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Emotion culture through the lens of PUA (pickup artist): emotions and the social media narratives of structual gendered violence

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Emotion culture through the lens of PUA (pickup artist): emotions and the social media narratives of structual gendered violence

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EMOTION CULTURE THROUGH THE LENS OF PUA (PICKUP ARTIST):
EMOTIONS AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA NARRATIVES
OF STRUCTUAL GENDERED VIOLENCE

by

Yusi Xu

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

August 2021

Copyright 2021 Yusi Xu
ii

DEDICATION

To my family,
my advisor Peggy McLaughlin,
and all victims of emotional abuse.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation project would not have been possible without the help and support from my
dissertation committee, Dr. Margaret McLaughlin, Dr. Robert Kozinets, Dr. Guobin Yang, and
Dr. Josh Kun, for their time and wisdom devoted to reading the drafts and providing constructive
feedbacks. Foremost, I am beyond fortunate to have my advisor, Peggy, by my side, through the
ups and downs in my life, and I hers. Thank you for showing me how to gracefully navigate it
when time gets a bit hard, and for holding my hands throughout this PhD journey. I would
always treasure our memories of countless late afternoon chats, the paper edits, the strategizing
for jobs, so many brilliant research ideas and the unwavering faith you placed in me. You are a
source of strength and inspiration.
In addition to my committee, I also own a debt of gratitude to Dr. Lynn Miller, Dr. Traci
Hong, Dr. Ben Lee, Dr. Andrea Hollingshead, Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Dr. Sandra Ball-
Rokeach, Dr. Daniela Baroffio, Dr. Carmen Lee, Dr. Taj Frazier, Dr. Dmitri Williams, Dr. Su
Jung Kim, Dr. Emilio Ferrara, and Dr. Lindsay Young. It has been an honor to work with you.
Your generosity and kindness have tremendously enriched my academic journey at Annenberg.
Sincere thanks also go to my friends and colleagues at the Annenberg School at USC: my
comrades Hye Min Kim, Ignacio Cruz, Jillian Kwong, Steffie Kim, Do Own Kim, Kathy Wang,
Jiaxi Wu, Yu Xu, Zhiming Xu, Liyuan Wang, Yue Yang, Ruqin Ren, Yao Sun, Meiqing Zhang,
Grace Wang, Hyun Tae Kim, Caitlin Joy Dobson, Lauren Levitt, Nazli Senyuva, Stefi
Demetriades and Nathan Walter. It was your company and friendship that made this journey
worthwhile.
iv
The past year has definitely been a memorable one. Being isolated in my home with my dog,
Pheno, was not an ideal picture I anticipated for myself when working on this project. Although
life sometimes seems hopeless, you made all the differences. I would like to thank my family and
friends for their unconditional love, encouragements and patience. My cousin Jiarui Ma, Zijiao
Zhang, Allen Wen, Cathy Tan, Yinsi Qi, Wen Zhou, Chen Xu, Eileen Zhang, Hank Yu,
Haojiang Zhou, Shihan Su, Anwen Zhang, Jason Gao, and Yihan Qin, are among the ones who
kept me grounded and sane through this unique period.
Lastly but not the least, my incredible family, the best family I could possibly imagine in the
whole world: I love you.

v
Table of Contents

DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... iii
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii
List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
The Chinese Provocation ............................................................................................................. 1
Key Gaps in Literature ................................................................................................................ 5
Overview of this Dissertation ...................................................................................................... 7
Chapter Summaries ..................................................................................................................... 9
CHAPTER 2: DIGITAL EMOTIONS, ENGAGEMENT ............................................................ 11
AND NETWORKED SOLIDARITY ........................................................................................... 11
The Cultural Politics of Emotions and Emotion Culture ........................................................... 11
Emotions elicit online propagation and engagement ................................................................. 17
CHAPTER 3: THE CHINESE REALITY: ................................................................................... 20
THE STRUCTURED, THE CENSORED AND THE CONNECTED ......................................... 20
Structural Gendered Violence Against Chinese Women .......................................................... 20
The Chinese Social Media Landscape: the Censored and the Connected ................................. 26
CHAPTER 4: STUDY 1 METHOD & RESULTS ....................................................................... 30
The Dataset: Reddit r/Seduction ................................................................................................ 30
Measures .................................................................................................................................... 32
Emotion ................................................................................................................................. 32
Popularity/ Engagement ........................................................................................................ 32
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 33
Structural Topic Modeling .................................................................................................... 33
Emotion Analysis and the NRC Lexicon .............................................................................. 34
Statistical Analysis ................................................................................................................ 35
Results ....................................................................................................................................... 36
Descriptive results from topic modeling ............................................................................... 36
CHAPTER 5: STUDY 2 METHOD & RESULTS ....................................................................... 45
vi
The Chinese Dataset: PUA Discussion on Zhihu ...................................................................... 45
Netnography .............................................................................................................................. 49
Data Collection and Analysis .................................................................................................... 51
Results ....................................................................................................................................... 56
CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................ 60
Study 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 60
Emotion as a popularity and engagement indicator .............................................................. 61
Study 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 63
The counterproductivity of over-visibility ............................................................................ 63
Consuming and being consumed ........................................................................................... 65
(De)moralization of PUAs, and structural gendered violence ............................................... 67
Judging the victims with superiority and condescension ...................................................... 69
Reproduction of misogyny and gendered norms ................................................................... 71
Othering as an oppressive mechanism in the Chinese emotion culture ................................ 73
The duality of Chinese Social Media .................................................................................... 75
Limitation .................................................................................................................................. 78
Chapter 7: Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 80
References ..................................................................................................................................... 84

vii
List of Tables
Table 1 . Topics and Respective Representative Excepts from r/Seduction ................................. 38
Table 2. Themes Identified from the 11 Emerging Topics ............................................................ 42
Table 3. Poisson Regression Results for Emotions and Post Popularity ....................................... 43
Table 4. Meanings of PUA under Various Themes ...................................................................... 56
Table 5. Correlation Table for Key Popularity Measures for Zhihu Dataset ................................ 57
Table 6. Numbers of Records under Each Theme ......................................................................... 58

viii

List of Figures
Figure 1. Pluchik's Three-dimensional Model of Emotions (Plutchik, 2001) ............................... 16
Figure 2. Diagnostic Matrices for Different Number of Topics .................................................... 37
Figure 3. Topic Correlations among the 11 Topics Emerged from r/Seduction ........................... 41
Figure 4. Emotion Distribution in the Reddit r/Seduction Dataset ............................................... 43
Figure 5. A Screenshot of Typical Q&A Interface on Zhihu ........................................................ 48
Figure 6. PRISMA Flow Diagram for the Final Zhihu Dataset .................................................... 54
Figure 7. Gender Distribution of Users in the Zhihu Dataset ........................................................ 57

ix

Abstract

Inspired by the tragic case of emotional abuse of a romantic partner, the subject of
pickup artists (PUAs) and the “seduction community” has become a topic of popular interest in
Chinese social media. Led by self-styled PUAs, the seduction community is a subculture for
socially awkward men (Denes, 2011) who need “direction and empowerment” (Almog &
Kaplan, 2017) to actively cultivate personal seduction skills and have success with women.
Primarily existing in the heterosexual space, pickup artistry became a popular cultural
phenomenon in the U.S. over the past three decades and has recently become a global one (King,
2018). Controversies have followed due to ambiguity around the potential of manipulative PUA
techniques to impose emotional harm on sexual partners, a form of gendered violence.
How online users view this contested cultural phenomenon is unclear. Consisting of two
studies, this dissertation applies a mixed-method, exploratory sequential design (Creswell, &
Clark, 2011) to examine PUA-related social media narratives on Reddit and Zhihu (a Chinese
question-and-answer social platform). Study 1 utilizes computational methods to understand the
latent topics discussed in a seduction community on Reddit and underpins the role of emotion in
promoting message popularity and mobilizing engagement.
Building on the finding of expressed emotion in posts as a predictor for virality and
engagement from Study 1, Study 2 zooms into the Chinese context after publicity surrounding
the case of Baoli, a woman emotionally abused and driven to suicide by her partner, and utilizes
Netnography to elucidate the intertwining of emotion culture (defined by Arlie Hochschild in
1979 as normative emotion rules, composed of feeling rules and display rules ), discourses of
x
gendered violence and the Chinese technoculture that enables the discursive struggles around this
“imported good,” PUA. Results indicate that the victims of PUA were narratively othered and
distanced from readers, seemingly to invite apathy. Misogyny and gender antagonism were
reproduced through the narratives around PUA. Although talking about an emotionally stirring
case, the narratives were characterized by lack of expressed emotion.
The emotion culture of the Chinese social media platform may work to suppressed
activation of “networked solidarity” (Castells, 2015) for possible changes. As Yang (2000; 2018)
notes, the activation of collective emotions is critical for cyber activism, “a new form of popular
contention” (2009: 33) in China. To problematize and challenge the status quo of
unacknowledged emotional abuse as a form of violence, as demonstrated in the narratives around
PUA, the role of emotional engagement needs to be highlighted. Chinese social media have a
duality mode: while having the potential to inspire meaningful discussions on critical topics,
provoke collective emotions, and install power into discourse, social media may also serve to
mute dissent, divide opinion, spark incivility, and sustain the socio-cultural hegemony of
structural gendered violence.

Keywords: emotion, pickup artist (PUA), social media, emotion abuse, structural gendered
violence, China, Netnography
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The Chinese Provocation
In October 2019, a controversial news report in China stirred heated discussion. A female
undergraduate at Peking University, with the pseudonym Baoli, was reported to have attempted
suicide, after allegedly being emotionally tortured by her boyfriend for more than a year. The
young woman was declared brain dead soon after. Her WeChat messages history with her
boyfriend received 1.4 billion views in two days on Weibo, the leading Chinese microblogging
website, before it was censored by the Chinese government (Yuan, 2019).
From the virally propagated screenshots of these WeChat messages, the boyfriend
blamed Baoli for “having given the most precious thing to another man,” referring to her
virginity, and demanding that she “get a tattoo of ‘the dog of Mu (his name)’,” “kneel and
apologize,” and “get pregnant with me and then get an abortion.” Baoli initially resisted, but
eventually surrendered to his continual cursing, abasement, threats, and psychological abuse.
After months of pain and fear, she sent her last message to the man: “You are dazzling, but I’m a
piece of trash,” before taking her own life to “pay for her[my] crimes.”
1

Although the discussion on Weibo was censored two days after the incident, Chinese
netizens took it to other platforms to continue the discussion. The cruel mind-controlling and
brainwashing tactics brought the debate around PUA (Pickup Artist) fully into the public sphere.
The Chinese government took the discussion seriously, removed related discussions on Weibo

1
Translated by the author from the screenshot of Baoli’s WeChat message exchange with her boyfriend.
Available at https://www.163.com/dy/article/G1OVF3V80528CSE1.html
2
and began a crackdown of companies teaching manipulative strategies as dating tips to men
(Yuan, 2019).
Although the Baoli case is an isolated one, it introduced the discussion around PUA to
the public. The author proposes to use it as an entry point to investigate the broader social beliefs
about PUA and emotional abuse in China.
While physical abuse is universally considered unacceptable (Fulu & Miedema, 2015),
and emotional pain is usually compared to physical pain (for example, “the betrayal felt like a
knife in my back”), in fact, the public may not fully acknowledge the harm. In a review drawing
from eight studies, Williams and colleagues (2012) found that victims viewed emotional abuse as
having more long-lasting harm, whereas third parties perceived emotional abuse to be minimal
and often negligible, especially when contrasted with physical abuse, which was rated as more
harmful, and deserving of punishment.
Emotional and psychological abuse are both formally recognized as domestic abuse and
are damaging to the victims (WHO, 2013). In a 2014 study, Siltala found that compared to
victims of sexual or physical violence, emotional abuse survivors scored lower on well-being
measures. Yet a certain ambiguity remains with respect to how people discuss pickup artistry and
emotional abuse, both in the US and China, particularly with respect to the topic of intimacy.
However, while emotional distress in romantic relations may be commonplace and
inflicted by both parties, the suffering from the emotional torture inflicted by a PUA is a
calculated manipulation. A pickup artist is someone who is “knowledgeable and competent in the
ways of attracting and seducing women” (Almog & Kalan, 2017: 34). While scholars (for
example, Denes, 2011; Marcotte, 2014) have long associated this group with misogyny,
3
deception and lies (Kray, 2018), others hold that the PUA philosophy in effect challenges
“certain forms of political correctness in Western, English-speaking cultures” (King, 2018: 300).
Following the same logic of Bourdieu’s formulation of various forms of capital, erotic
capital is a concept coined by Catherine Hakim (2010) to specifically refer to the possession of
beauty, social skills, and creative wit in sexual interactions. The seduction community is a
subculture and offers self-help groups for socially awkward men (Denes, 2011) who need
“direction and empowerment” (Almog & Kaplan, 2017), to actively build their erotic capital by
learning to cultivate personal seduction skills and have success with women. It should be noted
that the seduction community exists primarily in a heterosexual space, with men being the
seducers, and women the targets.
Though seemingly an innocent self-help movement among the so-called AFCs (Average
Frustrated Chumps), the goals of the seduction community are ambitious: to empower and to
radically change the identities of men who experience little success with women. Directing
resources to success in sexual relations is considered a step toward establishing “an integrative,
coherent, and successful masculine identity” (Almog & Kaplan, 2017: 34). Since erotic capital
can be bought, learned, and improved (Hakim, 2010), the seduction community became the place
to foster and develop erotic capital for an AFC to become a pickup artist, through the process
gaining confidence (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019) and acquiring agency.
The seduction community enjoys a highly systematic approach, and operates with its own
technical vocabulary (Hendriks, 2012). Intimacy is tied to a very particular set of systematic and
commercialized algorithms, following a guide to seduction wherein evolutionary psychology and
biology are mobilized to reconfigure affection as a biological auto-response. For example, in
Neil Strauss’s New York Times bestselling book “The Game”, he depicted a central aspect of the
4
seduction process, commonly known as “negging,” a humorous-aggressive communication that
uses ambivalent and vague provocations to suspend the meanings of the messages (Kaplan,
2005):
“Neither compliment nor insult, a neg is something in between an accidental insult or backhanded
compliment. The purpose of a neg is to lower a woman’s self-esteem, while actively displaying a
lack of interest in her---- by telling her she has lipstick on her teeth, for example, or offering her a
piece of gum after she speaks.” (Strauss, 2005: 20- 21)
As the negging technique demonstrates, PUAs instill psychological violence in their
desired targets through a systematic and commercialized algorithm (Almog & Kaplan, 2017).
Bratich and Banet-Weiser (2019: 5012) contend that by the “game”, men in PUA communities
“attain a sense of self-confidence through seducing and controlling women”. And such
confidence could be capitalized and taught. The commercial element of the initial seduction
groups, led by professional PUA instructors who teach the techniques in the game to group
members, was very clear: the schools are companies, the PUAs businessmen, and the students
consumers (Hendriks, 2012).
It also should be noted that the seduction community has an ambiguous relation with the
subculture of “incels,” a portmanteau of “involuntary celibates,” who self-define as unable to
find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. This group, failures at becoming PUAs,
has been more directly criticized as violence-promoting, spreading extreme sexist views, and
radicalizing their members (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019). Although there could be overlaps of
membership, the incels community is not the focus of this study.
The modern PUA phenomenon dates back to the early 1970s with the book How to Pick
Up Girls by Eric Weber (1970). Simultaneously, the West witnessed more liberal attitudes
toward sexuality with second-wave feminism, which went beyond legislative and social reforms
5
to the popular notion that living as a less prudish woman was progressive (King, 2018). King
(2018) argued that the second phase of modern PUAs and seduction culture occurred in the
1990s with the growth of the Internet, when online blog writing and videos focused on male self-
improvement with respect to attractiveness. If the second phase was still somewhat arcane and
inaccessible to the public, the seduction community soon turned into a global phenomenon after
publication of Neil Strauss’s widely popular book The Game (2005). In 2007 and 2008, VH1
aired the reality TV series The Pickup Artist, featuring the prominent figure Mystery. Since then,
most global major cities started to host offline seminars or bootcamps for seduction techniques,
and pickup artistry has become a “huge, if generally ignored industry” (Marcotte, 2014). The
golden days of commercial success and personal fame among the gurus of the PUA community
waned in response to feminism activists who protested against PUA proponents for abusing and
objectifying women. Since then, negative publicity has led to this morally dubious community’s
loss of its former glory and popularity, but various offshoots, especially non-commercial sites for
sharing of “dating tips” are still operating on social media (Hendriks, 2012).

