Identity Anxiety Of Urban Youth And Resistance Logic Of Internet Subculture

Xiaoqingxin, originates from a fresh and elegant music style, now has gradually developed into an aesthetic style and an anti-commercialism subculture during its spread process on China’s internet social media. This essay focuses on combing and analyzing how Xiaoqingxin starts and how it begins to go downhill under the theoretical frame of subculture theories, a strand of cultural studies. Our methodologies mainly are virtual ethnography, text analysis and interviews. The essay views Xiaoqingxin as a typical Internet Subculture, featuring as authenticity-lost styles, tenderer resistance and diaspora group-relation. When it comes to Xiaoqingxin’s decadency, this article attributes it to the external conflicts from mass media’s moral-panic-making and its internal contradiction, meaning the consensus drift. The essay discusses the identity anxiety of urban young people and the resistance logic of Internet subculture. After all the resistances have been made, Xiaoqingxin have to make a decision either to go back to mundane life or to be incorporated by mainstream culture. Xiaoqingxin, a youth subculture, does have the positive impact such as expanding young people’s expressing space, bringing up new occupations and improving cultural industry; however, it has certain negative effects, such as young people’s superficial internet performance, dissolved action-power and diaspora community relations.