Becoming precarious playbour: Chinese migrant youth on the Kuaishou video-sharing platform

Introduction

This article investigates the emergence of Chinese rural migrant youth’s digital labour production on Kuaishou; a user-generated, short-video platform that has become one of the most popular social media for the post-80s generation. While these migrant workers provide cheap labour for various industrial and service sectors in cities, they retain their rural identity because of their hukou (household registration) status. Engaged in low-income jobs such as assembly line, construction and delivery, these migrant youth have constituted the mainstay of the migrant labour force in China. Furthermore, their extensive use of social media – mainly mediated through mobile communication – has increasingly become an essential part of their daily lives and cultural production.

Migrant youth’s becoming precarious playbour represents an emerging kind of labour associated with user-generated content and value production in the form of play (Kücklich, 2005; Qiu, 2016). The term ‘playbour’, which refers to the audience labour of digital platforms, is drawn from the form of gamer-made alterations to pre-existing games. They redesign and improve the games by modifying the code, which simultaneously involves play, fun, and unpaid labour (Kücklich, 2005). On Kuaishou, the migrant youth also act as a kind of ‘playbourers’ because they play (wan) Kuaishou, while generating profits for the company without pay (Qiu, 2016).

We take the notion of playbour as a tool to conceptualise Kuaishou’s free labour and economy, combining digital engagement and rewards. In the age of media convergence, users become the free labour of social media platforms. Xia (2019) indicates that current digital labour research has two main foci: the exploitation of both professional and audience labour. Studies on audience labour often focus on urban and middle-class youth (Qiu, 2016). Migrant workers are often taken as being confined to the factory (Pun, 2005) or engaged in delivery work for digital platforms (Sun, 2019). However, their playbour practice and identity as social platform users are largely ignored and insufficiently studied (De Kloet and Fung, 2016). Hence, the research purpose of this study is to address this void by examining how migrant workers become playbourers beyond the scope of professional labour.

Kuaishou’s playbour involves high levels of insecurity, characterised by the precarious work of the digital and creative industry, including the absence of labour protection and wages and the lack of control over working hours and working conditions (Lin, 2020; Morgan et al., 2013). Wilson and Ebert (2013) argue that precarity not only involves insecurity in industrial relations but refers to a more general and comprehensive ‘state of being’ which the workers themselves subjectively experience. The increasing digitisation of different aspects of their lives has blurred the line between work and play (Goggin, 2011).

In this article, we focus specifically on the creative playbour practices of migrant youth on Kuaishou. These users who are not secured with a contractual relationship with the company (Van Doorn, 2017) produce value by generating content, social relationships, and networks on the platform. What interests us is that although these workers’ life experiences are saturated with negative feelings of uncertainty, insecurity and frustration in their increasingly precarious situations (Wilson and Ebert, 2013), they seem to produce videos and livestreams on Kuaishou voluntarily. The question is what motivates them and what it means to be a playbour for the platform, how they create an affective economy, where they can establish a sense of connection and intimacy with their audiences, and how they cope with the precariousness of their Kuaishou roles.

Literature review

With the popularisation of smartphones and the cost reduction of mobile services, Chinese internal migrant youth have increasingly become ‘digital natives’ who have grown up with digital media and acquired familiarity with digital communication (Wang, 2016). Despite the growing popularity of social media among Chinese young people, public expressions on such platforms as Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like platform, remain restricted and unrepresentative of the young generation (Svensson, 2014). Notably, while urban celebrities are privileged to use their social and cultural capital to build large followings and gain influence (Yang, 2014), rural migrant workers generally lack a voice in such restricted ‘public’ spaces.

The ‘voice’ is precisely what distinguishes Kuaishou from other social media spaces, as it provides rural migrant workers with an algorithm-based platform where users can zhibo (livestream) their performances as zhubos (livestreamer). What makes Kuaishou unique is the ‘unabashed earthiness of its objective contents’ (Li et al., 2019) and its grassroots user base, such as construction workers, small-town teenagers, and young farmers (Li, 2020a; Schaefer, 2019). These playbourers not only act as audiences, performers, creators, and free labour on Kuaishou. They can also profit from their productions, which have become increasingly professionalised (Song, 2018). Thus, the platform economy also enables migrant youth to participate as cultural producers.

