Gripping the Controller but Grappling with More: How Player Agency in Virtual Spaces Allows Recognition of Real- World Violence Rather Than Instigating It – Shehryar Hanif

Gripping the Controller but Grappling with More: How Player Agency in Virtual Spaces Allows Recognition of Real-World Violence Rather Than Instigating It

SHEHRYAR HANIF

From the lack of a story in Tetris to the basic damsel-in-distress plot of Super Mario Bros. to the decades-long espionage saga of the Metal Gear Solid series, video games have evolved, increasingly tackling themes and issues previously only confined to film and literature. In this regard, the medium has particularly distinguished itself from its aforementioned counterparts by offering control directly to the players. Instead of solely relying on ageold narrative tropes, video games enable players to actively shape their experiences and build their own stories. However, as a result of affording players greater agency, many video games have been specifically attacked for encouraging physical violence and prejudiced behaviors. In extreme cases, politicians and media figures have even blamed the corrupting influence of video games as the root cause of mass shootings. I, however, argue that video games do not necessarily teach violence, but rather allow players to grapple with it. Because players have agency in the video games they play, they are not routinely conditioned into learning violence; rather, their takeaway is molded by their interactions with both story and gameplay. Through a meta-analysis of past texts on video game representations, I will demonstrate that player agency in single-player video games enables consumers to better understand violence — particularly indirect violence that is often free of blood and gore — because they are able to re-interpret their real-world experiences in light of their virtual actions. Since players must grapple with their choices and actions, they have better opportunities for self-reflection, and this leads to the development of greater empathy, a subversion of expectations, and a more nuanced understanding of social relations.

Video games have had an image problem that has only recently begun to change. They have long been viewed as shallow, being good only for hedonistic pleasure. Some, such as film critic Roger Ebert, have even said that “video games cannot be art” (Ebert); their sole purpose is short-term entertainment, not long-term cultural impact. However, psychological research by Oliver et al. indicates that video games can indeed provide “meaningful” (390) experiences. Over time, narratives have become more emotionally mature, exploring nuanced issues like identity and isolation in a more lifelike and complex manner (393). Even when they do not follow the stereotypical approach of prioritizing “fun” (393), such games have achieved critical and commercial success. For example, 2010’s Heavy Rain followed the heart-aching story of a father searching for his missing son. Though the “game at times felt more like an interactive movie than a video game” (402), it was highly praised for giving players greater freedom in how they approach the story and autonomously make choices because it led to them being more emotionally invested in the narratives. Oliver et al.’s work also showed that video games were most appreciated when the plot provided greater insight about issues that players connected with (396). Even when the form of presentation was unrealistic, they could endear people as long as their subject matter addressed relatable topics and/or provided an emotional outlet. Video games can, thus, shed light on issues that are otherwise on the periphery of people’s awareness.

The overlap of story and gameplay can lead to a profound and enduring impact on players. Research by Ricci et al. indicates that people recall information better when it is presented in the form of video games, rather than text. Because of the “immediate feedback, … and goal direction” (305), people pay greater attention to what is being presented, retaining what they learn long after they are done playing, so that they can use it to inform their real-world decisions. For instance, point systems in spelling games can instill the importance of having a good eye for detail and/or correctness through positive gratification and negative punishments. Because video games disseminate messages so effectively, game developers have increasingly tackled complex topics in innovative ways.

In particular, a greater proportion of video games, rather than depicting only physical violence, are kickstarting discussions about the forms of suffering that are normally imperceptible and difficult to externalize. Unlike tangible somatic injuries, emotional and mental pain festers inside the mind, whereby a person becomes their own source of ill-being. Because it is difficult to express, the violence of internal anguish is further worsened by feelings of isolation. Video games can help remedy these issues of solitude by serving as accessible representations of otherwise-abstract issues. By putting players directly into the characters’ shoes, they can illustrate the troubles that others go through in a lifelike, unglamorized manner, and thereby provide a certain degree of relatability that is conducive to higher levels of empathy.