Key Gaps in Literature
Interestingly, studies on this seduction community are quite limited. Most of these studies
(for example, Hendriks, 2012; King, 2018; Kray, 2018) came from disciplines such as history,
gender and sexuality studies or critical cultural studies and did not utilize empirical data. For
studies that did, qualitative methods such as ethnography and interviewing have been among the
most popular research approaches. Representative works includes Whitley & Zhou’s (2020)
study on the mental health of PUA community members and O’Neil’s study of the London
seduction community. Two studies (Almog & Kaplan, 2017; Denes, 2011) conducted content
6
analysis of PUA masters’ texts. However, to the knowledge of the author, there has been no
study investigating social media narratives around PUA from networked users, and no work has
focused on the emotional elements of such discussions.
Social media serve as a key platform to reflect how this cultural phenomenon is
represented, discussed and understood. Such narratives, in turn, may also shed light on how our
socio-culture has exerted influence on the members of such communities. At the same time, the
very circulation of such narratives fits into the broader discourse of intimacy and romantic
relations and may provide creators and audiences “a sense of moral legitimacy and rhetorical
power” (Yang, 2009: 75), and hence play into broader social norms.
Online narratives could transform as well as reproduce normative and constrictive modes
of interaction (McLean et al., 2019). The narratives around PUA on social media help users
make sense of social experience and social identity from the semiotic resources of the online
narratives. Mere visibility on social media could legitimate users’ own values and empower them
(Yang, 2016). Therefore, the social media narrative provides a useful site for further inquiry.
The discourse of the seduction community not only has the potential to actually improve
the skills of help seekers, but also provides a system of “vocabulary for the self and in guiding
the perceptions of one’s social relations” (Illouz, 2008: 53). Therefore, beyond whether or not
such PUAs change people in the way they initially seek to change, they exert a socio-cultural
influence beyond the space of the initial promise.
The emotional, psychological and ethical ambiguity of social media talk around PUA
begs further theoretical elucidation and empirical investigation. While PUA communities were
extensively challenged by feminist activists (Kray, 2018) and scholars (Marcotte, 2014; Denes,
2011), there has been limited research looking at the actual narratives promulgated on social
7
media and in particular the role that emotional expression plays in message virality and user
engagement. Both studies in this dissertation utilizes behavioral data from a naturalistic setting, a
popular social media platform. Study 1examines the emotions expressed and the relationship
between emotion-laden content and popularity in the subreddit seduction community. Reddit was
identified as one of the social media located in the geekier and more misogynistic Internet space
(Massanari, 2017). Its subreddit r/Seduction serves to share dating tips, mainly among
heterosexual men who hopes to have success with women.
Lastly, it appears that the study of the PUA phenomenon in the Chinese context will
venture to a territory that has not been much charted. As Campbell argues in her
conceptualization of agency, the capacity to act is “constituted and constrained by the material
and symbolic elements of context and culture” (Campbell, 2005: 3), highlighting the significance
of externals and contexts that are material and symbolic, subject to the contingencies of
circumstance. Hence, this dissertation seeks to place an emphasis on the interaction between
symbolic context and actual narratives, especially in Study 2, where the context of discussion is a
Chinese social media platform, Zhihu, following the aforementioned tragic case.

Overview of this Dissertation
As Robert Kozinets reminded us, facing an electrified sociality, the “technoculture is our
evolutionary context” (Kozinet, 2020:6). As such, this dissertation project is propelled by three
specific objectives: documenting, comparing and understanding (1) the narratives around PUA
and seduction communities in both the US and Chinese contexts, where erotic capitals are the
center of discussion; (2) the role of emotion in these discussions; (3) the material and symbolic
8
contexts, including emotion culture, and the technoculture that constrained, framed and
interacted with the respective narratives.
This dissertation broadly investigates emotional expressions around erotic persuasion
from a socio-technical perspective. It probes into the public perceptions and discussions around
implicit and controversial norms of PUA, and the induced gendered psychological abuse. It
examines social media narratives and addresses the following questions: What are the prevalent
themes and latent topics emerging from the online narratives in Chinese and US social media
around PUA and seduction experiences? And what connotations were related to this subculture?
How did the affordances and constraints of social media shape and regulate the meaning creation
around structural gendered violence, especially the ambiguity of emotional abuse, through the
lens of online narratives around PUA?
Consisting of two studies, this dissertation applies a mixed-method, exploratory
sequential design (Creswell et al., 2011). In Study 1, with computational and statistical
approaches, the author uses a large volume of social media data from an online seduction
community to understand the themes and latent topics of the narratives and the role of emotion in
common identity creation, information transmission and message popularity.
Informed by the findings from Study 1, Study 2 drills down into the Chinese context
following the Baoli case and utilizes Netnography to elucidate the social media narratives of
PUA, with respect to emotions, social norms and the Chinese technoculture that enables the
discursive struggles around this “imported good”, PUA. Netnography was selected because of its
capability to denote certain “apparent truths”, but also connote more culturally specific meanings
in a particular context.

9
Chapter Summaries
This dissertation consists of seven chapters: Chapter 1 opens up with a provocation of a
tragic case involving PUA and emotional manipulation in a romantic relationship in China. I
then review the modern development of PUA and the seduction community in the West. After
identifying key gaps in the study of seduction communities from current literature, I present an
overview of the dissertation.
In Chapter 2, I review the extant literature on the cultural politics of collective emotion
and engagement/virality from exposure to social emotions, which together serve as the
theoretical framework in which I situate the first study.
Chapter 3 outlines the social reality informing gender politics in China to provide the
socio-technical context, where Study 2 is positioned: the structural violence against Chinese
women, the Chinese social media landscape and the struggle of Chinese cyber activism
coexisting with content moderation.
Chapter 4 describes the research design, datasets and the specific analytical procedures
undertaken in Study 1 and reports the results from computational and statistical content analysis
of r/Seduction.
Chapter 5 presents methods and results from Netnography applied to the data from Study
2 obtained from Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer social media site.
Chapter 6 presents a combined discussion of the two studies. It first explicates the
evidence for the productivity of expressed emotions from Study 1. Then coalescing findings
from the micro- and macro- levels, this chapter elucidates the interplay between emotion culture,
regulations, and social norms in the Chinese context that enable a redefining of the PUA cultural
phenomenon. This chapter also discusses the limitations for this project.
10
Chapter 7 summarizes the finding from both studies, and dialectically concludes that the
roles of social media are not only outlets for discontent and disclosure, but are simultaneously
drivers for negotiation and resistance, both dictated by the specific emotion culture the narratives
are embedded in. This chapter ends with a few directions for future research on this topic.

11
CHAPTER 2: DIGITAL EMOTIONS, ENGAGEMENT
AND NETWORKED SOLIDARITY

Social media have reshaped how we experience our daily lives. It is estimated that
globally average Internet users spent 144 minutes on social media every day (Tankovska, 2021),
during which time they are exposed to mediated representations of emotions and affect online.
Manuel Castells (2015) described social networks as “permanent forums of solidarity” and
identified “emotional activation of the collective” as the initial stage of online activism. Yang’s
theorization on Chinese cyber activism also highlighted the importance of emotion in
intensifying and underpinning networked solidarity (Yang, 2000; 2018). This chapter reviews
current literature about 1) the cultural politics of emotion; and 2) digital emotions and induced
engagement online.

The Cultural Politics of Emotions and Emotion Culture
Emotion, commonly conceptualized as opposed to rationality, has long possessed a
peripheral role in social science research (Yang, 2009). In her influential book, The Cultural
Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed (2004) defines emotion as the feeling of bodily change. She
stresses the immediacy and embodiment of emotion, arguing emotions are not only
psychological states, but would be instantaneously experienced bodily without self-control. For
Ahmed, emotions are subjective and relational. She argues that emotions exist in “the economy
of feelings”, in a Marxist sense, and could only be circulated through the specific cultural
settings that gives connotations to certain objects. For example, the emotion of disgust is also
12
associated with the feeling of dirtiness, which then “sticks to” blackness rather than whiteness,
and further has its implications in the racial context.
In interpersonal communication, we develop expectations about “when a definite emotion
might occur and in what situations it is appropriate to occur” (Kotchemidova, 2010: 208).
Members of each culture abide by such emotional norms that regulate “the admissible range of
emotional experience in concurrence” within specific situations, which process constitutes that
society’s emotional culture (Kotchemidova, 2010: 208). Likewise, Guobin Yang (2009: 1389-
1390) noted that “structures of power and inequality shape what emotions are appropriate to
what social groups.” Hence the socially-accepted emotion culture is deliberately or
unconsciously curated and embodied from the values of a society
Similarly, emotions in collective settings could amplify and influence actors’responses to
events (Collins, 2004; Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017) Toubiana and Zietsma found that violations of
expectations in institutional emotion cultures trigger strong negative responses, and such
responses to violations of emotional norms are called social emotions (Creed et al., 2014). In a
group setting, emotion culture functions as a social regulator to calibrate social comportments,
which consequently leads to perceived similarity, close social bonds and collective group
identities (Hoffman, 1984; 2008; Rime, 2009), with implications for empathy, and other
prosocial identities such as collective solidarity in social movements.
Therefore, emotions are social and cultural, and the conveying of emotions does not
translate into various paradigms, and thus they are curated socially and culturally. Ahmed then
challenges the psychological model of emotions and posits that merely studying the
interiorization of emotions is insufficient. She emphasizes the interaction of the inside and the
outside (social, cultural and religious context). That is, the object that elicits or inflicts the
13
emotions is simultaneously changed to be linked with the emotions it elicits. More interestingly,
she contends the very distinction of the inside (the psyche) and the outside (the social) is
manufactured.
From a cultural studies perspective, Ahmed further asks whose emotions are allowed, and
what such emotions look like, for instance, how emotions are gendered, i.e. women are thought
to be emotional, while the social lexicon for men does not usually contain such a word. For
example, angry male football viewers who scream and wave their hands hysterically are called
“passionate” but rarely called emotional. Hence, emotions are somehow gendered and implicitly
or explicitly conceptualized, in a way, as something to contradict rationality, which is
normatively viewed as “Western masculinist rationality”. Ironically, this very narrative seems to
reinscribe the opposition between emotionality and rationality, because in many cases, if not all,
emotionality and rationality are intertwined and even reinforce each other. In fact, departing
from the critical tradition, ample studies in psychology have shown that emotions fuel cognitive
work (see a theory and empirical review by Rime, 2009), particularly negative emotions.
Ahmed’s book explores extensively how collective emotions, mostly negative ones, such
as pain, hate and disgust, were arbitrarily linked with othering in constituting national subjects in
several cases (for example, the indigenous people in Australia and the refugees from Syria) in
international politics. However, collective emotions could also intensify and mobilize social
movements (Yang, 2008; Castells, 2015), and emotion management, or “the instrumental control
over emotions” can inherently suppress collective action (Yang, 2009: 1390). Ahmed also
contended that the very capacity to be political depends upon our caring about something, so to
be political, or to take a stance, essentially implicates emotion. Similarly, Yang reminded us that
14
“emotions condition and accompany collective action and social movements” (Yang, 2009:
1389).
In the case of feminism, as a political project, it does not emerge from rational thinking
alone, but is tied up with the cumulative experiences of the history of violence inflicted upon
bodies that in many ways necessitates feminism and gives intellectual accounts of the systemic
form of patriarchal violence.
Simply put, emotions are valuable, and it’s impossible to transcend concrete experiences
of emotions in order to be political or even caring (Ahmed, 2004). In essence, to dichotomize
reason vs. emotion or the inside vs. the outside reproduces and undermines the significance of
emotions. Similarly, Hall (2005) posits that setting rationality against emotion is analytically
counterproductive, as emotions always have reasons, and demands.
It needs noted that following McLean and colleagues (2019), I distinguish the concept of
affect and emotion. While the former refers to a “non-conscious experience of intensity,”
emotions are “an outward expression of a feeling,” which can be inferred from social media text
(McLean et al., 2019: 752).
To first gain a broad understanding about the content and emotions in the subreddit
r/Seduction dataset, I ask:
RQ1: What are the emerging topics from the Reddit r/Seduction dataset?
Humans are emotional social beings from birth. While scholars’ understanding of
emotions remain one of the most confused and open areas in the history of psychology (Plutchik,
2001), few disagree that emotions have a substantial effect on our decision making and behavior
(Fan et al., 2016). Through verbal and non-verbal communications emotions transfer between
15
individuals, resulting in others’ experiencing similar emotional states, and promoting social
interactions (Marsella & Gratch, 2014).
Another important distinction is sentiment from emotion. The definition and boundaries
of the two concepts are still highly contested, and some used the two interchangeably. For
example, Vicario and colleagues examined the positivity and negativity of discourse in Facebook
communities, yet in the title and abstract of their study they used the term “emotion” (Vicario et
al., 2016). Another study claiming to use an emotional model applied sentiment analysis that
annotated tweets with positive and negative sentiment scores (Xiong et al., 2018). While
sentiment analysis has been extensively used in previous studies, it has been criticized for having
limited ties to psychological models (Buechel & Hahn, 2016). On the other hand, emotion
analysis is fine-grained and better supported by existing psychological literature. Moreover,
sentiment analysis is subjected to an oversimplification of the categorization (Fan et al., 2014),
and emotion classification is more appropriate in differentiating emotions such as anger, sadness,
joy and disgust.
In the current study, the author proposes to follow Robert Plutchik’s categorization (see
Figure 1) and posits emotions to have eight primary dimensions, arranged as four pairs of
oppositions (Plutchik, 1980; 2001). The eight primary emotions, presented in pairs, are joy and
sadness, trust and disgust, fear and anger, and anticipation as opposed to surprise.
16
The other popular classification model of emotions is the Circumplex Model of Affect,
proposed by Russell (1980). It posits that emotions could be measured through two dimensions,
namely valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (arousing vs. relaxing). Although some
elements of the two models overlap, not all eight emotions identified in Pluchik’s model could be
clearly placed into the two dimensions proposed by Russell. Specifically, in Pluchik’s model,
while the pairs joy and sadness, trust and disgust, and anticipation and surprise, could be clearly
distinguished along the valence (positive vs. negative) dimension, the other pair, fear and anger,
does not fit into the opposing valence dimension.
With respect to the representation of emotion in discourse around PUA, the following
research question was posed:
Figure 1. Pluchik's Three-dimensional Model of Emotions (Plutchik, 2001)

Figure 1. Pluchik's Three-dimensional Model of Emotions (Plutchik, 2001)
17
RQ2: What are the prevailing emotions expressed in the Reddit r/Seduction dataset?