With the increasing convergence of consumption and labour, as well as leisure and work, in the digital era, scholarly debates have primarily revolved around the ‘exploitation vs. empowerment’ dialectic (Zhang and Fung, 2014). Critical political economists have critiqued social media platforms for turning users into ‘prosumers’ or ‘produsers’ through the exploitation of free labour (Fuchs, 2010; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). Tan et al. (2020) observe that Kuaishou users ultimately provide highly exploited labour in the guise of innocuous play. They argue that the appearance of zhubo exemplifies the commodification and exploitation of participants’ affective labour. In order to earn money, zhubos draw upon and exploit their personal experiences and stories based on what they think their audiences may like. As an emerging form of labour, a zhubo serves more as a subcontractor than an employee of the platform companies thus exempt from providing formal labour protection (Van Doorn, 2017).

Scholarship on digital labour has paid attention to how a playbourer becomes a precarious worker (Bulut, 2014; Kücklich, 2005; Lin, 2020). The notion of precariousness refers to employment or job insecurity, low wages, insufficient labour protection, as well as a low level of employee control over wages, hours and working conditions (Campbell and Price, 2016). Such precariousness also extends to other domains of social life where the sense of insecurity is widely felt by individuals even beyond work. In this study, migrant youth as precarious playbour also experience uncertainty and instability beyond work. As labourers, they generally lack regular employment contracts and job security. In particular, a zhubo spends considerable time and effort to develop fandom, while Kuaishou takes a 50% cut from a zhubo’s income. However, a few zhubos complain ‘because they understand their livestreaming more as innocuous wan “play” that they should pay for, rather than a serious, money-making work’ (Tan et al., 2020: 1245). Playbour is ‘[s]imultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited’ (Terranova, 2000: 32), rendering it unclassifiable in traditional terms of work and play (Bulut, 2014; Goggin, 2011; Kücklich, 2005).

Although the perspective of exploitation provides acute insights into emerging labour conditions in the global platform economy, scholars in this field tend to overlook the agency of audience labour. Simply labelling such practices in terms of exploitation may preclude the possibility that rural youths’ hopes and desires will be actualised. This possibility is expressed in upwards socio-economic mobility associated with their engagement with Kuaishou, as well as the subtle daily negotiations and struggles at play (Sun, 2019; Zhang and Fung, 2014). Moreover, this study seeks to demonstrate how Kuaishou users’ agency could be exerted and the way migrant workers produce their own participatory culture (Postigo, 2014).

Our analysis of Kuaishou’s labour production is informed by Jenkins’ (2006) notion of participatory culture that addresses the power of user collaboration and production. Li et al. (2019) examine how rural students pursue their dreams of upward socio-economic mobility on Kuaishou through becoming ‘micro-celebrities’, who seek to amplify their online popularity through the platform (Senft, 2008: 25). Lin and De Kloet (2019) argue that Kuaishou empowers ordinary people to become creative producers and self-employed entrepreneurs. However, critics also accuse Kuaishou of peddling low-quality tuwei (earthiness) contents (Liu, 2020).

Although existing studies have focused on young rural migrant workers’ engagement in Kuaishou as a means of realising upward socio-economic mobility, they tend to focus on individual practices while ignoring collaborative forms of cultural production. In order to cope with the uncertain, unpredictable, and risky precarious conditions while making their videos more attractive, they have sought to collaborate with other users, a practice that stimulates more creativity and competition on the platform. Existing scholarship tends to focus on the discursive marginalisation rather than the creativity of these youngsters (Li, 2020b; Lin and De Kloet, 2019).

Based on these studies, this research seeks to move beyond the restrictions of the ‘exploitation vs. empowerment’ dialectic by examining why rural migrant youth play Kuaishou, how they produce a participatory culture, and what precarious situations they face as they become playbourers. Furthermore, we also investigate how they collaborate to enhance creativity and competitiveness, and mitigate precarity.

Methodological statement

The selection of Kuaishou as our research target originates from a personal experience. On 15 October 2016, the first author met a female migrant worker named Liang, working at a barbershop in Zhuhai. Liang, originally from Anhui Province, is one of the four children of her family. She dropped out of school and went out to work with her sister as teenagers. Intrigued by her leisurely preoccupation with her smartphone, the first author asked what she was playing. She replied that ‘It’s boring when we have no customers, so I’m playing Kuaishou. It’s fun’. She continued to say that ‘We all play this App . . . There are a lot of funny videos on Kuaishou’. She could not help laughing when sharing her experience. Since then, the authors have explored Kuaishou and sensed a strong connection between the platform and rural populations. Interesting to notice that Kuaishou has been labelled ‘vulgar’ and ‘low-end’ by commentaries was the motivation for us to probe this phenomenon.

