The ‘rat person’ trend is here – and I thoroughly approve | Arwa Mahdawi
Do you like sleeping, eating and scrolling? Me too. What if I told you this was also a way to protest capitalism?Somewhere in Zhejiang province, China, a woman is living my dream. She gets up in the morning and then, almost immediately, goes back to bed. She lies prostrate all day long, scrolling, eating some food, opening some packages, showering at 2am, then snoozing again. As a longtime sleep enthusiast – and the mother of a child who thinks that 5am is a good time to start the day, all systems go – I think this sounds like bliss.The woman in Zhejiang is known as @jiawensishi – and also “rat person”. I am not being rude; that’s what she calls herself. There are lots of rat people out there: it’s a whole trend in China. You might have heard of the “lying flat” movement a few years ago, when young people lazed around displaying symptoms of mild depression, and some thinkers, including the novelist Liao Zenghu, theorised that it was a passive-aggressive resistance movement, rebelling against the demands of materialism and capitalism. Well, “rat people” are a rodenty reboot. Continue reading...

Do you like sleeping, eating and scrolling? Me too. What if I told you this was also a way to protest capitalism?
Somewhere in Zhejiang province, China, a woman is living my dream. She gets up in the morning and then, almost immediately, goes back to bed. She lies prostrate all day long, scrolling, eating some food, opening some packages, showering at 2am, then snoozing again. As a longtime sleep enthusiast – and the mother of a child who thinks that 5am is a good time to start the day, all systems go – I think this sounds like bliss.
The woman in Zhejiang is known as @jiawensishi – and also “rat person”. I am not being rude; that’s what she calls herself. There are lots of rat people out there: it’s a whole trend in China. You might have heard of the “lying flat” movement a few years ago, when young people lazed around displaying symptoms of mild depression, and some thinkers, including the novelist Liao Zenghu, theorised that it was a passive-aggressive resistance movement, rebelling against the demands of materialism and capitalism. Well, “rat people” are a rodenty reboot. Continue reading...