Techno-cultural domestication of online Tarot reading in contemporary China

Abstract

This article examines the contemporary popularization of Tarot reading on China’s prominent online video platform Bilibili. It tries to make sense of the cultural and political import of the phenomenon through the conceptual lens of techno-cultural domestication, defined as a process in which a non-native cultural artifact or practice becomes embedded in and tamed by a techno-cultural arena in a receiver country. Based on digital ethnography and textual analysis, the article presents how Chinese online Tarot diviners constructed their participatory ritual by drawing upon the symbols of Western occultism and the technological affordances of Bilibili, especially the function of danmu. However, Tarot divination was also brought in line with dominant social values and state ideologies. It ultimately became a form of ‘sheer entertainment’ promoting common sense ideas, an image of a good Chinese citizen, private solutions to life’s challenges, and a positive social atmosphere.

Keywords

China domestication participatory culture social platforms Tarot reading techno-culture

Tarot divination as a global occult culture has caught the imagination of contemporary Chinese youth, and digital media played an important role in promoting it. Along with the rise of video-sharing communities, videos of Tarot divination have been going viral. In 2019, Bilibili, one of China’s largest video sharing websites, facilitated the publishing of a new form of interactive videos that would allow users to trigger different plotlines and arrive at different endings. Interactive Tarot-reading videos emerged, further enhancing Tarot’s popularity. As of July 2021, Tarot-related videos have been viewed more than 910 million times on Bilibili (according to data shown on the site).

Despite its popularity, Tarot divination has long been criticized as a form of emerging superstition by China’s authorities. Even so, young people’s enthusiasm for Tarot has not been stifled. Criticisms by the authorities arguably triggered more debates about Tarot divination, leading even more young people to notice the practice.

This article aims to make sense of the phenomenon, especially how a ‘foreign and exotic’ practice could find its home in a social platform with its own set of technological features and value orientations. Specifically, how are Tarot’s practices and meanings transformed and incorporated into Bilibili’s architecture? How do Tarot bloggers (re)construct the practices of Tarot on Bilibili and bring it in line with the country’s dominant social values? What is the role of user participation in generating the popularity and shaping the overall significance of online Tarot reading in China?

We propose the concept of techno-cultural domestication to address these questions. Through online participant observation and textual analysis, we examine the development of online Tarot reading in contemporary China as a process of localizing and taming an external cultural practice, aligning it with the dominant values, regulation, and materiality of the technological platform. This article should contribute to our understanding of cross-culture communication on China’s social platforms, which is saturated with individual creativities, technological materiality, and nation-state ideology.

The article begins by explicating the notions of domestication and techno-culture. We then discuss the political economy of social platforms in China and provide further background of the phenomenon under study. Analysis of the practices and discourses of Tarot reading on Bilibili follows.

Literature review and key concepts

The concept of domestication

The word domestication originally refers to a process of defamiliarization and normalization of strange and/or threatening objects (Pantzar, 1997). In communication research or studies of technologies in society, the term has been utilized in three main ways. First, some researchers used domestication to refer to the process through which things become embedded in the home environment. Media objects ranging from the television set to social media applications have to be incorporated into a household’s daily routines and articulated with its values so that a sense of homeliness can be sustained (Berker et al., 2005; De Schutter et al., 2015; Matassi et al., 2019).

Second, domestication may refer to the transformation of artifacts or materials according to the interests, values, or cultural background of a domestic public. In journalism studies, research has examined how journalists ‘transform global events into the relevance structure of a national home audience’ (Lee et al., 2002: 43). Foreign news has to be reported in ways that the domestic public would find meaningful (Clausen, 2004). Related to media technologies, Ogone (2015) has examined how video technologies were adopted by Kenyans to produce vernacular contents and re-contextualize their local lifestyles.

Third, domestication refers to the transformation of something in ways such that the dangerous aspects or wild elements are tamed. Ginsberg (1986) used the term in this sense when discussing the historical development of opinion polling as a process through which public opinion became measurable and predictable. Another example is Sørensen’s (2005) study, which explicated how the importation of cars into Norway necessitated a process through which the act of driving was disciplined.

