This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
by Whitney Phillips
This book is history. Ancient history, by internet standards. A Rosetta Stone might be needed to parse terms like “lulz” or “rage face” in 2020, when these things have fallen out of contemporary usage (or perhaps I’ve just aged out of hearing them?). 2015 was, what, sixteen decades ago? That linear acceleration, man. This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture is not so much a “What is trolling and why does it exist?” but a “How has trolling metastasized from society and fed on itself like a rude oroborus?” Having survived enough internet poisoning to interact with the latter question is a pretty good inkblot for whether or not you’ll be able to pull things from this book. It is beyond the looking glass of a cultural survey, more than a tabloid of the activities that make trolling a closed subculture: it puts in real work, offers actual contextual synthesis. It isn’t directly relevant to today, while being extremely relevant to today. If that paradox works to pique you, then get ready to be recommended Nice Things by me, to you.
In addition to parroting digital and terrestrial media tropes, trolls are engaged in a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes. Not only does the act of trolling replicate gendered notions of dominance and success—most conspicuously expressed through the “adversary method,” Western philosophy’s dominant rhetorical paradigm—it also exhibits a profound sense of entitlement, one spurred by expansionist and colonialist ideologies. Further, trolling embodies precisely the values that are said to make America the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, with particular emphasis placed on the pursuit of life, liberty, and of course the freedom of expression.
Check out my Favorite Games of 2019 for an oblique reference to Steins;Gate.
I see a lot of people fight traffic here in San Francisco. Not in a way I understand, like the completely relatable “This car shouldn’t creep into the box while I have the pedestrian right-of-way, so I’ll flip him off” style, but in a “Walk in front of a car that has a green light, swinging a fist or otherwise goading the multi-ton metal death box to run you down” type way. The conclusion I have drawn after a year of walking around is that it is a power dynamic—it tends to be people that are having a hard time, that society has shunned or ignored, and they are using the only thing they have left as leverage to make an impact on the world around them: their bodies. When you are powerless, you grab at what you can that to prove to the world you exist. To be seen. Making a car wait for you outside of the social contract of “green means go, red means stop” forces someone else to play by your rules. To recognize you exist. The flavor of trolling tastes the same. If I have no impact on the world in a positive way, someone will see—someone will care—if I break this rule. They’ll react if I dox them. They’ll think about me when they get SWAT’d.
So the crux remains, what portion of our culture is darkly reflected in the intense, seemingly purposeless agitation that makes up trolling? Why are so many people primed to only feel alive when they’re bathed in the spotlight? This is Why suggests the needs of commerce. In particular, the need to fill the newly ever-present News cycle has co-opted the endless draw of infamy: a surfeit of negative material holds the attention, three-ring-circus style, better than nearly any positive news could. Certainly more than dead air or unremarkable social acquiescence. This constant refrain has deadened our reactions and opened the door to new cynicisms:
In the wake of the Challenger disaster, for example, images of the explosion were played again and again, each time accompanied by a wide-eyed newscaster who reminded his or her audience that this was tragedy of the very highest order. And yet these same newscasters skirted the fact that, by playing and replaying the explosion, they were forcing their viewers to watch seven horrific deaths again and again. The emergent humor iterated this omission, calling attention to the uncomfortable truths that the media continued to exploit but refused to directly acknowledge.
If seeing videos of mayhem, stories of tragedy and suffering, or outright villainy becomes standard, then to produce shock—to accrue recognition—requires ever higher feats of cruelty. Pretty bleak, folks. “Trolls certainly amplify the ugly side of mainstream behavior, but they aren’t pulling their materials, chosen targets, or impulses from the ether.” This is all about the ratings, baby.
I can’t help but think about it like Dragon Ball Z. Sorry if you wanted a serious review about a serious academic text, that’s really not my thing. Anyway. If you want to know about trolling, think about Dragon Ball Z. In the first season, there are fighters who fly around and shoot fireballs. One blows up a small city with his own chi energy. Ridiculously powerful, right? Ah, but soon enough, the threat is to a planet itself; that’s how strong the chi blasts have become. This power creep can’t stop; who cares about a threat to a dinky little city when planets are at stake? Eventually, the last story threatens the annihilation of the Universe!? Power creep, rising stakes, all in, all the time!
It’s like that, but with being mean. Oh, so when you were a kid you trained a bunch of monsters into someone’s Everquest character, and they died? That’s brutal, dude! You broke into someone’s guild house in The Realm and stole all their mythril ore? Serves them right for choosing such an easy-to-guess password as “honor.” And then later, you hacked someone’s World of Warcraft account and sold all their magical trinkets for cash? Savage! Oh, so you created a fake MySpace page for someone and listed their favorite band as Creed and their favorite author as David Foster Wallace? That’s kinda mean, actually. And then you started a Facebook group about their dead uncle and called it “I never liked my nephews or nieces, or anyone in my family!” and posted a bunch of pictures of them with their other family members, and everyone else had stink lines drawn over them? Uh, yeah, okay. I’m gonna get out of here. Have fun, man.
That power creep of mean shit you can do to strangers online is a death tolerance. All of sudden, you’re walking in front of cars just to remind other people you exist. This is Why didn’t teach me about trolling as a limited action circumscribed by direct effects. It forced me to think about trolling as a reactive impulse in a society that sells its own cruelty back to itself. That’s a real cognitive framework to make trolling comprehensible as a part of culture, rather than as the aberration that people pretend it to be.
As a bonus, here are some other books that I’ve reviewed that offer decent overlap, and are pretty good. I should really move these reviews over to this website:
Spam; The Coming Swarm; Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy; Kill All Normies; Exploding the Phone; Heteromation; Updating to Remain the Same