Vulgar livestreaming spectacle? Wanghong urbanism,digital platform and precarity in Laojie,Shenzhen

Digital platform, spectacle and Wanghong urbanism

The paradigmatic shift from industrial to informational urbanism, presciently theorized by Castells (1996), marked the rise of networked spatial logics. With the wider adoption of information and communication technology, the urban space has been further changed and “disrupted.” These digital remixing practices alter the traditional boundary and agency between producers and consumers of cultural content (Jenkins, 2006), the networked relations of participatory economics, and infrastructural and intermediary qualities (Langley and Leyshon, 2017). With the user-generated content of digital devices, Van Dijck et al. (2018) extend this analysis with the concept of the platform society, where digital infrastructures and social structures coalesce through contested processes of datafication and commodification. The form of the digital urban interface is an entanglement of the digital network and ‘real’ urban space (Fields et al., 2020), involving the platform capitalism through the circle of “capital–technology–cities” and the dual production of digital/physical space and data/money value (Sadowski, 2020).

Platform mechanisms underpinning these transformations recalibrate urbanization itself. Platforms engender what are conceptualized as new “modes of existence” for territorial components, a fundamental recalibration of spatial ontology (Simone, 2024). Against reductive categorization, Leszczynski (2020) argues that platforms constitute irreducible hybrids of infrastructure, discursive logic, and economic phenomena. This constitutive multiplicity generates the “flexible arrangements of space and time” (Richardson, 2021) that evade deterministic analytics while producing governance opacity. Rodgers and Moore (2020) characterize such systems as “walled gardens,” spaces of simultaneous power and impenetrability.

The other key pillar, besides the structural explanation, is Debord's (2014) diagnosis of the society of the spectacle, where social relations become commodified through circulatory images, dissolving material experiences into mediated desires—that is to say, the extra-economic mode where the digital entanglements of urban space become sentient, circulatory and splintering (Rose, 2016). Within this matrix, the spectacle mutates from static representation to dynamic flow, as Degen and Rose (2022) observe in their account of platform-enabled storytelling reconfiguring urban experiences and producing oscillating spatial imaginaries. The visual is increasingly changing and remediating the city, for example Google Maps or Instagram (Törnberg and Uitermark, 2022). This article turns the focus of the capital–value dualism into more aesthetic and visual forms of urbanism, as the digital platform is creating virtual spaces and intermingling such into the city from time to time.

The synthesis of the platform mechanism and Wanghong spectacle consequently establishes a ​​spatial dialectic of emancipation and control​​. Creators navigate algorithmic ecologies (Cunningham et al., 2019), spectators unwittingly supply emotional data (Cao, 2024), and infrastructures govern visibility (Leszczynski, 2020), while digital spectacles reprogram place-meanings (Zhang et al., 2022). These architectures enable grassroots cultural expressions, from rural streamers constructing romanticized ruralities (Zhao, 2024) to elderly vloggers fostering intergenerational solidarity (Li, 2024), but simultaneously establish extractive regimes that obscure power relations behind the ceaseless flow of images. Livestream labor emerges as a key site for examining such tensions between participation and predation.

To grasp this phenomenon, Wanghong urbanism makes its special contribution from the Chinese mode of spatial production with a translational turn (Zhao, 2020). It is a type of digital urbanism but further symbolizes circulatory spectacles and viral trends with the overarching teleology of becoming an internet celebrity. This collective Wanghong objectifies itself and becomes the “opposite of an individual” and the “general law of obedience” (Debord, 2014: 24). Without specific subjects, Wanghong urbanism manifests the circulatory spectacles that both concentrate and diffuse people and social relations with digital platforms as apparatuses.

As Zhang et al. (2022) seminally collages it, Wanghong urbanism​​ crystallizes as the spatial logic of platform spectacle as digitally mediated production and consumption of urban spaces, wherein algorithmic feedback loops continuously reshape both material environments and spatial subjectivities. Cao (2024) documents Guangzhou's “check-in” behaviors as evidence of platforms extracting affective data from place-based performances to fuel capital accumulation. Urban spaces, far from serving as passive backdrops, become active sites of value generation. This dynamic underscores Wanghong urbanism's role as a key accumulation strategy in digital capitalism. Zou (2025) highlights the mediatized culturalization of third-tier cities like Zibo, where barbecue culture transforms urban imaginaries. Such developments constitute more than aesthetic overlays; they enact a digital subversion of space, where platform affordances reconfigure power relations through vernacular performances (Woods, 2020). Such contradictions exemplify a mandate to map the complexities of digitally mediated cultural production (Rose, 2016), revealing platforms as extractive spatial engines. Consequently, the emancipatory potential of platformed spatial practices succumbs to algorithmic regimes extracting affective and relational value. Wanghong urbanism thus embodies a core contradiction: spectacular empowerment paradoxically precipitates vulgar precarity, the defining labor condition of platformized cities.