This study understands domestication in the second and third senses noted above. The meanings of the concept can be further clarified by relating it to similar notions such as localization or transculturation. Localization refers to how foreign cultural products are transformed to render them consistent with local cultures, values, or beliefs (Tomlinson, 1999). It captures only the second sense of the term domestication. Transculturation, meanwhile, is a process through which novel cultural representations, practices, or ideas are continually transformed through interactions among multiple cultures (Rogers, 2006). The outcomes of transculturation typically traverse cultural boundaries, rendering them suitable for global consumption (Chan, 2002; Tian and Xiong, 2013). Transculturation does not emphasize a domestic vs. foreign distinction. It is more sensitive toward the possibility that local culture can be transformed in the process of appropriating something external. These could be the advantages of the concept of transculturation in analyzing global cultural phenomena with multiple sites of reception and transformation. But in the context of China, domestication can call our attention to the presence of a dominant power exerting a substantial degree of control on what and how ‘foreign cultures’ are received. Nevertheless, similar to transculturation, domestication is a process of continual negotiation among multiple actors, the object itself, and the context of reception.

Social platform as a techno-cultural arena

Techno-culture refers to the knit and fusion of technology and culture (Murphie and Potts, 2003). The concept highlights the point that technology always has a cultural dimension. People’s identities, values, needs, and desires influence the invention, design, and usage of technologies (Aas, 2006). Hence pieces of technologies would be articulated with specific modes of thinking and values (Murphie and Potts, 2003). Besides, technology is a part of culture (Barker, 2003). When adopting a technology, people develop usages and integrate it into their everyday life (Du Gay, 2013). A technology becomes an integral part of various aspects of social life and associated with a set of cultural practices.

Techno-culture, therefore, encompasses the ‘various identities, practices, values, rituals, hierarchies, and other sources and structures of meanings that are influenced, created by, or expressed through technology consumption’ (Kozinets, 2019: 621). To facilitate a more systematic analysis, we can focus on three interrelated aspects of a techno-culture: platform materiality, technological practices, and social values.

First, although the physical design and architecture of a technology do not determine its use, they are not completely irrelevant either. Scholars have used the term affordances to represent how the interplay between users and the materiality of a technology ‘enables or constrains potential behavioral outcomes in a particular context’ (Evans et al., 2017: 36). As Davis and Chouinard (2016) explicated, affordances can be analyzed in terms of how the design of a technology requests, demands, allows, encourages, discourages, and/or refuses specific kinds of actions. Such affordances can be general ones or applicable to specific groups under specific circumstances. For instance, in China, Yin (2020) argued that Weibo’s voting function encourages users to treat generating good traffic as the primary goal and thereby contributes to the development of digital fan practices such as flooding, formatting, spamming, and anti-trolling (for other examples, see Arthurs et al., 2018; Weltevrede and Borra, 2016).

Second, through creative leveraging of technological affordances, users develop distinctive practices that are recognized by and meaningful for users on a platform. Put generally, technological practices simply refer to the more or less codified ways through which people accomplish tasks through using a technology. Technological practices are developed through users recombining material and immaterial resources in new ways, so that the practices would feel familiar to others and yet effective in the new technological environment (Burgess, 2006). For instance, danmuku, that is, the real-time scrolling of user comments across the screen, have stimulated forms of practices such as amateur translation by voluntary viewers (Yang, 2020), ‘fakesubs’ (Díaz-Cintas, 2018), and collective learning of foreign language (Zhang and Cassany, 2019).

Third, the design and usage of technological artifacts can be in support of certain value orientations (Klenk, 2021). The values associated with a technology can come from two sources. First, many digital technologies were developed by communities whose members share distinctive value orientations because of their common ideologies, identities or life experiences (Turner, 2006). These values may, in the production process, shape the design and thus affordances of the artifacts (Flanagan et al., 2008). Second, the values can come from the political economic system because, once popularized, digital technologies become embedded into the dominant political economic structure of the society. As Nissenbaum (2001: 120) stated, an account of how values embodied in technologies need to analyze the ‘interplay between the system or device, those who built it, its conditions of use, and the natural, cultural, social, and political context in which it is embedded’.

Based on the above considerations, we see a platform as a techno-cultural arena in which technological affordances, technological practices, and socio-cultural values interact with and shape each other. Combining with the concept of domestication, we can define techno-cultural domestication as a process in which a non-native cultural artifact or practice becomes embedded in and tamed by a techno-cultural arena in a receiver country. Analysis of techno-cultural domestication should pay attention to three dimensions of techno-culture and how the non-native cultural practice is ‘tamed’. These theoretical principles guide our analysis of Tarot reading in Bilibili.

Context

The Chinese political economy of platforms

China has witnessed the significant growth of digital platforms over the past decade. Besides those operated by digital giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, several others – for example, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili – that offered a range of user-generated cultural and entertainment materials have also gained prominence (China Netcasting Services Association, 2021). These platforms have facilitated the emergence of new cultural phenomena and the mobilization of the ‘unlikely creative class’ composed of members of marginal social groups (Lin and de Kloet, 2019).