Most of the data examined in this study are drawn from ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews, as well as screenshots and recordings of livestreams on Kuaishou. From July to September 2017, we conducted the first phase of online observation to gather initial data. We used the three tabs on the Kuaishou interface to locate our research targets: ‘trending’, ‘following’ and ‘nearby’. The ‘trending’ tab lists videos selected by the platform’s algorithm. Users can also tap on ‘follow’ to keep track of someone or view the videos produced by others ‘nearby’. Furthermore, our search was informed by recommendations from friends and relevant news reports. Ultimately, we located 34 users to be our primary targets, taking into account their fanbases, occupations, the city they live in and how often they post videos and do livestreaming. These workers were all born in the late 1980s and aged between 16 and 35. Their personal backgrounds reflect Kuaishou’s user base demographics: geographically, users are located all over China, including not only Shanghai and Guangzhou but also small cities and towns. They hold jobs ranging from construction workers and car mechanics to cooks and factory workers. Some of them quit their jobs in cities and went back to their hometowns to produce videos and livestreaming full-time. The act of returning to hometowns is strategic as it does not only reduce their cost of living but also enables them to display rural settings that could attract more attention. Furthermore, detailed field notes, screenshots and photos were taken to document their experiences from January to March 2018 and from June to August 2018, respectively. Finally, we created research profiles for each of our subjects and formulated the narratives of their life stories.

Meanwhile, we found that the method of ethnographic observation is limited in terms of retrieving ‘insider’ information, such as life trajectories and personal experiences. Therefore, in-depth interviews were used as supplements to enrich our data collection. We gradually established relationships with some subjects through livestreaming and WeChat messages, which are displayed on their Kuaishou profiles. We interviewed a total of 12 subjects (seven men and five women) with semi-structured questions revolving around their platform practices (See Table 1). Since the subjects of our research are located in different places across China, five of them were interviewed offline while others were done through video conferencing, as well as text and voice messages on WeChat. Among them, only one has become a full-time zhubo as others play casually as part of their work. We also communicated with the zhubos during their livestreaming and recorded their conversations with fans. When each interview concluded, we gave each interviewee 50 CNY as a token of our gratitude.

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Table1.

12 interviews.

ID	Gender	Host city or town	Hometown	Job	Born	Interview date
XY	Female	Qingdao	Tai’an	Shop assistant	1991	28 June 2018 4 September 2018	Restaurant, her home
RR	Male	Shanghai	Tai’an	Chef	1999	27 June 2018 24 September 2018	His home, WeChat
HB	Male	Weifang	Tai’an	Factory worker	1999	25 July 2018	Restaurant, WeChat
XX	Male	Linyi	Tai’an	Factory worker	1998	31 July 2018, 2 August 2018, 7 August 2018	WeChat, livestream
AX	Female	Shanghai	Fuyang	Cashier	1991	13 August 2018	Her workplace, WeChat
MB	Female	Zhengzhou	Zhumadian	Factory worker	1994	28 July 2018, 5 November 2020	WeChat, Kuaishou
	Male	Shenzhen	Yulin	Construction worker	1991	20 June 2018, 8 November 2020	WeChat, livestream
BB	Male	Weihai	Weihai	Real estate salesperson	1995	19 July 2017	WeChat
LC	Male	Anshan	Anshan	zhubo	1994	20 June 2018	WeChat, livestream
DF	Male	Wenzhou	Yibin	Factory worker	1986	11 August 2017, 5 April 2020	WeChat message, livestream
YY	Female	Tai’an	Tai’an	Pharmacy	1994	9 August 2017,20 September 2017,8 February 2018	Restaurant, her workplace
SS	Female	Zhoushan	Chongqing	Electric welder	1990	30 July 2018	WeChat, Kuaishou

Wan (playing) Kuaishou: Producing the tuwei culture

Precariousness with Chinese characteristics

Playing Kuaishou was originally meant for migrant youth to ease their sense of precariousness caused by work. However, their Kuaishou production has prompted them to become precarious playbour, moving between play and work. In order to arouse fans’ attention, zhubos have to be hyperactive, constantly give viewers something new to look at, respond to, or comment on, and minimise the downtime that might lead to disinterest and viewership decline (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019). They enthusiastically share every single detail of their lives, thereby increasingly eroding the boundaries between their private realities and public personae (Tan et al., 2020). Meanwhile, some migrant youth choose to highlight their personal conflicts in daily life as a selling point. For example, ZF is known for picking a fight with her Kuaishou micro-celebrity sister-in-law named YX. During livestreaming on 30 July 2018, they fought each other before the audience until a fan intervened. Just like a soap opera, this conflict became a hit among fans and immediately increased their popularity. While ZF’s number of viewers used to be around 2000, the family conflict had apparently boosted it to more than 9000. Such performance offers the audiences an opportunity to satisfy their desire for voyeurism by peeking into private lives (Song, 2018).

