In their work, describing the data manipulation tactics of fan leaders of Chinese idols’ fan clubs, Wu Xueyin describes two kinds of fandoms.
Two categories of fan identities account for a large proportion of fans in Chinese fandom: only stan/solo stan (Wei Fen) and fans who ship their idol with other celebrities as a fictional/real couple (CP Fen).
Wu, Xueyin. 2021. “Fan Leaders’ Control on Xiao Zhan’s Chinese Fan Community.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2053.
CP Fen’s activities could be more easily described with the familiar terms of transformative fandom.
Comparatively, CP Fen of Chinese pop culture belong to a loosely connected digital community. They tend to have a more casual and spontaneous attitude toward their daily practices. Most of them allow real person slash to be published within their Super Topics and some of them are even open to a more diverse interpretation of the idol’s image such as feminizing images of male idols or masculinizing those of female idols, while both of these are less tolerated in Wei Fen Super Topics. (…) Also, even though some of the CP Fen groups perform data manipulation as well, a large proportion of their daily activities are more spontaneous and less collective. The Untamed attracted a lot of CP Fen who ship Xiao Zhan and Wang Yi Bo; they upload the ship’s cute moments from the behind the scenes or clips of TV shows or video interviews. Some CP Fen also add likes or watch them multiple times to strategically promote the video’s popularity. But it can be observed from the comments that fans are having fun with it while they watch it; they make diverse interpretations of the video contents and contribute to the discourse of their relationship.
Wu, Xueyin. 2021. “Fan Leaders’ Control on Xiao Zhan’s Chinese Fan Community.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2053.
Shown in opposition here, is the data manipulation activities characterising Wei Fen.
(…) even though the business model of BL (generally in the name of bromance to avoid censorship) pairings achieve some success, the media industry is still sensitive to homosexuality-related contents. Thus, in order to ensure their idol’s long term success, CP Fen are generally deemed to be in a lower moral ground in the fan community and excluded from the Wei Fen community.
Wu, Xueyin. 2021. “Fan Leaders’ Control on Xiao Zhan’s Chinese Fan Community.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2053.
(…) in the case of Chinese media fandom, fans devote their labor not for the use of content materials but to proudly be part of the cultivation of their idols. They proclaim themselves as “female data worker” (Shu Ju NüGong). The term might imply fans’ recognition of fan identity and the media industry. One the one hand, they recognize their labor is being exploited by the media industry as workers whose work is repetitious and uncreative. On the other hand they happily accept that because they know the data traffic they generate will be transformed into their idol’s success and they will be the ones who determine that success.
Wu, Xueyin. 2021. “Fan Leaders’ Control on Xiao Zhan’s Chinese Fan Community.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 36. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.2053.
Throughout the paper, though, we can see, how this success is also motivated by a narrative of the idol: a grassroots artist, an artist too kind to protect themselves, the innocent child of the mothering fans. The data manipulation is therefore enabled by a different form of fan gossip or imaginings, in these case centred around the idol’s and the fans’ shared success.
How do you see the role of an idol or other star’s success in fannish imagination?