Performing lowbrowness: How Chinese queer people negotiate visibility on short-video platforms

Abstract

In recent years, Chinese media have tightened regulations on LGBTQ-related content, yet queer people remain highly visible on short-video platforms. Many of them have become influencers with millions of followers. This paper examines queer people’s digital tactics of negotiating visibility and establishing queer connections. Based on extensive research from 2020 to 2023 on Douyin, this paper unpacks how rather than relying on bounded LGBT identities to construct selfhood, Chinese queer influencers resort to the tactic of performing lowbrowness to build online personas and to achieve queer visibility. The performed lowbrowness ostensibly signifies a cultural taste, but queer influencers imbue these classed signs with queer meanings, using them to re-signify unconventional genders and/or sexualities. This project brings to light Chinese queer people’s digital agency to navigate today’s media regulations. It also shows how Chinese digital queer politics may not be intelligible to, and contest the discourses of, queer liberalism.