Abstract
During the pandemic, students from elite Chinese universities (Project 985), facing failure or unemployment, began labelling themselves as 985 waste. Scholars debate whether it signals rebellion against meritocracy or merely a stage of youth socialisation. I analysed 449 online posts by self-identified 985 waste, examining their identity negotiation through self-reference, predication, and argumentative topoi. The findings complicate those views. While referential patterns show growing awareness of structural inequality, meritocratic values remain internalised. Predication analysis highlights intense self-criticism and psychological distress, challenging its dismissal as mere youth socialisation. Yet their narratives feature self-repair or hope for self-repair, signalling resilience over defeatism and reconciliation over revolt. Topos analysis reveals a dominant sense of internalised failure, and also resistance via external blame, non-meritocratic values, and redefined success. These disidentification strategies reclaim agency without rejecting the system. 985 waste are caught between disillusionment and aspiration within a system they neither fully trust nor fully reject.
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in late 2019 just before the spring recruitment season, severely disrupted the job market and negatively impacted the employment prospects of 2020 graduates (Li Chunling, 2020). A panel study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that by the end of March 2020, nearly 75% of fresh graduates were still unemployed, a stark contrast to 2019, when over 75% had secured jobs during the same period (Wei Jie et al., 2021). After 3 years of intermittent lockdowns, over 460,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, accounting for 80% of urban employment, shut down in 2022 alone (Li Haizheng and Li Xiangyuan, 2023). According to data from Zhaopin, a leading human resources firm, only 48% of university graduates in 2024 had received job offers (Shiozaki, 2024).
Students from 985 and 211 universities, 1 who tend to be more outspoken and have a stronger sense of crisis, were among the first to speak out about their situation (Wei Jie et al., 2021). A student from a top university in Shanghai founded an online mutual help group Import Plan of 985 Waste (Waste Group). According to its announcement, the group provides a safe space for 985 students to share stories of failure and navigate uncertainty together. Waste Group immediately went viral, attracting over 80,000 self-identified 985 waste members within 2 months (Gui Tao, 2021).
From the start, however, the criteria defining a 985 waste were contentious. Some members questioned the inclusion of individuals they deemed not “waste” enough, while others felt their own accounts of failure were met with dismissal (as melodramatic whining) rather than empathy (Huang Feiran, 2020). In response, group administrators introduced a screening process: applicants had to locate a hidden code in the group rules and submit it together with a written narrative justifying their waste identity. Those failing to meet the criteria were denied access. Accepted members are expected to follow community norms: posts considered boastful are deleted, and repeated violations can lead to expulsion from the group (Gui Tao, 2021).
While no official demographic data exists, Soho News (2020) reported that most group members were post-90s university students or graduates, including some first-year undergraduates. With substantial internal variation (from the unemployed to high earners in major cities to first-year students), those identifying as 985 waste share a common disillusionment with the declining payoff of elite education in post-pandemic China. In mainstream discourse, admission to a 985 or 211 university signifies success, prompting many to dismiss 985 waste’s struggles as exaggerated. When such comments appear, 985 waste often push back by posting rebuttals, voicing dissatisfaction, or calling for restricted access (Huang Feiran, 2020). These acts of defense and emotional affirmation foster group cohesion and strengthen a shared identity.
The 985 waste incident reflects a deep-rooted anxiety in Chinese society about education and the promise of upward social mobility. Li Lulu and Zhu Bin (2017) mentioned that cross-class mobility became increasingly difficult in China. The pandemic exposed the structural inequality long obscured during periods of economic growth. Among the first cohort graduating into a contracting job market since China’s economic rise, 985 Waste realised that elite credentials no longer guarantee the promised life, namely “land a well-paying job, buy an apartment, and find a similarly high-achieving spouse” (Liu Yiling, 2021). They responded with ironic self-denigration, echoing broader trends in Chinese digital culture where “loser aesthetics” have gained traction among young people (Yang Sunyoung, 2017). The 985 waste incident is part of a growing subcultural response to the contradictions of meritocracy under economic precarity.
985 waste have drawn significant media and scholarly attention. While some view them as rebels of state-sanctioned meritocracy (e.g. Chen Hui, 2021; Liu Yiling, 2021), others dismiss them as young people undergoing a transient phase of youth socialisation (e.g. Liu Tingting and Gong Xiaojie, 2021; Wei Jie et al., 2021). Yet the discursive practices of 985 waste themselves are fraught with contradictions. For instance, Chen Hui (2021) noticed an obsession with prestigious universities among 985 waste that may reproduce meritocratic values they seek to challenge. This highlights the need for a more nuanced and critical analysis of their discursive practices. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Muñoz’s (1999) theory of disidentification, this study argues that 985 waste’s self-denigration is neither outright rejection nor passive acceptance of dominant norms. Instead, it constitutes a disidentificatory practice that, in Muñoz’s words, “tactically and simultaneously works on, with, and against” hegemonic discourses (p. 12).