While the tech giants are powerful players in China’s digital economy, the state has maintained tight control of the Internet. Similar to other authoritarian states, China had long attempted to grapple with how the country can achieve the benefits of developing ICTs without losing political control (MacKinnon, 2013). Reflecting this dual goal, Lin and de Kloet (2019: 2) noted that the Chinese government ‘simultaneously promotes and limits platformatization’. On the one hand, the Thirteenth Five-year Plan emphasized the goal of building digitalized China through informatization (Cyberspace Administration of China, 2016). The policy of Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation also encouraged individuals to use digital platforms for personal career development. But on the other hand, digital platforms are subjected to strict regulations and censorships. Zhuang Rongwen, Director of Cyberspace Administration of China, stated that ‘adhering to the correct political direction and directing public opinions and value orientations are the top priorities’ (Ye and Qu, 2021). The emphasis on value orientation is consistent with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) promulgation of ‘core socialist values’. These values include prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship, though many of them are interpreted in ways different from how they are understood in Western contexts. The promulgation of these values, coupled with the state’s coercive strategies, built a hegemonic social consensus that maintains the CCP’s legitimacy (Gow, 2017).

Chinese digital platforms typically seek state support through integrating their operation into the government agenda, joining the government’s anti-poverty programs, implementing self-regulation through algorithmic and manual censorship, and collaborating with local governments on policy initiatives (Zhang, 2021). Digital platforms must keep negotiating with the state and ensure that online contents and activities would align with the state’s policies and discourses (Chen, 2020). This is the background against which online Tarot reading through Bilibili emerged.

Tarot reading: from entering China to getting online

Tarot originated in Northern Italy and was transformed into an esoteric device in late-18th-century France. With the advent of the New Age Movement, the deck began to be used for healing and self-development (Farley, 2009). A Tarot deck normally consists of 78 cards. Each card features an icon and refers to a set of occult beliefs. The diviner interprets the meanings underlying a series of cards based on the concerns of clients, who can expect to gain insights into their desires or possible future.

While it is impossible to pinpoint the time Tarot cards entered China, its popularity can be traced to the 1990s when, during economic reform, the Chinese embraced occultism to deal with an accelerating society (Gong, 2004). The media reported related phenomena such as how manga magazines published Tarot divination quizzes, signifying the phenomenon’s popularity among young people (Ta luo zhan bu: Ni neng bu neng jia ru hao men, 2005). By the 2000s, online Tarot reading emerged, and it gained huge popularity on video-sharing platforms since 2016. This study focuses on Bilibili, the most influential Danmu platform targeting China’s Generation Z. It claims to have more than 223 million average monthly active users in the first quarter of 2021 and has established more than 7000 subcultural communities (Bilibili, n.d.). Among them, Tarot-themed videos have been viewed more than 910 million times by July 2021.

Several features and affordances of Bilibili are noteworthy. The platform requires each new user to pass a quiz if s/he wants to post comments. These tests typically feature 50 questions about community interaction etiquettes and 50 questions about ACG (animation, comics, and games), films, science, history, the arts, etc. Although the answers can often be found through search engines, the test can be seen as a ritual conveying the community’s expectations and self-identification to the users. Besides, the platform encourages users to participate in real-time discussions and content production. Bilibili’s most distinguishing feature is its commentary mechanism danmu, which enables audiences to post anonymous comments on top of live videos. Future audiences watching the videos will also see the real-time comments. The danmu-mediated interpersonal interaction can strengthen the sense of liveness, make the co-viewing community visible, and trigger unexpected discussions (Fan and Lee, 2019; Zhang and Cassany, 2020). Meanwhile, the platform retains the power to terminate user accounts and delete contents. All of the above set up the parameters within which a techno-culture is developed and specific practices, such as Tarot reading, are conducted.

Methods

Digital ethnography and textual analysis were adopted to understand how Tarot diviners adapted to Bilibili’s techno-cultural environment. We first constructed a sample of Tarot bloggers with a keyword search on Bilibili using talou (Tarot), zhanbu (divination), and the English word Tarot. Hundreds of bloggers were found. We paid attention only to those with more than 100,000 followers. We then purposively selected 13 uploaders for more in-depth analysis (see Table 1). These 13 were selected to capture the diversity in online Tarot reading – for example, they posted with varying frequencies and constructed their settings in various ways. While the majority of online Tarot diviners are females, we included two male diviners.

Table 1.

Basic information about the observed uploaders (up to March 2021).