Livestreaming labor and precarity

Contemporary labor is increasingly operating within what Standing (2011) and Lorey (2015) identify as normalization and a regime of precarity, where neoliberal apparatus blurs the division of personal and professional lives for promised freedom and self-actualization, but also for deeper capture of capital accumulation and social control. This precarity regime reflects Beck's (2000) diagnosis of a brave new world of work characterized by systemic instability, manifesting in platform economies as algorithmic insecurity that transfers risk entirely onto workers (Shin et al., 2023). Bauman's (2000) concept of liquid modernity materializes concretely in livestreaming through volatile income streams and contingent visibility, trapping laborers in cycles of what Berlant (2011) terms “cruel optimism,” the persistent attachment to unattainable promises of autonomy that mask exploitation. Gentili (2021) extends this analysis by arguing that permanent precarity paradoxically enables capitalism's reinvention, as workers internalize instability as opportunity. McRobbie's (2018) critique of the neoliberal “be creative” demand shows how platforms reframe precarity as entrepreneurial freedom.

Digital labor, in the post-industrial and informational age, marks greater complexities. Tang (2023) identifies five types of livestreaming labor practices: relational, affective, performative, creative and hidden labor. These terms mark the elusive nature of digitalization, where non-material production and emotions become increasingly important. This article views livestreaming labor as embodying the interlocking modalities that compound precarity. However, it extends its focus toward the aesthetic practice of vulgarity as the hub, which is simultaneously relational, affective and performative. Affective labor demands constant mood modulation to sustain viewer engagement, converting intimacy into human capital (Guarriello, 2019; Woodcock and Johnson, 2019). Wang (2021) bluntly terms this “desperational labor,” performed on the decaying terrain of unrealized aspirations. Simultaneously, performative labor requires algorithmic mimicry, imitation of viral trends to appease platform metrics, reducing creativity to monetizable self-commodification (Wang, 2020). Lu and Wang (2022) demonstrate how platforms like Douyin convert this labor into data traffic that enables corporate profit extraction. This intersects with relational labor that forces gendered compromises, particularly for female streamers, who must balance sexualized closeness for profit against personal morality, producing specific forms of embodied vulnerability (Ye et al., 2022: 10). As Caminhas (2025) observes in the Brazilian context, such erotic labor navigates local moral censure while monetizing desire, exemplifying Global South precarity configurations.

China's Wanghong ecosystem intensifies these dynamics. Cunningham et al. (2019) define Wanghong labor as inherently entrepreneurial and interdependent, requiring navigation through fragmented media ecologies spanning fan communities, advertisers and regulators, relying on gaining traffic and virtual gifts. The core tension is that streamer agency fundamentally intertwines with the broader platform ecology, creating structural dependence on algorithmic visibility (Lu and Wang, 2022: 307). Female streamers experience particularly acute cruel optimism, trading dignity for visibility in desperate “love games” that commodify intimacy itself (Wang, 2020). Crucially, China's state-capitalist framework creates unique spatial precarity, collapsing work–life boundaries in ways that exceed Western platform contexts, with politics actively enforcing precarity through integrated regulatory pressures (Cunningham et al., 2019).

Within this architecture, algorithmic precarization operates as governmentality through diffused agency, beyond a singular state, platform or streamers. The structural imagination of Wanghong traps laborers in endless optimization cycles and “directly fuels platform commodification” (Tang, 2023). Ye et al. (2025) term it as “playful governance,” where platforms outsource surveillance labor to creators themselves as algorithmic control. Still, laborers develop various tactics to perform their own agencies. Nairobi streamers exemplify “frugal innovation” by circumventing infrastructural barriers with low-tech solutions (Guma, 2023), while Southeast Asian activists exploit algorithmic ambiguities for covert dissent (Lim, 2023), and Brazilian camgirls navigate stigmatized and hostile economies while crafting spaces of erotic autonomy (Caminhas, 2025). As Brennan (2024) argues, micro-resistances transform lived crisis into method, tactical ways of knowing and disrupting platform power. As such, vulgarity becomes active aesthetic tactics to counter the mainstream Wanghong trend.

