhi is to] set a certain menkan 門檻 (threshold), and then make those below the menkan stop approaching, […] and save some time and improve the communication efficiency.

From this quotation, we can see that using youzhi in profiles shares the same logic as the filter feature: to situate the fit person(s) effectively, and it takes effect by deterring the undesirable ones from contacting.

Actually, Youzhi in profiles imitates not only the using logic of the filter feature but also its discriminatory nature. Even worse, compared to the silent discrimination created by the pre-set filter, using youzhi to exclude others is audible, even earsplitting for some. However, as Mowlabocus (2021) argues, users on LBRTDGP are habitual in adopting a more focused scope in selecting others. Thus, people justify youzhi expression in profiles as merely doing something already permitted or even promoted on Blued.

“Tiejin (貼金)” (gilding): self-image-promoting discourse

Like all the other sexual fields, Blued is also a popularity tournament (Green 2014a), in which the worst nightmare for anyone is being invisible because that means worthlessness and lack of significance (Bücher 2011, Dayan 2013). According to Bauman (2013a: 62), the Internet renders interpersonal connections “simultaneously more frequent and more shallow, more intense and more brief [sic],” it is much more competitive in online dating platforms like Blued than in off-line sites, because of the features of Blued: the seemingly endless list of potential dates, filter function, real-time messaging system, and visual-centeredness design.

Under this circumstance, to avoid being neglected and to gain more “clicks” in this attention-seeking competition on a first-glance basis, users tend to (re)present the best of themselves in the most effective and prominent way. For example, many choose to post photos featuring their physique (parts) that align(s) with the standards of gay hegemonic masculinity and ideal beauty (Burke 2016), or to create a desirable and curiosity-arousing profile, like the expression of youzhi, as Lorry said,

Expressing youzhi in one’s profile is a doing of tiejin 貼金 (gilding) [of oneself] in my opinion, you know, [be]cause no matter he’s really youzhi or what, he’s aroused people’s curiosity and motive them to take the initiative to know him, by just saying so.

It can be seen from this quotation that the connotation of youzhi has been widely acknowledged and shared by Blued users, and people take advantage of it to attract others’ attention. As suggested by Gonzalez and Meyers (1993), personal ads (hereby the intro of profiles) enable individuals to showcase their most attractive qualities and values, presenting themselves in the most favorable light possible. And youzhi, as a highly condensed term, incorporates and conveys the most attractive qualities on Blued, which could catch people’s eyes on short notice in such fleeting and ever-shifting cyberspace.

However, there is an obvious risk in using youzhi this way, owing that after promoting oneself via this discourse, one needs to face being judged by the stringent standards of youzhi. For example, as Gogol said, “Many of those [claiming to be youzhi in their profiles] turned out to be quite average or even ugly; I don’t know how dare they could claim that and reject me for not being youzhi.” In this quotation, people did render themselves conspicuous by claiming youzhi. However, owing to its extremely high and sometimes ambiguous standards, its users are easily reprimanded for failing one or more. These reprimands, which seem to be anti-discriminatory resistance, not only fail to challenge the legitimacy or rationality of the discourse, but reproduce and further enhance youzhi by imagining and solidifying an even more ideal gay beauty. The reprimands are themselves full of discrimination.

“Diaoyu (釣魚)” (fishing): attracting discourse

Coupland (1996:191) described the visibility competition mentioned above as “involved not only with the promoting or ‘selling’ of selves but [also] with the attracting or ‘buying’ of others.” Profiles on Blued are used not just for promoting oneself but to “shop” for targeted persons (Cousineau, Oakes, and Johnson 2019; Gonzalez and Meyers 1993). It can be typically seen from the phrasing “you zhao you (優找優)” (a good-quality guy looks for the same); as Morris explained,

They (people using youzhi discourse) rarely take the initiative to start a conversation. Usually, they wait for those who are youzhi to come to them to respond to their “you zhao you.” [This is a process] like diaoyu 釣魚 (fishing). […] It’s used to attract the most popular ones to take the bait.

As stated by Morris, youzhi is socialized extensively to Blued users, and the ones self-identified as meeting its standards would respond to profiles of “you zhao you.” So, the profiles can act as hailing or interpellation brought up by Althusser (2020 [1971]). According to him, interpellation is the social process by which individuals are called to subjectivity by others. For example, on a structural level, the dating site calls its users into subjects of online daters via pre-set attributes that enable them to express mating preferences (Brickell 2012). Specific to youzhi discourse on Blued as interpellation, it takes both positive and negative forms: “zhao you (找優)” (looking for the good-quality) or “xi you (喜優)” (into the good-quality) as examples of the former; “fei you wu rao (非優勿擾)” (do not bother me unless you are good-quality) as one of the latter.

Such power-laden claims force people to ponder whether they are qualified for the demands and to ask questions: “Is that me?”; “Am I the one hailed here?”; and ultimately, “Who am I?” and “Whom do I want to become?” (Brickell 2012: 31), but also “If I am not youzhi (good-quality), does that mean I am bad-quality?” and “What can I do about me being bad-quality?”. Thus, youzhi discourse defines both subjectivity and otherness. In other words, as a hailing, youzhi discourse in profile would not be just “audible” for the targeted “right” people scatting in the Blued world, but also “earsplitting” for the people who fail to meet the standards of youzhi. This process can be seen from some informants’ experiences when they once got rejected by those who used youzhi; they tended to feel a sense of inferiority of themselves.