Name	No. of followers	Gender	No. of videos	Settings/appearance
Dawang alü de taluo xuyu	110,000	Female	85	Balcony/bright and cozy living room; Soothing music
Liaoyushi Luna	191,000	Female	60	Mysterious curtains and table of warm colors; Soothing music
Yuansheng taluo	130,000	Female	110	Exquisite make-up; warm room/sunny outdoors; soft music
Longnü taluo	194,000	Female	393	Exquisite make-up; bright room/outdoors
Jiuyou Tarot	224,000	Female	52	Wearing a mask; bright and simple basement room; no music
Yizhi bixia oo0o0o	149,000	Female	57	Not showing face; black-and-white table with Tarot books; English pop songs
Sophie Tianshi liaoyu	172,000	Female	24	A table with black tablecloth, statues, crystal ball, and orange light; No music
SpiritLuna	160,000	Female	107	Not showing face, but showing polished nails and colorful rings on fingers; a table, a black feather, and candles; various Tarot cards
Nuannuande Alice jiejie	210,700	Female	98	Not showing face; An angel-like Garage kit
Kido-Kido	270,000	Female	156	Wearing a black hat and finger rings; candles, crystals, plants
Zhanい Shi Gin (Tarot Gin)	160,500	Male	231	Not showing face; a sword, candles, watch, crystals; video effects
Taluo de diyu Whisper	160,100	Male	91	Not showing face; A blue tablecloth, without other items
Annnxx_Taluo	114,000	Female	48	Not showing face; a yellow tablecloth with a five-pointed star pattern; candles, crystals.

The majority of the Tarot videos followed a common format. When the user opens a video, the uploader would guide the watcher to ‘receive energy’ from the cards through a set of technology-mediated rituals. The diviners often remind the users to share their instant feelings on danmu (see Figure 1). Close to a video’s end, the diviner would encourage users to give the video a high score. Similar to other social media platforms, more Tarot videos will be recommended to the users if they react to a Tarot video positively.

Figure 1.

Screenshot of a Tarot reading video with danmu.

We examined these uploaders’ productions, including videos, profiles, and other textual contents, published between July 2019 and March 2021. The first two authors ‘followed’ the 13 uploaders on Bilibili and regularly joined the real-time dialog between the diviner and audiences in order to participate in the experience of livestreaming.

In addition, the authors went through newly released videos made by the bloggers every week. Some of the videos were watched iteratively for a more in-depth analysis. Close attention was paid to: (a) the bloggers’ ritual performance, including their physical appearances and dressing, the setting, use of artifacts, the procedure, etc., (b) the bloggers’ ‘scripts’, focusing particularly on how the bloggers address their audience, recurrent themes and ideas, and articulation between Tarot divination and the social context, and (c) the danmu comments, especially use of language, recurrent patterns, relationship with video content, and relationship with other comments. We also examined how the bloggers described themselves in their online profiles. Overall speaking, through observational and textual analyses, we aim at providing a thick description of online Tarot reading practices that is informed by our understanding of the Chinese context and our conceptual focus on techno-cultural domestication. In the following, we first discuss ritual performance and participation in the videos. Then we link the videos to the social political context.

Ritual performance and participation

Ritual performance is crucial for cultivating collective emotions and promoting participation. The Tarot diviners reconstructed the ritual of Tarot reading by appropriating various symbols and leveraging on certain affordances of Bilibili. The product is a package presenting Tarot reading as mysterious yet credible and inspiring.

Materiality and timing: constructing mysteriousness and exoticism

Visible elements in the Tarot videos, including material objects and virtual special effects, are crucial in the construction of a sense of mystery and sanctity. Tarot diviners place crystals, candles, feathers, swords, etc. in their basic settings (Table 1). Furnishing objects with occult meanings is a common technique to create an air of mystery and orient the audiences to the practice.

Many diviners carefully crafted their performances through articulating the various elements together. Tarot Gin, for example, typically began his videos by sitting behind a black table and clasping his two hands in a darkened room. An European-style dagger was placed at the center, surrounded by four cards placed closely to it. Other ornaments such as necklaces and colored crystals scattered around. We can see similar practices in Dawang alü de taluo xuyu’s videos. She routinely sanctified an object, for example, a white feather or a white pencil, and then touched the cards with it, claiming that this could purify the cards. A similar routine was carried out by Liaoyushi Luna with a white sage and by Yuansheng taluo by a piece of white quartz. Notably, while there is no single way to perform Tarot reading, the diviners drew upon a pool of cultural symbols commonly understood as ‘foreign’ and ‘mystic’ to (re)produce the exoticism of Tarot reading.