The literature reveals a lacuna as affective, performative and relational labor are well-theorized, while their synthesis into vulgar precarity as aesthetic form, the coerced self-degradation required for visibility, remains underexamined. In Laojie, this manifests not just as cultural degradation but a spatialized survival strategy, where livestreamers deploy vulgarity to navigate algorithmic demands and negotiate the necropolitical realities of informational urbanization.​​

Staged practice of vulgarity

Field observations reveal how vulgarity operates as a staged practice in Laojie, emerging through distinctive categorizations. Streamers without significant economic capital or refined performance skills develop their own strategies to capture attention. These practices fall into four broad categories: attractive performances adhering to expectations, peculiar performances with gendered patterns of male grotesquerie and female allure, and banal performances reflecting an attempt to remain normative without creativity. This section mainly analyzes the last three types as three modes of vulgarity, to which this public space has developed a higher tolerance of vulgarity.

Normally, the streamers are pulled back to the physical world after staged performance. They rapidly adjust their performance to mediate between the physical and digital, and the motion is remolded from the original situation. Many shift their bodily comportment and attire to mediate these transitions. Some change costumes immediately after their show, blending back into everyday urban life (Figure 2(a)). Others continue to wear their performance outfits as they move through subways, boulevards, and shopping malls, maintaining their digital personas in physical spaces (Figure 2(b)). While Laojie normalizes these presences, their diffusion into adjacent urban settings often provokes shock or discomfort among uninvolved passersby. Proactive streamers extend their online interactions even while traveling home, isolating themselves from their physical surroundings. This self-imposed detachment frequently surprises fellow subway passengers, as the performers’ deviant attire clashes with public expectations (Figure 2(b)).

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Figure 2.

Changing costume before and after stage (a), or keeping costume unchanged (b).

The interplay between digitality and gender surfaces through these practices. Codes, understood both as algorithmic instructions and social norms, can constrain, transgress, disrupt and reconfigure gendered representations (Cockayne and Richardson, 2017). Gendered practice is a process of continuously configuring the social institutions and structure in Laojie's gendered representations. From this, we will discover how it unsettles the previous gender structure in Laojie, and what the typical formulation of it is under the online digital mechanism. To attract audiences’ attention, males and females choose specific way of dressing. Male performers often adopt extravagant outfits, such as Taoist monk robes, clown suits, or historical Chinese attire, staging grotesque performances that oscillate between absurdity and humiliation. For the performers, their presentations of femininity and masculinity reorganize the patterns of performance and different cultural expectations for Laojie. The clothes and appearance are most visible representations of streamers, yet different genders perform distinctly with their clothes disrupt the normative boundary.

Males without experience or capital tend to perform grotesquely. What they are exhibit is the wearing of bizarre attire and making meaningless movements. In Figure 3(a), a performer dressed as the Joker shocks online audiences with exaggerated gestures and unsettling expressions. In Figure 3(b), one streamer pole-dances against a signal pillar, attracting local spectators who record and laugh at his performance. When online viewers dwindle, he escalates his movements as though controlled by an external force. Frustration emerges when his efforts fail to generate sustained engagement. In Figure 3(c), the streamer wears clothes like the famous singer Jay Chou, and acts like him, exhibiting copycat behavior.

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Figure 3.

Male as joker (a), pole dance (b), copycat (c).

Meanwhile, some top-rank streamers are experienced and they establish another category for the arena. Rurality and modernity coexist. People come to Laojie mainly not for personal interest, but view it as another dream maker in the digital age, like the reform era's bosses. In contrast, the spectators are predominantly men idling around, visiting the place to see free shows. The online spectators, with a similar rationale, stay at their own homes to view the performances. The interaction between streamers and spectators creates an atmosphere that celebrates peculiarity to fulfil online spectators’ curiosity and desire.