Consequently, video games can provide a voice to the voiceless. For example, 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was lauded for its depiction of schizophrenia, with psychologist Charles Fernyhough calling it the “best representation [he’s] heard of what these experiences are like” (Sherrif). The game’s basic premise is about Senua, a young female warrior who journeys to Hell to save her lover’s soul, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Senua’s bigger battle is with the psychosis she developed as a result of her father’s abuse. Throughout the game, the player experiences the eponymous character’s “voices”, both as an important narrative device and as a key gameplay mechanic. Herein, the developers centralized the protagonist’s personal struggle in the story, putting the player in constant confrontation with the strain of her mental illness. Because games like Hellblade demand active engagement with complex issues, they are able to provide relatability and cognizance otherwise missing in film due to passive viewership. People are able to broaden their understanding of what constitutes violence and consequently recognize it as more than just what is tangible.

Players can better identify real-world oppression by first experiencing it in virtual spaces. Sociologist Johan Galtung has described “structural violence” as the “difference between the potential and the actual” (168). According to him, many forms of violence are not physical but rather result from the unrealized gap between people’s potential social standing and their actual reality (the former is often better). Because resources are finite and the

“power to decide over [their] distribution … is unevenly distributed” (171), the spread of wealth and power is inequitable. Problematically, such real-life social exploitation lacks “drama” (171), remaining invisible and consequently unaddressed. In comparison, gore and blood is more spectacular, and draws attention — both in real life and in video games. However, because video game depictions of physical violence tend to be heavily embellished, players are likely to find the representations of indirect violence that are innate to society’s power structures to be more consistent with their sense of reality and, therefore, more memorable.

Denham et al.’s case study of the crime-simulator Grand Theft Auto V demonstrated that players gain insight through video game representations of structural violence. Interviewing fifteen college students, they found that the game’s depictions of systematic exploitation in Los Santos — a satirized recreation of Los Angeles — were readily seen to reflect the real world even if they were presented in an exaggerated manner. For example, by “playing into … stereotypes” of “white-wealth and white-poverty,” the game could “orient the player inside of this culturally imagined poverty using the player’s ‘transgressive imagination’” (8). Because players’ expectations of capitalism’s dangers aligned with the game’s hyperreal image of financial injustice, they were able to obtain a more acute awareness of the inequitable distribution of wealth present in their own society.

Still, media depictions of structural inequalities are not new; in fact, many movies and books (e.g., Parasite, V for Vendetta) have been lauded for highlighting class divides. However, what differentiates Grand Theft Auto V from these alternate media forms is how it utilizes player agency to manipulate expectations about violence. In the aforementioned study by Denham et al., participants saw the game’s interpersonal violence to be exaggerated and the game mechanics (e.g. shooting, driving) to be flawed (15). Because they knew the game’s physics and death mechanics were inaccurate, they did not believe much in them; the gameplay mechanics only served the purpose of entertainment. In contrast, although they too were heightened, the narrative tropes were found to be relatable (8). As there was such a jarring contrast between how realistic the social commentary and

player actions were, the environmental storytelling was able to effectively provide meaning beyond the virtual space. Because video games can offer hedonic and eudaimonic gratification through distinct avenues, violence’s different forms can be presented in contrasting manners, making it easier for players to compartmentalize their understanding of them. For example, in the case of Grand Theft Auto V, the player’s recognition of structural violence stemmed from the game world’s contextual information while their opinion of physical violence’s gratuitousness was based on the illogical gameplay. The game did not forego physical violence but was still able to address other forms of social injustice. Thus, the interplay between different design aspects allow for unique depictions of structural violence that inform people’s understanding of the real world.

Video games can utilize the freedom of player agency to subvert expectations and comment on real-world autonomy. Gameplay does not have to be just an exercise of players’ freedom; rather, it can reveal individuals’ lack of volition. As described by Bourdieu and Passeron, people often unsuspectingly fall prey to “symbolic violence”, whereby they follow “power[s] … [that manage] to impose meanings and … impose them as legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force” (4). Through implicit cultural norms, people inculcate ideologies that support the domination of certain groups/individuals and the subordination of others. These power differentials translate into acts of violence that are often unconscious in nature. Privy to these concerns about individuals’ independence, developers have leveraged the notion of control to raise awareness about social injustices.

