This is why we can't have nice things
Subtitle: mapping the relationship between online trolling and mainstream culture
By: Whitney Phillips
Series: The information society series; Information society series
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
ISBN-13: 9780262028943
Subjects: Online etiquette; Moral and ethical aspects; Online identities; Internet; Social aspects; Internet users; Online chat groups
Description: Internet trolls live to upset as many people as possible, using all the technical and psychological tools at their disposal. They gleefully whip the media into a frenzy over a fake teen drug crisis; they post offensive messages on Facebook memorial pages, traumatizing grief-stricken friends and family; they use unabashedly racist language and images. They take pleasure in ruining a complete stranger's day and find amusementin their victim's anguish. In short, trolling is the obstacle to a kinder, gentler Internet. To quote a famous Internet meme, trolling is why we can't have nice things online. Or at least that's what we have ben led to believe. In this provocative book, Whitney Phillips argues that trolling, widely condemned as obscene and deviant, actually fits comfortably within the contemporary media landscape. Trolling may be obscene, but, Phillips argues, it isn't all that deviant. Trolls' actions are born of and fueled by culturally sanctioned impulses - which are just as damaging as the trolls' most disruptive behaviors. Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media - pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, "the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world," align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't have just a trolling problem. This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-223) and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Introduction; title: I. Subcultural Origins, 2003-2007; title: 1. Defining Terms: The Origins and Evolution of Subcultural Trolling; title: 2. The Only Reason to Do Anything: Lulz, Play, and the Mask of Trolling; title: 3. Toward a Method/ology; title: II. The "Golden Years," 2008-2011; title: 4. The House That Fox Built: Anonymous, Spectacle, and Cycles of Amplification; title: 5. LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages, and the Business of Mass-Mediated Disaster Narratives; title: 6. Race and the No-Spin Zone: The Thin Line between Trolling and Corporate Punditry; title: 7. Dicks Everywhere: The Cultural Logics of Trolling; title: III. The Transitional Period, 2012-2015; title: 8. The Lulz Are Dead, Long Live the Lulz: From Subculture to Mainstream; title: 9. Where Do We Go from Here? The Importance of Spinning Endlessly; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index