This summer, an intensive internet data traffic war between fans of the famous middle-aged singer Jay Chou and 21-year-old new generation idol Cai Xukun, was happened on a Chinese social media called Weibo (微博). The trigger was the puzzlement by a user over why it is so difficult to get tickets for Chou’s concerts when he didn’t even make it onto Weibo’s Chaohua (Super Topics), which ranks stars according to their “influence”.
Reflections on the abnormal qualities of ‘normal’ infrastructure
The reason lies behind the war is the conflict between the two ideologies. For Cai’s Fans and even some people who are not his fans perceive a belief that data are taken as facts. Specifically, there should be “a foreseeable path” (Houser, 2014: 328): make data as “influence” on Super Topics, change someone’s recognition and knowledge and then produce the popularity in real-world conditions. While for Chou’s Fans, what the user doubt challenges their recognition that data chart is not everything. Because their beliefs are based on their abundant and collective memories created with Chou’s music that accompanies them from teenager to grow-up. There are multi-dimensional narratives to explain his popularity rather than something linear.
Then Chou’s Fans tried to use Cai’s Fans perceived ways to prove how ‘normal’ data infrastructure abnormal. In 4 days, though they achieved success in the end, they also realised making internet traffic is easy but not that “easy”. It needs them to combine basic-level strategy (have command of the rule of making internet traffic), middle-level strategy (learn to make internet traffic efficiently by purchasing Weibo membership or third-party services) and advanced-level strategy (use time strategy to allocate scores properly). They should choose between continuous participation or being overtaken at any time.
While what Chou’s fans done tried to present a reality that outside Cai’s Fans perceptual and cognitive fields, such “a quiet sea” (Navaro-Yashin, 2003: 121) is still hard to be disturbed. Since Cai’s fans are born in this normal data infrastructure, to deny the data infrastructure is to deny themselves, their existence.
Seeing is believing?
This case prompts us to ask: is seeing believing? On the internet, what we can see are data, graphs and charts, while what we can hardly see are marketing strategies and capital operation, etc. As a result, for some people, the best way to imagine what they can hardly see is to confirm what they can see as a reality by every affective moment: feeling motivated, feeling passionate and feeling deserved.
Reflect on Affect Theory
From my perspective, instead of explaining a phenomenon by using institutional knowledge, Affect Theory emphasize revealing a process of being. Such a process tends to be captured by seizing tiny affective moments. Then the question is, under what conditions can the affective moments be powerful? In Chou-Cai’s Fans case, it might enlighten us that when institutional knowledge can hardly explain the “ordinary” life, affective moments can be the sign to remind us that the normal is abnormal.
References:
Heather, H. (2014). The Aesthetics of Environmental Visualizations: More than Information Ecstacy? Public Culture, 26(2), pp.319-337.
Navaro-Yashin, Y. (2003). ‘Life is dead here’: Sensing the political in ‘no man’s land’. Anthropological Theory, 3(1), pp.107-125.
Seigworth, G & Melissa, G. (2010). ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’. Introduction to the Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press.
Linked Resources:
SHINE News. (2019) Jay Chou fans rally to win Internet ‘battle’. Retrieved from: https://www.shine.cn/news/nation/1907238889/
PINGWEST. (2019) Chinese Millennials Are Sick of the Gen Z, They Dethroned A Young Pop Star from Social Network and Instated Their Own Favorite. Retrieved from: https://en.pingwest.com/a/2836
anthropology of infrastructure 2019 