Parasite, Para-Text: Daguguguji’s Performance of Digital Identity

Abstract

This article explores the digital identity of Daguguguji, one of the most famous microbloggers and microfiction writers on Sina Microblog. Despite having 3.9 million followers on Sina Weibo, his personal background remains veiled from the public. Daguguguji often refers to himself using nonsensical terms, animals, or neologisms irrelevant to his personal life, such as “a dog,” “Zhang Dachui,” “follow me,” or “Zhang Wei.” His profile pictures are not selfies, but images appropriated from other famous singers and writers, modified in a Dadaist style. Daguguguji’s identity performance is substantially different from that of celebrities who use paratexts such as selfies and verbal descriptions to reveal their offline identities and inner selves. Instead, his writing can be conceptualized as parasitic use of the paratext, as the information displayed in his profile image, bio, posts, and reposts shows a parasitical mimesis of “who I am not,” rather than an authentic self-display of “who I am.” I propose that Daguguguji’s identity performance is representative of the culture of anonymity in the Chinese mediascape, where netizens no longer seek to exhibit the “authentic self” but rather play with the “inauthentic persona,” a persona parasitic on appropriated visual-verbal texts that are irrelevant to either their inner self or offline identity.

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2023JJ039). Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Notes

1 Yan and Wang, “Popularity Fallacy of Big Vs’ Public Participation on Sina Weibo”; Baidu-Encyclopedia, “Big Vs.” https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%A7%E2%85%A4/9663742?fr=aladdin.

2 Chen and She, “An Analysis of Verifications in Microblogging Social Networks—Sina Weibo”; see, also, Hwang and Eun Choi, “Exploring Gender Differences in Motivations for Using Sina Weibo.”

3 Liu, “Digital Celebrity Is a Flash in the Pan, While Digital Celebrity Economy Is Normality.”

4 Hwang and Zhang, “Influence of Parasocial Relationship Between Digital Celebrities and Their Followers on Followers’ Purchase,” 160.

5 Yang, The Power of the Internet in China, 36.

6 Ibid.

7 Yuan, “Exploring Chinese College Students’ Construction of Online Identity on the Sina Microblog,” 43.

8 Li, “Identity Construction in Social Media,” 1685.

9 Ibid., 1676.

10 Genette, Paratexts, 1.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 8–10.

13 Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 20; see also: Searle, “How Performatives Work,” 545.

14 Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 104; Searle, “How Performatives Work,” 551.

15 Ramasamy et al., “Potential Molecular Mimicry.”

16 Braune, Language Parasites, 15.

17 Marwick and Boyd, “To See and Be Seen,” 149.

18 Wang and Picone, “The Art of Attracting Attention,” 336.

19 Weninger and Li, “Performing Microcelebrity,” 267.

20 Daguguguji, “Old Wang on the Plain.” This poem was published online in Daguguguji’s collection in 2018, and the earlier version is no longer accessible.

21 Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 105.

22 Ibid.

23 Daguguguji, “Xiao Liu in Shanxi Museum.”

24 Nöth, “Signs from the Life of Organisms, Species, Languages, and the Media,” 126.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Cook, The Discourse of Advertising, 165.

29 Ibid.

30 Daguguguji, “Three Billboards.”

31 Metz, The Imaginary Signifier, 49–50.

32 Ibid.

33 Daguguguji, “Tissot Wristwatch.”

34 See Daguguguji’s post: “What Should I Do If I’m Asked to Release My Real Name?” https://weibo.com/2146965345/NoapzDH3v.

35 See the comment section of Daguguguji’s post: "My Real Name." https://weibo.com/2146965345/NoapzDH3v.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yiwen Wang

Yiwen Wang is a lecturer (equivalent to an assistant professor in the United States) at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She received her PhD degree from the University of California, San Diego in 2022. Her research interests revolve around transmedia studies, adaptation, fandom, aesthetics of appropriation, and science, technology, and society. Her articles on music videos, fan video remakes, and naked-eye VR videos have been published in China Perspectives, Feminist Media Studies, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Her research on the transmedia adaptation of Chinese internet fiction appears in Yingjin Zhang’s last edited collection, A World History of Chinese Literature, and Zhang left his last words for her in the general introduction of the book. The original version of this article is a paper submitted to one of Zhang’s seminars that Yiwen attended. Above all, all of Yiwen’s works are deeply indebted to Professor Zhang, who supervised her research from her second year as an undergraduate student through to her last year as a PhD student.