Case in point, the first-person-shooter, BioShock, can be seen as not just a critique of objectivism but also a demonstration of symbolic violence. The game follows protagonist Jack in the underwater city of Rapture, a former utopia that now stands abandoned. For the majority of the story, the player is guided by the voice of the anonymous Atlas. The player constantly accepts Atlas’s advice at face-value, seeing him as a kind benefactor that only has Jack’s well-being at heart; this association is reinforced by imagery and reminders about the “influence” Atlas can have and how he will use it for

good. Eventually, however, the game reveals that Atlas only meant to use Jack for his own benefit and had fed him lies about his purpose. Though the player had believed that they were the one in power and had been following someone else’s advice only by choice, the truth was that their implicit bias to trust the power hierarchy had led to them becoming another person’s pawn. A replay of the game shows that the player’s various actions were all shaped in one way or the other by their trust in the influential Atlas. Therefore, even when they killed other characters, the players were indirectly committing violence against themselves. By letting someone else dictate their choices and actions, they had inadvertently surrendered their own individual agency. Herein, the game’s depiction of willful subservience serves as a metacommentary on real life: just as Jack follows Atlas blindly in the game, people in the real world also have a tendency to support groups that are working against their interests, which in turn leads to symbolic violence. Thus, player agency can show people how they can be unconsciously subservient to other powers even when they believe themselves to be in control.

The player’s active involvement in video games also allows self-reflection on the moral responsibility of violence. According to Galtung, structural violence lacks an evident “subject-object relation” (171) since there is not always a clear perpetrator or victim. Video games have also increasingly looked inwards about the agency of violence by asking players to reconsider the consequences of their in-game and real-world actions. For instance, in BioShock, on one hand, Atlas was pulling the strings, while on the other, Jack (and, by extension, the player) was the one committing the final acts of physical violence. Herein, like most cases of invisible violence, the line between intention and consequence was blurred. However, rather than provide a morally deterministic conclusion about the violence, the experience of playing a game offers players the chance to reexamine their past actions in a different light, thereby providing insight through experience and introspection. Consequently, the game is able to convey the message that violence’s roots are not always traceable to a single source; the final act of social injustice is often the culmination of many agents and factors. Here, the game mechanics act as a storytelling device that can be used to convey the complex and varied nature of violence.

Similarly, video games can play around consumerism and help players grapple with the “violence of positivity” described by post-Marxist ByungChul Han. According to Han, the modern era is characterized by “an excess of mobility, of consumption, … and of production” (90); such violence manifests as mundane parts of everyday life. In this regard, video games’ various personalization features reflect real-world consumerist patterns. In fact, according to Denham et al.’s research, Grand Theft Auto V players felt that the game most mirrored their “sense of the real” in the case of “passive” actions like shopping (11). Given an abundance of choices, players were motivated to buy and attain customizable apparel even if the only effect was a change in appearance. Because the game’s diegesis implicitly pressured them into buying more goods, players were able to recognize the “embedded transactional nature of capitalism” (11), which similarly creates artificial needs for new goods and services (i.e., the feeling that “more is better”). In this case, even though the in-game currency did not require real-world payment, the game’s virtual economy still mirrored the exploitative ethos of commercialization. By encountering such representations of social systems, players are able to better navigate through exploitative situations that can prove harmful in the real world. Thus, video games do not need to confront the topic of violence head-on to be effective. Rather, subtextual cues can often be enough for people to link their personal experiences and further their understanding of social injustice.

Player agency leveraged in the form of story decisions and non-traditional, choice-centric gameplay can also be very impactful. In fact, the last few years have seen an upsurge in graphic adventure video games where players have plentiful opportunities to shape the central narrative but little other gameplay flexibility. These games do not completely dispose of the conventional gameplay mechanics but rather decenter them; their primary objective is to tell a meaningful (and possibly branching) story based on the player’s choices. Because of this non-conventional approach, this new genre of games has received great praise, being particularly highlighted for their greater moral complexity. Conventional role-playing video games often shape their story according to a narrow point-based system, which rewards “good” deeds and punishes “evil” ones (Sicart 208). As a result, the

structure of such video games is highly linear and akin to moral policing. In contrast, due to the higher number of branching paths, decisions in graphic adventures are made with little foresight of their potential consequences and without the constraints of an evaluation system. The uncertainty mimics that of real life, where people have to navigate through unforeseen circumstances. Because choices in graphic adventures carry a greater weight in the story compared to most video games, they are likely to be made with more care, thereby offering better opportunities for introspection — both when a decision is initially made and when its results pan out.

