Bingeing on Daydreams: Identity Negotiation Among Micro-Drama Viewers in a Chinese Tier-3 City

This study examines how frequent micro-drama viewers in a Chinese tier-3 city negotiate identity through binge-watching so-called daydream-style micro-dramas. Drawing on experience sampling, in-depth interviews, and 4,189 online comments, the analysis identifies four identity positions that take shape as viewers move between pleasure and rationality, as well as between grassroots belonging and upward aspiration: aspirational dreamers, pleasure hunters, grassroots skeptics, and meritocratic realists. To legitimate their viewing, viewers both reshape the meaning of pleasure in ways that soften cultural stigma and maintain a rational self-image through downplaying the significance of viewing, attributing responsibility to external circumstances, engaging in a critique of critique, among other strategies. Micro-drama binge-watching thus becomes an everyday practice of identity negotiation: viewers do not simply accept the cultural judgements attached to their media tastes, but actively negotiate the self and make limited adjustments to existing standards of evaluation. In doing so, the study further reveals the complex relationship among hierarchies of taste, mediated pleasure, and self-formation.