Female performers rely on provocative clothing and repetitive sensual gestures to sustain attention. Figure 4(a) depicts a common scene: a female streamer encircled by male spectators whose gazes and cameras objectify her body. These physical gatherings often translate into virtual traffic as photographers and onlookers livestream the moment, converting offline allure into online visibility.

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Figure 4.

Female circled by males (a), male intrudes on females’ territory (b).

While undulating her body, she interacts and even exhibits her body in front of the cameras and male-dominated spectators. The crowd’s response ranges from fixed gazes to the voyeuristic act of recording, turning her performance into a permanent digital object. To broadcast their performances, female streamers actively welcome males. Males are like the wolves piercing the female's body, and through their gaze, they even grab it. Meanwhile, many of the males are streamers too, and their broadcast rooms are filled with online spectators. Someone claimed, “a carnival for her” (a digital gift worth 3000 CNY, around 420 USD). A female passerby mentioned, “I never want to stay in this greasy and disgusting masculine atmosphere.” However, to cater to the audience, consisting mainly of males, female streamers have to wear revealing clothing and strike provocative poses under the males’ cheers. In an extreme case, online comments exist such as: “a bunch of rotting flesh attracting flies for spectacle.” Female audiences often attract a swarm of photographers, who see where the flux would be potentially concentrated , and see the physical arena as a series of flux hotspots. Many of the filming audience members spontaneously gather to generate online traffic, attracting unaware viewers, making offline allure translate into online presence, and vice versa, emphasizing the crowd mentality.

Female streamers endure frequent intrusions from male performers, emboldened by online encouragement. In Figure 4(b), a male streamer invades a female performer's space with loud gestures, forcing her to retreat and minimize her movements. The female streamer has a sense of uncertainty and retreats to a smaller circle and actions. She did not even dare to move and sing when the man intruded. The male performers’ behaviors are motivated and encouraged by the online audience, who pay the performers awards for their performance of outrage, whereas the female performers also received awards from the online audience for their “inferiority and patience with that kind of suffering.” The reaction and interaction of the online audience justify the performance at the same time: the public discourse maintains that such superior masculinity and seductive femininity are acceptable in the place of Laojie at that fragmented moment.

The last group tends not to perform peculiarly but banally. They obey ordinary social norms, like performance and singing. Some can attract a great number of online spectators to 10,000 (HL), as people would view this as an interesting talent show. Laypeople entering the livestreaming space often emulate these practices, swinging their bodies rigidly, adjusting voice boxes, or waving their sleeves in repetitive motions. These banal performances highlight the stratification of labor within Laojie, where even mundane actions participate in the broader economy of attention. The onsite audience, mostly idle men from underdeveloped areas, contribute little financially, serving primarily to enhance performers’ perceived popularity. By contrast, online spectators provide the critical economic benefits through virtual gifts and engagements.

Between humiliation and aspiration

Through grotesque, alluring, and banal performances, streamers navigate the paradox of vulgarity as both self-exploitation and aspiration. Laojie's atmosphere cultivates dreams of economic mobility, echoing Shenzhen's reform-era ethos of opportunity. What the slogan of “once you come, you are a Shenzhen person” signifies repeats in Laojie, “if you have a dream, please come to this stage,” which inspires migrants to reimagine livestreaming as a path toward Wanghong status. The previous entrepreneurial or working aspirations are now transferred into the livestreaming practice. Stories of top streamers earning over 100,000 CNY in a single day reinforce these aspirations. Yet for most, reality intrudes harshly, with daily earnings ranging from “a few dozen to a few hundred CNY” (SX). The aspirational pull of Laojie converts laypeople into streamers, normalizing vulgarity as a survival strategy. Spectators label performers as “artists” or “jokers,” depending on their acts, but the performers themselves rarely have alternatives to these self-degrading practices. This is the paradox of the self-exploitation critique of creative labor (McRobbie, 2018) or cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011). Spectators call them artist or joker, based on their performance. Here, we summarize the ways of navigating this as aspiration, endurance and utilization.

Most of the streamers aspire to be Wanghong; they foresee hard work with good results. JH mentions “I’m in my thirties and I want to have a wife too. I’ll keep going as long as Douyin doesn’t shut down.” Another asserts, “I believe that if you have a dream in your heart and strive to achieve it, you will surely realize your goals” (AX). Many of the streamers explicitly declare they will persevere to accumulate fans, so that they will be able to perform what they want and raise funds for getting married. Many streamers fake their background; some of them name their university, such as the Communication University of China and Peking University.

