The divided affective connections with the influencer

This study explores the multimodal Chinese language discourses of an emerging type of influencers on the short video platform Douyin, the domestic counterpart of TikTok in Mainland China. Their hilarious performance is scornfully celebrated for vulgarity and absurdity. In public discussions, they are described as “pretending craziness and selling stupidity”. The analysis takes “Teacher Guo” as an example. Her funny, awkward and obscene performance, and audiences’ participation in China’s heavily regulated online space inspire the current study to adopt the theoretical lens of carnival. The study examines how audiences’ affective connections with Teacher Guo manifest through both the influencer’s and the audience’s carnivalesque semiotic practices. Findings show that Teacher Guo performs a vulgar and obscene image through her grotesque body and comic language. Audiences’ negative affective connection with her results from rejecting such social transgression: the vulgarity and obscenity are considered as a bad object in today’s wanghong culture. In contrast, the positive connection with Teacher Guo is manifested through the carnivalesque participation by those who temporarily transgress the norms of being serious, positive and polite online, thus conducting light-hearted cultural resistance with mischievous fun.