In particular, engagement with a more in-depth and flexible narrative allows for a better understanding of violence’s effect on social relationships. In this regard, Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead is an insightful example of a graphic adventure that places “player agency [not in the gameplay, but] … in the players’ interpretations of the game text” (Stang) and consequently imparts a greater emotional effect. In the game, the player takes on the role of Lee Everett, a university professor, who amidst a zombie outbreak has to take on the role of surrogate father to Clementine, an eight-year-old he met by chance. To survive, Everett has to often choose between bloodybut-pragmatic and pacifistic-but-risky decisions — neither of which are strictly encouraged nor discouraged. Herein, Clementine acts as an ethical barometer, with the story implicitly encouraging the player to consider what she might take away from their choices (Stang). But even Clementine does not always immediately react towards the player’s choices with gratitude or disapproval; rather, depending on what Everett does, she will eventually start altering her behavior in social situations (e.g., how easily she trusts other human beings). As a result, the game draws the player’s attention to the unintentional ramifications of their actions, demonstrating how violence is neither isolated nor one-time; its aftereffects often spread out and affect individuals that are neither perpetrators nor direct victims. Because of their emotional connection with Clementine, the player is able to directly relate to the story and gain insight about the interconnectivity of their actions. Thereby, the game conveys to the player that violence, by nature, is often muddled and can impact third-parties in unforeseen ways.

Not all video games require violence, and peaceful resolution can bring its own unique insights. Many role-playing games now allow players to advance the story through a variety of non-violent means, such as stealth or dialogue. Rather than depicting gratuitous violence, such games present the player with the option to not commit harm and leverage it as a narrative tool instead. Such video games’ circumstantial violence is “latent” in nature; even if it “is something which is not [necessarily] there, [it] might [either] easily come about” (Galtung 172) or be prevented. For instance, in 2015’s Undertale, the player controls the sole human in a world brimming with distrusting monsters, but is never forced to fight during any of the game’s many physical confrontations. Rather, the protagonist is able to converse with other characters and solve the issues that have caused them to become violent, thereby defusing the situation peacefully. In fact, the player can complete the entire story in a pacifist manner. Consequently, because they provide the player with alternate avenues of gratification, games like Undertale demonstrate how violence is often unnecessary and sometimes even counterproductive; many times, other avenues of action are just as effective, but are ignored because they lack the immediate apparency of the violent route. Moreover, since they place the moral imperative of violence on the protagonists’ shoulders, the games encourage — but do not force — the player to seek out peaceful forms of resolution. As a result, people will be able to realize that real-world violence is often the result of deeper problems that can be more effectively neutralized through an empathetic and intentional exploration of other people’s motivations rather than through violent means that endanger all involved parties (including both the perpetrator and the victim). Even if the structural problems enabling the violence are outside of one’s control, particular crises can still be resolved on a case-by-case basis (like when two individuals are directly interacting with each other and actively make the choice to take the pacifist route), so as to prevent social injustice from coming to fruition.

When a video game offers players the ability to impact the virtual space around them, it simultaneously provides them with hyperreal social contexts with real-world generalizability. Interactions with the game world, manipulation of various gameplay mechanics and a direct influence on a

game’s narrative can all help improve players’ understanding of invisible violence. Because players are actively engaged in gameplay, they have a better spatial awareness of unfolding action and are able to link the video games’ signs and symbols to both their own individual experiences and the outside world’s structural oppression. Still, there is less clarity regarding whether higher levels of agency also increase the amount of insight obtained by players. Given how a player’s understanding of violence is closely tied to the overall impact a game imparts, deciphering the relation between player agency and meaningfulness is key to understanding players’ perception of video game violence. In this regard, case studies of players’ choices in open-world games should be conducted, so as to understand why people choose the gameplay paths that they undertake: do they select options that maximize entertainment or the ones that provide the most meaning, or is it something in between? Although video games have already proven themselves to be a profoundly powerful medium for depictions of violence and injustice, leveraging the potential impact of player agency will only further allow them to fully transcend storytelling media to become a tool for greater social impact.

