Interesting new book on trolling - Gendergap

1 Apr 2015

This looks worth reading.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between
Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (Information Society Series)
Hardcover – February 27, 2015by Whitney Phillips
<http://smile.amazon.com/Whitney-Phillips/e/B00TR4REOK/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1>
  (Author)
http://smile.amazon.com/This-Cant-Have-Nice-Things/dp/0262028948?sa-no-redi…

"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, for example, 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."

Jake (Ocaasi)