Meritocracy, education, and social mobility in China
Meritocracy has been ideologically central in China “throughout oscillating political circumstances” (Liu Ye, 2016: 190). At its core, it holds that social resources should be distributed according to individual merits like intelligence, ability and effort rather than inherited social status (Jin and Ball, 2020). To evaluate these qualities, China has used education and standardised examinations for talent selection over a millennium, a tradition stretching from the imperial-era Keju system 2 to today’s Gaokao system 3 (Liu Ye, 2016). This deep-rooted belief in meritocracy influences people’s perception of education nowadays, particularly the link between academic achievement and social status. As Kim et al. (2018: 97) observed in their study, interviewees of different socioeconomic backgrounds often believed that “their ‘poorer’ classmates performed better academically than their ‘wealthier’ peers”. Their narratives downplayed structural inequality and muted class-based explanations for educational outcomes, reinforcing upward mobility achieved through hard work at school. It confirms what Hanser (2005: 584) describes as “a new ideology of individual enterprise and achievement” that has largely displaced class-based understandings of society in post-reform China. Deeply entwined with this “powerful ideology of meritocracy and upward social mobility” (Liu Ye, 2016: 169), Gaokao once inspired hope, especially among students from underdeveloped regions, that “they could improve their situation through the upward social mobility offered by higher education” (Liu Ye, 2016: 188). Yet this promise is becoming elusive.
Growing evidence of structural barriers increasingly undermines this ideal of equal opportunity. Research documented a widening urban–rural gap in college enrolment so rather than levelling the playing field, education now appears to reproduce entrenched social hierarchies (Li Angran, 2019). Also, the massification of higher education, initially designed to expand access to educational resources, has instead contributed to rising graduate unemployment and underemployment (Kang Yuyang and Xiong Weiyan, 2021). Higher education now plays a diminishing role in facilitating upward social mobility, especially when compared to the enduring influence of family background (Mok and Wu, 2016). Despite strong Gaokao performance, working-class students often remain disadvantaged by their limited access to soft skills and cultural capital. Gaokao became “a broken promise to those from rural areas in terms of achieving upward social mobility” (Liu Ye, 2016:184). Disillusioned with “the shrinking possibilities for upward socio-economic mobility” (Szablewicz, 2014: 260), a growing number of Chinese youth turned to embrace a so-called “loser aesthetics” (Li Yaotai and Song Yunya, 2020).
Rising “loser aesthetics” and 985 waste
“Loser aesthetics” refers to cultural practices that foreground the perceived pathetic, ordinary, or unremarkable dimensions of everyday life through self-denigration, irony, and parody (Yang Sunyoung, 2017). In recent decades, various forms of “loser” subcultures have emerged globally as youth responses to economic stagnation, social immobility, and intensifying social pressure. In the West, groups like NEETs, Doomers, and Zoomers articulate existential cynicism and disaffection through ironic humour and memes, as they confront mounting precarity, student debt, and climate anxiety. In Japan, groups like Hikikomori and the Satori Generation express similar sentiments through social withdrawal, minimalism, and rejection of productivity and traditional masculinity in response to rigid norms of conformity and corporate loyalty. South Korea’s Hell Joseon and N-po Generation articulate alienation from a hyper-competitive society where collapsing job security and soaring living costs have led many young people to forgo aspirations of professional success, marriage, or family. Recently in China, “loser” subcultures such as Diaosi (early 2010s), Sang (mid to late 2010s), and 985 Waste (post-2019) have successively emerged. Although arising from slightly different social pressures confronting different groups, they articulate the same underlying concern: the erosion of upward mobility and the diminishing returns of hard work. These subcultures trace an escalating disillusionment in response to worsening social realities, culminating in a profound confidence crisis in the meritocratic promise in 985 waste incident.
Diaosi, a vulgar slang originally referring to male genitalia, emerged as prominent internet catchphrases in China around 2012. A typical early Diaosi was an Internet-savvy male college student with intelligence but lacking wealth, family connections, and social capital, often caricatured as short, poor, and ugly as opposed to more privileged men with inherited status and resources (Yang et al., 2015). Diaosi expresses emotional solidarity, self-deprecating humour, and subtle social critique (Cao Siyang, 2017) of “income inequality” in urban China (Szablewicz, 2014: 265), quickly embraced by underprivileged young men as a term for self-mockery (Szablewicz, 2014). Yet beneath this self-mockery lies not the abandonment of aspiration but the desire for success and enduring fantasy of 屌丝逆袭diaosi’s rise (Li Mingjie, 2016).
Originating from similar anxieties over upward mobility, Sang (meaning “dejected” or “dispirited”) subculture emerged in 2016 as an emotional catharsis to job market saturation, stagnating wages, and rising housing costs of urban youth (Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020). Increasingly pessimistic about their future (Cai Qingyun, 2022), these young people embraced Sang as a counter-narrative to official discourses portraying youth as inherently hopeful, courageous, and dynamic (Kwong, 1994: 248). Sang is not a fixed demographic, but a loosely defined cultural stance expressed through memes, irony, and shared affect, articulating widespread disillusionment with official youth discourse in post-reform China (Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020). Its followers celebrate the loser identity (Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020), resisting values of productivity and ambition embedded in “the mainstream visions of success” (Lu Miao and Fan Hua, 2018: 36). Like diaosi, Sang rejects mainstream success ideals but still holds hope for social mobility, though the doubt deepens (characterised by cynicism and emotional exhaustion). Sang inherits Diaosi’s carnivalesque quality, marked by humour, dramatic emotional performance, and the parody of dominant social norms (Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020), offering urban youth affective spaces for navigating the contradictions of a society that demands success but offers few viable paths.
