Abstract
This chapter explores young people’s reminiscences about gaming in Internet cafés through interviews and analysis of popular micro-films (films created for the Internet) about the coming-of-age experiences of post-1980 and post-1990 youth. The analysis focuses on the role that nostalgia plays in young people’s relationship to their current circumstances. Often dissatisfied with the lack of possibilities for upward mobility and faced with the drudgery of everyday life, digital games and locations such as the Internet café are constructed as places that embody youthful hope, optimism, and happiness. Ironically, those who remain in the cafés are simultaneously cast as failures—migrant workers, high-school dropouts, and troublemakers. Through a close examination of young people’s affective attachments to Internet cafés and digital games, this chapter reveals how these spaces are not only sites of sociality but also sites where class identities are negotiated and formed.
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- 1.
Braester, “Real Time to Virtual Reality.”
- 2.
Braester, 99.
- 3.
Braester, 98.
- 4.
Feng quoted in Braester, “Real Time to Virtual Reality,” 89.
- 5.
Liu, Urban Youth in China, 155.
- 6.
Stelter, “The Good Ol’ Days.”
- 7.
Haskins, “Between Archive and Participation,” 401.
- 8.
Gillis, Commemorations, 15.
- 9.
Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, xiv.
- 10.
Yang, “China’s Zhiqing Generation,” 267.
- 11.
Liu, Urban Youth in China, 156.
- 12.
See Mutula, “Cyber Café Industry”; Salvador, Sherry and Urrutia, “Less Cyber, More Café”; Wahid, Furuholt and Kristiansen, “Internet for Development?”
- 13.
See Qiu and Zhou, “Prism of the Internet Café”; Tsui, “The Panopticon as the Antithesis”.
- 14.
See Chee, “The Games We Play”; Laegran and Stewart, “Nerdy, Trendy, or Healthy?”; Lee, “Private Uses in Public Spaces”; Liff & Laegran, “Cybercafés”; Liff & Steward, “Shaping e-Access”; Powell, “Space, Place Reality and Virtuality”; Uotinen, “Involvement in (the information) Society”; Wakeford, “The Embedding of Local Culture”.
- 15.
Liff and Laegran, “Cybercafés,” 308.
- 16.
Lee, “Private Uses in Public Spaces,” 332.
- 17.
Liu, “Not Merely About Life on the Screen.”
- 18.
Oldenburg, The Great Good Place, 26.
- 19.
Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
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Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere”; Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.
- 21.
Liu, Urban Youth in China, 121.
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Harper, Culture of Digital Fighting Games, 139.
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Burrell, Invisible Users, 33.
- 24.
Turner, “Betwixt and Between,” 97.
- 25.
Turner, 97.
- 26.
See “shehui qingnian,” Baidu Baike; Baidu Baike [Baidu Encyclopedia] is a wiki-based encyclopedia run by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Throughout the book, I will rely on Baidu Baike for definitions of key Internet and game-related terms. While not an official dictionary, this site is a useful reference because it captures the colloquial and shifting uses of words and phrases that may not be included in more traditional reference texts.
- 27.
DOTA, also rendered DotA, stands for Defense of the Ancients. It is a mod of Warcraft III, played in two teams of five.
- 28.
Yang, “Spatial Struggles”.
- 29.
Zhang, In Search of Paradise, 108.
- 30.
“Wei dianying,” Baidu Baike.
- 31.
Zhao, “The Micro-Movie Wave.”
- 32.
Luo, dir., Wan Da De.
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Szablewicz, M. (2020). Internet Cafés: Nostalgia, Sociality, and Stigma. In: Mapping Digital Game Culture in China. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36111-2_2
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