Emotions elicit online propagation and engagement
Expressions of emotions on digital platforms are increasingly being recognized as
contributing to message propagation on serious topics (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013; Xu et al.,
2020). For example, emotionally charged Twitter messages tend to induce more retweets and
transfer more quickly through social networks compared to neutral Twitter messages (Stieglitz &
Dang-Xuan, 2013). Online emotional content is motivationally relevant because it is associated
with such goals as the detection of threatening content (Bar-Haim et al., 2007), and social goals
such as understanding other people’s behaviors in social environments (Campos et al., 1994).
Ample studies have shown that emotions fuel cognitive work (see a theory and empirical
review by Rime, 2009), particularly negative emotions. Negative emotions stimulate social
interactions, in forms including social comparison (Schachter, 1959), story-telling and narration,
and conversation (Bruner, 1990). This negativity bias might be related to our evolutionary
process, as people might be more alert and responsive to negative influences that may be
detrimental to their survival (Pluchik, 1980; Bar-Haim et al., 2007). Communicating negative
content to others may also help making sense of how we feel, and help cope or reduce the
feelings of dissonance (Festinger et al., 1956). For example, in a recent paper studying social
media posts after natural disasters, researchers found posts fueled with sadness positively
affected the number of reposts (Li et al., 2020). Previous literature also has shown that anger and
fear significantly contribute to user influence (Chung & Zeng, 2018). Compared to ordinary
users, influencers with a larger number of followers also tended to be associated with expressing
18
intense emotions of fear, anger, disgust and sadness (Kanavos et al., 2018; Chung & Zeng,
2018).
Therefore, the author hypothesizes that the expression of negative emotions in posts will
increase online engagement, in the form of responses to the posts, and negatively valenced posts
will achieve greater popularity, operationalized as the number of upvotes received.
H1a: Anger expressed in posts is significantly associated with increased popularity and a
engagement from community members.
H1c: Fear expressed in posts is significantly associated with increased popularity and
engagement from community members.
H1d: Sadness expressed in posts is significantly associated with increased popularity and
engagement from community members.
H1e: Surprise expressed in posts is significantly associated with increased popularity and
engagement from community members.
On the other hand, literature on positive emotions’ impact on message propagation and
virality is somewhat more equivocal (Schreiner et al., 2019). Remi’s review article (2009) found
that positive emotions are shared as widely as negative emotions such as fear, anger or sadness.
The only exceptions are shame and guilt, which are both shared to a lesser degree (Remi, 2009).
Furthermore, Berger and Milkman (2010) found that positive content transmitted more virally
than negative content. However, when taking a closer look, anxiety and anger-inducing content
contributed the most to shareability.
Due to the conflicting findings about the effect of positive emotions/affect, the following
research questions is posed:
19
RQ3: What effects do positive emotions (joy, anticipation, trust) have on content
engagement and popularity?
The next chapter will review the current literature around structural gendered violence in
China, and the Chinese techno-culture for Study 2.

20
CHAPTER 3: THE CHINESE REALITY:
THE STRUCTURED, THE CENSORED AND THE CONNECTED

This chapter unpacks the Chinese reality of what I call structural gendered violence and
the unique social media landscape. I list six “actors of power” (Lee, 2016) in shaping the
systematic subordinate position Chinese women occupy: the traditional gendered norm dictated
by Confucianism, the desired virtue of silence, a culture of “masculine face” (gained through
“show[ing] off of dominance and masculinity” (Hou et al., 2017: 4), the institutional forces such
as the police and legal system, the obsession with “social harmony”, and the mythology of
marriage. I then introduce the Chinese “intranet” and present debate around the roles social
media play in the struggles between Chinese citizens and authorities in setting the boundary of
speech.

Structural Gendered Violence Against Chinese Women
Violence occupies a position that cannot be ignored in the lives of everyday people. More
significantly, the prevalence of violent experience is disproportionately skewed by gender. While
it has been widely acknowledged that genetically, women tend to be more resistant to diseases
and live longer than men (Chen et al., 2016), gender-based health disparities (including diseases,
disabilities and injuries, etc.) continue to persist primarily due to socioeconomic hierarchies.
Among these disparities, violence against women is an alarming epidemic that is affecting one in
three women worldwide (WHO, 2014; García-Moreno et al., 2005).
Violence, in essence, is a display of power. Applying Wolfe’s resource theory of power
(1960) to the violence context, Goode contended that, violence, similar to personal capabilities or
21
money, could prevent undesired behaviors or induce preferred acts (Goode, 1971, in Hoffman,
Demo, & Edwards, 1994). As a multi-dimensional issue that involves a complex range of factors,
including the psychological, familial, economic, political, environmental and social, violence is
grounded in an interplay among personal, situational/community and sociocultural levels (Carton
& Egan, 2017; Eriksson & Mazerolle, 2015).
Though reported incidents on the news seem isolated, and may be due to individual
pathologies, the disproportionately high prevalence of violence against women reflects the fact
that social ideologies of patriarchy, even when modern technologies increase transparency and
legislation has largely promoted egalitarianism, are strong forces in making violence against
women invisible to critical inspection, further normalizing it. Invisible or unacknowledged
violence against women is embedded in ubiquitous social structures and is perpetrated by
institutions and everyday experience. Such violence could be theorized as structural violence.
The phrase “structural violence” was coined by Johan Galtung in his seminal essay in
1969, to refer to any acts of deliberate constraints or “impairment of fundamental human needs
by actors of power” (cited in Lee, 2016: 110). Many displays of masculine power faced by
Chinese women, regardless of their social class or other common social determinants, are
instantiations of structural violence. Moreover, unequal beliefs and norms are so deeply rooted in
the historical, cultural and social systems that individuals cannot imagine an alternative or realize
those norms can be and are being subjected to challenge (Langman, 2015). This is how the
hegemony, the ideological control of culture that elicit willingness to higher power and
acceptance of subordination as “normal” (Gramsci, 1971), sustains and reproduces itself: through
the privilege of remaining unnoticed, unexamined, and thus unchallenged (Connell, 1994;
22
Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). What is precarious about the system of reproduction is that it
will not end naturally without persistent interrogation and intervention (Langman, 2015).
In essence, like all kinds of displays of power, structural gendered violence in China is
exerted to enforce social control and to elicit submission. Gendered norms of traditional gender
roles, the institutional goal of development and the aim of social harmony have placed Chinese
women as a site of subordination, penetration, and even violence (Chen et al., 2016). Cultural
insensitivity to gendered violence is dictated, subtly and overtly, deliberately or inadvertently, by
social norms and institutions. The uniqueness of the structural violence faced by Chinese women
is the intertwinement of unacceptable institutional policies and traditional cultural beliefs that
sustain each other (Chan, 2012).
Firstly, the traditional gendered norms centered around Confucianism systematically
serve as an oppressive force against Chinese women. Applying a social constructionist
perspective, Connell (1994) maintained that any given cultural context offers a set of standard, or
multiple standards, of masculinities and femininities. Traditional standards of masculinity and
femininity are enforced through a social learning process. With the influence of family, peers and
social institutions, such norms are passed on and internalized by the young.
Traditionally, the hegemonic Confucian School believes that a decent Chinese woman
needs to follow the doctrine of “three obedience” (“三从”)
2
: to obey her father before marriage;
to obey her husband after getting married; and to obey her sons after her husband’s death. It is
the wife’s obligation to satisfy her husband, in every possible way, but the husband is expected
to be the sole provider for the family. This doctrine provides a theoretical foundation for
expected gender roles, and I would further argue that Confucianism offers an organized

2
Originally from “yili”(《仪礼》), a Confucianism classic from Han Dynasty (B.C. 202- A.D.220).
23
oppressive system for authorities to glorify hierarchies and objectify women. Such beliefs
position men as the dominant decision makers in a relationship and justify violence to discipline
women who fail to follow the doctrine of three obedience (Chen et al., 2016; Hou et al., 2017; Tu
& Lou, 2017).
In a meta-analysis of intimate partner violence during pregnancy in China (Wang et al.,
2017), Wang and colleagues noticed the underreporting of gender-based violence and contended
that Chinese women usually see violence from their husbands as tolerable, or even as an
expected and common experience in marriage. It is believed that a wife’s duty is to obey her
husband, therefore sex is an obligation of a wife, which should not be contingent on any
conditions, nor negotiable. Moreover, even when women acknowledge that the failure to obtain
their consent, even in a stable romantic relationship, results in victimization, they are reluctant to
come forward (Zhao, 2014).
Secondly, the underreporting of gendered violence underscores a desired virtue of stoic
silence and the culture values social harmony and avoidance of confrontation (Peng et al., 2020;
Zeng, 2020). Intimate partner violence is further perceived as a domestic issue that “the
disciplining of a female partner is men’s obligation”, implicitly endorsing the objectification of
women as the property of men, where men have the same right to dispose of their partners as any
other object in their possession.
Thirdly, the culture of “masculine face” is another force in the structural gendered
violence in China. “Face” in the Chinese linguistic context is a complicated notion that closely
relates to personal dignity, social perception of the self, and perceived prestige: whereas it in fact
is self-reflected, “it is most evident when viewed in social contexts” (Hou et al., 2017:3). Unlike
the Western perception of “losing face”, which refers to humiliation, the Chinese “face” could be
24
actively acquired and maintained. From a sample consisting of participants from Beijing,
Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Chan (2012) found that the construct “acquisitive face orientation”,
or the willingness to actively gain face, is positively associated with intimate partner violence
measures.
Hou and colleagues claim that violence against wives or partners is a possible way to
save and even gain face, due to a “show off of dominance and masculinity” (Hou et al., 2017: 4).
Here, the masculinity is exactly Connell’s sense of hegemonic masculinity (1994). Therefore, I
call the face concerning performative representation of dominance through intimate partner
violence, a “masculine face”, which is connected with the imaginary of dignity and pride from
hegemonic masculinity.
Institutional forces constitute the fourth structural challenges in gendered violence against
Chinese women. Similarly, from the traditional Confucianism doctrine, intimate relations are
regarded as “domestic” matters that do not warrant public intervention. Confucianism explicitly
claims an absolute distinction between the domestic sphere and the public sphere (Pulerwitz et
al., 2015). The former is strictly private, and disclosure of issues in the domestic sphere is
regarded as rude and socially inappropriate. On the other hand, meddling into other people’s
domestic life is also viewed to be impolite and unwarranted. Police officers and other
governmental officials would avoid involvement because they view intimate partner violence as
completely domestic, entirely belonging to the family and private domain, which thus should not
be publicly addressed (Xie et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2016; Pulerwitz et al., 2015).
The legal system goes hand in hand with the above cultural beliefs: women are to be
blamed because they irritate their husbands, and they should go home to calm their husbands
down (Xie, Eyre, & Barker, 2018). However, going back home usually results in a vicious cycle
25
(Johnson, 2006; in Wood, 2015) that often ends with more severe consequences, as the
preparator may feel encouraged by the prevailing institutions (Tu & Lou, 2017).
The last structural factor contributing to gendered violence is the obsession with “social
harmony” and the mythology of marriage. As a collective culture, social harmony is not only a
popular belief, but is an institutional force, or a complete ideological system promoted by the
government to ensure social stability, perceived as a primary goal in the postreform era (Xie et
al., 2018). Moreover, marriage ties the two partners into an inseparable unity that condemning
one party will lead to shaming the whole family. Spreading ill of one’s husband is perceived to
be degrading and “losing face”. The immediate response will be perceived failure as a woman
due to lack of virtue and failing to conform to the prevailing beliefs about the role of women. A
divorced woman is regarded as undesirable because she is believed to have done wrong,
especially in rural areas (Tu & Lou, 2017; Xie et al., 2018). These socio-cultural beliefs
endanger women’s subjectivity and their capability to resist the structural violence against them.
While intimate partner violence against women is commonplace, especially in rural areas
and under the influence of alcohol, empirical work examining structural violence against Chinese
women is limited. To understand the structural forces contributing to the discourse that tolerates
and reinforces the subordination of women, Xie and colleagues conducted a six weeks’ long
project of full-time interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in northern China (Xie et al., 2018).
The researchers spent more than 150 hours observing and interviewing local officials in charge
of women’s rights, as well as battered women themselves. They identified a strong obsession
with “social harmony” that served as a persuasive strategy to encourage women to stay in their
marriage and try to work it out.