WORKS CITED

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Blued, or Be Lewd: A Study of a Chinese Gay Dating App

SOPHIA LIN

Today, forty million people, which is more than the entire population of Canada, are using an online dating app called Blued (Jing; “Canada Population (LIVE)”). Blued is not just any dating app; it is a dating app based in mainland China, specifically designed for gay men. Its features closely resemble those of its western counterpart, Grindr, including profile photos, messages, live video streaming, and private live chat. Although Blued may not be a novelty in countries like the U.S., where Grindr has been around since 2009, Blued is unprecedented in the more conservative and less tolerant Chinese society. Many news pages covered the success of this untraditional Chinese app. For example, CGTN — a Chinese international news channel — described this app as “taboo-busting” (“Taboo-busting gay app”). Similarly, India Today claims that this app has helped the gay community “develop a positive selfimage and fight social prejudices that force [gay people] to stay anonymous” (Reuters). However, by doing a close analysis of the app and drawing upon relevant literature about the social practice of “passing”, this paper will show that Blued’s popularity is a product of heteronormativity and homophobia in China. Instead of being “taboo-busting,” Blued is conforming to and reinforcing the existing norms by providing an online space for Chinese gay men to lead a double life and creating a culture that invalidates the realness of gay identities and relationships.

Firstly, an overview of (in)tolerance in China illustrates why this app may appear to be “taboo-busting.” Homosexuality remains a stigmatized subject and is often pathologized in China. Until 2001, the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD) had classified homosexuality and bisexuality as mental disorders (Wu 118). Even after the release of CCMD-3, which removed such classification, many health professionals in China still consider homosexuality a disorder that requires sexual orientation conversion efforts (Bhandari). The Chinese government is also curbing the acceptance of

homosexuality with its laws and regulations. Although there is no law ruling being gay as illegal, the Chinese government frequently uses the phrase “not encouraging, not discouraging and not promoting” when addressing the topic of the gay community in China (Mountford 3). This stance taken by the Chinese government further alienates gay people in China, deeming them part of an obscene subculture that cannot be officially recognized and needs to stay out of the public sphere.

Part of this ‘obscene’ community was Geng Le, the founder of Blued. A New York Times article written by Javier C. Hernández covered Geng Le’s life story: for more than a decade, Geng Le led a secret double life. In the real world, he lived with his real name, Ma Baoli. He was a policeman, a husband, and a father in Qinhuangdao in northern China. Meanwhile, online, he was Geng Le—an activist who created a website, Danlan.org (Mandarin for “light blue”), in 2000 for gay men in China to connect and share their stories. His double life was discovered by his supervisors at his workplace in 2012, and as a result, he had to come out of the closet. Consequences then followed: because discrimination based on sexual orientation was, and is still, legal in China, he was ‘rightfully’ fired from the police force (Mountford 5). His wife left him, and his whole family was ashamed and distressed. That was when he, with his pseudonym Geng Le, created Blued, the first gay dating app in China (Hernández).

Geng Le is not the only individual in China who has faced an incredible amount of family and social rejection because of his sexual orientation. According to a survey done in China by Peking University in 2016, “58% of respondents (gay and straight) agreed with the statement that gays are rejected by their families… Fewer than 15% [of gays] said they had come out to their families, and more than half of those who did said they had experienced discrimination as a result” (J.P.). A study done by the UN Development Programme found out that “only around 5% choose to disclose their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression at school, in the workplace, or in the religious communities” (“Being LGBTI in China” 8). In these statistics, it is overwhelmingly apparent that Chinese society largely rejects the gay community and forces Chinese gay men to stay in the closet.

Being in such an inhospitable climate, gay men in China are compelled by society’s standards to conform to the heterosexual norms. In the book Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China by Tiantian Zheng, a sociologist and anthropologist at the State University of New York, Zheng includes a detailed account of her interviews with several Chinese gay men. One of the interviewees commented that “when a person…wants to live like a normal person, he has to get married [to a woman],” and the other interviewees agreed with this distressing but true statement (Zheng 142). That is what Geng Le, the founder of Blued, did as well—he married a straight woman and had a child. In fact, according to research done by Beichuan Zhang, a Professor at Qingdao University, as much as “80 percent of gay men in China have, due to the toxic combination of family and societal pressure, entered traditional marriages with straight women” (Bram). This data further demonstrates that the need to comply with the heterosexual norm in China is both real and utterly coercive.