In order to sustain fan support, many zhubos push themselves to the limit, livestreaming 7 days a week and more than 8 hours a day. This is because fans would migrate to other zhubos or platforms if they ceased livestreaming (Zhang et al., 2019). Thus, Kuaishou embodies the idea of the social factory, meaning that value extraction occurs anywhere and anytime (Tan et al., 2020). Despite the serious disruption of daily life routines, nothing guarantees their income. LC said during a livestream:

In 2017, I can earn more than 10,000 CNY a month, while this year [2018] is more difficult, sometimes four to five thousand a month, sometimes seven to eight thousand a month, but it is still better than working as a waiter with only 1800 CNY a month. (29 June 2018)

Zhubos are constantly met with unfriendly troublemakers, heifen (Black fans), who post aggressive and hateful comments to discredit them. Nevertheless, the ability to respond quickly to these negative comments may earn them a reputation (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019). In addition, they generally ignore verbal harassment to avoid conflicts with followers and suppress their emotions to control their performance while livestreaming.

The growing popularity of these young rural migrant workers has also met with more challenges. First, their videos have caused public debates over the ‘taste’ of Kuaishou micro-celebrities (Liu, 2020). Some urban bloggers on Weibo describe these works as unintelligible and absurd, and label them as tuwei that connotes incivility, tastelessness and low-end characteristics. However, those who produce the videos contest such claims (Sun, 2020). Meanwhile, taste is closely related to class power (Bourdieu, 1984), and the debate can be seen as a mark of social distinction (Sun, 2020). Despite these criticisms, it is clear that Kuaishou provides new opportunities for migrant workers to become cultural producers, brings the traditionally marginalised groups into the national spotlight, and enables them to increase income.

Moreover, the state criticised Kuaishou in April 2018 for displaying videos involving tattoos, social-shake dance (a form of dance that features ear-bashing soundtracks and is accompanied by rhythmic, intense and identical upper body movement of performers), and other controversial videos, such as unmarried teenage girls showing off their pregnant belly. As a result, Kuaishou tightened up its censorship measures. Some top-ranked micro-celebrities’ accounts were also blocked, like Tianyou, who became famous for performing hanmai (shouting with a microphone), a Chinese rap-like performance. Since hanmai’s lyrics are catchy and entertaining, and the rhythm is easy to learn, it became immensely popular among rural youth and migrant workers (Arcbering, 2017). On 12 February 2018, Tianyou was named by CCTV as a ‘malign’ micro-celebrity who allegedly encouraged drug use in his show (Xu and Zhang, 2021). In response, Kuaishou and other video-sharing platforms swiftly removed Tianyou’s accounts and all content related to him. The incident has resulted in a tightening of state and commercial censorship that has tended to make the social media business more precarious.

Zhubos’ revenue comes from fans’ virtual gifts rather than wages. As a result, they have to endure long ‘playing’ time, uncertain incomes and harassment. In addition to platform censorship, zhubos have to take legal or political risks associated with their performance. These precarious conditions have caused many users to regard zhubo only as non-serious ‘play’ (Tan et al., 2020). The blurred distinction between work and play is characteristic of Kuaishou playbour (Goggin, 2011). SP gave up his factory job to shoot videos. Although the number of fans has steadily increased, his virtual gift income is not high compared to regular micro-celebrities. The uncertainty of being a playbourer has prompted him to use the money earned from Kuaishou to open a milk-tea shop and a grilled fish shop in his hometown.

XX, an auto repair worker, loves social-shake dancing, which relies on collective participation – with the belief that dancing alone cannot produce sufficient emotional momentum to sustain audience attention. Tired of his dirty and low-paying job in the workshop, he decided to return to his hometown, Tai’an, Shandong Province and devote himself to Kuaishou video production full-time:

I often send private messages to ‘nearby’ (a function in the app) people who also dance social shake, then adding them to my WeChat. We are all boys, so it’s easier to get acquainted with each other. We often dance and make videos together. (XX, 31 July 2018, interview)

XX used the money earned from Kuaishou to buy the long-awaited iPhone. However, since the ban on the social-shake dance craze in April 2018, his team was dismissed, and XX became jobless again. Such precarity of playbour bears the risk of production while remaining unprotected by labour standards (Fuchs, 2010; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010; Tan et al., 2020).

