Platform affordances studies focus excessively on how media technologies provide roles for humans, ignoring diversified agents and their complicated relationship network, and overlooking the action logic in specific media ecology system. This study reflects on and transcends the theoretical framework of imagined affordances. Through participatory observation and in-depth interviews with MCNs and people in the MCN occupation, we examine the “two-way connection” relationship between MCNs and live streaming platforms with the progressive logic of “rule visibility- temporal order manipulation-emotional subjectivity”. This study imagines the logic of industry rules through the angle of the “other”, constructs the industry practice of “dependent/active” MCNs and the emotional subjectivity of practitioners, and focuses on the emotional experience and survival situation of individual practitioners in the live streaming industry. It is found that platforms constrain MCNs in terms of content selection standards and censorship; the manipulation of time order by platforms regulates the content production process of MCNs; and the positive or negative emotional expressions of MCN practitioners are the complex emotional projections of individuals on the survival situation in live streaming platforms. In the “two-way connection” relationship, live streaming platforms and MCNs generate meaningful space for each other and build a unique online live streaming ecology in China. Finally, this study also offers reflections on future research on imagined affordances theory.