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Abstract
When the internet and social networking sites became a part of modern urban life, extensive research across social sciences has studied the motivation for participating in them; on the other hand, the mass aesthetic practice was a valid topic for philosophers even in ancient times. However, few studies combine those two topics to understand online artistic practices. The theoretical debate on mass art practices has often fallen into the dichotomy between the elite/capitalism industry and the repressed masses without digging into its subtlety. What should online mass artistic practice be like if decoupled from capitalism, and why would people join an online group where information exchange, sociality, and solidarity are not primary motivations? As a response, this study uses semi-structured qualitative interviews with active participants in a Douban (a Chinese Social Networking Site) group named “useless aesthetics,” whose members share the pictures that they regard as having pure aesthetic value without “utility” to fill the gaps in the previous two trends of discussions. The study demonstrates that the central motivation for participating in the online aesthetic group is to affirm a lifestyle of being perceptive and enamored with everyday experiences and rejecting mainstream thinking governed by the mere utility or material achievement. The participants need to demonstrate their affirmation through various techniques in their posts. However, as Adorno argued in his Aesthetic Theory, this potential power of art (in this study, the lifestyle) might not be achieved in reality and only manifests itself in an ideal. When the artistic lifestyle temporarily calls the participants, they might regard themselves as being healed from the utilitarian pressure; when the participants are continually on the stage free from the utilitarian pressure, they might, as a healer, radiate their spiritual brightness to others through posting.