Even though Kuaishou takes 50% out of zhubo’s earnings, few have complained and even take it for granted. On the contrary, they often refer to Kuaishou as ‘official master’ (guanfang daren) and express their appreciation on their homepage, such as ‘thanking Kuaishou for providing such a wonderful platform’. In particular, Lin and De Kloet (2019) indicate that this is because the governance of Kuaishou creates a pervasive sense of insecurity among users, making them feel obliged to post these statements on their homepage. When asked about her attitude towards the platform, XY said,

I had seen other people writing thanks to Kuaishou on their homepage, so I imitated them. I sincerely appreciate that the Kuaishou platform allows me to be seen by so many strangers. I also hope that my video will be more widely disseminated on the platform and seen by more people. (XY, 4 September 2018, interview)

Her response implies that migrant workers are not entirely subjected to platform exploitation. Instead, they creatively use the platform to produce and display culture in ways that help them to cope with the growing precariousness.

Not just for fun: Collaborative production

Although most of Kuaishou’s users start as ‘hobbyists with little intention of developing income’ (Cunningham and Craig, 2019: 16), the potential social, cultural, and economic rewards motivate some to engage in a collaborative production characterised by spontaneous and free participation (Mehta, 2019). Some even turn themselves into full-time producers. With the intensification of Internet censorship since April 2018, there has been a pervasive sense of uncertainty and insecurity among Kuaishou producers (Lin and De Kloet, 2019), who resort to improving the quality of their shows. In order to cope with market competition, more users have worked together to foster a collaborative form of production.

So far, three forms of collaboration have been taking shape on Kuaishou. First, some like-minded users may form a team, and those with the most fans become protagonists and ‘mentors’, while other ‘apprentices’ become supporting actors or actresses. LJ became popular on Kuaishou for his duanzi, which literally means jokes and humour. In August 2017, five youngsters from rural Guizhou came to his hometown, Fenggang Village, Zunyi, Guizhou Province, and asked to become his apprentices. They participated in LJ’s videos where, in return, they enlarged their own fanbases through LJ’s popularity. Among them, JY, aged 18, is the youngest and has just finished high school. He manages all members’ Kuaishou accounts daily and even does household chores for the mentor’s family. Since then, JY’s personal Kuaishou account has grown from almost none to 136,000 fans in merely 2 months. However, not all are as successful as JY; the other three apprentices left after 2 months.

LC recruits female apprentices directly on Kuaishou. He told audiences during a livestream on 21 June 2018 that ‘if there are girls willing to play Kuaishou with me, send me private messages. I can teach you to dance for free’. His Kuaishou and WeChat profiles read, ‘Call for female apprentices with basic level of dance skills, guarantee to increase fan numbers, a monthly salary of more than 10,000 CNY!’

On Kuaishou, many participants call each other mentors and apprentices in an attempt to cultivate a family-like relationship. Apprentices usually work as free labourers for their mentors, as in the case of interns (Xia, 2019). Xia (2019) finds that in China, interns’ hard work is never fairly rewarded by their employers. In order to obtain a full-time position after completing their internships, they must build strong guanxi (personal relationships) with mentors; which also explains why some Kuaishou participants are willing to do all kinds of work for their mentors.

The second form of collaboration involves active fan participation. Zhubo’s livestreaming is primarily meant to interact with followers, such as answering their questions and creating a ‘gift economy’ that can be converted into income. Similar to the ‘like’ button on Facebook, which converts user engagement into tradeable data flows (Wang, 2019), the number of fans and their participation (i.e. likes and comments) affect both the content of zhubos’ livestreams and their incomes – the more popular they are, the more advertising revenue they receive from sponsors who want to promote products through zhubo.

A zhubo primarily benefits from their fans in the form of ‘sending gifts’ (shua liwu) that followers purchase using platform currencies (Kuaishou Coin, hereafter KC). Viewers cannot send money directly to zhubos, only through gifts offered by the platform. There are 32 types of virtual gifts. The most expensive gift that one can send costs 6666 KC, worth approximately 952 CNY (See Table 2). The gifts can also be used to make animations for zhubos’ shows. For example, 328 KC shows an arrow shooting into the sky, 208 KC displays fireworks, while the smallest donation (1 KC) displays a lollipop on the screen. If a user purchases virtual presents for a zhubo, their account details will automatically pop up on the zhubo’s feed.