Like Diaosi and Sang subcultures, 985 waste is not a fixed demographic category but a self-ascribed identity. It is discursively constructed and sustained through shared experiences, affective expressions, and engagements with dominant social values. Despite internal diversity, what unites them is a shared sense of alienation within a meritocratic system that equates educational achievement with social mobility. Some vocabularies from Diaosi and Sang subcultures are still used by 985 waste. But unlike Diaosi who are typically from socioeconomically underprivileged groups and Sang advocates who represent urban youth more broadly, 985 waste belong to a narrower and more elite demographic: graduates of China’s top universities who are expected to succeed in career and social mobility. Diaosi and Sang subcultures are often marked by ironic detachment and playful self-deprecation, but 985 Waste incident reflects painful struggles with self-acceptance and deep disillusionment with meritocracy. Although Sang subculture is often characterised by nihilism and emotional fatigue, its triggers tend to be relatively minor, such as academic underperformance or routine life setbacks (Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020). By contrast, 985 Waste emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when economic recession, precarity and unemployment deepened despair even among top university graduates. The pandemic laid bare the broken promise of education-driven mobility, and 985 Waste, unlike Diaosi and Sang followers who still entertained some expectation of upward movement, confronted stagnated economy and unemployment head-on. Rather than merely continuing Diaosi or Sang, as suggested by Chen Hui (2021) and Liu Tingting and Gong Xiaojie (2021), 985 waste signals a deeper crisis of China’s meritocratic ideal. It reaches an impasse: if even those who did everything “right” feel lost, what is the point of working hard? 985 Waste, former loyal adherents and “winners” in the meritocracy system, face a more pressing need for value transformation than their Diaosi or Sang predecessors. 985 Waste incident might mark a long-accumulating substantive turning point in young people’s attitudes to meritocracy. Their discursive practices, as both manifestations and drivers of this transformation, deserve critical examination.
Moreover, although “loser” subcultures like Diaosi, Sang, and 985 Waste are often interpreted as resistant to dominant social values (e.g. Liu Yiling, 2021; Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin, 2020), their discourses often reproduce the very norms they critique. Chen Hui (2021: 2) observed that an “obsession with the halo of prestigious universities” remains central to the 985 Waste identity, suggesting the persistent grip of meritocratic ideology in their self-perception. Their discourses are thus haunted by the very hegemonic values (success, prestige, productivity) that they seek to question (Song Xaiomei, 2016). To unpack these tensions, this research introduces the concept of disidentification to critically examine 985 waste’s discursive practices.
Framework
Theoretical framework: Disidentification
Disidentification, first theorised by José Esteban Muñoz (1999) within the context of queer theory, describes how marginalised individuals navigate oppressive or dominant cultural narratives. It offers a third mode of engagement, neither full assimilation (identification) nor outright rejection (counter-identification), but a tactical and ambivalent reworking of hegemonic discourses from within, which allows people to critique and survive systems that exclude them. It involves “scrambling and reconstructing” dominant cultural messages to expose their exclusions and repurpose them to make space for marginalised identities (Muñoz, 1999, p. 31).
Drawing from Judith Butler’s (1993) notion of misrecognition, disidentification involves an uneasy and unstable relationship to a norm, what Butler describes as “standing under a sign to which one does and does not belong” (p. 219). It is often fraught with contradiction and featured by a partial investment in dominant ideologies, even when those ideologies fail to fully recognise or accommodate the subjects. Although challenging dominant norms, disidentificatory subjects may also unwittingly reproduce the very values they critique.
The 985 waste identity exemplifies the ambivalent dynamics of disidentification: these elite university graduates, disillusioned by the failure of educational credentials to secure social mobility, remain preoccupied with the symbolic capital of their alma maters. They simultaneously crave recognition and reject the very system that withholds it. Disidentification offers a critical lens for understanding how they navigate this tension, and negotiate with dominant ideals of success, productivity, and self-worth.
Analytical framework: Discourse Historical Approach (DHA)
To critically examine the discursive practices of 985 waste, this research employs DHA framework, an important strand of CDA widely used to investigate the discursive construction of identity. CDA offers a problem-oriented, interdisciplinary framework that investigates how language contributes to the construction, reinforcement, or subversion of social power relations (Baker et al., 2008). Within this approach, discourses are not viewed as neutral representations but analytically deconstructed to expose the underlying assumptions, ideological positions, and power structures they reproduce. Applying this critical lens, the study can reveal how individuals identifying as 985 waste engage in acts of disidentification, tactically working on, with, and against dominant social discourses to challenge, negotiate, and reconfigure the normative expectations.