Beside visual effects and material objects, timing of the videos’ release is also noteworthy. Some Tarot bloggers, such as Liaoyushi Luna and Tarot Gin, are committed to holding diverse forms of ceremonies at particular time points associated with the moon phases, for example, the new moon and the full moon are the phases appropriate for making wishes. Tarot Gin narrated the full moon as the time for people to find inner calm and the direction of efforts, since at that time the sun (conscious mind) and the moon (subconscious mind) are opposite to each other, indicating the conflict between the inner self and the outer self. This kind of explication and practices creates a world for a specific way of Tarot reading. Remarkably, some diviners may emphasize a level of temporal precision to the minutes or even seconds. The practice of divination at a precise time-point is enabled by Bilibili, which allows uploaders to pre-set a video’s exact uploading time, and the uploaders can pre-announce it. In these cases, the video recorded is articulated by diviners as frozen in time, which can bring audiences back to the timing of recording to make a wish, whereas pre-announcement allows the bloggers to advertise their upcoming contents, thus attracting more attention.

Interactive divination exclusively for ‘you’

Although the videos are accessible to all, the Tarot bloggers were committed to making each individual audience member feels that the video is made exclusively for her or him. The Tarot diviners employed a highly similar discourse structure in the introduction part of the videos. The following is one example from Taluo de diyu Whisper:

Hello, welcome to my channel! Today’s divination theme is about . . . the video consists of several parts. . .. First, ni (you) can type down “receive my good luck” on danmu to get your own good luck. . .And then, please pick the card that ni (you) feel most strongly about . . . Finally, (the system) will automatically jump to the corresponding episode, in which I will interpret your choice. (Emphasis added)

Different from English, the second person singular (ni) and the second person plural (ni men) are distinguishable in Chinese. Using the second person singular individualizes the audience. Moreover, some Tarot diviners developed a way to tie individualization to the mysticism of Tarot reading. For example, Dawang alü de taluo xuyu emphasized to her viewers that ‘it is not that you picked the cards, but the message. . .. . .selected you’. Interestingly, this argument differs fundamentally with other forms of computerized divination, where randomness is the basis of the supposed validity and meaningfulness of the results (Ruah-Midbar, 2014)

In the process of divination, the audience members are almost invariably asked to conduct a sequence of actions through danmu. For example, before picking a card, viewers are directed to type down ‘receive my good luck’ (ling-qu-hao-yun). After picking a card, viewers are often reminded to tell the diviner through danmu which card they have drawn. Into card interpretation, the diviners typically instructed the viewers to share their immediate feelings through danmu. This series of actions was often described by the diviners as allowing the users to connect with the spirits of Tarot. In effect, these actions turn passive video watching into active ritual participation.

Although the diviners cannot respond to user comments, the sense of interactivity is strengthened by the fact that one’s comments would appear on the screen together with comments from fellow audience members. Intriguingly, while the Tarot diviners’ discourses tend to individualize the viewers, danmu brings the community of viewers into visibility and provides an interactive co-viewing experience.

Negotiating the individual-collective relationship

As pointed out earlier, the affordances of danmu have important implications on Tarot reading on Bilibili. Through danmu, user comments are foregrounded on the screen. When many users simultaneously produce comments, the comments can even temporarily ‘cover up’ the video. These constitute moments when individual users are immersed into the responses from people joining the online viewing.

However, it does not mean that individuals become subsumed under the collective. As mentioned earlier, the diviners typically asked users to write down their feelings and thoughts. Many of the comments were short phrases expressing relatively simple reactions. Some comments expressed the users’ wishes; some evaluated the performance of the uploader. In any case, rarely would there be an unanimous reaction from users proclaiming the accuracy or appropriateness of the card interpretation. The cacophony of responses suggests to users that all reactions are possible.

Many users employed a humorous tone when writing the comments or make references to popular culture, thus adding to the ‘fun’ of video watching. Moreover, over time, users developed certain codified responses for specific situations or types of contents. For example, the text ‘yi-zhi dan-shen, yi-zhi ce’ (keep single, keep testing) and ‘mutai danshen’ (title of a Korean online video game, meaning ‘being single since birth’) often flooded the screen in videos addressing the theme of love. We cannot trace the origin of these codified responses, but the self-mockery had seemingly resonated with the video watchers and captured succinctly the challenge young people face in their lives: the desire for and difficulty in developing relationships.

