Morning Lineup – June 11 – OnLine Trolls

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A dissertation on troll behavior

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

Whitney Phillips in an introduction to the book:

I first encountered trolling in the summer of 2007, after my then eighteen-year-old brother recommended I spend some time on 4chan’s /b/ board, one of the Internet ’ s most infamous and active trolling hotspots.

Needless to say, I was intrigued. I was also completely at a loss, and began writing my way into an explanation. One short project turned into another, which turned into another, which evolved into full-blown ethnographic research drawing from dozens of formal interviews and thousands of hours of participant observation. Ultimately, I decided to write an entire PhD dissertation on the subject, which I deposited with the University of Oregon in 2012. This book is an enhanced, expanded, and heavily revised version of that initial study.

Phillips describes the result of her research: “… within the postmillennial digital media landscape of the United States, trolls reveal the thin and at times nonexistent line between trolling and sensationalist corporate media.”

“The primary difference is that, for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity. For corporate media, it’s a business strategy. Because they don’t have to take censors or advertisers into account, trolls’ behaviors are often more conspicuously offensive, and more conspicuously exploitative. But often not by much. And unlike the media outlets that run sensationalist, racist, and exploitative content, trolling behaviors aren’t rewarded with a paycheck.”

“Trolls also fit very comfortably within the contemporary, hypernetworked digital media landscape. Not only do they put Internet technologies to expert and highly creative use, their behaviors are often in direct (if surprising) alignment with social media marketers and other corporate interests. Furthermore they are quite skilled at navigating and in fact harnessing the energies created when politics, history, and digital media collide. In short, rather than functioning as a counterpoint to “correct” online behavior, trolls are in many ways the grimacing poster children for the socially networked world.”

“That’s not the only overlap between trolling and the mainstream. In addition to parroting digital and terrestrial media tropes, trolls are engaged in a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes.”

“This book complicates the idea that trolls, and trolls alone, are why we can’t have nice things online. Instead, it argues that trolls are born of and embedded within dominant institutions and tropes, which are every bit as damaging as the trolls’ most disruptive behaviors. Ultimately, then, this is why we can’t have nice things, and is the point to which the title gestures: the fact that online trolling is par for the mainstream cultural course.”