DHA was developed by Ruth Wodak and her colleagues (e.g. Reisigl and Wodak, 2001) to investigate how language constructs and reproduces social power, identity, and ideology within specific historical, political, and institutional contexts. DHA is distinguished by its strong emphasis on contextual sensitivity, historical embedding, and multi-level analysis. As a robust discourse-analytical framework, it provides a set of tools (see Table 1) that allow people to examine several important aspects of self-/other-presentation (e.g. Beglerović, 2020; Li Yaotai and Song Yunya, 2020), and explore the negotiation of collective identities (e.g. Wodak et al., 2009).
Discursive strategies in DHA.
Source: Adapted from Wodak (2001).
DHA has been successfully applied across a wide range of identity-focused studies, including national identity and belonging (De Cillia et al., 1999), immigrant and diasporic identities (Clary-Lemon, 2010), linguistic and regional identity (Unger, 2009), and gendered occupational identities (Hanser, 2005). It demonstrates DHA’s versatility and effectiveness in tracing how identities are discursively constructed, negotiated, and contested within different socio-historical and cultural contexts. This thus study adopts DHA, and draws on the concept of disidentification to explores the following questions:
(1) How do members of Import Plan of 985 Waste refer to themselves?
(2) What attributes do they attach to themselves?
(3) What topoi do they use to claim or resist 985 waste identity?
Data and methodology
All 449 posts listed in the “popular posts” section 4 of Waste Group between 10th May 2020 and 20th February 2022 were collected, yielding a corpus of 154,667 Chinese characters. To investigate how post writers refer to themselves, I browsed 500 concordance lines generated from the top ten high-frequency words in the corpus, complemented by an examination of the top 100 N-grams and top 100 keywords benchmarked against Chinese Web 2017 (zhTenTen17) Simplified. 5 Referential expressions were categorised using the framework developed by Reisigl and Wodak (2001), with an additional category, academisation, introduced to better accommodate patterns observed in the data (Appendix). The most frequent self-referential expressions were examined through concordance analysis to identify salient traits attached to 985 Waste. To investigate arguments used to claim or resist 985 Waste label, I located all 78 posts in the corpus containing self-referential terms denoting waste namely 废物, fw, five. In these posts, I analysed the use of topoi, argumentative warrants that connect premises to conclusions, which can be paraphrased conditionally as “if x, then y” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001).
Findings and discussion
Referential strategies
Seven categories of referential strategies and their distributions were identified (Table 2): somatisation (34.39%), academisation (24.67%), collectivisation (20.56%), de-spatialisation (14.58%), actionalisation (4.49%), economisation (0.75%), and politicisation (0.56%).
The distribution of referential strategies.
Collective terms like 我们 we (20.56%) in the corpus are frequently used to stress shared identity, experiences, values or mentalities within Waste Group (Excerpt 1), serving as a key strategy for building solidarity. It suggests that group members actively engage in identity construction and exhibit a strong sense of belonging, indicating the 985 Waste identity is grounded in and sustained by shared recognition and collective meaning-making. As such, it constitutes a conceptually sound social identity worth academic attention.
If we can’t let go of our former sense of superiority on a psychological level, then there’s really nothing we can do. After all, it’s something that defined us for many years.
The frequent use (24.67%) of the academisation strategy shows self-identified 985 waste still anchor their identity in academic credentials and institutional affiliations (e.g. 985名校毕业的学生a graduate of a prestigious 985 university), indicating education background still holds symbolic value to them. However, the presence of actionalisation (4.49%), and economisation (0.75%) strategies reveals a growing awareness of the disjuncture between education achievement and upward mobility. Through economisation, they highlight their modest socioeconomic origins (e.g. 小镇青年small-town youth), foregrounding class-based disadvantage. For instance in Excerpt 2, the post writer identifies as a small-town youth raised on conventional aspirations of success (e.g. wealth, status, and official rank) only to experience confusion and disillusionment upon entering an elite university. Exposure to new cultural values and peer affluence triggers a crisis of meaning, leading the post writer to question not only their ability to succeed but the very definition of success, which exposes the limits of meritocratic ideology. Actionalisation strategy (e.g. 农村做题选手rural exam-grinder) further frames their identity through the action of test-taking, portraying them as products of a narrow test-driven system that excludes access to elite extracurriculars, cultural capital, or parental networks. As illustrated in Excerpt 3, many express a deep sense of inferiority and alienation upon entering elite universities, where prior achievements are quickly trivialised and eclipsed by peers’ greater social ease, cultural fluency, and long-term vision. Their once-valued identity of being a “good student” is devalued in an environment where academic credentials are ubiquitous and social capital becomes more decisive. These discursive strategies reveal a growing recognition that educational merit alone cannot ensure mobility. It signals a re-emerging class consciousness that challenges the post-reform narrative of individual enterprise and achievement (Hanser, 2005), positioning 985 waste identity as a response to the crumbling legitimacy of meritocratic promise.
As small-town youth . . . the world I grew up in is narrow and confined. The biggest dream I ever had was the one my parents constantly repeated: “Grow up, make a lot of money, become a high-ranking official” . . . After grinding my way into a 985 university, I was suddenly flooded with a torrent of new values and cultural influences that threw me into a state of confusion. I keep asking myself: What am I really pursuing? Can I even attain it? What does success truly mean? And do people have to succeed?. . . I’m poor, I come from a small town, and I fall short compared to others. Does that mean I’m a failure?