Considered together, the Tarot video watchers are constantly negotiating their relationship with the community of watchers through danmu. On the one hand, video watchers come to recognize that they share the same expectations, challenges and anxieties in life. When the diviner introduces the deck and the topic, it is common to see the screen filled with the phrases ‘Humbly accept your blessing words’ (jie-ni-ji-yan) and ‘Receive my good luck’ (ling-qu-hao-yun). Viewers can copy and click ‘like’ for danmu comments that resonate with them. Moreover, the comment section provides a space for watchers to further share own stories and respond to others. Besides, the number of co-watchers of a video now can be seen at the upper left of the full screen. The sense of co-presence became visible and quantifiable.

On the other hand, their choices and reactions are ultimately their own. Picking a card sets the individual watcher apart from others. Although many individual watchers could have chosen the same card, individualization can be further achieved through people sharing their (sometimes seemingly arbitrary) reasons for choosing a card. For example, in videos of Sophie Tianshi liaoyu, some viewers said on danmu that s/he chose a card or an artifact because s/he likes a certain color. Then, entering card interpretation, viewers can react to the diviner’s words in individualized manners. For example, in a video regarding study and career, Longnü taluo said in a positive tone that viewers who have chosen the card will achieve success in their career. In response, the danmu was filled with diverse reactions such as ‘Pass the civil service exam!!’, ‘Ah, hope I can be a PhD student!’, and ‘Will take the national postgraduate entrance exam!’ These represent the unique wishes of each viewer. At the end of the videos, viewers are often further encouraged to share the troubles they face in the real life.

The implication of danmu in online Tarot reading thus differs from other cases. In their analysis of live broadcasting of court trials through Bilibili, Fan and Lee (2019) argued that danmu facilitated the emergence of collective commentaries on the country’s legal system. It is not to say that danmu can sustained reasoned deliberation, but it encourages citizens to respond as members of an onlooking public. In contrast, in Tarot reading videos, users are ultimately individuals facing challenges in their private lives. The challenges can be unique to each individual, and even when the challenges are shared, the viewers are still facing the challenges as individuals, not as a group.

Disenchantment and mainstreaming

Despite the reconstruction of mysticism and exoticism, we found that online Tarot reading also involved the disenchantment and mainstreaming of Tarot. Tarot reading was ultimately dissociated from superstition and turned into mere entertainment, and online Tarot reading became embedded in the Chinese society and values.

Tarot as entertainment and diviners as helpers

Given state regulation, platform operators had the responsibility of ensuring the appropriateness of contents. While Tarot reading videos are not banned, when users search for Tarot-related videos on Bilibili, a prominent warning will pop up, saying that ‘the contents are for entertainment only, please do not believe lightly’. Certainly, traditional broadcasters may also attach warnings to specific types of potentially controversial or problematic contents, but the conventional broadcast warnings would usually only identify the nature of the contents (e.g. violence or sex). In contrast, the above warning explicitly instructs the audience how to approach the content.

The Tarot diviners cooperated by emphasizing the same point. Despite their elaborate ritual performance, most diviners position themselves merely as helpers. Their role is to assist the audiences to mitigate personal anxieties. In one video, SpiritLuna compared the relationship between Tarot and Tarot diviners to that between the Morse code and the decoder. Nuannuande Alice jiejie compared Tarot to the Global Positioning System, helping people to locate themselves.

The diviners were aware of the fact that their videos would be watched by thousands of people, and it is impossible for everyone to find the interpretation relevant and accurate. Some constructed a distinction between ‘private’ and ‘mass divination’. For example, in one video, Dawang alü de taluo xuyu emphasized that mass divination can be accurate or inaccurate, and its accuracy can increase if users have clear questions in minds. But ultimately, she suggested the audience to take mass divination as a form of entertainment: ‘It is not to say one shouldn’t believe, but one shouldn’t rely on these; in fact you can effect change by relying on yourselves’. Similarly, Nuannuande Alice jiejie often reminded watchers that ‘because many people watch this video, please ignore this video if you feel that the choices differ from your personal situation too much’. Such discursive work positions the diviner as a helper-entertainer who aids people to get the information that would come to them if they have questions in mind. This discourse distances the diviner not only from any special power, but also from the information provided in the reading process.

The Tarot diviners’ advocacy for a more ‘rational’ approach to Tarot and to life can also be discerned in how they interpret a ‘bad result’. In one video Liaoyushi Luna was interpreting a set of bad cards on the theme of romantic relationships:

This set of cards shows that your luck in love seems weak in the near future, but it is a good time to improve yourself and focus on your study and career. Believe that you will eventually meet the right person if you keep improving yourself and enjoying life.