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Table 2.

Value of KC.

CNY	6	40	68	98	198	698
KC	42	280	476	686	1386	4886

The platform’s gift system is implemented through a set of visual symbols; the greater the value, the more spectacular the visual effect (Zhang et al., 2019). For example, if an audience wants to create the number ‘6’ on the screen, around 30 beer bottle emojis (worth 10KC for each) need to be created. In this way, special visual appeals are programmed to entice platform users to spend more real money on virtual gifting.

However, the gift economy does not solely function to meet the fans’ psychological needs (Zhang et al., 2019). Some people who want to promote products or themselves would send gifts to a zhubo as well. In return, a zhubo may help them by ‘calling attention’ (han guanzhu), which is meant to call on their audiences to follow them. This has become a key strategy for aspiring zhubos to increase their visibility.

Acquiring a virtual gift on Kuaishou requires not only a sufficient number of viewers, but also active cooperation of audiences. It also requires zhubos to actively manage their emotions and personality to cultivate a sense of intimacy with audiences (Lin and De Kloet, 2019). They usually refer to their fans as laotie (very close friends) or ‘family’ while fan groups would coalesce into a gang-like ‘family army’ (jia jun). For example, Tianyou’s fans are ‘You jiajun’ while LC calls his followers ‘Nong jiajun’ (peasant army).

The third mode of revenue creation based on virtual gifting is the collaborative production between Kuaishou and zhubos. By continually adding new technological affordances, the platform enables zhubos to attract attention and generate revenue, thereby raising more revenues for the platform. This form of collaboration is featured by the ‘VS’ mode (also known as PK), where two performers showcase their competition to attract more audiences. This form of collaboration stimulates the gift economy by arousing fans’ sympathy and sense of competitiveness, as much as mobilising their emotional investment. When a zhubo is livestreaming, they can randomly match up with the other zhubos who agree on the battle rules. The scores of the two rivals change in real-time at the bar on top of the screen, showing the value of virtual gifts they receive. In some cases, the loser needs to do pushups, sing or do face-painting. The PK strategy helps increase viewership for some zhubos.

The 18-year-old girl FB migrated to Guangzhou from her native Anhui Province. She has been working in a garment factory for 3 years, earning about 3000 CNY per month. She has produced many videos showing her long legs on Kuaishou. In order to increase viewership, she often launches contests with other zhubos and uses emotional language to solicit support. After COVID-19, FB did not return to Guangzhou but stayed in her hometown to become a full-time zhubo. The content produced by FB and many zhubos is underpinned by constant emotional investments and viewers’ affective responses (Wang, 2019). However, as Zhang et al. (2019) point out, during the ‘sell-out’ transition from self-expression to self-promotion, zhubos, especially female zhubos, are increasingly treated by the audience as objects of gaze, desire and consumption. These practices demonstrate how Kuaishou’s micro-celebrities use ‘emotional labour’ to capitalise on character and intimacy (Li, 2020a; Raun, 2018).

Conclusion

This article investigates the emergence of playbour as a dynamic process on Kuaishou. We examine the group of people whose cultures are often ignored. Becoming a playbourer on Kuaishou has low entry barriers, without particular knowledge or skills, education, or qualifications (Tai and Hu, 2017). Kuaishou has attracted countless rural youth, who lack access to social rights and protections, to engage in creative production as a means of self-expression and self-branding, passing boredom and increasing income. We have explored how they construct their ambivalent identities by performing in daily spaces such as the village, construction site, factory and dormitory. Their expressive and creative practices enable them to obtain social, cultural and economic capital and showcase the ‘authenticity’ of their daily lives, and offer a sense of cultural intimacy to the audience. However, these cultural practices have also triggered a moral panic and debates over the cultural value of tuwei.

This article has also examined three forms of collaboration that incorporate emotions and authenticity into production. We consider zhubos’ precarious production on Kuaishou, enduring long work hours without social security or stable income. Nonetheless, Kuaishou does provide a platform for many rural migrant workers to pursue upwards mobility and economic success. Overall, this article presents original data in a non-Western context, where forms of worker self-expression and digital labour apply in different ways. Moreover, we suggest that future research pay more attention to how their precarious status affects playbourers’ platform production and the consequence of the cultural development of migrant workers in China.