‘Festival of ten thousand memes’: platformized performance in Shanghai Halloween 2023

This article examines Shanghai Halloween 2023 as a case of platformized performance. Drawing on participant observation, online materials, and eighteen semi-structured interviews, it investigates how mobile platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu reshape the conditions under which embodied costume performance becomes visible, circulates, and is interactively interpreted. The article argues that platformized performance operates through the recursive integration of visibility, circulation, and interaction. First, mobile recording, instant uploading, and algorithmic recommendation reconfigure Halloween from a localized street gathering into a hybrid performance space addressed simultaneously to on-site spectators and dispersed online audiences. Second, platform circulation transforms the repertoire of costume performance, shifting it from conventional Halloween figures toward meme-based expressions rooted in internet culture and everyday social experience. Third, mediated interaction enables participants and audiences to reinterpret work pressure, unemployment, burnout, and social anxiety as forms of ‘realistic horror’, turning costume performance into a playful yet socially resonant mode of affective expression and indirect critique. By demonstrating how platforms organize embodied practices across online and offline contexts, this article advances the concept of platformized performance and contributes to debates on mediatized performance, platform culture, and urban public expression in contemporary China.