This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
250This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
250Paperback(Reprint)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
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 amusement in 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 been 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 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 just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn’t only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780262529877 |
---|---|
Publisher: | MIT Press |
Publication date: | 09/02/2016 |
Series: | The MIT Press |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 250 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
I Subcultural Origins, 2003-2007 13
1 Defining Terms: The Origins and Evolution of Subcultural Trolling 15
2 The Only Reason to Do Anything: Lulz, Play, and the Mask of Trolling 27
3 Toward a Method/ology 37
II The "Golden Years," 2008-2011 49
4 The House That Fox Built: Anonymous, Spectacle, and Cycles of Amplification 51
5 LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages, and the Business of Mass-Mediated Disaster Narratives 71
6 Race and the No-Spin Zone: The Thin Line between Trolling and Corporate Punditry 95
7 Dicks Everywhere: The Cultural Logics of Trolling 115
III The Transitional Period, 2012-2015 135
8 The Lulz Are Dead, Long Live the Lulz: From Subculture to Mainstream 137
9 Where Do We Go from Here? The Importance of Spinning Endlessly 153
Notes 171
Bibliography 199
Index 225
What People are Saying About This
Given the social anxiety surrounding online antagonism and mischief generally, and the confusion surrounding trolling specifically, it is about time someone wrote this book. Building on deep empirical research, Phillips has given us a rich, comprehensive, and wonderfully engaging account of the identities and practices of trolling, both as a historically situated subculture and as a dynamic of the digital media environment.
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things gives us an important, critical exploration into the world of trollingthat vexed part of the Internet that is simultaneously often too easily dismissed and yet tremendously impactful. Through her careful fieldwork involving in-depth observation and interviews, Phillips presents not only a historical look at trolling, but rich insight into the practices and attitudes of those who carry it out. This is a must-read for those interested in, and concerned about, life online.
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things gives us an important, critical exploration into the world of trollingthat vexed part of the Internet that is simultaneously often too easily dismissed and yet tremendously impactful. Through her careful fieldwork involving in-depth observation and interviews, Phillips presents not only a historical look at trolling, but rich insight into the practices and attitudes of those who carry it out. This is a must-read for those interested in, and concerned about, life online.
T. L. Taylor, Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MIT
A fascinating and truly thought-provoking investigation of online trollstheir evolution, their rationales, and their actions over the past decade. Whitney Phillips has gone where few of us dareinto the heart of trolling activities across the Internet. What she finds is that trolls aren't a world apart from the rest of usthey are instead a particular manifestation of contemporary culture, a distorted fun house image of ourselvesthat we need to confront in order to tackle the complex issues associated with their less savory operations.
Mia Consalvo, Canada Research Chair in Games Studies & Design, Concordia UniversityGiven the social anxiety surrounding online antagonism and mischief generally, and the confusion surrounding trolling specifically, it is about time someone wrote this book. Building on deep empirical research, Phillips has given us a rich, comprehensive, and wonderfully engaging account of the identities and practices of trolling, both as a historically situated subculture and as a dynamic of the digital media environment.
Jean Burgess, Associate Professor of Digital Media, Queensland University of TechnologyThis Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things gives us an important, critical exploration into the world of trollingthat vexed part of the Internet that is simultaneously often too easily dismissed and yet tremendously impactful. Through her careful fieldwork involving in-depth observation and interviews, Phillips presents not only a historical look at trolling, but rich insight into the practices and attitudes of those who carry it out. This is a must-read for those interested in, and concerned about, life online.
T. L. Taylor, Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MITA fascinating and truly thought-provoking investigation of online trollstheir evolution, their rationales, and their actions over the past decade. Whitney Phillips has gone where few of us dareinto the heart of trolling activities across the Internet. What she finds is that trolls aren't a world apart from the rest of usthey are instead a particular manifestation of contemporary culture, a distorted fun house image of ourselvesthat we need to confront in order to tackle the complex issues associated with their less savory operations.