Capybaras as Internet celebrities: Collective frustration and Sang culture in the post-COVID-19 period

Capybaras are gentle herbivores, native to the tropical warmth of South America. Their adorkable image became an online hit in 2023, accompanied by the popularity of a song named after the animal on video-sharing platforms. By the end of 2023, the song and the animal’s image had formed one of the most popular youth cultures in China. With attention to capybaras-related videos on Bilibili, this article investigates why and how capybaras became a popular celebrity species in China from the perspective of the development of a youth network subculture. It argues that the emergence of capybaras as a celebrity species is highly related to the ongoing sang culture in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. This celebrity species became an emotional projection of young people’s growing anxiety and collective frustration, delivering a connotation that they are nonconformist to official doctrines and resistant to capitalist exploitation.