As a small-town test-crammer, I grew up in a family that wasn’t well off. Leaving that underdeveloped place and entering the wider world was a real shock. I found myself overwhelmed by the material wealth of big cities, and even more so by the sense of confidence and inner richness people had built on top of that foundation. Faced with such contrasts, I struggled to balance academics and life and became deeply self-conscious about the personality flaws that surfaced. What I once considered my only strength, being a “good student” who worked hard, turned out to be just the bare minimum among my peers. Beyond academics, their social skills, outlook on life, future planning, and perspectives on various issues all felt far beyond my reach.
De-spatialisation strategy (14.58%), like actionalisation and economisation strategies, also point to structural inequalities experienced by 985 waste. Geographic references in the corpus often operate as a proxy for regional disparity and structural constraint. In Excerpt 4, the writer positions three places, Dalian in Northeast China, their home province, and Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, within a hierarchy of desirability (Hangzhou > Dalian > home province). The writer excluded the home province for its intense civil service exam competition, deliberately targeted the lower-threshold Northeast, secured an offer there but now longed for the newly opened position in Hangzhou though also daunted by its fierce competition. Full understanding of the struggle and strategic adaptation of 985 waste here requires contextualising it within China’s hukou system and civil service exam. The hukou (household registration) system ties one’s legal identity to a specific locality and restricts access to resources outside one’s place of registration, thus limiting population mobility and sustaining “a spatial hierarchy, that is, urban above rural and well-developed above less-developed cities” (Liu Zhiqiang, 2005: 137). The civil service exam is a key pathway to hukou status change and also government jobs “regarded as the most stable occupation in China” (Zhuge Liqun and Lang Kevin, 2023:8), thus extremely competitive. Although standardised, competition varies by region: developed areas (e.g. Zhejiang Province) are more competitive than underdeveloped areas (e.g. Northeast China); populous areas (e.g. the writer’s home province) are more competitive than underpopulated areas (e.g. Northeast China). Hukou system further complicates the situation as many civil service posts are reserved for local hukou holders (Zhuge Liqun and Lang Kevin, 2023). It increases the difficulty for 985 waste whose birth places are often at the bottom of regional hierarchy to migrate to other areas. Spatial terms here highlight an uneven geography of opportunity faced by 985 waste in a supposedly standardised selection system. The aspiration to move upward in the regional hierarchy, tempered by the recognition of being unable to compete there, underscores their dilemma: mobility is structured not solely by merit but by unequal regional distributions of resources and structural constraints.
I passed the civil service exam in Northeast China and now hesitate about whether to take the job. . . I’m not a Northeasterner but from a province with fierce competition in civil service exams, so I chose an easier region to “test the waters” and unexpectedly got in. I was happy at first: With the current job market, any offer felt like a lifeline. But then, during the New Year holiday at home, I saw that post comparing Hangzhou and Dalian (a Northeastern city). . . Sigh. I want to go to Hangzhou too, but it’s too competitive and I can’t pass there. . .
The somatisation strategy in 985 waste discourse centres on internalised expressions of inadequacy shaped by dominant social norms around capacity, maturity, and gender. Individuals portray themselves as emotionally stunted or developmentally delayed adults who fail to meet normative social expectations (e.g. 大龄青年over-age youth and 巨婴giant baby). Labels such as 菜狗noob further emphasise their incompetence or unworthiness despite elite academic credentials (Excerpt 5). These self-deprecating expressions reflect not just external judgment but the internalisation of normative timelines and behavioural standards, reflecting embodied feelings of personal failure. Notably, most (91.30%) gendered expressions within this category are female-coded (e.g. 女生girl, 独生女only daughter), suggesting that female posters may feel more socially permitted to disclose their gendered subjectivity within narratives of failure.
I still feel a sense of inferiority because of my GPA ranking especially in an environment full of top performers who excel across the board: grades, student leadership, and contests. In comparison, I feel like a “salted fish” and noob. I can’t even comfort myself with the idea that a low GPA doesn’t reflect my ability because deep down, I know my own limits.
Referential analysis reveals a discursive shift in how youth in post-reform China understand the relationship between education and social mobility. Contrary to Kim et al. (2018), who observed that structural inequality was often downplayed in favour of meritocratic narratives of hard work and personal effort, the discourse of self-identified 985 Waste foregrounds the structural constraints elite education fails to overcome. While academisation and somatisation strategies reveal obsession with academic credentials and internalised meritocratic values, economisation and de-spatialisation highlight socioeconomic disadvantage, and regional inequality. They frame academic success as insufficient in the face of unequal access to social capital and opportunities. Together, they perform a form of disidentification that neither fully rejects nor affirms meritocracy but negotiates its contradictions in self-reflective ways. It signals a return to class consciousness, not in overt ideological terms, but through affective and personal narratives that challenge prevailing discourse of individual achievement and question the legitimacy of the meritocracy.
