FCJ-159 /b/lack up: What Trolls Can Teach Us About Race

Tanner Higgin Independent Scholar I hate racists (even if I sometimes play one on the internet). Paulie Socash (Phillips, 2012) Closing Pools, Posing Questions I’d been a fringe observer of 4chan and /b/ for years, aware but ignorant of its pleasures and horrors. Then in a particularly aimless night of YouTube browsing, I watched something that plunged me into the /b/ abyss. It was a player made World of Warcraft (WOW) machinima video featuring a white human avatar dressed in plain clothes and a wide brimmed hat. This wasn’t remarkable, but what followed him—a group of dark skinned human avatars—was. Couched in a Benny Hill sensibility, the video featured a pack of ‘slaves’ who chased and were chased by the ‘slave master’ through the city of Stormwind to crowds of (one can assume) perplexed, entertained, and offended onlookers. The ‘slave chase video’ as I refer to it (it’s long since […]