26
The Chinese Social Media Landscape: the Censored and the Connected
While accurate and succinct definitions of social media are surprisingly hard to find, a
useful exception is Ulrike Gretzel’s definition: “Web-based communication platforms or
applications that take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies, which make it possible for users
without technical expertise to easily produce and publish contents on the Internet. Social media
encompass a variety of different types, such as social networks, review sites, instant messaging
applications, and video and photo sharing sites.” (2017: 1). Below I describe the landscape of
social media in China.
Chinese has become the second most commonly used language across the Internet as of
Dec. 31, 2017 (assessed by the number of Internet users by language)
3
. According to the latest
“Statistical Report on Internet Development in China”
4
, the official annual report published by
the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), as of December 2017, Internet users in
China had reached to 772 million, with a penetration rate as high as 54.6%
5
. Among them, 753
million are mobile Internet users, accounting for 97.5% of all netizens, and increase from 95.1%
at the end of 2016 (CNNIC, 2018).
The landscape of the Chinese Internet is so distinct from almost all the rest of the world
that it has been jokingly referred to as “Intranet” by many (Jonah Kessel and Paul Mozur from
New York Times, among others). “Intranet” was an appropriate name in the sense that the
Chinese government created the Great Firewall, a popular term referring to the censorship

3
Retrieved from https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm, on March 17, 2018
4
Available from http://cnnic.cn/gywm/xwzx/rdxw/201801/t20180131_70188.htm , retrieved on March
17, 2018, translated by the author
5
Internetworldstats reported the same number of users for Mainland China:
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats17.htm, with another 7 million netizens from Hong Kong and
Macao, and an extra 20.8 million Internet users from Taiwan. To avoid further political complexity, the
author follows the report from the official research center in Beijing.
27
apparatus which filters information and websites that are perceived to be harmful. Social media
sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even the search engine Google and other
Google services are not available legally in Mainland China (deLisle et al., 2016; Wallis, 2015).
Instead, what fills the Internet and social media vacuum is a series of local “copycats” offering
similar functions to the former blocked sites (Kent et al., 2018).
Only a marginal number of people make the extra effort to set up or use virtual private
networks (VPN) to bypass the firewall and access foreign sites (Kent et al., 2018). Consequently,
only 1.8 million Chinese are Facebook subscribers, with a penetration rate of 0.1% in all Chinese
Internet users. Among them, many are Chinese living or visiting abroad. This marginal number
speaks to the nature of social networking sites: if you have no one to connect to on a site, you
have no incentive to join it. The number is predicted to further decline since in 2017 the Ministry
of Industry and Information Technology declared unauthorized VPN services illegal (CNNIC,
2018). With fewer VPN service providers available, the authorized service providers were also
asked to require complete user profiles, which further limited access to blocked sites (CNNIC,
2018). This fact makes local-grown Internet services significant to most Chinese netizens.
Social media have been largely regarded as “pervasive and transformative forces” in
contemporary China by many scholars (DeLisle, Goldstein, & Yang, 2016: 1). Shi and Yang
(2016) contend that social media enable multiple forms of empowerment, particularly on an
individual level. However, Morozov (2011), among others, argued the dystopian view that in an
authoritarian government, Internet has the potential to facilitate a “de-democratization”, because
it could be used to monitor and control public opinion. For example, after the Chinese Congress
proposed to change the constitution to remove the term limits for the current leadership, a top-
sensitive issue that may be highly contested, relevant discussions were strictly censored.
28
Following that, a netizen posted a video of people lining up and moving backwards, implicitly
mocking the proposal without mentioning any specific topic on Weibo. The post was quickly
removed by the platform and the creator was arrested for disseminating rumors, though the
creator argued the timing was an inconvenient coincidence. This incident shed light on the
authoritative censorship placed by the state government (Kent et al., 2018; Zeng, 2020).
As shown in the above case, humor, jokes, online spoofs, and other political satire are
predominantly used as a form of grassroots resistance and political mobilization against power.
As such, playfulness is a defining aspect of Chinese social media culture (Yang & Jiang, 2015).
Yang and Jiang argued that online political satire generates cultural expression and social
interactions, serving not only political but also ritual functions (2015). Many such implicit and
disguised satires may creatively bypass the scrutiny of control, but the space for interpretation
has always been flexible, sometimes even arbitrary. The boundary for regulation and control on
Chinese social media is issue-specific and multilayered (Balla, 2014). In fact, observing this
boundary could be fruitful in identifying the most sensitive and subversive issues in the Chinese
context.
Desperately seeking to survive in China, social media platforms also share the
responsibility of monitoring content and enforcing moderation. The domestic Internet giants
were called upon to “spread positive energy,” which could be loosely understood as regime-
favoring messages ((DeLisle et al., 2016). With constant struggles and boundary-negotiation
over years, many netizens, especially influencers and opinion leaders, may also practice self-
regulation, not merely as an ad hoc reaction to the tighter control but as a preventive approach to
avoid institutional scrutiny and further trouble. Consequently, the organizational structure of
regulation constitutes a cooperative multi-layered pyramid, with the state power at the top, the
29
semi-private social media companies in the middle level, and individual users at the bottom. This
is also what Lee called a “decentralized authoritarianism” (2014:127). Each level of actors
collaborates to achieve a dynamic equilibrium in the unique Chinese social media ecology.
Therefore, civic/public-lead Chinese cyberspace and its regulation are establishing an
interdependent relationship, coevolving with and shaped by each other. Despite the complex and
dynamic circumstances, Chinese social media still hold the potential to channel public opinions
and facilitate collective action, which may eventually lead to legal reforms and systemic change,
as many scholars repeatedly demonstrated (Svensson, 2016).
In recent years, Weibo is no longer the only social media outlet citizens use to gather
information and express their opinions. Instead, other platforms such as WeChat Official
Accounts, Douban, Douyin, Kuaishou, Toutiao, and Zhihu are competing for users’ attention and
time as well.

30
CHAPTER 4: STUDY 1 METHOD & RESULTS

This chapter introduces the data collection and analysis approaches utilized in Study 1.
Given the large quantity of data, this dissertation uses a mixed-method, exploratory sequential
design (Creswell, & Clark, 2011). Lewis et al. (2013: 47) argue for a hybrid approach that blends
computer text analyses and traditional methods in order to “preserve the strengths of traditional
content analysis, with its systematic rigor and contextual awareness, while maximizing the large-
scale capacity of big data and the efficiencies of computational methods”. Some of the research
questions in this study, which concern manifest content and discrete attributes, are particularly
amenable to automated categorization (Lacy et al., 2015), while the contextual understanding of
the Chinese dataset requires close reading and contextualization. The author applies topic
modelling and computational emotion detection to efficiently and effectively detect latent topics
and the emotions embedded in the Reddit dataset.

The Dataset: Reddit r/Seduction
Reddit is a bulletin board system based social media site aggregating user-generated
content. The site hosts numerous finely divided communities based on interests. It is among the
top three most popular social media platforms in the U.S. Reddit was identified as one of the
social media located in the more misogynist space (Massanari, 2017), partially due to its
anonymous configuration (users browse public subreddits without registration, for instance) and
relatively loose moderation. It serves as an appropriate platform for studying otherwise self-
censored discourse about controversial behaviors such as vaping, far right movements, White
Supremacist groups and other extremist groups (Xu et al., 2021; Mamie et al., 2021; Jackson,
31
2019). It was considered one of the online communities broadly within “the Manosphere”, which
was united by a belief in a crisis in masculinity (Mamie et al., 2021).
Multiple studies (Mamie et al., 2021; Khan & Golab, 2020; LaViolette & Hogan, 2019)
have investigated Reddit communities for their gender-related implications. For example, Farell
and colleagues applied computational and socio-linguistic methods to study the misogynistic
jargon and word embeddings in selected subreddits (Farell et al., 2019; Farell et al., 2020).
The subreddit /seduction serves to share dating experiences and hone skills within the
community to competently seduce women. The introduction of this community is “Help with
dating, with a focus on how to get something started up, whether the goal is casual sex or a
relationship. Learn how to connect with the ones you're trying to get with!” It was created in
April, 2008 and currently has more than 629,000 members (see r/Seduction
6
).
The author used the Python Reddit API Wrapper (PRAW
7
) to scrape 235 top-rated posts
with their 10,511 corresponding first-level comments (the comments directly responding to the
posts), resulting in 656,410 words. The parameters were set to collect the top-ranking posts,
which are the most upvoted posts and comments. The data collection was conducted on July 22,
2020. Other metadata collected include the username of each post and comment, the number of
upvotes for each post, the number of comments for each post and the timestamp of both post and
comments.

6
https://www.reddit.com/r/seduction/top/?t=all. Accessed on April 8
th
, 2020.
7
https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ Accessed on April 9
th
, 2021.
32
Measures
Emotion
The National Research Council of Canada lexicon (NRC lexicon, Mohammad & Turney, 2013)
in the R package “tidytext” (Silge, Robinson, & Hester, 2016) was used to automatically classify
the eight basic emotions of each post and comment in the Reddit dataset. The eight prototypical
emotions are joy, sadness, anger, fear, trust (in a later version of Plutchik’s paper referred to as
“acceptance”), disgust, surprise and anticipation (Plutchik, 1980; 2001).
The unit of analysis is one post. Thus, a post is automatically assigned the count of each
emotion, whereas all corresponding comments to the post are aggregated together to generate the
count of emotions in each category.

Popularity/ Engagement
In social media studies, scholars have not reached a consensus on how to measure the concepts
of popularity, virality, and engagement (Massanari, 2017). Scholars have operationalized
popularity and engagement in substantially different ways across social media platforms. In
Muntinga and colleagues’ review (2011), they proposed a typology for engagement on social
network sites: consuming, contributing, and creating, each category reflecting an increased level
of engagement. The current study adopted upvote numbers as a minimal indicator of engagement
and popularity. Although voting on the post arguably involves minimal effort, users demonstrate
consuming and contributing behaviors because they need to read, evaluate and vote based on
their judgement. Please also note that in the following sections, popularity and engagement are
used interchangeably in this study.

33
Data Analysis
Structural Topic Modeling
Topic modeling was used to identify the latent topics and trends in the corpus of all posts
and comments contained in thie dataset. Topic models are a set of hierarchical probabilistic
models for analyzing text data (Zhao, Qin, & Wan, 2011). Topic modelling assumes that each
document can be viewed as a mixture of topics, and these latent topics are characterized by a
distribution over words. The models place higher probability on words that represent concepts,
and such concepts were used to represent the documents (Chou, Tsai, & Hsu, 2017; Zhao, Qin,
& Wan, 2011; Chang, Boyd-Graber, Wang, Gerrish, & Blei, 2009).
Topic modelling is particularly strong in large sets of text data since this method can
provide semantically meaningful decompositions of the documents. Chang and colleagues
(2009) argued that topic modelling can produce a human-interpretable decomposition of the
texts, and thus could effectively capture the themes of a large collection of documents of interest.
However, it is important to acknowledge that the method is essentially qualitative and is subject
to researchers’ interpretations: they will need to compare the generated cooccurred words and the
representative posts to decide the most semantically meaningful topics.
For RQ 1, the author uses Structural Topic Modeling (STM, Robert et al., 2019) in R, an
unsupervised approach. STM is an unsupervised approach that makes use of metadata, including
but not limited to temporal information. To obtain a contextualized understanding of the data, I
identified prevalent topics with the Reddit dataset. Posts were preprocessed according to
standard procedures (Sterling et al., 2019), including stemming words and removing punctuation,
URLs, stop-words, and case-specific stop-words such as “http,” “will,” and “can.”

34
Emotion Analysis and the NRC Lexicon
Under the umbrella term subjectivity analysis, two popular approaches are sentiment
analysis (used interchangeably with opinion mining) and emotion analysis (Breck & Cardie,
2017). From a computational social science perspective, sentiment is typically used to measure
semantic polarity on the spectrum from positiveness to negativeness.
Emotion analysis assumes that words are directly indicative of emotions (Mohammad &
Turney, 2013). For example, a work like “abnormal” indicates disgust, while “gloomy” is
indicative of sadness (Mohammad & Turney, 2013). Emotion analysis is particularly suitable in
highly opinionated social media texts, rather than narratives where the expressions of emotions
are more subtle. For example, an early study found that the collective emotions of users on
Twitter predicted the daily movements of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with an accuracy of
86.7% (Bollen et al., 2011).
The National Research Council Canada Word-Emotion Association Lexicon (NRC
Emotion Lexicon) consists a list of words and their eight associated universal emotions (anger,
joy, anticipation, surprise, trust, disgust, sadness and fear) based on Pluchik’s model (1980;
2001). The lexicon assigns each entry (unigram) with binary scores on all dimensions of
emotion. The lexicon was created through a crowdsourcing approach (Mohammad, 2010). It
lexicon covers 14,182 unigram words, and remains the largest general word-emotion association
lexicon (Mohammad & Turney, 2013; Mohammad, 2021). It has been used not only in the field
of natural language processing, but also in the digital humanities (Mohammad, 2010), public
health (Cherry et al., 2012), political science (Voscoughi et al., 2018), business (Kiritchenko et
al., 2014) and other behavioral sciences (see Mohammad, 2020). For example, earlier work
utilizing this lexicon effectively detected emotions and sentiments in customer reviews
35
(Kiritchenko et al., 2014) and in Twitter hashtags (Kunnenman et al., 2014). Suicide intentions
and depression messages were also detected through this lexicon (Cherry et al., 2012). In a more
recent study using the NRC lexicon, Voscoughi and colleagues (2018) investigated the diffusion
of verified true and false news stories on Twitter, and found that true stories inspired
anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust.
However, these computational methods from the NLP field, including unsupervised topic
modeling approachesand a lexicon-based emotional analysis have been criticized for their
inability to effectively detect implicit or figurative language (Mohammad, 2021; Rosenthal et al.,
2014). For example, even at a sentiment level (positive vs. negative), untrained sentiment
classifiers underperformed by about 25% to 70% when applied to sarcastic tweets (Rosenthal et
al., 2014). Similarly, automatic emotional analysis was shown to have difficulty with other
nonliterary language such as metaphors and idioms (Liu et al., 2017). A recent review on
sentiment analysis showed no current work exploring machine-aided classification in hyperbole,
understatement, rhetorical questions or other creative use of language (Mohammad, 2021).
Nonetheless, text mining approaches using the NRC lexicon provide the best opportunity to date
for uncovering expression of emotion around PUA in a very large data set.

Statistical Analysis
To answer RQ2, RQ3 and the hypotheses, since the outcome variable, upvotes, is count
data with positive integers, I considered Poisson regression and negative binomial regression.
Unlike the linear regression models such as ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, Poisson and
negative binomial regression do not assume normally distributed residuals with constant variance
(Coxe et al., 2009). They also do not assume a linear relationship between the independent and
36
dependent variables, as would be the case in OLS regression.
However, Poisson regression assumes “equidispersion”, referring to the equal mean and
variance of the count distribution (Coxe et al., 2009). In cases in which the variance of the
outcome variable is greater than the mean, referred to as overdispersion, the Poisson regression
model may underestimate standard errors leading to the likelihood of Type 1 error (Ismail &
Jemain, 2007). The situation of overdispersion often happens in failures to include all causes of
variation in the counts (Coxe et al., 2009). Ismail and Jemain (2007), among other statisticians
(for example, Gujarati, 2005) recommend negative binomial regression in such cases. It also
needs noting that when equidispersion is not assumed but achieved, the negative binomial
distribution converges onto the Poisson distribution (Aiken et al., 2015).
Using R and SPSS Version 27 (IBM Corp, 2020), I begin by checking the distribution of
outcome variables to check the assumptions for linear regression; if not satisfied, I would
continue to analyze the data with Poisson regression. If there is evidence of overdispersion, I
would then consider the Negative Binomial regression model to test the second set of hypotheses
and answer the research question.

Results
Descriptive results from topic modeling
For RQ1, to take a broader look at the Reddit dataset, I applied Structural Topic
Modeling to determine the appropriate number of topics (K) that emerged from the r/Seduction
community, I ran models in increments of five with potential Ks ranging from 2 to 52. After
closely examining the diagnostic indicators, I then narrowed the K range to 2 to 15 as the topic
37
content grew more redundant in larger K models without much improvement in model
convergence. Based on the indicators Held-Out Likelihood, Semantic Coherence, Residuals, and
Lower Bound (depicted in Figure 2), the eleven-topic solution turned out to be most plausible.
However, solely depending on statistical measures could yield less meaningful model parameter
decisions (Chen et al., 2020; Levy & Franklin, 2014). I thus continued to inspect four additional
matrices: Highest Prob, FREX, Lift, and score (Roberts et al., 2014) and used the five most

representative posts selected for each topic to assist in the interpretation. Considering the
information from the four matrices and reading the representative posts, topic labels were
generated with an aim to capture the semantics of the most representative words in each topic.
The eleven topics emerging from the dataset were: (1) Solving approaching anxiety; (2)
Confidence; (3) Conversation tips; (4) Non-verbal tips; (5) Be patient; (6) Tips for setbacks; (7)
Figure 2. Diagnostic Matrices for Different Number of Topics Figure 2. Diagnostic Matrices for Different Number of Topics
38
Targeting desperate girls; (8) Appearance; (9) Get in the field; (10) Self-improvement; (11)
Ranting about useless tips or tools (i.e. Tinder).
Table 1 presents excerpts from representative posts for each topic, with the findThoughts
function in STM package (Roberts et al., 2014). With ethical concerns, I did not include the
usernames for these sample posts, although arguably the username on Reddit is hard to be traced
back to the individual user, as one feature of Reddit.

