Entertain China : livestreaming, erotic gifts and the platformization of sexual commerce

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the emerging characteristics of China's rapid platformization in the realm of intimate economy. It meticulously examines 'camgirls' engaged in professional livestreaming, their significant male sponsors, and the platforms and intermediary organizations enabling their interactions. The primary objective is to capture the conflicts and transformations stemming from these heavily government-monitored platforms and businesses. This research, spanning a two-year ethnographic study (2019-2021), involves a five-month immersion as a camgirl on Momo, supplemented by data collection from online sources and offline interviews in Chengdu and other cities. The study critically analyzes the impact of platformization on obscured labor intertwined with intimacy, emotions, and modern Chinese desires. This dissertation explores how China has integrated non-contact sexual activities into its platformization process using livestreaming technologies. The study particularly focuses on 'camgirls' and their interactions on platforms that cultivate a pseudo-separation of emotional and physical relationships. A state-sanctioned platform allows the performance of sexually suggestive acts within state-defined boundaries, attracting male users who engage in a gift economy with real currency. In this process, male users can attain a 'dage' status, symbolizing their superior position. Platforms, in collaboration with intermediary organizations, produce and circulate 'bounded authenticity' through platform-based sexual services. Like other creative workers, camgirls encounter 'nested precarities' amidst unstable relationships and emotional turmoil. The platform model, devoid of nudity but consuming their emotional and physical labor, is designed to incentivize user return. Subsequently, this dissertation focuses on the regulation of camgirls at the platform level and as erotic objects. When these women transgress platform norms through sexually suggestive and explicit acts on camera, they are penalized by a preset algorithm on the platform that reduces their visibility to users. However, they continue to participate and serve the platform, albeit demoted as “shadow influencers.” These self-regulating functions enable platforms to maintain a self-defined clean, moral, and "spotless" environment, strategically responding to the increasing tension between platform governance and economic development. Finally, this study investigates the impact of platformization on participants in the realm of intimate labor, particularly focusing on female livestreamers. While the platformization of the intimate economy is predicated on the homogenization and predictability of production activities, it fails to apprehend the intimate relationships and emotions that develop between camgirls and their significant supporters. Male viewers who invest considerable time, energy, and emotion on the platform evidently become unsatisfied with merely observing the "safe sexual allure" and eventually crave reciprocal exchanges that require recompense from camgirls off-platform. This research also brings forward the strategies that camgirls employ to appease their audiences to create sustained sponsorship while leveraging their talents and occasionally risking legal sanctions. This research contributes to three critical areas. Firstly, it elucidates the novel characteristics of the platformization era, focusing on gamified intimate labor and the gift economy, and evaluating their impacts on practitioners. Secondly, using the "live-streaming realm" inhabited by camgirls, it seeks to understand work, life, and personal desires in a platformed China, offering an insightful perspective beneath China's ethno-techno-nationalism. Lastly, it challenges ethnocentric and Techno-Orientalist biases in platform studies. Given concerns similar to TikTok, the "Chinese model" of platformed intimate economy may be replicated globally. Thus, it underscores the need for understanding and scrutiny of these trends in a globally interconnected context, avoiding geopolitical binaries.