Breaking the “chain of contempt”: distinction and taste in Chinese Social Media Fandom

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complexity of taste in today’s Chinese social media fandom through a detailed analysis of bishilian (chain of contempt) and using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction. We examine bishilian both in relation to wider practices of taste in contemporary Chinese society, and in relation to platform-specific dynamics within Chinese-language social media. Two dilemmas emerge through the taste as a marker of social distinction in Chinese social media: first, that between the subjectivity of personal preference and the objectivity of high-low taste hierarchies; second, that between the desire to maintain the exclusivity of highbrow fandom and the desire for a higher impact through expansion, which may compromise exclusivity. The prerequisite for a better, rather than deeper, aesthetic literacy of Chinese society is a clearer understanding taste as a marker of social distinction in the context of Chinese social media fandom by the public.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese social media
• digital fandom
• taste
• social distinction

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Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. Various Chinese studies focused on the hierarchy of taste in contemporary China. For an overview, see Hu and Chen (2022), 133–136, 142–143.

2. This is called lacai (拉踩, literally translating to ‘upvote and downvote’ in Chinese), which specifically means to compare a celebrity to a rival, purposely praising one while belittling the other. See Yin and Xie (2021), 15.

3. Bourdieu (1984, 280) notes that to appropriate a work of art is to assert oneself as the exclusive possessor of the object and of the authentic taste for that object, which is thereby converted into the reified negation of all those who are unworthy of possessing it, for lack of the material or symbolic means of doing so, or simply for lack of a desire to possess it strong enough to ‘sacrifice everything for it’.

4. The term ‘imagined communities’ in our study is significantly different from what was proposed by Benedict Anderson. See Zhong (2020).

5. For the record, our argument is based on the observation of Chinese social media, which may not completely align with the dynamics of contemporary Chinese offline society. For a detailed exploration of how privileges contributed to the emergence of taste as a marker of social distinction in Chinese social reality, refer to Li (2021).