One may question how the popularity of Blued, the gay dating app, fits into this homophobic and heteronormative society. CGTN offers a seemingly plausible answer—this app challenges and perpetuates societal norms. However, the truth is that Blued offers Chinese gay men a place to hide digitally. While hiding in the closet and conforming to the heterosexual norms, Chinese gay men have always sought out other ways to connect and fulfill their sexual desires. Before the era of social media, the most popular gathering places for gay men in Beijing were public bathroom stalls (Buoye et al. 305-306). Bathroom stalls offered these men the discretion and anonymity they needed, given that their sexuality was disapproved of in public. In Chinese society today, with the readily accessible Internet, gay dating apps like Blued have taken over the role of bathroom stalls. Blued now functions as bathroom stalls, where Chinese gay men gather to connect and fulfill their needs without having to come out to the public. It is a digital place parallel to the physical place where gay men would usually gather. Like the bathroom stalls, Blued grants its users the discretion and anonymity they need. On Blued, people are visible only to others on the app. Although users have personal profile pages, they are not obliged to use their real names, put in real information about themselves, or show pictures with their faces. Blued is like a sheltered sanctuary for these gay men

in China, whose identity and orientation can bring them discrimination and rejection out in the real world.

This hidden sanctuary offered by Blued helps users live a double life. Blued’s founder, Geng Le, had lived a double life for many years, being both a husband to a woman and a gay activist online. The double personas he took on enabled him to both conform to societal expectations and fulfill his desires. Similar stories are found on Zhihu—a Chinese question-and-answer website similar to Quora—where some Blued users shared their thoughts and experience of using Blued: “To me, Blued may be one of the only ways we can find people like us because, in the general environment of China, we are not accepted…Even when I meet someone like me in the real world, I won’t ‘come out.’ It’s too risky…” said an anonymous Blued user on Zhihu (Anonymous). Another user who marked himself as a student from southern China on Zhihu said he was often approached by middle-aged men who are already married to women in real life but using Blued as a hook-up app (Xiaoluluanzhuang). Because users can easily construct a persona that may or may not be the same as the persona they take on in real life, Blued enables closeted gay men to be openly gay online.

This kind of double life—ranging from only revealing one’s homosexuality to marrying a woman in real life and being gay online—is comparable to the life of gay men in New York City before WWII when the society was aggressively homophobic. George Chauncey, a professor of history at Columbia University, wrote about gay men in New York during that time in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. Chauncey observed that to cope with the hostile environment, gay men in New York developed their system of subcultural codes, including dress code, style of speech, etc., that helped them to recognize one another but remain unintelligible to others (Chauncey 4). These codes enabled them to pass as heterosexual, straight men. Passing is a kind of cultural performance in which individuals present themselves as persons they are not. It enables people to “escape the subordination and oppression accompanying one identity and accessing the privileges and status of the other” (Ginsberg 3). Borrowing this terminology, we can see that many gay men in China today

are also passing. Today, Chinese society is less hostile towards gay men than American society back then, where being gay in public meant the risk of violence and arrest (Chauncey 5). However, Chinese gay men still feel pressured by societal norms to pass as heterosexuals to avoid the rejection and discrimination that are likely to arise from being openly gay. Apps like Blued are like the New Yorkers’ codes, enabling gay men in China to seek out each other online while passing as heterosexuals in real life.

Passing seems to be a reasonable strategy for Chinese gay men to cope with the homophobic society. However, the double life that Blued facilitates invalidates the legitimacy and seriousness of gay relationships and practices, thereby leading its users to consider their passing identity as more meaningful and real than their actual identity. This can be illustrated through a closer look at Blued’s user interface. There is a noticeable difference between Blued’s interface and that of other dating apps such as Tinder. For example, on Tinder, to connect with someone, a user first has to swipe right on the profile of the person he or she is interested in, and then wait to see if that other person is also interested to get matched. This already fast-paced dating model is made even more fast-paced on Blued. Blued does not have the swiping feature. Instead, upon opening the app, the user sees something similar to a menu—a grid of nearby users’ profile pictures. All the user has to do is click on the person he is interested in and send him a message directly. To make things even simpler and faster, the personal information one can put in only includes age, height, weight, race, body type, location, the language(s) he speaks, and what he is looking for (e.g., friends, relationships, or hook-ups). There is nothing like hobbies or a few lines to describe oneself. Everything is so straightforward that the app seems only to be facilitating the meeting of sexual needs, instead of actual meaningful relationships.

This instant hook-up culture promoted by Blued’s user interface corresponds to what one of the interviewees noted in Tiantian Zheng’s research: “in China, being gay is only a ‘youthful fling’ that is never meant to last. When people got older, they would have to stop their gay life and lead a normal life—a straight life” ( 142). Blued reinforces this conception that being gay

and connecting with other gay men can only be for temporary fulfillment of desires instead of for long-term relationships. Thereby, gay men who use Blued to lead a double life are prompted to see that their sexuality is something obscene that needs to be hidden away from the public persona. Even in their secret gay life on Blued, their gay relationships are ‘youthful flings’ that are by no means normal like the heterosexual relationships they may have in real life. Therefore, the app’s user interface and culture demonstrate that Blued conforms to and even reproduces the existing heteronormative norm in China, instead of challenging it.