More generally, many diviners would emphasize a positive outlook and the need for people to regain their agency. In one video, Sophie Tianshi liaoyu stated: ‘fortune is just a matter of prediction; it is not determined. The purpose of our work is to transcend our fortune so as to live a better life. But a large part of it is based on our own creation’. Certainly, interpreting bad results with an encouraging tone or emphasizing human agency can be common in other forms of mediated divination and understood as a way to lighten the content. After all, the practice is unlikely to attract many supporters if they constantly proffer disheartening results. But in the case of online Tarot reading in China, the diviners’ self-positioning and approach are not driven only by popularity concerns, but also by the need to fall in line with the dominant ideology, an issue we now turn to.

From superficial localization to mainstreaming

As Tarot reading enters the online arena in China, some forms and degrees of localization is expectable. Indeed, many Tarot diviners on Bilibili tied their practices to the Chinese calendar. For example, some initiated a form of divination named ‘si ji pai zhen’, and it was regularly practiced at the beginning of the four seasons. Besides, some diviners would launch videos on the first day of a solar term for audiences to check their fortunes in the upcoming period. Moreover, some diviners produce videos tied to important festivals. Tarot Gin, for instance, issued a series of videos during the Chinese New Year in 2020. In one video on the fifth day of the New Year, he invoked the conventional idea that the God of Wealth would appear on the day. Dawang alü de taluo xuyu wore red clothes during Chinese New Year, following the local cultural convention that the color could bring good luck.

There is no sign that audience members found it awkward to tie Tarot to the Chinese New Year. Users simply play along. Certainly, this kind of localization can be regarded as relatively superficial. But it does involve an attempt to embed the practice of Tarot reading into the calendar of social life in the country, thereby making it more relevant to a domestic public.

As discussed in the conceptual section, domestication involves not only localization but also taming. From the comments left by users and bloggers, they were aware of attempts by the state to clamp down on problematic online contents and how Tarot-related contents were also affected. The previous subsection has illustrated how Tarot diviners secularize their practices in order to distance themselves from superstition. Meanwhile, the advice they gave to the audiences through Tarot card interpretations were largely consistent with the image of a good Chinese citizen – a person who respects the nation, dedicates to work, and acts sincerely. For example, when responding to questions about work and career development, no matter what the cards are, diviners typically highlighted the need for people to work hard, and success will come. When interpreting cards in relation to questions about interpersonal relationships, diviners almost invariably reminded watchers about the necessity of being honest and sincere. In other words, statements about immediate fortune based on the cards can be seen merely as the pre-text for the common-sense messages about widely accepted private virtues.

However, the validity of these common-sense messages presumes a society where hard work, individual efforts, and honesty indeed pay off. Tarot reading, in the end, encourages people to resolve their individual problems and uncertainties through private efforts, instead of considering the public issues that contribute to the problems and uncertainties in the first place. Of course, critiquing online Tarot reading in this way is, in one sense, largely repeating Adorno (2001) critique of the Los Angeles Times’ astrology column. That is, this type of mediated divination materials promotes a pseudo-rationality and orients people by giving seemingly sensible and easy-to-follow advice.

Nonetheless, the mainstreaming of Tarot goes beyond alignment with societal values and obscuring systemic issues. When the society faces crisis, Tarot divination on Bilibili could help relieve anxieties, promote ‘positive energies’, and mobilize people’s morale. This was evident at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. For example, in late January 2020 when the Wuhan lockdown began, Yuansheng taluo performed a rite to pray for Wuhan. In a video published on February 8, 2020, which had more than 3.93 million views by September 2021, Yuansheng taluo addressed the question of how many romantic relationships one would get throughout an entire life. While the Tarot reading proceeded as usual, the diviner said at the end:

But this is only a public test for your reference [. . .] Don’t get addicted or superstitious. This is because we can change ourselves. Therefore, also hope that you can enjoy the time staying at home during this period. And let’s pray that the pandemic would pass soon, and everyone would stay healthy and safe.

Here, the diviner moved smoothly from the usual disclaimer into a soothing message for people experiencing the pandemic.

Conclusion

This study makes sense of the popularization of online Tarot reading in contemporary China through the conceptual lens of techno-cultural domestication. We emphasize the need to pay attention to affordances, practices and values of a techno-culture, and domestication as a process involving both localization and the taming of an object. To recapitulate, online Tarot reading in China involved a reconstruction of the ritual performance through the appropriation of cultural symbols of Western occultism and the technological affordances offered by Bilibili. In the process, distinctive practices emerge and combine to constitute an online participatory ritual.