Table 1 . Topics and Respective Representative Excepts from r/Seduction
Topics emerging
from the dataset
Representative posts generated
Topic 1
Solving
approaching
anxiety

Here is a video on “How To Approach women & The Number One
Way To Conquer Approach Anxiety.”
https://youtu.be/s0amsAnmWJo hope this helps guys. There’s lots of
fish out in the sea. Good luck dating guys!
Topic 2
Confidence
As you said let them talk, girls love to talk. Try to talk slow with a
manly deep voice with confidence.
Make them laugh and make some jokes. If there is no chemie or she
is boring and not interesting. Go to the next one and talk to her
another time.

Topic 3
Conversation Tips
I personally prefer to go from jokes to introducing teasing flirtatious
element before transitioning to genuine interaction after bit of
flirting.

Topic 4
Non-verbal tips
Another thing to consider is that 90% of all communication is non-
verbal. The words only represent 10% of the interaction. What’s
more important is your tonality, body language, posture and how
39
you’re dressed/presented all of these non-verbal cues that women are
very receptive to. You could go indirect all you want, but if your non-
verbal is dogshit, then you’re dead in the water.

Topic 5
Be patient
Sexual investment doesn’t just mean sex. It could mean sexual
banter, it could mean physical contact, but whatever it is it leads to
sex, that right there. You don’t have to have intercourse right away
and can invest yourselves emotionally for longer time, but you must
keep up some sexual energy to let her know you are sexually
attracted to her and this relationship will involve physical intimacy.

Topic 6
Setbacks
I’ve been training to be a consistently successful day trader every day
since April (I mean, waking up at 4am, everyday, running 2 miles,
then doing simulated trading for about 2 - 3 hours), and today was
especially hard.
Just reading what you said about when you fail, you just get back on
the horse and keep trying, really hit me. I know this is true, but when
you have an especially hard fail, it can be hard to remember, so thank
you man.

Topic 7
Target: Desperate
girls
As a man from West Virginia that has moved to another area, let me
tell you my experience.
I never thought I was the most attractive guy because, factually, I'm
not. In WV, I would match with really hot country girls (which I
have a thing for) and I would be surprised. Down here in the new
city I live in, it's not like that at all. I feel like the girls with limited
options, they settle for anything. The girls in more populated areas
are not like that. They try to stay on "their level".

Topic 8
Appearance
Nice fantasy lol she’s rooting for attractive men to sweep her off her
feet. Ugly guys are like you said out of the game before it even starts
40
(yes even if they have perfect hygiene, whatever dumbass haircut is
in, and dressed in full Gucci) ugly is no woman’s type.

Topic 9
Get in the field
Oh, right, a lot of people want to spend hours here or read 5 books
before approaching, when they should be approaching several hours
for every hour they spend here or reading.
Plus, a lot of people use working on other aspects as an excuse not to
work on game, approach, and actually get better with women.

Topic 10
Self-improvement
Fuck yeah, this sub is great for men to share advice with other men
for when it comes to dealing with women. And I suppose these days
it's more common for women to be on here as well which is great!
But I have found the most use I have gotten out of this sub was in
regards to inner game and loving myself. Working on yourself and
being consistent with it is the key to success in every facet of life.

Topic 11
Ranting about the
useless tips or
tools (i.e. Tinder)
Now admittedly I’m an American in Gen X and we mostly focused
on getting laid by chicks. That's what seduction used to mean: the
process of getting laid by chicks. In this subreddit, it means some
half-baked quasi-intellectual philosophical bullshit, or getting over
your past emotional injuries, or "hitting the gym." No wonder you
guys aren’t getting laid to the extent that the birthrate is actually
going down. Must be those daydreaming idealists.

Additionally, a graph of topic correlations using a simple thresholding measure is
included as Figure 4. Conceptually, topic correlations represented the semantic closeness of
topics and calculated the correlation of Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimates for the topic
proportion θ which yields the marginal correlation of the mode of the variational distribution
(Zhao & Liu, 2012). In STM package (Roberts et al., 2014), the programmers set the threshold as
41
zero, where no edge is shown. Since in models with lower numbers of K often have identical
results from this simple thresholding model and an alternative high dimensional undirected
model, the author chose it for parsimonious reason.

As shown in Figure 3, topic 2 and 10 were semantically linked: in fact, discussions about
confidence and self-improvement are very relevant. Topic 8 and 11 appeared to be single nodes
without edges to any other nodes, indicating the overlap of meanings in these topics with other
topics was little, and they were distinct from the rest nodes. Indeed, discussions about
appearance as the decisive factor and ranting are not consistent with other topics emerging in this
subreddit. The rest of the nodes with edges linking them all to some extent talked about the tips
and strategies addressing some aspects of PUA techniques. For example, this theme includes
topics about how to deal with anxieties about approaching women, conversation tips and non-
Figure 3. Topic Correlations among the 11 Topics Emerged from r/Seduction
42
verbal communication tips. Table 2 displays the main themes and the emerging topics
accordingly.

Table 2. Themes Identified from the 11 Emerging Topics
3 Main Themes
(1) Inner game: encouragement for confidence building and self-
improvement
topic 2 and 10
(2) Complaints about the futility of PUA techniques topic 8 and 11
(3) Tips and strategies in seduction (the rest of the topics, covering
conversation tips, non-verbal behaviors, solving approaching
anxiety, and etc.)
topic 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
and 9

Results of statistical analysis
For RQ2, among all emotion-loaded words in the full dataset, the words indicating joy
enjoyed the highest prevalence (21.17%), followed by trust (15.8%), anticipation (13.4%), and
fear (12.31%). These top three most prevalent emotions accounted for more than half of all
emotions expressed in the dataset. The less prevalent emotions in the dataset are surprise
(6.25%), disgust (8.89%), sadness (9.47%) and anger (11.06%). The distribution is depicted in
Figure 4. The results indicated that the dataset is skewed toward a positive valence.

43

Figure 4. Emotion Distribution in the Reddit r/Seduction Dataset

The first set of hypotheses (H1a- e) was about each emotion’s role on popularity and
engagement. The outcome variable, popularity, operationalized as counts of upvotes showed no
sign of overdispersion. Therefore, Poisson regression was performed. The Goodness of Fit test
(χ
2
= 35275,01) indicated the model fits well with the data. The Omnibus test (χ
2
= 546.87,
p< .01) showed the final model worked significantly better than the intercept only model.

Table 3. Poisson Regression Results for Emotions and Post Popularity
44
As shown in Table 3, results indicated that holding all other variables constant, with one
more word representing surprise in the post, there is a roughly 1.1% increase in the likelihood of
its popularity (95%CI: 1.01 - 1.02, χ2 =26, p < .01). Similarly, with one more word representing
disgust in the post, there would be a 0.8% increase in the likelihood of its popularity (95%CI:
1.00 - 1.01, χ2 =13.78, p < .01). Furthermore, with one more word representing anger in the
post, there would be a 0.5% increase in the likelihood of its popularity (95%CI: 1.00 - 1.01, χ2
=4.41, p = .04). And with one more word representing trust in the post, there would be a 0.5%
increase in the likelihood of its popularity (95%CI: 1.00 - 1.01, χ2 =6.08, p = .01). Lastly, with
one more word representing sadness in the post, there would be a 0.4 % increase in the
likelihood of its popularity (95%CI: 1.00 - 1.01, χ2 =4.07, p = .04). Therefore, H1a, H1b, H1c,
and H1e were supported, while H1d (fear) was rejected. Among the positive emotions (RQ3),
surprise was actually found to be the strongest predictor for content popularity among the eight
primary emotions. Surprise, disgust, anger and sadness are all negative emotions that
significantly predict the increase of popularity and engagement.

45
CHAPTER 5: STUDY 2 METHOD & RESULTS

This chapter introduces the data collection and analysis approaches utilized in Study 2
before displaying the results. I first elaborate on the sampling strategy and considerations to
identify Zhihu as site of inquiry, and then offer a step-by-step illustration of Netnographic
procedures I undertook. Descriptive results from the dataset and from coding are displayed at the
end.

The Chinese Dataset: PUA Discussion on Zhihu
This chapter introduces the data collection and analysis approaches utilized in Study 2. I
first elaborate on the sampling strategy and considerations to identify Zhihu as site of inquiry,
and then offer a step-by-step illustration of Netnographic procedures I undertook. Descriptive
results from the dataset and from coding are displayed at the end.
A key stage of the netnographic approach taken to Study 2 is to identify the appropriate
online communities for data collection (Kozinets, 2015; 2020). In the current study, the author
aimed to examine the digital discourse space of intimacy and emotion/ psychological abuse in
the discussion of PUA on the public question-and-answer site, Zhihu. Although the author
applied computational data mining for the dataset collection, the process of selecting the site and
ethnographic emersion in the site was not neglected: since the research questions and aim of the
research was hoping to depict a vivid picture of public narratives around PUA and to examine
the implications within the broader context of contemporary China, the author systematically
46
searched the top text-based Chinese social media platforms, including WeChat, Sina Weibo,
Douban, and Hupu.com.
Sina Weibo was first discarded due to lack of data (as mentioned above, the discussion
was censored after two days of Baoli’s case). Due to the limitation of the WeChat API, it proved
to be a technical challenge to efficiently and systematically collect data. Although Hupu.com is
commonly identified as a more misogynist space, whose core segment of users are heterosexual
men, the main topics discussed are sports and female celebrities. In fact, during the period of
Netnographic immersion, there were only 5 posts discussing the Baoli case. The organization of
the Douban community is relatively steady, based on common user traits, and not organized
through a “contextual fellowship” (Kozinets, 2015:11), or consociality. The rather fixed
membership may prove counterproductive in comparison to Zhihu, which may provide ample
discussions due to heterogeneous users’ participating in the discussion.
Zhihu was selected because it provides “more quality, argumentative and information-
rich postings” (Zhang, 2020: 96) on contested socio-cultural or political topics, rather than
merely entertainment or lifestyle issues. Furthermore, statistics show that its core user group is
male-dominated (see the github page of Peng, 2017
8
), with 67.8% males. Moreover, the largest
user group Zhihu enjoys is educated and middle-class (Peng et al., 2020), which may lead socio-
cultural trends in China (Denemark & Chubb, 2016). Although no exception to censorship,
Zhihu has proved to be a meaningful recourse for previous studies trying the unpack the gender-
related (Peng et al., 2020) and political (Zhang, 2020) discussions.
Launched in 2011, Zhihu is the largest question-and-answer social media site in China.

8
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/24960279, Accessed on Jun 17
th
, 2021
47
According to its IPO filing document
9
accessed from the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), Zhihu is “one of the top five comprehensive online communities” in China.
As for the end of 2020, Zhihu had 76 million monthly active users and 43 million cumulative
content creators (HyFolio, 2021). Its self-described mission is to “empower people to share
knowledge, experiences, and insights”. The discussion varied from daily lifestyle and
entertainment topics, some sophisticated and expert knowledge fields such as quantum physics,
to more somber firsthand experiences such as breast cancer survivorship. Unlike Reddit,
introduced above, Zhihu takes pride in its culture of “sincerity, expertise, and respect” (IPO
document, 2021), and its community aims to foster diversity and value constructiveness. Zhihu
also claims itself to represent “trustworthiness” in the Chinese Internet would.
Figure 5 below is a screenshot of a typical Q&A interface on Zhihu.

9
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1835724/000119312521070815/d72883df1.htm Accessed on May
19
th
, 2021.
48

Figure 5. A Screenshot of Typical Q&A Interface on Zhihu

It should be noted that the formality of its organization centers around common
questions, unlike a stable online community traditionally organized around an ascribed identity
or trait (i.e. gender, race, occupation, and etc.) and was characterized as “steadfast conditions of
constancy, stability, functionality, reliability, timelessness, emergence and boundary” (Kozinets,
2015:10). Such anorganization fits our understanding of a “contextual fellowship” (Kozinets,
2015:11). This organizing modality is called consociality, which revolves around “what we
share”, rather than “what we are”. This is particularly true in discussions around news event,
incidents, activities or daily mundane issues, and circumstances. The relatively loose
49
organization of networked sociality has become natural, and the online interactions do not
necessarily carry the meaning of a communal identity, though one could lead to another.

