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lulz

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FCJ-163 Olympic Trolls: Mainstream Memes and Digital Discord?

By ⋅ December 30, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Tama Leaver Curtin University Introduction During 2012, the Australian and international press frequently deployed the accusation of ‘trolling’ as part of a wider moral panic about supposedly anonymous online abuse facilitated by social media. The term trolling has been applied to a range of activities, many of which are simultaneously labelled abuse, (cyber)bullying and general mischief. Despite clear early work on trolls in Usenet discussion groups (Donath, 1999), there is surprisingly little detailed research on trolling, and what exists is largely focused on the provocative and ephemeral internet image board 4chan, and the related Anonymous movement (Phillips, 2011b; 2012a). As 4chan has been a hotbed for the creation of online memes—jokes and images, often combining text and visuals, following a particular style or grammar, which are rapidly spread across the internet—memes and trolling have often been tied together. However, this paper focuses on a more banal example of memes as […]

FCJ-156 Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.

By ⋅ December 30, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Ryan M. Milner College of Charleston Violentacrez and the Antagonistic Internet ‘A troll exploits social dynamics like computer hackers exploit security loopholes…’ (Adrian Chen, 2012 October 12) In October 2012, reddit – a popular link aggregation service and public discussion forum – was embroiled in a prominent controversy. Adrian Chen, a journalist for the news site Gawker, had just revealed the ‘offline’ identity of Violentacrez, one of reddit’s ‘most reviled characters but also one if its most beloved users’ (Chen, 2012 October 12). Violentacrez, who Chen calls ‘the biggest troll on the web’, was responsible for reddit pages (called ‘subreddits’) like ‘r/Jailbait’ (sexualised photos of young girls) and ‘r/Creepshots’ (sexualised photos of women taken in public without their consent). Chen accuses Violentacrez of releasing ‘an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed’ to reddit. To Chen, Violentacrez ‘hacked’ social dynamics with his posts, exploiting […]

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