Echoes of displaced heterotopias: taste stigmatization and digital exploitation among Middle-aged and older-adult fans on digital platforms in China

This study examines the evolution of middle-aged and older-adult fan cultures within China’s digital media landscape, focusing on the construction, transformation, and eventual dissolution of “emotional heterotopias” on short-form video platforms. Emotional heterotopias are digital spaces shaped by nostalgic narratives and interactions between fans and platform celebrities, which serve as sites of emotional refuge and cultural participation, offering a counternarrative to dominant societal norms and stereotypes. However, the divergence of these fan communities from elite cultural standards often subjects them to stigmatization, intergenerational conflicts, and social marginalization. This study examines how emotional heterotopias are transformed into tools of control and exchange through platform capitalism’s commodification of fan practices as a means of capital accumulation, drawing on critical theories of cultural commodification and digital labour, and employing digital ethnography and in-depth interviews. The quadruple exploitation of fans’ time, bodies, finances, and emotions is highlighted, exposing the socioeconomic contradictions inherent in platform capitalism.