Netnography
Netnography is “a specific set of research practices related to data collection, creation and
analysis, ethical, and representational concerns, where a significant amount of the data collected
and participant-observational research conducted originates in and manifests through the data
shared on Internet and mobile networks” (Kozinets, 2015: 100). This definition highlights the
detailed procedural instructions offered by the method, which is widely acknowledged as an
advantage of netnography. This definition also makes netnography identifiably more specific
than qualitative research approaches in social media studies.
Netnography adopted critical ethnographical orientations and aims (Kozinets, 2017). But
the key adaptations from ethnography to netnography, as identified by Kozinets (2017: 7; 2015),
are: 1) Alteration: the change of communicative practices to suit the online environment; 2)
Access: Internet provides prominent access to otherwise closed communication channels; 3)
Archiving: mediated communications are automatically stored and archived; 4) Analysis: there
are innovative and more potential ways for data analysis; 5) Ethics: different standards of ethics
in the presence of new media call for “self-realizing reflectivity and revelation” (Kozinets, 2015:
95); 6) Colonization: corporations and governments could colonize online data, such as the
Facebook scandal.
In the intelligent adaptation of ethnography into the online media sphere, Kozinets (2015)
identified one of the methodological benefits of netnography as its unobtrusive and non-
influencing approach. Unlike interviews or focus groups, netnography could bypass the reliance
50
on participants’ memory (Costello, McDermott, & Wallace, 2017) and willingness to share,
which could vary considerably depending on individual respondents and the skills of researchers.
Using readily accessible data online could not only extend the validity of findings, but also add
to the convenience of replicating the research.
The second key advantage is the anonymity of users. In contrast to face-to-face
interactions in focus groups or different forms (telephone or in person or panel, etc.) of
interviews, netnography allows concealing of off-line or real identities, even from the
researchers. Arguably, therefore, netnography is particularly strong in analyzing stigmatized or
sensitive topics or controversial issues that pose social desirability risks. In Kozinets’ words,
netnography has a “voyeuristic” quality (2015: 88) and presents a chance for “revelations of
stigma” (2015:89). For instance, netnography could be an ideal tool to study marginalized, at risk
and hidden populations.
Another inherent feature of online data is the blurring of geographic boundaries, which
allows the otherwise segregated individuals to join the conversation. Costello, McDermott, and
Wallace (2017:4) also argued for a “cocreation of value within online communities and social
media space” as a function for netnography.
Netnography also provides a step-by-step procedure guide to ensure the rigor of the
method. Apart from that, to further ensure the rigor of netnography, Sadovykhhk and Sundaram
(2017) acknowledged the rich insights netnography provides in studying online human
interactions and offered three additional suggestions to ensure the “generalizability, validity and
usefulness” of findings (D’Ambra, J., Wilson, & Akter, 2017: 6), namely longitudinal approach,
iterations and convergence (Sadovykh, & Sundaram, 2017: 8). These principles request a
repetition of the whole procedure of plan, data selection and collection, analysis and
51
interpretation, and assessment and convergence (Kozinets, 2015) after reflecting on the whole
process. These suggestions were incorporated in D’Ambra and colleagues’ study (2017) on using
netnography to understand e-book experience.
In the next sections the author introduces the steps taken in Study 2.
Data Collection and Analysis
Scrapy and ZhihuScraper with Python were used to collect all answers with the search
word “PUA” among all questions, articles, and all articles organized under the subject “PUA”.
As introduced earlier, Baoli was the pseudonym of the victim in the controversial emotional
violence news around October 2019, which first drew public attention to the Chinese PUA and
emotional abuse phenomenon. As a long time user on Zhihu, the author is a fluent speaker of
Zhihu culture, and the Chinese social media culture at large. The first wave of data was collected
in February 2020, five months after the report of the above tragic case, and the second wave of
data collection was one year after the first wave, in February 2021. Following Sadovykh and
Sundaram’s suggestion of “longitudinal iterative convergence” (2017) in conducting
netnography studies, the purpose of the second wave of data collection was aiming to capture
discussions about new development of the Baoli case, in which the victim’s mother brought the
alleged preparator to court.
I collected all accessible questions, articles containing the search word “PUA”, and all
articles organized under the subject “PUA” in both waves. After deduplication, the dataset
consists of 1831 answers to 24 questions with the keyword search PUA, and 122 articles, and
169 articles collected in the Zhihu subject/ discussion board (知乎话题) “PUA”. For the 1831
answers meta-data including upvotes, comment count, user ID, user gender, count of agrees,
52
likes, the count of “collects” (the number of other users who added the answer into their own
collection for easier access in the future, which is another indicator for the answer’s value) were
also obtained.
This study does not include interactive data gaining from active participation. There
remains debate about the passive and active forms of participation in netnography. For example,
Costello, McDermott, and Wallace (2017) argue against the current trend of non-participatory or
passive observation in netnography research and advocate for active, real-time netnography.
They claimed that the passive approaches limited the chance for “co-creation in online
communities and social media space” (Costello, McDermott, & Wallace, 2017:1). On the other
hand, participatory approaches allow researchers to “contribute […] value and a continuity of
narrative to online spaces” (Costello, McDermott, & Wallace, 2017:1). Kozinets (2015: 97) also
maintained that “the key element is not to forget the participative, reflective, interactive and
active part of our research when using the communicative function of social media and the
internet”.
I argue that while participation, or engagement is indispensable, what constitutes
participation is negotiable. As Kozinets (2017: 10) reminds us, netnographers “must negotiate a
spectrum of participation and observation”. Costello and colleagues failed to provide a clear
boundary for “active participation” and premised that lurking is not participation, with which I
would strongly disagree, especially in the Chinese social media context, where the public has
trust issues with anyone who seems “fishy”. There are countless Chinese users organically
lurking on the Internet or participating by clicking the like button but not actively adding to the
discourse, due to fear of surveillance and retaliation. If researchers started to elicit answers or
prompt discussions, how would it be the “naturally emerged data” (Kozinets, 2010; 2015; 2020)
53
that is inherent in the definition of the method? On the contrary, I would argue against Costello,
McDermott, and Wallace, and argue for the non-participatory or purely observational style in
conducting netnography on Chinese social media, especially when working on semi-sensitive
10

issues. I believe researchers should refrain from any obtrusive intervention or participation to
avoid creating bias or leading the conversation. In fact, researchers getting into the way of an
discussion between community members could even scare off informants or discourage
conversations. As Alavi, Ahuja, and Medury (2010: 88), among others, contended that lurking
online or analyzing archival data ensures that “the analysis is conducted in the natural context of
the community and thus is free from the bias which may arise through the involvement of the
researcher or experimental research setting.” Hence, I believe, the observational and unobtrusive
approach is the very essential core for effective netnographic inquiry about the Chinese
“Intranet”, and gives it an advantage over other qualitative methods, including the traditional
ethnography in the anthropological sense.
Zhang and Hitchcock (2017) claimed that “lurking” is an acceptable behavior on Chinese
social media. Therefore, I followed my natural way in engaging with the Zhihu site, and adopted
a “lurker” approach, as Zhang and Hitchcock did in their netnographic work in understanding a
Chinese young women’s travel blog on Macao. Before the first wave of data collection, I spent
five months from October 2019 to February 2020 engaging with the community intellectually,
culturally, historical and socially (Kozinets, 2020: 248-250). In this immersive process, I took
notes to inductively determine core themes for the later development of a coding scheme. Then
after the data scraping and deduplication, I follow the first four steps in Kozinets’ (2020) five

10
Here I use “semi”, because the firewall would block hyper-sensitive posts in the first place. Only the
semi-sensitive ones would bypass the initial block and be published online.
54
analytic operations, collating, coding, combing, and counting. In the collating step, I first filtered
out answers and articles solely focused on specific online celebrities, and comparing PUA with
other international online games (both are beyond the scope of investigation in this study), before
converging the three parts of data (questions and answers gathered through keyword searching,
articles gathered through keyword searching, articles in organized in the topic “PUA” 知乎话
题 ) into one spreadsheet. The final dataset consisted of 1775 records, including answers and
articles.
A PRISMA flow diagram adapted from Moher and colleagues (2009) depicting the final
dataset is pictured below as Figure 6.

Figure 6. PRISMA Flow Diagram for the Final Zhihu Dataset Figure 6. PRISMA Flow Diagram for the Final Zhihu Dataset
55
Thematic analysis was conducted through independent coding by the author and a trained
second coder, who is also a native Mandarin speaker familiar with the Zhihu platform. All
answers and articles are in Mandarin. The coding scheme was developed combining inductive
and deductive strategies, based upon related literature and intense reading of the dataset. The
eight categories under theme were Baoli, business model, morality, gender distinction,
prevention, identify PUA, PUA schemes/ techniques, PUA contexts other than intimate relations.
Since the categories are not mutually exclusive, each post was dummy coded in every category,
representing the presence or absence of the specific theme in this post.
In the Combing step, the author closely read through the dataset by category from the
coding procedure, paying special attention to commonalities that “transcend and link individual
instances into […] a pattern.” (Kozinets, 2020: 344). The author spent more time on the data
with higher popularity measures, as higher numbers of agreement indicate wider acceptance in
the community. The author went back to the original post if it consisted of visual information
that was not collected in the automatic scraping step. Similarities, especially among the highly
upvoted and agreed-to answers and articles, were defined with descriptive labels. In the final
Counting step, a simple content analysis was conducted to demonstrate some key characteristic
of the dataset.
I then followed five of the six interpretative procedures offered by Robert Kozinets
(2020: 364- 397): theming (recognizing thematic patterns), totalizing (micrological
defragmentation on the whole dataset), translating (linking data with literature), turtling
(connecting with context and other conceptual systems it was embedded in) and troublemaking
(critically examining existing bias) in my further analysis.

56
Results
During the netnographic immersion process, it became clear that the dataset consists of a
co-existence of miscellaneous discourses around PUA. In fact, the meaning of PUA in the
Chinese context is fluid: apart from the original meaning of a pickup artist, in a more general
aspect, PUA was creatively used as a verb, referring to the behavior of manipulation through
strategic brainwashing and emotional extortion, with an implication of fraud. I refer to this
reformulation as the “adapted meaning.” With that in mind, I classified the meaning of PUA in
each theme in table 4.
Table 4. Meanings of PUA under Various Themes
Themes Meaning of PUA contextualized
Baoli case Adapted meaning
PUA training business model Original meaning
Morality of PUA Original meaning and adapted meaning
Gender dichotomy/ antagonism Original meaning and adapted meaning
PUA prevention Original meaning and adapted meaning
How to identify PUA Original meaning and adapted meaning
PUA schemes/ techniques Original meaning
Other contexts Adapted meaning

The final Zhihu PUA dataset consisted of 1755 records, including answers and articles.
Among them, 1103 of the creators were identified as male, accounting for 72.9% of the total
number of creators who reported gender information. The 409 female creators accounted for the
rest 27.1% of the users who reported their gender. Gender information for 243 creators was
missing, indicating they either posted as anonymous users, didn’t report gender information, or
57
reported their gender as non-binary in their Zhihu profile. Figure 7 below shows the distribution
of creators contributing to the discussions of PUA on Zhihu.

Figure 7. Gender Distribution of Users in the Zhihu Dataset

I also ran a correlation between all popularity indicators, and the results are presented in
Table 5 below. Since likes, collects, and the followers of creators are highly correlated (almost
identical), and upvotes and comment numbers are also highly correlated and lacked variance, the
number of agreements could be used as the primary gauge of the true acceptance of each post.
During the combing step, I paid special attention to the commonalities from answers receiving
higher numbers of agreements.

Table 5. Correlation Table for Key Popularity Measures for Zhihu Dataset
Variables 1 2 3 4 5
1. upvotes
23%
63%
14%
Gender distribution of users in the dataset
Female
Male
unknown
58
2. cmt_num .744
**

3. agree .062
*
.079
**

4. like .090
**
.073
*
.266
**

5. collect .079
**
.054 .147
**
.986
**

6. followers .090
**
.066
*
.105
**
.976
**
.991
**

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

In the thematic coding procedure, the inter-coder reliability in all categories demonstrated a
minimum 90% of agreement between two coders, and any remaining differences were discussed
and settled. A table of numbers of records in each theme were demonstrated in table 6 below.

Table 6. Numbers of Records under Each Theme
Themes Numbers of records
Baoli case 523
PUA training business model 50
Morality of PUA 129
Gender dichotomy/ antagonism 137
PUA prevention 570
Distinguishing/ identifying PUA 128
PUA schemes/ techniques 190
Other contexts 170

59
The prevalent themes discussed on Zhihu are content about PUA prevention and the Baoli
case. Following those two themes are the discussions around PUA techniques and PUA in
contexts other than intimate relations, gender antagonism, morality of PUA, and distinguishing /
identifying PUA.
A detailed discussion and implications of the findings will be covered in the discussion
chapter.

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CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION

“Now when I think of love, a chill shiver rippled over my body.”
---- Baoli

This dissertation uses social media data and focuses on actual behavioral outcomes (i.e.,
the text from posts and comments, and actual interaction, such as comments and upvotes) to
analyze 1) emotions’ impacts on content engagement and popularity, with implications to digital
social movement mobilization; 2) the narratives around PUA from Reddit r/Seduction and Zhihu,
and its implications for the structural gendered violence and emotion culture in China. This
chapter reports the findings and implications from both studies.

Study 1
RQ1 seeks to broadly examine the topics extensively discussed in the dataset. From the
structural topic modeling results, eleven latent topics emerged from the subreddit r/Seduction.
They are clustered around three main themes: (1) encouragement for inner game: confidence
building and self-improvement (topics 2 and 10); (2) complaints about the futility of PUA
techniques (topics 8 and 11); and (3) tips and strategies in seduction (the rest of the topics,
covering conversation tips, non-verbal behaviors, solving approaching anxiety, and etc.).
RQ2 investigates the prevalent emotions characteristic of this online community. Results
indicate that the sentiments detected in this dataset are skewed to positive ones such as joy, trust
and anticipation. Together the three emotions with positive valence accounted for more than half
of the emotions in the dataset, indicating a generally hopeful and less confrontational community
61
atmosphere. This may be due to the fact that in seduction communities, typically of self-help
groups, the guru or pickup artist or masters are confident (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019) and
upbeat. And that within the community, the relatively homogeneous members cheer one another
on, despite the underlining mysoginist logic. Alternatively, the positive emotions existin in the
dataset may be a form of deliberate representation. Observable behaviors online are indeed a
form of performance (Alexander et al., 2006). Viewing the public platforms of social media as
stages, users tend to lean toward a more desirable approach to sustain a positive performance of
the self in social networks.

Emotion as a popularity and engagement indicator
Following Muntinga and colleagues (2011), the current study adopted upvote counts as a
minimal level indicator of engagement and popularity. Consistent with previous literature
(Berger & Milkman, 2010), this study demonstrates that emotion-laden posts are likely to elicit
attention and go viral. Specifically, surprise, disgust, anger, sadness and trust were identified to
positively predict the virality of posts.
Significant negative emotion predictors are indicative of a negativity bias in popularity
(Pluchik, 1980; Bar-Haim et al., 2007; Bruner, 1990). Content loaded with negative emotions
may gain more virality because evolutionarily, people might be more alert and responsive to
negative influences that may be detrimental to their survival. Responding to negativity-laden
content may also help us make sense of how we feel, and help cope or reduce the feelings of
dissonance (Festinger et al., 1956). For example, a study on natural disaster posts’ propagation
on social media showed that anger is more relevant in promoting reposting (Li et al., 2020).
62
What about trust? To the knowledge of the author, this is the first study to have found an
effective role of trust for content popularity. Trust falls onto the more relaxes (less arousal) end
of Russel’s dimension of emotion arousal (Russel, 1980). The less arousing emotion requires a
reduced level of cognitive processing, which consequently translates to less engagement
(Prochazkova & Kret, 2017). However, contradicting to the arousal perspective of explanation,
trust was found to be significantly positive predictor for upvotes increasing. Alternative
interpretations may be needed to illustrate this significant result.
However, we should be cautious not to overgeneralize. This significant finding may be
content-specific and could not be extended to online communities of other natures. As shown in
the topic modeling and emotion distribution analysis, this subreddit may not have much
confrontational discussions, and may consist of like-minded community members (Massanari,
2017).
Similarly importantly, we need to be mindful that emotion is not the single most
important factor impacting information transmission, virality and online engagement. In fact,
social media transmission is more complex than just valence or even emotion (Berger &
Milkman, 2010), and might also depend on the specific social media platforms, the
characteristics of information sources, and the situational context. For example, in a study
investigating emotions and virality of New York Times articles, Berger and Milkman (2010)
found that positive valence is more likely to be shared than negative ones. But interestingly when
taking a more detailed look, anxiety and anger filled content was found to be the most powerful
predictor of shareability, while no significant relationship was found between disgust and virality
(Berger & Milkman, 2010). Berger and Milkman also found that famous writers significantly
increase the odds of shareability. However in the above-mentioned study on natural disaster
63
posts’ propagation on social media, anxiety-related posts were found to be less propagated.
Therefore, other content characteristics and the context might be equally important to the
prediction of information transmission.

Study 2
As we have increasingly incorporated social media and the digital into our lives,
especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, online narratives could transform as well as
reproduce normative and constrictive modes of interaction (McLean et al., 2019). Narratives do
not exist in a vacuum, but they are deeply embedded in a complex and interlocked context of
history, socio-culture, politics and technology. The initial report of the Baoli case was originated
from legacy newspapers, and then continued to propagate in digital spaces, fueling heated
discussion.

