Some popular social media accounts that depict “lying down”—eschewing the rat race in favor of a more frugal, less ambitious, low-consumption lifestyle—have recently been deplatformed, to the dismay of their many fans. Although the bans were ostensibly for “violating platform rules and regulations,” there is widespread speculation that they were targeted for deletion because their easygoing ethos clashed with central government policies promoting marriage, childbirth, homebuying, consumption, and relentless hard work and sacrifice. As the government struggles to address record-high youth unemployment, stagnant wages, and sluggish real-estate and consumer sectors, it seems to view these “simple life” video content creators as a pernicious influence.
This is not the first time that Chinese authorities have cracked down on those who would prefer to lie down, drop out, or at least take life a bit slower: in May of 2021, a “lie-downism” Douban group with close to 10,000 members was banned. A month later, a leaked censorship directive translated by CDT revealed a mandate from cyberspace authorities for e-commerce platforms to cease selling items featuring the terms “lie down,” “lie-downism,” and “involution.” State media and the Communist Youth League (CYL) have launched periodic broadsides against perceived slackerism. In 2021, just before the Douban group was banned, an article in the official Guangming Daily criticized the “lying flat” movement as detrimental to China’s economic and social development. In June 2024, a CYL-produced online video survey designed to combat “lie-downism” was roundly derided by Chinese netizens. The previous year, leaked screenshots (later censored on Weibo) from CYL’s Guangzhou branch called for transforming disaffected “Four Won’t Youth” into “Four Will Youth”—that is, young people willing to date, get married, purchase real estate, and procreate. Columnist and WeChat blogger Tang Yinghong summed up the problem by pointing out that these young people “aren’t so much ‘lying down’ as finding that it is impossible to get ahead, mired as they are in a struggle to financially support themselves.”
The “lying down” videos that have grown popular on content-sharing platforms such as Bilibili and Douyin depict the daily lives of their creators, who may travel from city to city, living in inexpensive rented rooms, playing video games or sometimes napping at internet cafes, and shopping for and preparing meals on a limited budget. Vloggers who have reportedly been blocked or banned on Chinese platforms include peripatetic gamer “Little A is Online” (小A在上网, Xiǎo A zài shàngwǎng); fellow gaming enthusiasts “Internet Cafe Girl Little Qing” (网吧少女小青, Wǎngbā shàonǚ Xiǎo Qīng) and “Ten-Year Internet Cafe Legend” (十年网吧大神, Shínián wǎngbā dàshén); and once-homeless vlogger “Mr. Niu” (浪仔小牛, Làngzǎi xiǎoniú), who squatted for over two years in an abandoned villa in Hangzhou. Another well-known vlogger, Hu Chenfeng, has also reportedly had all of his social media accounts blocked this month. Hu was known for content focusing on science, health, urban life, the cost of living, and more. In 2023, his video interview with an elderly man living on a pension of 107 yuan per month (about $15 U.S. dollars) went viral and was later deleted by platform censors.
A less controversial type of “frugal living” trend can be seen in the popularity of “produce-scavenging videos” in which groups of young people save money on groceries by scavenging for leftovers at produce markets. These do not seem to be targeted for censorship; indeed, they were recently given fulsome praise in an Aurora News broadcast: “After knocking off work for the day, instead of heading to the shopping center, these young folks make a dash for the produce market, where they dig through piles of discarded fruits and vegetables to scavenge for [still edible] leftovers. Not only are they saving money, making friends, and doing the planet a good turn, they’re also discovering life’s simple joys.” Some Chinese social media users criticized the Aurora News anchor for being oblivious to the economic realities motivating these produce scavengers: poverty, underemployment, and wage stagnation.
CDT Chinese editors have archived a number of articles, social media posts, and online comments about the deplatforming of some popular “lying flat” vloggers, including Little A. A post from Weibo account 何牧歌耶 (Hé mùgē yé, “What bucolic life?”), which received many supportive comments, praised Little A for his honesty, simplicity, lack of materialism, and genuine “positive energy”:
A few days ago, Bilibili content creator “Little A is Online” had all of his videos deleted across the entire internet.
[…] Little A is very positive. Most of these content creators who share their difficult lives and financial struggles occasionally complain about how they ended up this way. Their commentary about welfare, basic income subsidies, unemployment rates, and similar issues tends to drift toward “keyboard politics.” But Little A rarely touches on such topics, and on the few occasions when he does, he is always very positive and supportive of government policy, quite well-behaved.
His genuine, approachable, down-to-earth personality and lack of pretension has gained him millions of followers. He never got into e-commerce livestreaming, and despite having so many followers, never signed with an MCN [multi-channel network] or aspired to make big bucks. His videos are more or less the same as they were two years ago, in that he’s still living a simple life in rented flats with barely functional heat or air-conditioning. He manages to get by on meager monthly earnings from a few small ads that accompany his videos.
He never caused any trouble for the Party or the country, and is completely self-sufficient.
But even a content creator such as him – someone who never criticized the government, begged for money, or accepted tips, and who dedicates himself to documenting his daily routine of sleeping late and playing games on the internet – still can’t escape the government’s disapproval, still can’t avoid being crushed by its iron fist.
And now this humble guy who wouldn’t harm a fly has been deprived of his living.
All I can say is this: sometimes, when you push people too far, there’s no telling what might happen. [Chinese]
A short post from another Weibo user, InsomniaR2023, discussed how videos produced by Little A and others like him offered Chinese viewers a welcome escape from the unrelenting demands of work, school, society, and the consumer economy:
Taken together, several events from the past few days are making me worried.
