Diaosi (屌丝) ranked as one of the most popular Internet memes of 2012, and it continues to be popular to this day. This article analyses the origins and nature of the diaosi meme and the young men (and women) who self-mockingly describe themselves as 'losers'. The meme has led to ample speculation in the media and among Chinese academics, and while some see the meme as a relevant form of political critique, others dismiss it as indicative of a psychological malaise affecting contemporary youth. This article reviews the state of this debate about the meanings of the diaosi phenomenon, while offering a new interpretation that frames the meme in terms of Raymond Williams's notion of 'structures of feeling'. Though diaosi is a seemingly humorous and playful Internet meme, it is also one that signals young netizens' disillusionment with the apparent lack of possibilities for upward socio-economic mobility in contemporary China. This author contends that the diaosi phenomenon, though amorphous and at times contradictory, may also be considered an emergent form of affective identification through which alternative desires and forms of mobility may be imagined and enacted.

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This article addresses the proliferation of images and appearances in the realm of e-sports culture in urban China. The author's findings are based upon ethnographic research and participant observation of e-sports audience members, teams, and tournaments, including the 2010 E-sports Champion League tournament in Beijing, the 2012 and 2013 World Cyber Games Festivals in Kunshan, and a 2014 Starcraft II tournament in Shanghai. A comparison of these events leads the author to argue that live e-sports events in China are less about spectatorship than they are about creating a spectacle that presents a carefully crafted vision of Chinese politics, nationalism, and capitalist consumer culture. In these cases, the participants and audience members are not only commodities to be sold but also a means of masking contradictory and highly ambivalent discourses about China's role in technological production, digital game culture, and the promotion of the discourse of Internet addiction.

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