The counterproductivity of over-visibility
Before moving on to deeper discussion, we need to tease out how PUA was understood in
the Chinese context. Although initially the use of the abbreviation PUA was popularized in
China through the Baoli case, not all realize what it stands for. Instead, a new symbolic meaning
was attached to the use of PUA, just as the prevalent practice of meaning-making or meaning
creation in Chinese cyberspace (Yang & Jiang, 2015). As demonstrated in the previous chapter,
the use of PUA is fluid, and the localized meaning of PUA has been expanded, diluted or
completely redefined, departing from the original meaning of “pickup artist” in the imported
context of intimate relations.
64
While many scholars praised the networked visibility in online activism (Clark-Parsons,
2019), the Zhihu dataset indicates a dialectical interpretation: sometimes less is more. When only
searching for the word “PUA”, results yielded many less relevant contexts such as emotion
manipulation in the workplace, in family life with in-laws, and even with parents. As explained
in an earlier section, PUA was completely deprived of its original context in intimate relations
and was generally acknowledged to indicate the meaning of manipulation through strategic
brainwashing, with the element of negging and emotional extortion. When asked about real-life
PUA experiences, one answer goes:
“In workplace, your supervisor hopes to pay you less while you work more. When you
are drained up, your supervisor would pressure you to quit on your own by negging; another
example is that in school, your teacher scolds you and crushes your confidence if you don’t
completely obey. Your parents may also want you to behave in their way by constantly belittling
you.” (Xiaoqi, female)
I argue that the very pervasiveness or overuse of the word of “PUA” desensitized and
normalized the misogyny and gendered violence embedded in it, as the public stopped to register
it as a form of gendered violence that needed to be recognized and acted upon. In some sense, the
usage of PUA, just as many hashtag movements, has been hijacked, because its linguistic
contexts have been expanded into more generalized conversations, such as discussions of the
public sphere which have no connection with intimate relations. It was so overused to the point
that was seamlessly incorporated into daily discourse and would not be registered as something
pressing and serious or worthy of further inspection.
This might speak to the fact that psychological violence has been somehow normalized as
part of the life everyone experiences from time to time. For example, “If you count negging/
belittling as emotional abuse, then it happens all the time in conflicts, not just in relationships.
65
Think about that, if Baoli didn’t commit suicide, who would find it noteworthy?” (Liuyun, no
gender information)
This quote vividly demonstrats the insensitivity of this user in responding to emotional
violence and how its significance is minimized if physical harm was not done. This lack of
response underscores the question of whether psychological pain is worthy of sympathy, or if
emotional abuse invites engagement only when physically manifested? Because emotions are
“too hard to grasp”, why don’t we just choose the easy way out and downplay them? As Ahmed
(2004) reminds us, to associate only physical pain with the feeling of empathy is deeply
problematic.
The discussion of PUA and the tragic case of Baoli on Zhihu rarely fits into the image of
irrational “cyber boxers” who use emotional persuasiveness at the expense of reason (Shi, 2016;
quoted in Wu et al., 2019). The dismissiveness, calm and certainty in the tone of many posts,
ironically, is unrepresentative of the highly contentious nature of the Chinese Internet culture,
theorized a decade ago by Guobin Yang (2009). On the other hand, such posts blend in perfectly
with the “emotion culture” specifically tolerated or even desired in the Chinese virtual public
sphere, and underscore the absence of the emotional engagement which may effectively elicit
concrete social activism (Castells, 2005).

Consuming and being consumed
Under the theme “business”, the discussion of PUA indicated a shared understanding that
the companies teaching seduction skills are nefarious, the business model being perceived as
deceptive, superficial and low-quality.
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Many posts indicated empathy with the students recruited in PUA educational institutes.
As one anonymous answer notes:
“PUA mentors claim ‘as long as you master this approach, all muses would fall for you!’
I believe many of the students are nerds that sincerely need help, not try to manipulate or hurt
women. They desire of recognition rather than meaningless sex. I desire you equals to I want you
to desire me. What these nerds’ desire is the desire of others for themselves. In fact, they are used
or PUAed [author: used as a verb, manipulated through brainwash].” (anonymous user
11
)

Though not explicitly pointed out, this sympathetic feeling of understanding echoed the
critiques from self-help literature: the self-help organizations often persuade their students to
embrace the idea that they should radically transform themselves. In another word, they are not
motivated by power-hungry misogynist motives such as manipulation and domination of women,
but the subjective feeling of “not being enough” socially, financially, and sexually. The very
aggressive pursuit of sex is a manifestation of insecurity towards hegemonic masculinity (Cosma
& Gurevich, 2020), which is a false concept primarily requiring constant contestation.
As highlighted in this answer, the hegemonic masculinity ideal also borrows from
Consumerism culture, which assumes that erotic capital could be purchased, learned and
increased (through purchasing the service) (Hakim, 2010). Through conquering women, men
could eventually reclaim and assert their masculinity. In many ways, in the process of consuming
intimacy, as pointed out in the quotations above, they themselves are the commodity to be
consumed.

11
Zhihu allows registered users to post in an anonymous way, in which case, no user info and metadata of
popularity metrics are available.
67
At the same time, similar to the business model from the West, students (“Averaged
Frustrated Chumps,” AFC in the canonical literature from the seduction community) were
legitimated into nothing more irregular than an average customer, encountered nothing more
serious than an average frustrated circumstance, and could be quickly fixed through nothing
more unusual than a series of trainings. Students were encouraged to embrace the idea that they
can radically transform themselves if they follow the guidelines from PUA companies. In this
way, the students fell under the spells of PUA companies and started to believe intimacy is
purchasable. As Bauman theorized, modern courtship was transformed into a commodified
game, where the security and solidity provided by life-long partnership has been “liquefied”
within modernity (Hobbs et al., 2017: 271).
Ironically, the hegemonic logic of consumerism so eagerly circulated in digital spaces
precisely reflected the users’ cultural habits, as well as insecurity in their masculine identity in
the face of a postmodern commercial culture (Wu et al., 2019).

(De)moralization of PUAs, and structural gendered violence
Under the theme “morality,” a majority of the answers reflected the belief that PUA is
amoral. PUA as a set of seduction techniques is frequently referred to as a tool or a weapon: “a
gun does not kill, man kills.” (Zouyihuan, female); “Kungfu is amoral; it depends on who yields
it.” (Bianqinkai, male) These narratives speak to the moral justification of persuasion: who and
how to use it matters. As Liyingshuo (male) eloquently illustrated in an answer that received
28,312 agrees,
“The intimacy PUA provided is similar to a washing machine: in the beginning he
‘soaks’ (Pao, best translated as persistent harassment) and convolves you with love, sleeps with
68
you, spends your money, and then drains you up, and hangs you outside. He then moves on to
another piece of clothes.”
At the same time, in the theme “Baoli”, most highly endorsed answers see PUA as an
attention freeloader. As a top-voted answer receiving 118,221 agreements explains:
“We Chinese have a habit to blame external factors: for example, if a kid slipped on the
floor, the grandma would slap the floor and cursing it for hurting her baby. Instead of discussing
the morality of PUA, why don’t we establish rationality and think about what truly counts as
masculine attraction. What kind of loving experience worth your life?” (Hexuren, male)
As many pointed out in the answers under the theme Baoli, PUA and the suicide case
only indirectly relate to one another, as reminded by Xuheping (male) in his answer which
received 86,606 agreements: “Attributing her [Baoli] suicide to PUA alone is actually helping it
to thrive here.” Emotional abuse could be observed and accounted for by untrained people who
never heard of PUA. PUA was identified as a convenient scapegoat for the complexity of the
structural gendered violence, including obliviousness toward the emotional mistreatment of
women. Placing a focus on the problems and opportunities of the atomistic individual or an
imported phenomenon, e.g., the perpetrator and PUA, instead of the structure that permitted it, is
frequently at the expense of a critical stance toward collective social norms (Hendriks, 2012).
Another emerging trend seemed to place blame on the perpetrator for “crossing the
regular line” of PUA and emotional abuse. “PUA is a commonplace that happens all the time,”
However, the power this perpetrator possessed is not solely from Baoli, or their dyadic
interaction; instead, it was validated by the broader patriarchal culture, including a hegemonic
feminine imagination of pureness and chastity, a culture of slut-shaming, and an acceptance of
sadomasochism. The guilt cultivated by the perpetrator festered into unease with her impurity,
hence shame over the female body, self-loathing and eventually the suicide.
69
This begs the question, how come media didn’t comment more on these structural
factors? Yhc.class (male) blamed media reports for diverting attention to PUA from other
structural social problems: “Media reports blamed PUA for the suicide and now no one asks why
the [privileged] background of him [the perpetrator].” Yhc.class continued with the perpetrator’s
other privileged experiences, indicating that he’s from “a powerful family.” Other structural
factors or “actors of power” (Lee, 2016) are more ingrained in the roots of patriarchal social
norms, hence very challenging and offensive to bring up within the very discourse that muffled
them. It is exactly that obliviousness, the under-recognition of such structural powers, whether
purposeful or not, that maintains the power of patriarchal hegemony. In comparison, PUA, an
innovative concept unfamiliar to many, naturally became an easier target to which to attribute
blame.

Judging the victims with superiority and condescension
In fact, the above-mentioned answer, although implicitly, also seemed to suggest an
insufficiency of the victim, attributing blame to her as the internal factor as opposed to PUA as
the external factor: the thinking is that she should have been smarter in understanding what
constitutes masculine attraction; she should have known better not to take her own life for a
childish love play. What else should she have done? There is an implication that the victim
should have had a “pure spiritual past” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009) or that she should have
been docile and continued suffering without taking her own life.
Similarly, under the theme “PUA prevention,” more explicit comments are
commonplace. For example,
70
“As long as women learn to love and respect themselves, no one would have a chance to
hurt you. Tame your vanity and the mindset of money worshipping. Afterall, only bitches would
fall into this [PUA] trap because only rotten eggs attract flies.” (anonymous user)
Such posts invite the concept of gaze, which not only means to look or stare, but refers tp
the viewing relationship characteristic of a particular set of social circumstances (Sturken &
Cartwright, 2009). The gaze, with a note of the judgmental, from the spectators, as a form of
power, is not sharpened by unrealistic expectations for the female body, but is extended to a
“pure spiritual past” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). It is further prolonged by an unrealistic moral
standard filled with apathy. Therefore, the gaze, the interrogation, the unrealistic standard does
not need to be visual or graphic, as such narratives work on the discursive formation of gendered
violence. Consequently, the desired heterosexual woman is shaped in and through normative
hegemonic discourse: rational, beautiful, stoic, pure and silent. Women, as future victims, are
expected to be self-disciplined, to have a consciousness of playing to the judgment of an
objectifying and omnipresent gaze. Those who judge women and assume the moral high ground
display typical characteristics of men who are dubbed “keyboard warriors” on Chinese social
media.
Likewise, under the theme “gender dichotomy/antagonism”, the expressions “Zhanan and
green tea bitch” (e.g. User Ertingmuremaliya, no gender information and Renbowen, female,
among others) were repeatedly used to describe male PUAs and their targets. According to the
Chinese Urban Dictionary (Li, 2016), zhanan is a player, an unfaithful man, scum, who cheats
whenever he gets a chance and blames others for his incapability to maintain a false sense of
self-worth. Green tea bitch, on the other hand, according to Urban Dictionary (BlueElf, 2016),
refers to a calculated (and gold-digging) woman who presents herself as innocent, harmless and
sweet (green tea) to get what she wants, in most cases, power and money.
71
Intentionally or not, it pleases the “keyboard warriors” to denigrate their objects of gaze
online, which ironically implies their own insecurity and anxiety about their loss of dominance
(Xu & Tan, 2019).

Reproduction of misogyny and gendered norms
Social media narratives reflected and simultaneously reinforced the biases already present
and deeply ingrained in the system. For example, it was noteworthy to see how misogyny was
implied not only among men, but women users, in the sense that women were complicit in
upholding these systems of oppression. As this interpretation goes, “The goal of male PUAs is
sex, but female PUAs are after resources, including housing and wealth.” (kiaos, female) This
quotation not only asserts a dichotomous and absolute gender difference between men and
women, but also reproduces the rigid gender expectation that women can only secure wealth
through seducing men.
Interestingly, in Jean Baudrillard’s Seduction (1979), he set up a poetic paean to the
feminine forces of seduction, identifying it as disruptive to the masculine discourse of reason,
through artifice and play. He further claimed that such feminine forces of seduction assumed a
more superior position against masculinity because of their charm and enchantment. His
philosophical understanding of seduction being unquestionably a feminine force was subjected to
the critiques of the second wave of feminism (King, 2018; Kray, 2018). However, his idea
seemed to travel far across continents and found its home in the discourse about PUAs in China.
As one answer goes:
“Invisible female PUAs are far more in number than male PUAs, I’m not even
exaggerating. Only a marginal of men practice seduction techniques, but women are natural PUA
72
masters without knowing it. The society accepts this fact because women are regarded as
vulnerable and in need of protection!” (Nifeng, male)
Under the theme “PUA prevention”, many posts shared the idea that the key for PUA
prevention is to “keep your legs closed” (for example, users named Cindy, female, and Laogui,
male). Another very popular stream of answers made fun of female victims’ low intelligence,
encouraging women to “Read more, eat better, and grow some brains” (Haoyuweichen, male).
Such malicious and dismissive comments underscored the belief that women needed to be
disciplined, improved and bettered, simultaneously reproducing misogyny and the hegemonic
gender norms. This finding resonates with the increasing spread of misogyny expediated by
social media platforms in contexts outside of China (Zuckerberg, 2018).
“This is why I don’t want a daughter. If I have a son, I only need to teach him to be a
man; but if I have a daughter, I’ll need to teach the rest hundreds of millions of men.”
(GraceChenChen, female)
The patriarchal gendered norms have many faces, and misogyny is only one of them. As
shown in the above quote, the fear of men and the vulnerability of women would be instilled and
passed on to the next generation. While the ability of teach “hundreds of millions of men” is not
easily acquired, if even possible, CraceChenChen’s words highlighted that the world is a
dangerous place for girls, underscoring the chilling effect of the Baoli case. Middle-class users
remain the largest user group on Zhihu (Peng et al., 2020), and this group upholds social stability
(Goodman, 2014). The reproduction of incapability in the face of structural issues from this
group of users is profound.
The narratives around PUA on Zhihu are not isolated or individual accounts of the very
provocative tragedy, but are attached and embedded in the systemic cultural conditions they exist
in. As Bakhtin (1986: 294) reminded us, words, genres and registers do not exist in an objective
73
or neutral way, but always already “in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s
intentions”. The circulation and propagation of the above answer underscored the endorsement
of these contents within the normative conceptual frameworks that govern the evaluation of
opinions.