Self-attribution
I identified the four most frequent expressions (我们we, 我/自己I, 本人I, lz/楼主I) in referential analysis and used them as seed expressions for predication analysis, from which I randomly sampled 400 concordance lines for close examination. As is shown in Table 3, eight dominant themes emerge, all of which are marked by overwhelmingly negative self-assessment: achievement at work (100%), achievement at school/university (82.76%), emotional status and health (92.42%), capacity (97.44%), personality (90.00%), social support (85.00%), social status (83.33%), and physical appearance (66.67%). These findings point to a broader crisis of self-acceptance among 985 Waste, who recurrently describe themselves as unsuccessful in domains traditionally associated with meritocratic success. As graduates of elite universities, 985 Waste not only possess sharper awareness of declining social mobility (Wei Jie et al., 2021) but also belonged to the first cohort to enter a contracting job market during the pandemic (Liu Yiling, 2021). They inevitably experience a profound sense of disillusionment.
Concordance analysis of 我们, 我/自己, 本人, and lz/楼主.
Interestingly, five of the eight themes, capacity (16.32%), achievement at school/university (12.13%), achievement at work (10.88%), personality (4.18%), and physical appearance (1.26%), relate to individual shortcomings, while only two, social support (25.10%) and social status (2.51%), hint at external social conditions. 985 waste discourses clearly bear resemblance with student meme culture observed in Ask and Abidin (2018): personal suffering is rationalised through self-critique rather than social critique, thus reinforcing instead of challenging existing social order.
Notably, while achievement at school/university (12.13%) and achievement at work (10.88%) appear close in frequency, they differ significantly in tone. In 17.24% of the instances, 985 waste affirm their achievement and efforts in secondary school or university, while none of them expresses positive feelings about their work performance. This suggests that they experience the workplace as a site of complete failure and frustration, appearing stranded between partial academic success and total professional dissatisfaction. As Liu Ye (2016), Liu Yiling (2021), and Szablewicz (2014) have rightly observed, socioeconomically disadvantaged youth in China such as 985 waste are experiencing a crisis of faith in meritocratic ideals that promise a linear path from hard work in school to tangible reward in the labour market.
Beyond self-critique, 985 Waste’s discourses reveal an emotional landscape shaped by psychological strain and efforts toward recovery. Emotional status and health (27.62%) emerged as the most prominent theme in the concordance analysis. Like followers of diaosi and sang subcultures, 985 waste express disenchantment with mainstream values such as upward mobility, professional success, and individual merits, for which expressions from Diaosi (e.g. 逆袭失败failed diaosi’s rise, 挫lame) and Sang subcultures (e.g. 丧Sang, 佛系Buddhist-style, 咸鱼deadbeat) are still used. Noticeably, 985 waste rarely self-identify as Diaosi, and one post even distinguishes 985 waste from Diaosi in terms of social status and attitude to mainstream expectations (Excerpt 6). Yet they strongly resonate with Sang aesthetics, adopting its idioms widely. For instance, 丧Sang is frequently used to describe their emotional states (Excerpt 7).
The definition of Diaosi aligns with mainstream social standards such as weak academic background and low income, generally excluding 985 university students. . . Diaosi . . .pursue “dream girl” and view “tall, rich, and handsome” men as rivals. . .conforming to mainstream values. But . . .985 waste rarely aspire to love, detached from mainstream happiness.
My first job is honestly pretty Sang. . . Every day I’m questioning what I’m even doing here. It’s really Sang and has worn down a lot of my confidence.
However, unlike the humorous cynicism and “playful irreverence” characteristic of Diaosi and Sang (Li Yaotai and Song Yunya, 2020: 289), discourses of 985 waste are less cynical, but more emotionally heavy, marked by accommodation and desire to survive rather than rebel (Liu Xinting, 2020). If Diaosi and Sang are emotional venting not necessarily expecting redemption, 985 waste incident signals a genuine appeal for help. Contrary to Chen Hui’s (2021) view of 985 Waste as mere self-mockery not meant to be taken seriously, 985 waste frequently disclose their experience with psychological distress such as 抑郁症depression, 双相情感障碍bipolar affective disorder, 躁郁症manic-depressive psychosis, and 焦虑症anxiety disorder. They express future-oriented affect such as 迷茫puzzlement, 焦虑anxiety, and 担忧worry, which signals a longing for clarity, support, and change (Baumgartner et al., 2008). Unlike earlier subcultures’ carnivalesque defiance, many posts by 985 Waste trace an emotional trajectory from 崩溃breakdown and 自杀suicide toward emotional recovery and self-renewal. What distinguishes this emotional arc is its reliance on self-regulation through study, introspection, and social reconnection, rather than external critique or rebellion. For instance, one post writes:
I reflected on many things over the past year. At first, I had a mental breakdown, but gradually I began to accept reality and come to terms with myself. Through studying, I slowly rebuilt my confidence and started reconnecting with old friends, drawing strength from them.
