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That's a question that has been asked repeatedly over the past few years. And it's quite understandable.
To the average person, it seems that issues once consigned to the fringes of mainstream thinking (such as "white privilege") have appeared out of nowhere to dominate our current discourse. Also, because of the ever shifting sands, people can find themselves being wrong footed within a short space of time (witness how the term 'BAME' is now considered by some to be problematic).
We've heard about how this moment has its origins in left wing academia (which, to a degree, is true) but, for many, such connections are a little too erudite and not immediately satisfying. What is needed is a look at where this culture began to articulate itself and grow. That, of course, is the internet.
In her introduction, Angela Nagle traces this back to the hope and optimism of Barack Obama' 2008 election campaign. Coming after the ever memeable George W. Bush, Obama and his endlessly reproduced "hope" poster seemed like the beginning of something; the notion that the internet could be used and harnessed for "good." The Arab Spring two years later reinforced this belief among activists and encouraged them to be much more vocal about their beliefs and politics.
Gravitating to places like Tumblr, this coalition of self-identified liberals (who had won the fight for same sex marriage) turned into an echo chamber and then turned into a purity cycle. The logical progression of the type of liberal deplored by Mark Lilla, these were people whose main concerns were "...gender fluidity and providing a safe space to explore other concerns like mental ill-health, physical disability, race, cultural identity and 'intersectionality ..."
All the while, the more flippant, irreverent and nihilistic end of the internet remained, mainly on 4Chan, trolling memorial pages for dead children and harrassing anyone who didn't agree with them. Now, however, with a clearly defined target in sight, they upped the ante in terms of trolling and 'shitposting.'
Nagle gives two examples of this clash of cultures (the sensitive left vs the trolling right). Firstly, the Kony 2012 video. Shared widely on social media with the intention of having Joseph Kony arrested, it was quickly derided for inaccuracy and the filmmaker was arrested after filming himself wanking,
The second, and most brutal, example is the case of Harambe the gorilla. Shot dead in order to protect a child that fallen into the gorilla's enclosure, there was a mass outpouring of grief and rage at the killing. In no time, the incident turned into a meme with the obligatory #DicksOutForHarambe hashtag on Twitter and a 'Bush did Harambe' appearing in news footage outside the Democratic National Convention.
Nagle accurately surmises both incidents as examples of how:
At a dizzying pace ... a now familiar course from mainstream virtue to competitive hot takes to disgrace to Schadenfreude ... would become a standard plot of dark online spectacles ... Responding to highly mediated tragedies with insensitive pranking and irony had been a staple of online trolling cultures for many years ... it hit at a time when a particular style of humourless, self-righteous, right-on social media sentimentality had already reached such an absurd peak that the once obscure style of ironic cynical mockery also emerged into more mainstream Internet-culture as a counterforce.
Using this as a diving board, she explores both sides of the spectrum, looking at how they inadvertently set the tone for the 2016 US election and how there was a clear divide between these two tribes and their mainstream counterparts (e.g the alt-right/shitposters laughing at "cuckservatives" and the Tumblr crowd dismissing supporters of Bernie Sanders as "Bernie bros"). It's fascinating how both sides mirror each other in terms blaming others for their problems and their wilful attempts to tear down modern discourse.
Even handed in her approach, Nagle has produced a text that serves as a sterling introduction to those wanting to know how obscure, online battles have spilled over into the real world and led to the first post-modern president in America's history. Running at 120 pages, this is the book you recommend to those asking how this all began.
Angela Nagle, 2017, Kill all Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Zero Books. ISBN-13: 978-1785355431
Christopher
ReplyDeleteExcellent review of a book whose themes I have been motivated to write about (and will write again - New Year's Resolution) on this weblog