On the contrary, one respondent (King) critically asked questions like “Are they the only or ultimate criteria in judging my value on dating platforms?” to challenge the logic and supreme beauty standards centered in youzhi discourse. This kind of question or rebuttal exists in both interview responses and profiles on Blued, which can be regarded as a counterdiscourse (Deleuze and Foucault 1977) or counternarrative (Delgado and Stefancic 2012) used by marginalized groups to deconstruct dominant narratives about them (Connell 2013). Apart from this direct challenge, I also witnessed some post-modern playful expressions on Blued, like “cha zhao cha (差找差)” (a bad-quality guy looks for the same) or “putong zhao putong (普通找普通)” (an average guy looks for the same). At first glance, these claims contradict the essential principle of dating sites that people tend to present the very best of themselves to compete for attention and favor. These seem more like self-devalued expressions after uncritically internalizing the logic of youzhi discourse. Nevertheless, some respondents regarded them as a post-modern rebellion against youzhi through playing with the expression paradigm. This resistant parody and humor are also found by Conner (2019) in his examination of Grindr.

In short, despite the discriminatory nature of youzhi, there are three pushes for people to use it on Blued, and they are normalized and justified owing to being logically consistent with the pre-set attributes and marketing promotion of Blued. Moreover, Clinard and Meier (2011) claimed that deviant behaviors like this can be curbed by external pressures that take the form of formal and informal sanctions. However, as discussed in the first body part, Blued is pre-configured into a sexual field dominated by hookup ethos, which overwhelmingly values the sexual capital with physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity as its dominant currency. Thereafter, what discriminatory behaviors indicate – usually one’s morality, civility, or empathy – is less of a criterion in judging others’ value in the context of Blued. As mentioned by some respondents, being offensive or discriminative could hurt one’s desirability as a potential romantic or long-term partner, but not much for “just a hookup buddy.” It can be seen that there is barely any sanction from other users to informally control the expression of youzhi, and as discussed above, Blued’s connivance also means a lack of formal control. In sum, there are justified motivations for people to use youzhi but no obvious restraint because expressing discrimination would not much hurt one’s desirability in the sexual field of Blued.

Conclusion

In response to Dhoest’s (2016) call for more research on digital cultures and experiences of gay men outside Western and English-language contexts, this paper focuses on mainland China to explore the interaction between the LGBTQ community and social media. To this specific issue of youzhi, I argue that it is a neoliberal discourse that inherits the essential logic of suzhi. Youzhi can incorporate a variety of human qualities and generate a hierarchy by establishing an image of first-class citizens in the Chinese gay community. Particularly, on LBRTDGPs like Blued, the connotation of youzhi has been limited and reframed into a one-sided, superficial version that highlights the sexual and erotic capital with physical aspects of gay hegemonic masculinity as the currency through the attributes and marketing promotions of the cyber platform. Thus, people on Blued, from a condescending perspective, utilize youzhi to exclude the ones lacking these resources and discriminate against them as bad-quality. Though the oppression, objectification, and discrimination are real and rigid, the discourse of youzhi is challenging to refute for its seeming neutrality and polite cover.

Given this well-recognized discriminatory nature of youzhi, which ought to jeopardize its users’ desirability in the sexual field, youzhi is still popular and normal in personal profiles on Blued. I find that people use youzhi to filter out the ones lacking the kind of sexual capital valued on Blued, to promote one’s image in the fast-paced popularity tournament designed by Blued, and, as a lure, to attract the popular ones who meet the stringent Blued beauty standards. They justify and normalize the usage of youzhi as aligning with the pre-set features and marketing promotion of Blued, which exist and are permitted so far. In this argument, it can be claimed that Blued does not promote equality in gay dating and socialization, but instead reinforces hierarchy by normalizing discrimination. Furthermore, examining these topics provides understanding into broader inquiries regarding paradoxical relationships between technology and power, revealing how information and communication technologies facilitate certain modes of social being, while simultaneously creating new types of social control and marginalization (Dyer-Witheford 1999).

For future research, it would be worth exploring the variations of the connotation, utilization, and discriminatory mechanism of youzhi on different platforms, especially non-LBRTDGP social sites. By doing so, a more diverse comparison can be made among distinctive types of sexual fields. Moreover, several of my informants said youzhi was rare on some non-LBRTDGP gay dating platforms, such as Douban Group and Zhihu. So, starting from this paper and concerning youzhi as multifaceted discourse, a broader project investigating the different using frequencies of youzhi between LBRTDGP(s) and alternative(s) can be done, which would probably lead to the revelation of the relationship between various dating platforms and types and frequencies of intra-group discriminations, as well as the reasons behind.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank all participants for their contributions to the study and thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on the article. The author also thanks Doctor Day Kit Mui Wong for her precious comments on early drafts of this work and Doctor Tien Ee Dominic Yoe for his suggestions on research methods.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

Notes on contributors

Zihao Zhou

Zihao Zhou is an MPhil candidate at Hong Kong Baptist University. He has an MSc from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His current projects focus on exploring intra-group discrimination and homonormativity in the Chinese gay community.

Notes

¹ In queer studies, this view is closely related to a surmise of the post-gay era (Sinfield 1998, Maddison 2012), in which the online world would have created an alternative queer space free from the temporality and self-hindering features rooted in conventional identity politics of gay and lesbian people. In other words, a person’s sexuality in this utopian sphere would become a nonissue (see Blackwell, Birnholtz, and Abbott 2015; Ghaziani 2014).