985 Waste inherit idioms from previous “loser” subcultures especially Sang but shifts from playful resistance or collective satire to genuine distress, from grassroots cynicism or general vented nihilism to elite disillusionment. It reflects a converging and deepening disillusionment sentiment in Chinese society. But noticeably, Diaosi (even Sang) emerged in an era of rapid growth when upward mobility still seemed remotely attainable, leaving room for residual hope in mainstream ideals. 985 waste graduated right into pandemic-induced economic crisis when elite credentials no longer gurantee decent jobs. Their hope is shattered and their distress is pressing, immediately requiring practical constructive solutions, and emotional as well as value adjustment to adapt to new realities (hence the emergence of 985 Waste community as an online mutual-help platform). Thus, they are oriented more toward emotional processing, self-repair, and the inward search for meaning, distinct from the ironic resignation of Diaosi and Sang. That makes 985 Waste more than mere continuation of previous “loser” culture.
Predication analysis reveals a striking pattern of negative self-assessment across eight key themes. Notably, despite this pervasive negativity, 985 Waste do not appear to have fully disengaged from dominant meritocratic ideals. Their assessment centres on perceived individual shortcomings rather than systemic barriers, and they continue to pursue self-improvement, often through the same mechanisms (e.g. education, personal effort) that have failed to yield the expected social rewards. This reflects a partial disidentification with the dominant meritocratic ideal: while acknowledging their social disadvantages, they place greater emphasis on individual responsibility and self-correction. As Tan Cohen and Cheng Shuxin (2020) note, unlike many Western subcultures that catalyse political activism, Chinese online subcultures like 985 waste tend to internalise dissent. Through disidentification, they foster emotional solidarity but stop short of collective mobilisation or demands for structural change.
Claim or resist 985 waste identity
Topos analysis of 78 selected posts reveals that 66.40% of identified instances of topoi reinforce 985 waste identity by mainly drawing on internalised meritocratic norms. Seven topoi were identified (Table 4) with the most common being the Topos of Achievement (31.55%). It basically says “I do not succeed in certain things, so I am a waste”, citing academic or professional metrics like low GPA, failure in competitions, lack of scholarships, lack of employment and low salary. Topos of Competence (24.40%) means “I lack certain abilities, so I am a waste”. It reflects self-perceived inadequacy in skills or abilities such as poor learning ability, poor ability to withstand pressure, or lack of practical knowledge. The Topos of Endeavour, with a similar frequency (21.43%), frames self-worth around sustained effort, encapsulated in the logic: “I do not study hard, so I am a waste.” Post writers use it to express a perceived lack of discipline, motivation, or resilience, identifying it as a key cause of their current dissatisfaction. The Topos of Comparison (11.90%) operates on the logic: “My peers achieve more than I do, so I am a waste”. It highlights feelings of stagnation by contrasting their struggles with the perceived success of their peers, especially those deemed as less academically qualified. This relative, rather than absolute, underachievement deepens the sense of personal failure. The Topos of Expectation (6.55%) follows the logic: “I do not meet expected standards, so I am a waste”. It reflects internalised meritocratic expectations tided to 985 identity, for instance securing prestigious jobs or further academic success. Failing to meet these benchmarks often leads to feelings of personal inadequacy. The Topos of Relation (3.57%) and Topos of Physical Appearance (0.60%) are infrequent in the posts, therefore not analysed here. Analysis of these topoi shows how 985 Waste internalise dominant success norms even as they express disillusionment with the meritocratic system.
Topoi used to claim 985 waste identity.
Notably, 33.60% of instances of topoi try to resist or renegotiate the 985 waste identity. Rather than internalising failure, these topoi challenge the label indirectly by relocating responsibility, reframing personal value, or adjusting normative expectations. Three topoi were identified: the Topos of Circumstantial Constraint, the Topos of Non-Material Worth, and the Topos of Meritocratic Recalibration (Table 5).
Topoi used to resist 985 waste identity.
The Topos of Circumstantial Constraint is the most frequently used counter-strategy (32.93%). It conveys the argument: “External conditions explain my lack of success, so I am not truly a waste.” This topos shifts blame from personal flaws to systemic and contextual limitations, articulating a critique of meritocratic ideals. Within this topos, six subtopoi concerning specific structural and social obstacles emerge. The topos of social capital deficit (12.80%) highlights the lack of connections, or familial resources. The topos of family or social pressure (9.15%) reveals the burden of parental interference and social conformity. The topos of unfortunate decision (5.49%) frames failure as the result of circumstantial missteps rather than personal flaws. The Covid topos (2.44%) concerns pandemic-related emotional exhaustion and derailed professional plans. Similarly, the policy conditions topos (2.44%) draws attention to institutional barriers such as internship prerequisites, university entrance reforms, and rigid civil service criteria. One rare instance invokes fatalistic resignation (0.61%), attributing failure to destiny rather than agency. However, these sub-topoi still enact a form of disidentification that expose structural inequities in the meritocratic system while remaining partially invested in the logic that “I could succeed if the system were fairer”. It reveals an ambivalent attachment to the ideal of upward mobility, even as its legitimacy is called into question.
