As I was reading the selections for this week, the thread that kept coming up for me was identity. By identity, I mean the ways in which the various "anons" identify themselves, how the anons enforce a stringent identity politics, and how the anons attack the identity politics of others. What interests me is the way the anons identify their actions as trolling "for the lulz" which seemingly gives them a warrant to behave so atrociously. I'm interested in the ways in which racist, sexist, etc. ideologies get reified in online communities under the guise of "the lulz." If the outcome is the same as "legitimate" prejudiced acts, then what is the difference?
Sparby points out in her article "Digital Social Media and Aggression: Memetic Rhetoric in 4chan's Collective Identity" that the anons that participate in /b/ refer to themselves as "betas" which is "a construction [that] depicts anons as outsiders, or people who fall lower on the social hierarchy" (89). Though they position themselves as outsiders, the trolling the anons engage in mirrors and reinstantiates the existing dominant power structure. In her reading of interactions between two different transwomen with /b/, Sparby asserts that the second transanon's interactions were more productive in sparking dialogue.
While reading the transwoman's interaction with /b/ was interesting, I don't necessarily read the interaction the same way the author does. For example, she reads comments like "What did they do with your dick?" as opening up a dialogue about transfolk. To me, that comment reads as another attack on the transanon. Moreover, in moving into this "more productive" dialogue, the transanon reinscribes dominant ideology by lobbing "autistic" as an insult, further marginalizing that population. Sparby "reads" this moment thus: "When the transgender woman uses the term to dismiss the remarks about chromosomes, she simultaneously firmly affixes herself within the collective identity while setting the other anon outside of it" (91). While I agree that this is what is happening in this interaction, Sparby doesn't engage with the problematic implications of othering that occur. Furthermore, the transanon also has to marginalize herself at points within the interaction; as Sparby points out: "She clearly does more to maintain her individual identity than her casual dismissal lets on, but she disavows it in favor of the collective" (91). If the transanon has to marginalize her own identity at points in order to align herself with the "collective identity," then how "productive" could this dialogue possibly be? The interaction provokes no real change (as acknowledged by Sparby) and ultimately nothing is gained.
To look at another example of the marginalizing actions of /b/, with Ebola-chan, the fact that /b/ even thought they could incite distrust among Nigerians with their concocted story of white doctors worshiping at altars devoted to an anime character is racist unto itself in that it assumes Nigerians would believe something so ludicrous. Moreover, no matter how ludicrous the sentiment, the fact is that members of /b/ hoped at some level to alienate the local population from seeking medical attention, potentially worsening the epidemic. While Marcus and Singer's "reading" of Ebola-chan situated in a socio-historical tradition of depictions of disease is interesting, the fact that they fairly gloss over the racist implications of the incident is pretty shameful. To wit, the only time the authors engage with the racist aspects of the incident follows: "To be sure, there is another level of analysis that involves an actual public health threat when people--mostly from Euro-American donor countries--feed into centuries-old racist sentiments and risk, further ingraining mistrust toward health-care workers, government, and non-governmental aid efforts" (350). "To be sure," indeed, and while this particular gloss wasn't the purpose of the article per se, the overt racism of the Ebola-chan meme cannot, in my opinion, be overlooked in any kind of critical analysis of its function.
The "bikini bridge" incident (see link below) further illustrates that these acts done "for the lulz" have actual, material consequences. What started out as some kind of joke turned into an actual instance of "thinspiration" akin to the "thigh gap." How are these acts of "trolling" if they merely reinscribe harmful messages that already exist within mainstream society, mirroring the same kinds of hegemonic controls that are already in place? The fact that /b/ anons position themselves as "outsiders" does not make them so. This positioning seems to me akin to the same "victim" nonsense associated with the so-called "alt-right," who are merely re-branded neo-Nazis. Both groups are outgrowths of the dominant white cis-male patriarchy attempting to gain sympathy and justification by claiming outsider status.
The same kind of re-positioning and reification is illustrated in the "Cigar Guy" version of "Accidental Napalm." As the Boudana, Frosh, and Cohen point out, Kim Phuc is erased in the "Cigar Guy" instantiation of the memetic reinscription: "The destruction of the iconicity of 'Accidental Napalm' is achieved simultaneously in two dimensions: emblematically, by erasing its key topic of suffering, and indexically, through the material annihilation of the figure of the girl" (17). Further, instead of the creator of this instantiation saying anything of substance with the new piece, they merely repeat the image "for the lulz." Again, this act done "for the lulz" enacts symbolic violence against women, children, and people of color: it once again reinscribes the dominance of a white cis male perspective.
Vocativ Article mentioned in Sparby
4chan Users Are Trying to Spread Ebola Lies in West AfricaWashington Post Article mentioned in Sparby
4Chan's latest, terrible 'prank': Convincing West Africans that Ebola doctors actually worship the diseaseBikini Bridge
Bikini Bridge: Everything You Need to Know About This Horrible (and Fake) New Body Trend