First, there’s the quiet crackdown on “lying-down” lifestyle vloggers. You won’t see any big announcements or overt criticism, but several vloggers have had their videos taken offline. It started with “Little A is Online,” who had all of his video content yanked from the internet. Sanji-kun, an early pioneer in this niche, was so slack [about posting new content] that he initially escaped scrutiny and didn’t have his videos taken down. But after posting a new video a few days ago, he was forced to delete it.
Second, a RedNote user posted a video describing the high-stress daily grind of working at a Midea [home appliance] factory, and it attracted unwanted attention. Someone showed up at their door, and all their content was taken offline.
Nearby, in Japan, the “lying down” or “slacker” approach to life has been a thing for quite some time. No matter how much you attack this attitude, as long as we’re all struggling to survive in this environment, there will always be some people who choose to take life “lying down.”
You can’t expect everyone to be upbeat and ambitious, and societal resources are finite. So why should everyone be expected to sacrifice their quality of life and squander decades of their energy in exchange for a shitty job, a mindless existence, and an endless cycle of saving, borrowing, and home-buying? [Chinese]
An article from WeChat account Paper Shadow (纸影, zhǐ yǐng) called the ban on these frugal vloggers a bitter warning for all young people who don’t want to be cogs in the wheel:
Little A’s disappearance is not an isolated case.
Some netizens have discovered that similar “lie-downist” vloggers like him, such as Liu Ergou, Internet Cafe Girl Little Qing, and Ten-Year Internet Cafe Legend (a group of accounts with tens of millions of fans between them) have been “cleaned up” recently.
[…] The problem may not be their videos, but the “attitude” they represent.
[…] The way they live their lives suggests another quiet possibility: “What if we just stopped playing the game?”
[…] But some observers see this kind of withdrawal as an affront.
[…] To be honest, I don’t completely agree with their lifestyle, but what matters to me is that they offer another way of thinking.
[…] What’s important is that their very presence is a comfort. It tells every ordinary person who comes home exhausted late at night: “Look, there’s more than one path in life, and more than one way to live.”
That comfort has now been taken away from us.
There might appear to be thousands of roads on the map, but the navigator always seems to point us in the direction of the same one.
If a young person who doesn’t steal or rob, cheat or deceive, but only wants to live a peaceful, low-cost life and decides to record it for us, he is apparently in “violation of the rules.”
This sends a truly worrying signal.
The Little As have vanished. But what about the enormous, overwhelming sense of exhaustion that inspired so many young people to want to become Little As? Has that vanished, too?
No, it has simply been buried, forced into silence. [Chinese]
CDT Chinese editors have also compiled a number of shorter comments from WeChat and Weibo users about the crackdown on the “lying down” content creators:
Happy嘻嘻乔巴: Sometimes it’s fine to “lie down.” I followed Little A and don’t know why he got banned, but supposedly it was for being out of line with government policy. Everyone’s already working like livestock, and now we can’t even “lie down” and take it slow sometimes?
BitBenbi: If it’s not their type of “positive energy,” they straight up delete it.
又红温又砖: Everyone knows it’s mindless entertainment, just good fun. But it made some people nervous.
猫手手: Slave away doing overtime to earn money to pay the bride price to get married, scrimp and save to get a mortgage on a house, then pump out three kids—yeah, that’s the life!
佛系2号机: Lying down is fine, what’s wrong with it?
断头力天使不会梦到赛博明日香: He might not work a regular job, but he’s not unemployed – he’s a content creator who posts videos, and still they decide to ban him? Salted Fish Dreamer [a vlogger who posts videos of himself eating] makes videos that are way more disgusting than his.
传说中爱吃草莓圣代的少年A: His videos were basically just him spending ten or more hours at night playing video games at an internet cafe, then going back to his cheap rental at dawn to sleep, then waking up and going back to the internet cafe. Now and then he’d work as a day laborer, doing odd jobs and that sort of thing. Little A might have been banned for mentioning that some people had DM’d to ask him advice about living that kind of life, which brought him unwanted attention.
狸狸龙龙: With ad revenue from 700,000 followers, he was feeding himself just fine. But anyone who took a page from his book and literally slacked off would have ended up skint.
你猜我说的啥: Haha, anyone who makes videos saying they’re slacking off isn’t actually a slacker. It’s the ones who believe them who are the real slackers.
多多的财富和福气: A nice guy who wouldn’t harm a fly, and they won’t even let him make a living.
厵子: What if you changed the wording a bit? Instead of saying you’re “lying down,” say you’re desperately searching for a 40-hour-per-week job that offers reasonable pay and weekends off, and you’re not going to give up until you find it. Would that still count as slacking off?
鱼唇的人类啊: That would count as “malicious job-seeking.”
腊月: It’s not that there are no jobs, a lot of places are hiring. But they’re offering jobs that require you to sacrifice your entire life for 3,000 yuan a month, so they can treat you like livestock and then forbid you from complaining because it has a negative effect on morale.
刘庆峰（流色）: Working full-out to earn money is materialism, and “lying down” is a lack of ambition. Both are taboo.
以琳: Young people are supposed to be the most vibrant demographic. But when you totally screw over this whole cohort of young people and then keep finding fault with them, without bothering to reflect on how your own extreme behavior contributed to the problem, there’s no hope for you!
南宫飞羽: You can’t be a slacker, can’t be materialistic, you just have to keep working and grinding away. When they put it that way, I get it: all we can do is wait until they grind us down to nothing. [Chinese]