The Topos of Non-Material Worth is also frequently used (15.85%), asserting that “I possess other forms of value beyond meritocratic criteria, so I am not a waste”. It opposes the reduction of human value to productivity or merits but proposes alternate metrics of self-worth. Topos of psycho-social healing (6.71%) prioritises mental health, emotional regulation, and physical recovery over relentless striving and external accomplishments. Topos of inner value and cultivation (3.66%) affirms autonomy, and intrinsic joy, prioritising pursuit of personal interests over utilitarian outcomes. Topos of temporal reframing (3.05%) contests rigid success timelines by embracing non-linear life paths, and suggests that late achievement or alternative pacing can still yield fulfilling outcomes. Topos of ethical relational value (1.83%) locates self-worth in compassion, responsibility, or interpersonal connection such as volunteer work, family care, and solidarity with marginalised groups. While this topos and its subtopoi enact a disidentificatory move that reconstructs meaning beyond meritocratic logic, they still reveal an implicit desire for recognition, particularly in the case of temporal reframing.
The Topos of Meritocratic Recalibration (3.05%) reflects a discursive move where individuals revise rather than reject the meritocratic standards they once embraced. It conveys the sentiment: “The meritocratic standards I held myself to feel no longer tenable or fair, so I adjust them instead of viewing myself as a failure.” It does not challenge meritocracy outright but seeks a more humane, sustainable definition of success.
Generally, resistance to the 985 waste identity in these topoi is not radical or revolutionary, but adaptive, emotionally mediated, and context-dependent. Rather than a rupture, they represent negotiations: partial disengagements and subtle reworkings of dominant norms. These discursive acts resonate with the concept of disidentification: a strategy for navigating exclusion by working on, with, and against dominant ideologies simultaneously. This allows individuals to endure contradiction, reclaim agency, and reconstruct meaning on more livable terms, making ambivalent voices of 985 waste not signs of failed resistance, but expressions of the psychic and cultural labour involved in reimagining values under broken promises.
Conclusion
This study examined how individuals identifying as 985 waste construct and negotiate their social identity in post-pandemic China. Through an integrated analysis of referential strategies, self-attribution, and argumentative topoi, the findings reveal emerging discursive practices of disidentification. Referential strategies show how they assert academic prestige and internalise meritocratic values via academicisation and somatisation while articulating structural disadvantage via economisation, and de-spatialisation. It reflects a partial but growing awareness of social inequality. Predication analysis reveals overwhelmingly negative self-assessments: 985 waste describe themselves as underachieving, emotionally unstable, incompetent, socially awkward, and physically unattractive but acknowledge their lack of social capital and support. Their narratives often trace a trajectory from despair to self-repair, signalling not resignation but endurance with hope. Topos analysis further illustrates this ambivalence. While most instances of topoi reinforce waste identity with internalised meritocratic values, one third of them resist it through external attribution of failure, affirmation of non-meritocratic values, and recalibration of self-measuring standards. But these moves are not radical rejection but negotiations that reclaim agency without dismantling meritocracy.
Disidentification here signal a weakening of meritocracy’s normative grip: even elite graduates struggle to reconcile effort with reward. Rather than overt protest, this erosion is accomplished with affective discourses that prioritise rest, care, delayed timelines, and relational ethics. Alternative values are quietly forming beneath meritocratic value system, offering more inclusive and human-scale definitions of worth. However, 985 waste, though showing signs of burnout, anxiety, and depression, still partially believe in meritocracy rather than fully reject it. In this case, disidentification can deepen ambivalence rather than liberate. As Butler (1993) suggests, they “stand under a sign to which they do and do not belong,” enduring the psychic toll of misrecognition, emotionally exhausted and structurally stuck. Also, instead of mobilising collective critique, 985 waste turn to individualised coping: reframing failure, lowering expectations, or seeking emotional healing. While these practices support psychic survival, they may also diffuse social momentum for change by obscuring structural causes. In this way, disidentification functions both as critique and containment.
Footnotes
Appendix
Referential strategies and their linguistic realization adapted for the current study.
| Referential strategies | Linguistic means | |
|---|---|---|
| Collectivisation | Deictics; collectives | |
| De-spatialisation | De-toponymie anthroponyms; de-adverbial anthroponyms | |
| Actionalisation | Actionyms/praxonyms and professionyms | |
| Somatisation | Engendering | Genderonyms |
| Sexual orientation | Anthroponyms referring to persons in terms of their sexual habits or orientation | |
| Enageing | Gerontonyms | |
| Mental capacity and state | Anthroponyms denoting mental deficiency (including pathologonyms); anthroponyms denoting mental weakness; anthroponyms denoting mental problems | |
| Economisation | Anthroponyms referring to persons in terms of possession | |
| Politicisation | Party political alignment | Party names |
| Academisation | Major | Names of the majors |
| Graduation/enrolment year | Year of graduation/enrolment | |
| Educational background | Names of the university or university leagues; academic qualification; academic performance | |
Ethical Considerations
This study is based exclusively on existing, publicly available social media data. No private or password-protected content was accessed. In accordance with the research ethics policy of King’s College London, formal ethical clearance was not required.
Consent to Participate/Publication
As the data analysed in this study were publicly available and did not involve any interaction with human participants, informed consent was not required. The analysis focuses on discourse patterns rather than individual identities, consistent with ethical research guidelines for online data.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.