The platformization of socially constructed gender realities: the ‘Fat Cat incident’ (2024)

This paper examines the “Fat Cat Incident” (2024), where a young Chinese gamer’s suicide after an online relationship breakdown sparked intense online discourse. Through inductive thematic analysis and qualitative sentiment analysis of 1,200 user comments from the female-oriented Xiaohongshu and male-dominated Zhihu platforms, we demonstrate how Chinese social media facilitate the social construction of polarized gender realities. Xiaohongshu users predominantly framed Fat Cat as an emotionally impulsive “hopeless romantic” while defending his ex-girlfriend’s right to financial compensation, whereas Zhihu users portrayed Fat Cat as a manipulated victim while characterizing his ex-girlfriend as a calculated “gold-digger” employing PUA tactics. The incident reveals three key processes: (1) gender norm construction via polarized discourse, (2) tragedy commodification into “liuliang” (traffic) and memes, and (3) transactional relationship normalization and digital gender segregation. This demonstrates how platforms shape social realities by reinforcing gender divides, monetizing emotion, and commodifying personal loss, offering critical insight into gender politics in China’s digital public sphere.