TY - JOUR
T1 - It Wasn’t Just the Trolls
T2 - Early Internet Culture, “Fun,” and the Fires of Exclusionary Laughter
AU - Phillips, Whitney
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/4/1
Y1 - 2019/4/1
N2 - When considering the extremist turn of the Trump-era internet, it is critical to interrogate the influence of subcultural trolling on and around 4chan from 2008 to 2012. The troll space isn’t the only space worth interrogating, however. During this same period, there was a marked overlap between subcultural trolling and the nebulous, discursive category known colloquially as “internet culture.” Both were swiftly absorbed into broader popular culture. Both were characterized by overwhelming irony and detached, fetishized laughter. That participants in these early internet culture spaces (which included but were not limited to “classic” subcultural trolling) were overwhelmingly white, middle class, and felt comfortable enough in their subject positions to respond to the world with a blanket “lol” speaks to much deeper problems than the obvious problems. Pressingly, the things that were—and that for some people, still are—fun and funny and apparently harmless online need more careful unpacking. Fun and funny and apparently harmless things have a way of obscuring weapons that privileged people cannot see, because they do not have to see them. They also have a way of establishing precedent and a step-by-step media manipulation guide that is easily hijacked by those looking to do harm, whose actions often fly under the radar—because those actions look familiar, because they look like the things that used to be fun.
AB - When considering the extremist turn of the Trump-era internet, it is critical to interrogate the influence of subcultural trolling on and around 4chan from 2008 to 2012. The troll space isn’t the only space worth interrogating, however. During this same period, there was a marked overlap between subcultural trolling and the nebulous, discursive category known colloquially as “internet culture.” Both were swiftly absorbed into broader popular culture. Both were characterized by overwhelming irony and detached, fetishized laughter. That participants in these early internet culture spaces (which included but were not limited to “classic” subcultural trolling) were overwhelmingly white, middle class, and felt comfortable enough in their subject positions to respond to the world with a blanket “lol” speaks to much deeper problems than the obvious problems. Pressingly, the things that were—and that for some people, still are—fun and funny and apparently harmless online need more careful unpacking. Fun and funny and apparently harmless things have a way of obscuring weapons that privileged people cannot see, because they do not have to see them. They also have a way of establishing precedent and a step-by-step media manipulation guide that is easily hijacked by those looking to do harm, whose actions often fly under the radar—because those actions look familiar, because they look like the things that used to be fun.
KW - Internet culture
KW - Internet humor
KW - extremism
KW - irony
KW - meme culture
KW - trolling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068959095&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85068959095&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2056305119849493
DO - 10.1177/2056305119849493
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068959095
SN - 2056-3051
VL - 5
JO - Social Media and Society
JF - Social Media and Society
IS - 3
ER -