Meanwhile, the streamers have to endure humiliation and contempt. Many of the streamers, particularly the inexperienced, found it pretty hard to ignore. Some arrive early in the morning and stay until eleven or twelve, just to endure half a day. After a being given a hard time, one streamer who could not afford their daily expenses, while being mocked, disclosed: ‘It feels like crawling around in the dark like a mouse’ (AN). Anxiety about fluctuating popularity intensifies as data metrics fail to align with effort. “The more popular you are, the more afraid you are of losing that popularity,” QY explains. “This can lead to self-doubt, and many ultimately give up streaming.” Data fluctuates day by day, which can be mentally challenging, and many streamers have ultimately given up streaming for this reason.

Nevertheless, others embrace vulgarity strategically. Livestreaming has been criticized as using vulgarity to make money. Spectators mock them for embodying the “three lows of economy, culture, and talent; you have to let others see you, so you can only act ugly and strange, you can't act beautiful” (XB). If one has no professional equipment, one cannot survive here. AZ recalls being humiliated frequently but choosing to “work harder” in response. SX responds, “that's not my dark past, but the path I took to get here.” Online audiences list these streamers as “new-era beggars” in digital worlds, for example, “not working, being lazy and gluttonous.” Even being regulated, Laojie streamers navigate it well. For instance, XC acts as a beckoning cat when online spectators send her gifts. Some females would call male viewers “brother” to foster loyalty and bonded incentives. The streamer HW clearly articulated their underlying pragmatism: “It's all about selling products; otherwise, who would spend so much energy?”

Circulation and transmission of vulgarity

Wanghong's performance in Laojie remains insecure as multiple dispositions struggle here. Vulgarity in Laojie circulates dynamically, shaped by physical gatherings, digital platforms, and the interplay between them. Digital reinforcement of vulgarity refers to the way that streamers and spectators shift the focus to the virtual space, which increasingly produces a fake sense of anonymity. Streamers and spectators co-create performances that emphasize peculiarity, fulfilling online audiences’ curiosity and desire while disregarding onsite viewers. This prioritization occurs because online audiences, unlike physical bystanders, contribute financially through virtual gifts. Performers compete for gift points within time-limited challenges, which incentivizes exaggerated actions. For instance, the spectators would send streamers “gifts,” with a ratio to convert to cash, and the person who gets more gift points within 5 minutes wins.

Third-perspective streamers further amplify these dynamics by broadcasting from Laojie to wider audiences. They gravitate toward sexually provocative performances, intensifying gendered disparities as fragile male performers resort to grotesque acts to achieve visibility. Online spectators reinforce these practices with comments such as, “The old man is hopping around like a rabbit, with his graying hair, bouncing around.” These cycles of observation and commentary expand Laojie's spectacle beyond its physical boundaries.

The nature of online transmission could easily relocate the streamers to another place, replicating a new sense of vulgarity (Zou, 2025). In May 2024, a grassroots singer in Heze, Shandong was crafted as Wanghong, and their followers bulged to 10 million in ten days with huge traffic. Douyin instantly made Heze the hotspot and many stationary streamers in Laojie moved physically to Heze to benefit their careers, despite the Heze being 1,700 km away from Laojie. Within ten days, the local authority stopped streaming to preserve the civil environment, and the digital boom of streamers in Heze collapsed (Lu, 2024), with some streamers returning to Laojie.

Government responses to Laojie remain ambivalent. On the one hand, livestreaming is embraced as a tool for cultural revitalization; on the other, it is condemned for fostering “distorted aesthetics, traffic-first priorities, and chaotic fan culture” (SZ News, 2024). By early 2025, the spectacle had dissipated. Pop-up shops and shoppers reoccupied Laojie (Figure 5), exemplifying the reterritorialization of urban space under governance strategies. These shifts highlight how digital and physical forces intersect to produce a volatile street cultural arena. Laojie's livestreamers inhabit a precarious world where mobility and visibility are always conditional, their presence sustained by algorithmic flows and vulnerable to sudden erasure (Castells, 1996; Van Dijck et al., 2018).

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Figure 5.

The afterlife of Laojie in 2025.