Diaosi

The term diaosi (屌丝) first appeared in October 2011 on Baidu Tieba, China's largest online forum, during a dispute between two sub-forums.1 Members of one group hurled it as an insult. The targeted group adopted it. Within months, millions of young Chinese were using the word to describe themselves.

The literal translation is crude, roughly "pubic hair," but the social meaning evolved rapidly into something closer to self-aware underdog.2 China Radio International named it the number one internet buzzword of 2012.3

A 2013 survey by the Chinese gaming company Giant Interactive found that 529 million young people across China, roughly forty percent of the population, identified with the term.4 A Sohu survey found that 64 percent of people in their twenties, 81 percent in their thirties, and 70 percent in their forties could identify with the feeling of being a diaosi.5

The typical self-described diaosi was born in the 1980s, earned around 2,917 yuan per month, and lived far from home. Roughly seventy-five percent had migrated to cities for work.6

The word emerged in counterpoint to gaofushuai (tall, rich, handsome), the idealized male type in Chinese consumer culture. A diaosi had no car, no house, no connections. Yet the term carried a defiant edge: pop culture icon Han Han, a wealthy Shanghai blogger, called himself "an authentic diaosi who started from scratch with no power or connections."7

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun remarked that the Chinese mobile industry belonged to the diaosi.8 A generation that could not afford to compete on the terms the economy offered had invented a vocabulary for opting out of the competition.