Meanwhile, the Tarot diviners carefully align their discourses and practices with the dominant social values. In response to the state’s criticisms against superstition, the diviners ultimately demystified their practices. Despite the symbolic reconstruction of the mysticism and exoticism of Tarot during the ritual, the diviners put forward disclaimers that Tarot is only for entertainment. The diviners, with or without the intention, also promoted the concept of a good Chinese citizen through their advice to people on various matters: a good Chinese citizen is a person who resolves the difficulties, uncertainties, and challenges in life through individual efforts, while maintaining honesty and harmonious relationships with others. The audience members are not invited to consider the social and systemic roots of their individual problems. Both the problems and suggested solutions belong to the private arena.

The analysis contributes to our understanding of online participatory culture in China. Danmu, in particular, has attracted much scholarly attention. Some have noted the possibility of danmu to initiate public criticisms of social and political phenomena (Fan and Lee, 2019); others have noted how danmu can facilitate collaborative learning and the generation of collective intelligence (Zhang and Cassany, 2019). While we cannot dismiss such possibilities in specific cases, this study shows that danmu may also sustain a form of private and individualistic media participation. For the audience of online Tarot videos, danmu makes the presence of co-watchers visible. The danmu comments can confirm the legitimacy of the users’ concerns when the concerns are shown to be shared by numerous others. But at the same time, the users’ participation remains highly individualized. They seldom respond to the comments from others. Watching Tarot videos together is analogous to praying in the presence of others in a church or a temple. The crowd does not constitute a collective actor, and the actions of the individuals remain self-oriented.

As such, the critical potential of the participatory culture typified by online Tarot reading is even weaker than that contained in other forms of popular cultural participation in China. For example, in their analysis of fan activism in China through online translation communities, Zhang and Mao (2013) noted that popular culture has long been recognized as a conservative force in China because of how it could pacify the society and divert people from a critical discourse of civic engagement. However, they also found that, despite a lack of relationship between fan activism and political participation, fan activism did promote collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the spirit of volunteerism, which might in turn cultivate a participatory civic culture. In contrast, we see a minimal level of horizontal collaboration among Tarot video watchers. There is little sign of a participatory civic culture.

Nevertheless, we do not intend to argue that the domestication of Tarot reading has facilitated a stable equilibrium in which the practice is fully accepted by the power structure. As a matter of fact, even into year 2021, the Chinese state media continued to occasionally criticize Tarot reading for promoting a kind of superstition that might negatively influence the society. Such criticisms could merely be reminders and warnings issued for preventive reasons, but they could also signify the state’s intention to further tighten its control of the online cultural sphere. In fact, the Chinese government had recently employed various measures to regulate popular cultural phenomena ranging from online fan groups to digital game-playing. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the newest developments in the politics of state control of pop culture in China. Suffice it to note that techno-cultural domestication is an ongoing process, as actors have to continually respond to an ever-changing environment.

Theoretically, this study illustrates that the concept of domestication remains useful in the study of transnational cultural studies. As discussed earlier, many scholars in the intercultural communication field have turned to the notion of transculturation. Indeed, transculturation has the advantage of not assuming a fixed point of origin and a fixed destination. And it is more suitable for analyzing certain forms of dynamic cultural flows in which cultural artifacts and ideas travel across multiple cultures, and the transformation it experiences in a certain place may prepare it not so much for domestic consumption than for continual global consumption (e.g. Chan, 2002). However, there can still be cases when distinctively foreign cultural phenomena are incorporated into the domestic environment for largely domestic consumption. In the case of Tarot reading in China, there were no major transnational corporations promoting the practice in the country, and there is no attempt by the ordinary users or any organizations to re-export the domesticated practices of Tarot reading to other places. It is a case where local youths, equipped with advanced information technologies and ability to access foreign cultures online, created a localized version of the foreign cultural practice. For this and possibly other similar cases, techno-cultural domestication provides an analytical framework, consisting of individual creativities, technological materiality, and local dominant ideologies, for understanding the localization process of foreign cultures on domestic social platforms with techno-cultural specialties.

Moreover, the notion of domestication highlights the continuing role of local social, political, and cultural structures in shaping transnational and online cultural flows. It could mean that the notion of techno-cultural domestication can be particularly significant in places where the dominant power structure retains tight control of the internet space. The Internet has not brought about the complete free flow of information and ideas around the world. Instead, it is increasingly subjected to state controls in the forms of content censorships and infrastructural and institutional regulations (Pager and Candeub, 2012). As authoritarian systems have improved their ability not only to maintain control of the Internet but also to appropriate the Internet to strengthen their power (MacKinnon, 2013), the concept of techno-cultural domestication should remain highly pertinent to the analysis of online culture in the contemporary world.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Han Fu

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