Furthermore, Blued reinforces the legitimacy of heteronormativity in China by preventing the construction of self as a gay person. American philosopher Judith Butler argues that “that which it excludes in order to make that determination remains constitutive of the determination itself” (Butler 309). In the context of passing and double life, Butler’s words can be interpreted as saying that by claiming one identity, a person also denies the other one. More specifically, when passing as heterosexual, a person denies the realness of his identity as a gay man. Butler’s idea illustrates that by facilitating passing and a double life, Blued reifies a person’s heterosexual persona and stifles the construction of the person’s true gay identity. The question of realness also arises from Geng Le’s life story. Till today, he is known by his pseudonym, Geng Le. He still resorts to the put-up persona to appear in public. Even though it has been many years since he came out of the closet, he still associates his fake name, Geng Le, with his real identity as a gay man. Behind his seemingly empowering and revolutionary public image, he is still questioning the legitimacy of his homosexuality and conforming to the established system of heteronormativity by hiding his real identity behind his fake name.

“Blued, or Be Lewd” seems like a fitting hidden slogan for Blued. In the homophobic and toxically heteronormative Chinese society, this app suggests that gay men have only two choices—either being openly gay and thereby considered “lewd” in the real world or passing as a straight man and only revealing their identity on discrete and anonymous social media platforms like Blued. It was due to stigma and social pressure that

the founder of this app resorted to a pseudonym and a secluded online platform. Similarly, it is the lack of tolerance and support for the Chinese gay community that gives rise to the popularity of Blued. On top of that, Blued itself promotes an instant hook-up culture that reinforces the notion that gay relationships are not legitimate and cannot be normalized like heterosexual relationships. The lack of realness in the secluded world of Blued reproduces heteronormativity and rejects Chinese gay men by prompting them to accept their passing heterosexual identity as a more real and valid identity.

As much as one may hope that such an unprecedented platform in China may lead the society closer towards acceptance and tolerance, it is regrettably true that this app is just another “bathroom stall” where Chinese gay men have to hide and avoid being seen as lewd. The situation in China calls for actions that will bring about true changes in the way the Chinese gay community perceives itself and is perceived by the rest of the society. “Blued, or Be Lewd” should not be the future of gay men in China.

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177

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186 EXIT 11

This picture depicts Abra Water Taxis, Dubai’s most traditional mode of transport. Deviating from it is the background of Dubai’s skyline, a pictureperfect representation of a modern city. The contrast between the old and the new highlights Dubai beyond its quintessential modernity and sheds light on its infinite complexities. Finally, the idea behind the sunset was the end - giving way to a new beginning.

“Connecting the old Dubai to the new” by Sashank Silwal

“What I enjoy the most about teaching my First-year Writing Seminar is how the structure of the course allows for a development of radical curiosity. In my class we ask complicated—well, impossible—questions and we beautifully fail to answer them. That’s not to say that we don’t answer them, but we work together to realize that a fundamental part of academic knowledge production is to realize that these questions cannot be answered in full, at least not by one person, thinker, writer. The best essays are curious, engaging, and, oftentimes, imperfect. They provide you with a sense of the writer and take the reader’s experience seriously. They argue and they allow the reader to disagree. Exit 11 highlights the best of our students’ essays--their complexity, their impossibility. As a journal we keep in the Writing Center, Exit 11 serves as a great teaching tool, as a way of showing students that what they are trying to accomplish is indeed possible.”

Ken Nielsen, Associate Director of the Writing Program and Director of the Writing Center

“As a managing editor, it is a matter of great pride and pleasure to be able to publish this volume regardless of the unprecedented challenges we faced during this pandemic. Our writers, editors and administrators stayed committed to this project. The online editorial meetings involved regular reflections and debates on what we value in students’ essays. Those discussions and deliberations also helped us grow as teachers of writing. Exit 11 displays the strong team work of the editors alongside the academic caliber of NYUAD students.”

Sweta Kumari, Managing Editor & Associate Instructor of Writing

COVER PHOTO: FIZZA FATIMA RANA