Text:
“We were at San Gabriel yesterday, and my friends joked to the coffee shop ‘Cotti Coffee’ that Shanghainese young masters like me won’t like it.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student who is originally from Shanghai. The piece emerged during a casual outing at a San Gabriel shopping area, where the informant’s friends spontaneously used the term “Shanghainese young master” as a joke directed at her. “Cotti Coffee” is a budget-friendly Chinese chain, which also means that it is significantly cheaper than other premium brands like Starbucks, which is also the butt of the joke. The term “Shanghainese young master” originated on Chinese social media platforms, where increased information flow made regional economic differences newly visible and discussable. It is used mockingly to describe Shanghainese people who, having grown up in one of China’s wealthiest cities, carry unconscious class privilege. This privilege is demonstrated in this case around consumption habits and taste. The informant received the joke good-naturedly, suggesting she recognizes herself in the stereotype.

Analysis:

This piece shows the way folk speech born on the internet negotiates class identity within a folk group. The term “Shanghainese young master” exemplifies internet folklore’s characteristic of rapid diffusion and variation: the joke emerges from online discussions of regional inequality and is incorporated into in-person social interaction, demonstrating the collapse of boundaries between digital and oral communication in the post-modern era. Moreover, the jokes operate through Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, or the idea that class position is not just economic but embodied in unconscious tastes and preferences (in this case, coffee consumption). Choosing or refusing a budget coffee chain becomes an involuntary performance of class identity, revealing what the informant has internalized as “normal” without conscious awareness. The joke also shows the way material culture functions as a marker of group identity: the coffee brand is a folk symbol through which insiders negotiate belonging, difference, and hierarchy.