Othering as an oppressive mechanism in the Chinese emotion culture
Apart from the salient misogyny with a not subtle sense of superiority, this post
showcased the strategy of stigmatizing the others. And of course, the category of we and others
are manually fabricated.
“I don’t understand why the PUAs are to be blamed. This PUA sleeps with three girls a
day, but don’t you wonder what kinds of innocent and pure girls could agree to sleep with a
stranger she had just met 8 hours ago? […] They are just sluts.”
(HeXianSenDeYYXiaoWangwangJiejie, female)
As demonstrated in Study 1, emotional expression in posts is productive in the sense that
it is linked to higher rates of propagation or popularity. And as Ahmed (2004) also reminds us,
it’s concrete experiences of emotions “transferred” from others that cause us to become political
or even caring. Yet we observe in the above post and many others in this dataset a lack of
emotion, the lack of sympathy for the victims of PUA, which begs the question of why posters
can present as aloof, calm and ‘rational’ in the face of the demonstrable harm to women.
From a neuro-psychological perspective, commonalities and interdependence, indicators
for in-group membership, could activate the mechanism called sympathetic arousal (Pijeira-Díaz
et al., 2019). On the contrary, outgroup members are less likely to derive emotion arousal, hence
less empathy.
74
As clearly demonstrated from the above quote, othering was displayed among many top-
rated posts to distance the online users from both PUA practitioners and victims. The narrative of
“they are just sluts” augmented the emotional detachment from the victims, the supposed
subjects of sympathy. Berreby (2005) reminded us that othering rhetoric decreases intergroup
help through failure to adhere to emotional and moral considerations. The victims, who were
fully human, were reduced and othered to “sluts”, who are placed at the lowest rank on the moral
hierarchy (Smith, 2014). This reductionist cognitive bias translates to justification for the lack of
identification and empathy for outgroup members. Therefore, both the bogus PUA practitioners
and the “green tea” victims are those who are “not us”, and who in not being us, are not worth
our investment of time or emotion involvement.
Such “others” live in a surreal world parallel to “ours”, echoing to what Sara Ahmed
(2004) referred to as “bodies out of place”
12
in a metaphorical sense. These others, being
excluded from “us” who form a collective identity, deserve what happened to them because in
many ways they are deviant from the norms we acknowledged, such as girls who are, I quote,
“innocent and pure”, placed high in the morally desired hegemonic hierarchy. Objects from the
outgroup do not invoke compassion, hence harsher and more unfair judgement to their
characters. And to maintain “our” rationality and cognitive resonance, we need to distance and
distinguish them from us (Ahmed, 2004). Therefore, the others are no longer worthy to be the
objects of our feelings, hence the lack of emotions, compassion or passion.
However, the represented aloofness and distance might also be ascribed to a self-censor
mindset. As mentioned in Chapter 1, when the Baoli case first became known to the public, the
hashtag gained 14 billion views within 2 days before it was removed on Weibo. The performance

12
Ahmed was referring to illegal immigrants and the asylum seekers in her book, which were “bodies out of
place” in a more literal sense. Here I use it in a metaphoric sense
75
of rationality in the form of emotionlessness may be viewed dialectically as self-censoring or
self-policing (Peterson, 2006) in response to the chilling effect of the constantly regulated digital
emotion culture, as social stability is valued as the top priority by Chinese government (Zeng,
2020). As Yang eloquently noted, a culture of instrumental control over emotions has its “built-
in mechanism against collective actions” (Yang, 2009: 1390). Then, the Chinese digital emotion
culture serves as an omnipresent apparatus to prevent collective actions from burgeoning.
As found in Study 1, emotions can invite attention, content transmission, popularity, and
engagement. Emotion, as a form of cultural practice, is productive (Ahmed, 2004; Castells,
2015). And emotions always have reasons, and demands (Hall, 2005). Therefore, the capability
to stir emotions is a privilege, and in it lies tremendous power. I argue that only when one is
fluent in the emotion culture could one provoke turbulent and heated emotions, which then may
lead to social change. However, the emotion culture is, in turn, deeply embedded in the socio-
cultural norms that engrained in the accumulation of history and collective memories (Yang,
2009). Therefore, this isolated incident and the narratives around it are never peripheral, but
always touching the core of a patriarchal hegemony that dictates every fabric of the society.
Through everyday practices, the dehumanization, and devaluation, the structural violence against
women (here in the form of slut-shaming) is consolidated and reproduced through remaining
unnoticed, unexamined, and thus unchallenged.

The duality of Chinese Social Media
In a linguistic anthropological sense, “metapragmatics” refers to the normative pragmatic
frameworks that regulate how people in a society interpret, evaluate or behave according to the
indexical relations between semiotic phenomena and their context (Silverstein, 1976). Therefore,
76
studying the social media narratives of the initially imported cultural phenomenon of PUA would
shed light on the metapragmatics of the Chinese technoculture.
Under the theme “PUA techniques”, the affordances of social media were identified to
have an amplifying effect for PUAs to carefully manage their self-representations.
“The very first class [of PUA training] is about how to manage your self-representation
on WeChat. All the fake designer brands clothes, rented luxury cars and crowdfunded hotel visits
could only last in your profile pictures and WeChat Moments. Then you move on with
conversation tricks with multiple girls [on WeChat].” (Songxiaoshi, male)
Self-representation on social media, where the self is disembodies and textual
performance is all, follows a similar logic, and even facilitates the performances of PUA.
Romantic love with its innate feelings of spontaneity, chemistry, heat, magnetism and electricity
are fundamentally rationalized into a carefully calibrated vocabulary of the self (Illouz, 2007).
The asynchronous feature of mediated communication contributed to such calibration, fitting
well with the set of systematic and commercialized algorithm of the PUA vocabulary. Social
media also permit simultaneous interaction with multiple people, which a PUA practitioner
would hope to increase his chances.
While Shi and Yang (2016), among other scholars, held an optimistic view of the
democratic capacity of social media in mainland China, arguing that China was going through a
communication revolution, which expands citizens’ unofficial democracy and enables various
forms of individual empowerment, this study has shown a more dialectical observation that
Chinese social media have a duality mode. The very “complex and interlocked conditions of
politics, technology, history and culture” (Yang & Jiang, 2015) dictate the Chinese digital space,
especially in contested issues such as gender, intimacy, public health and etc. As critical social
77
media users, we could choose to embrace them, praise them or condemn them, but we should
never ignore them.
On the one hand, Zhihu, among other platforms, can inspire meaningful discussions on
critical gender-related topics (Peng et al., 2020), provoke collective emotions, install power into
discourse, and even begin to change the socio-culture within the current context; while on the
other hand, online platforms can be handicapped or self- handicapped to mute dissents, divide
opinions, spark incivility, and sustain the socio-cultural hegemony. As discussed above, the
victims of gendered violence were viewed with judgment, othering was used to invite apathy
toward victims, and misogyny and gender antagonism were reproduced through the narratives
around PUA.
Often, marginalized issues are too important to be scrutinized or even discussed under the
spotlight of the mainstream. Structural gendered violence including emotional violence stayed in
the twilight zone on the fringes of society, desperately needing a scapegoat and camouflage to
diverge attention. PUA can serve such a function, where emotional harm endured by its victims
is dismissed as self-induced due to the victim’s alleged terpitude, venality or stupidity rather than
called out as a manifestation of structural gendered violence.
I would also argue that after the very devious localization of the global #MeToo ( used
interchangeably in Mandarin as #米兔，or #我也是), the dominant culture of rationality, i.e. the
consistent goal to sustain stability, has to some extents, diluted the affordances of visibility.
Postmodern features of playfulness, irony, and sarcasm (Wu et al., 2019) did not seem whimsical
in the face of content regulation and censorship. The self-ridicule, humor and biaoqing bao
(Chinese style emoji, or emoticons) had long been theorized as a form of resistance (Yang &
Jiang, 2015), as deeply buried under the tranquil and non-aggressive surface is the temporary
78
compromise and continuing struggles with the authorities. The co-evolvement of all parties
performed a delicate dance, in which the boundaries of permission are constantly renegotiated,
and repeatedly reinforced.
Yet there is still a long route to collective actions or social movements, let alone
institutionalized change, as the initial stage for social movements is the activation of collective
emotions. The narratives around PUA and emotion manipulation, with the characteristic lack of
emotion/apathy, at most, offered a change to see emotion emancipation toward gendered
violence. However, the preliminary step was to properly identify emotional abuse as a form of
violence and problematize it as pain to inflate collective rage. Channeling observable yet
ephemeral emotions (Yang, 2009), the networked nature of social media platforms may facilitate
the digital emotion transmission, and engagement, as shown in this study. Once collective
emotions activate networked solidarity (Castells, 2015), the possibilities for social changes from
bottom up open up. In another word, radical activism does not merely gain power from
“rational”
13
thinking and intelligent accounts or justification of inequality. Instead, the emotions
elicited from the present event, and framed by a specific history of cumulative institutions,
cultural practices and symbolic meanings, are forces to be acted upon. Digital activism, maybe
particularly digital activism, should not disavow emotions, but validate them, experience them
and eventually act upon them, in the hope to at least begin to deconstruct the emotion cultures.

Limitation
This dissertation is subject to a few limitations.

13
As explained in Chapter 2, I have no intention to dichotomize emotionality against rationality.
79
For Study 1, the Reddit dataset was collected searching for “top” posts within the
subreddit r/Seduction, so that the data was skewed to more popular ones. However, the default
recommendation algorithm of Reddit is based on “hotness”; an algorithm remains secret. Thus,
highly upvoted posts may not systematically get more exposure to users purely due to the upvote
counts.
The conceptualization of emotion could be very complex and contested among and even
within scholars from various disciplines (Peterson, 2006; Kotchemidova, 2020; Lutz, 1986). This
study applied a computational approach to automatically classify emotions from the Reddit
dataset. While computational emotion analysis works efficiently with large quantity of social
media data (Mohammad, & Turney, 2013), I acknowledge the limitation of this method, such
that its assumption of words directly linking to emotion (Mohammad, 2021) is relatively strong
and this method may miss other details and nuances in more refined and implicit emotional
expressions.
Another limitation considers the generalizability and representativeness of results from
the two datasets. While these behavioral datasets were collected in a naturalistic setting, which
significantly enhanced their validity, each social media platform may have a distinct culture,
which harms the general applicability of the study results. For example, as explained in the
methods chapter, Zhihu enjoys a specific section of the general Chinese netizenry, arguably
skewing to a self-classified better educated, middle-class population (Peng et al., 2020). I chose
this platform in the hope of obtaining a more information-rich dataset, with self-reported male
users constituting the majority of users (72.9%) in this dataset. Other platforms might yield
drastically more liberal or more hegemonic narratives than this site of inquiry.

80

Chapter 7: Conclusion

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but
because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
---- Albert Einstein
This dissertation has broadly investigated the narratives and emotional expression
around PUA from a socio-technical perspective. Consisting of two studies, this dissertation
applies a mixed-method, exploratory sequential design (Creswell et al., 2011) to examine the
social media narratives on Reddit and Zhihu.
In Study 1, within the Reddit r/Seduction community, 235 top-rated posts with their
10,511 corresponding comments were scraped. Utilizing structural topic modeling and emotion
analysis, the author hopes to understand the themes and latent topics emerging from the
narratives and underpins the role of emotion in information transmission, message popularity and
engagement.
This study indicates that emotion-laden expressions may increase content popularity.
Specifically, negative sentiments, including surprise, disgust, anger, and sadness seem to be
more likely to invite engagement and popularity voting, and consequently gain more visibility
and propagation. The negativity bias (Schachter, 1959; Bruner, 1990; Festinger et al., 1956; Bar-
Haim et al., 2007) was observed in this study, indicating that negative emotions may mobilize
engagement in the context of intimate relationships, which is not necessarily a cognitively
threatening context in the evolutionary sense (Pluchik, 1980; Bar-Haim et al., 2007).
81
Informed by the implications of Study 1 that emotionally loaded content sparks virality
and engagement, Study 2 drills down into the Chinese context after the aforementioned tragic
case of Baoli, and utilizes netnography to elucidate the social media narratives of PUA, with
respect to emotions, social norms and the Chinese technoculture that enables the discursive
struggles around this “imported good”, PUA. The final dataset consisted of 1755 answers and
articles around the topic PUA from Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer social media site.
I began by distinguishing the two distinct meanings attached to “PUA,” and argued the
overuse of “PUA” in general contexts has diluted the effect of visibility and normalized
emotional abuse in intimate relations. Chinese PUA students were actually consumed while
trying to consume intimacy as a commodity. Social media narratives have shown a
demoralization of PUA, which then shed light on the obliviousness to structural gendered
violence against women in China.
As shown in study 1, emotions expressed on social media are productive. They serve as a
necessity to form collective identity. Study 2 demonstrated that the victims of PUA were
subjected to condescension and judgment and that othering was used to suppress empathy toward
victims. Misogyny and gender antagonism were reproduced through the narratives around PUA.
The lack of emotional expression in posts reflects the emotion culture of contemporary China,
which positions social stability as the top priority (Zeng, 2020). Such apathy in turn may in turn
serve to suppress the activation of the “networked solidarity” (Castells, 2015) that may lead to
collective activism, more particularly to organized outrage in emotional abuse of women. In this
sense, emotions are productive (Ahmed, 2004), while rationality is, more than often, less
productive. I argued, the capability to stir emotions is a privilege, and in it lies tremendous
82
power. Only when one is fluent in the emotion culture could one provoke turbulent and heated
emotions, which then may lead to social change.
Moreover, Study 2 implied the ambiguity of emotional abuse in legal and moral
judgment. As shown from the theme Baoli case in the dataset, it was the actual physical
consequence of the loss of life that shocked the public, while emotional abuse was seen as
commonplace. However, to associate only physical pain with the feeling of empathy is deeply
problematic (Ahmed, 2004).
Study 2 ended with a dialectical note that Chinese social media have a duality mode:
while having the potential to inspire meaningful discussions on critical topics, provoke collective
emotions, install power into discourse, social media may also serve to mute dissent, divide
opinions, spark incivility, and sustain the socio-cultural hegemony of gendered violence, as
manifested in the PUA discussions.

Future research may work on systematically conceptualizing the distinctions between
popularity measures such as virality, popularity, and engagement (Massanari, 2017), which
would be useful in determining how to differentiate between these measures across multiple
platforms. A standardized understanding might be useful for future social media studies. A more
refined understanding of the emotional “active ingredients” in specific topics, platforms, and
cultures to invite information popularity, diffusion and engagement is also much needed. Future
research working on collective emotions and online social movement could also look at the
relationship of specific emotions among strong or weak ties in certain communities, as negative
emotions such as anger seemed to be more efficiently disseminated through weaker ties than
83
positive emotions (Fan et al., 2016), and many social movements have been inspired by social
injustice which may induce negative sentiments and emotions.
Another direction considers the effect of positive sentiments on digital content
propagation and engagement, as there is no consensus in academia so far (Schreiner et al., 2019;
Remi, 2009; Berger and Milkman, 2010). Although expressions of trust were found to be a
significant predictor for increasing content popularity, the mechanism of the impact and to what
extent this finding could be expanded to more general contexts remain unclear. Other positive
emotions, i.e., joy and anticipation, although were not found to be significant predictors for
virality, might also need further examination in future research.
Finally, it may also be worthwhile to elucidate and theorize the dynamic relationship
between the emotion culture on a broader societal level (Kotchemidova, 2010) versus the
specific emotion culture in a more specific group, institution (Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017) or
other forms of social gathering (consociality, for instance), in particular examining how they
interact, reenforce or challenge one another.

84
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Asset Metadata

Creator Xu, Yusi (author)

Core Title Emotion culture through the lens of PUA (pickup artist): emotions and the social media narratives of structual gendered violence

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Degree Conferral Date 2021-08

Publication Date 08/04/2021

Defense Date 06/16/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag China,emotion,emotion abuse,Netnography,OAI-PMH Harvest,pickup artist (PUA),social media,structural gendered violence

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor McLaughlin, Margaret (committee chair), Kozinets, Robert (committee member), Kun, Joshua (committee member), Yang, Guobin (committee member)

Creator Email yusixu@me.com,yusixu@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC15676560

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