Chapter 4
The Meme Factory: How Trolls Shaped Internet Culture
From approximately 2003 to 2011, subcultural trolls on and around 4chan's /b/ board created or amplified nearly every popular internet meme. The term "meme," coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe how cultural artifacts spread and evolve, has become ubiquitous but contentious in online contexts. For trolls, memes function as a holistic system of meaning that only makes sense in relation to other memes, allowing participants to communicate clearly within their network while baffling outsiders.
Despite originating in subcultural spaces, troll-created artifacts like LOLcats, Rickrolling, and rage face comics achieved mainstream success. LOLcats spawned a multi-million dollar empire, Rick Astley performed during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and rage faces appeared on retail t-shirts. By 2009, 4chan had become what founder moot called a "meme factory," quietly positioning itself as one of the most influential forces in American pop culture.
The transformation from subcultural to mainstream content accelerated with the rise of Know Your Meme (KYM), which democratized previously insider knowledge by providing detailed, clinical explanations of Internet memes for novices. Unlike Encyclopedia Dramatica's insider references, KYM made meme culture accessible to outsiders, inadvertently codifying what had been an evolving repertoire of shared experiences. This accessibility increased visibility and marketability, leading to "memejacking" - marketers appropriating existing content for branding purposes.
As meme culture went mainstream, a nostalgic backlash emerged among trolling veterans. At ROFLcon 2012, moot lamented that internet users had become mere consumers rather than content producers. On 4chan's /b/ board, self-described "oldfags" constantly complained about the influx of "newfags" and "summerfags" (inexperienced users who discovered the site during summer vacation). Unlike earlier times when newcomers were compelled to conform to established norms, veterans now felt overwhelmed by "the cancer" of mainstream users.
Chapter 5
Anonymous: From Internet Hate Machine to Hacktivist Movement
Anonymous underwent a dramatic transformation from being framed as the "Internet Hate Machine" to becoming synonymous with hacktivism and progressive political action. This shift reflected broader changes in American pop culture and media coverage. A fundamental tension emerged between "lulzfags" (motivated primarily by chaos and humor) and "causefags"/"moralfags" (targeting perceived injustices).
This division first became apparent during Project Chanology against Scientology in 2009, when some anons worried that developing coherent political objectives would change Anonymous's nature. The gulf between lulz and activism widened during Operation Payback (2010) and especially after Anonymous supported WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Operations supporting Arab uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya further solidified Anonymous's political identity.
By 2011, the division between Big-A Anonymous (activists) and little-a anonymous (trolls) had become so pronounced that they were essentially two distinct groups sharing the same name. As LulzSec emerged with their trollish aesthetics but hacker tactics targeting corporate websites rather than individuals, they aligned with the hacktivist wing of Anonymous, propelling them to mainstream news prominence. When Occupy Wall Street emerged, media heavily featured Guy Fawkes mask-wearing protestors, crediting Anonymous with transforming the movement into a "distinctive new movement." The mask, once a symbol of failure and then of lulz, had transformed into a rallying cry for social justice.
Original "lulzfags" rejected this development, lamenting that "Anonymous isn't supposed to represent anything" and that they should be "doing stuff for lulz only." Unlike Lulz Anon, which resisted ideological incorporation, Hacktivist Anon proved highly susceptible, embraced by everyone from politicians to fashion designers - even Glenn Beck created an "Anonymous for Good" campaign with minimal pushback from the community.
Chapter 6
The Media-Troll Symbiosis: A Feedback Loop of Outrage
Fox News reporter Taryn Sauthoff's profile of 4chan's /b/ board exemplifies mainstream media's contradictory portrayal of trolls as simultaneously threatening and pathetic. This rhetorical technique - framing /b/ users as both powerful misanthropes and harmless cat-loving geeks - attempts to neutralize their counterhegemonic cultural threat through ideological incorporation. Ironically, mainstream media outlets helped popularize the very trolling spaces they condemn, creating a cybernetic feedback loop where trolls and sensationalist media amplify each other's reactions in a symbiotic relationship.
The "Jenkem" story perfectly illustrates this dynamic. First appearing in a 1998 New York Times article about Zambian children allegedly huffing fermented human waste to get high, the story resurfaced in 2007 when a user named Pickwick on the Totse forum posted fake images of himself making and using Jenkem. Despite Pickwick later admitting it was a hoax using flour, water, beer and Nutella, the story was picked up by multiple news outlets including Fox and CBS affiliates. Reporters warned parents to smell their children's breath and watch for "funky odors" despite finding no actual cases of American teens using Jenkem. This exemplifies "media fuckery" - trolls' ability to manipulate the news cycle by exploiting media's hunger for sensational stories.
When Fox News aired its infamous "Report on Anonymous" in July 2007, calling them "hackers on steroids" and an "Internet Hate Machine," it inadvertently amplified Anonymous's reach. The segment, which featured dramatic claims of domestic terrorism and included footage of an exploding van, gave Anonymous national exposure. Trolls immediately incorporated Fox's hyperbolic terminology into their lexicon, with terms like "Internet Hate Machine" and "4chan party van" becoming cultural touchstones. Far from deterring trolling, Fox's coverage provided both a branding strategy and behavioral blueprint that accelerated Anonymous's growth and visibility.
Chapter 7
RIP Trolling: The Dark Side of Digital Mourning
In October 2009, Facebook employee Max Kelley announced a policy change allowing friends and family to "memorialize" deceased users' accounts. By February 2010, Newsweek was praising this approach as representing how "we collectively mourn: Globally. Together. Online." Unlike memorialized accounts (snapshots of a person's life before death), memorial or RIP pages allowed everyone - from close friends to strangers who learned about tragedies through media - to participate in grieving.
A perfect storm of tragic events in early 2010 triggered widespread RIP trolling. On February 25, SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by a killer whale during a performance, prompting trolls to flood /b/ with macros featuring the whale and sexualized memes. That same day, teenager Chelsea King disappeared in San Diego, prompting tens of thousands to join Facebook support pages. When King's body was found and her suspected killer charged with her murder and that of another teen, trolls unleashed a new wave of attacks across memorial pages, including the infamous "I Bet a Pickle Can Get More Fans than Chelsea King" page.
Memorial page trolling quickly became a global phenomenon, with similar patterns emerging simultaneously in Britain and Australia. While American media conflated "cyberbullying" with "trolling," Australian authorities recognized the behavior and took legal action, arresting Paul Bradley Hampson for posting obscene photoshopped images to Trinity Bates' memorial page. Despite geographical separation, trolls across nations shared resources and targets, with American trolls raiding Australian pages and vice versa.
Facebook's platform fundamentally shaped memorial page trolling, transforming it from anonymous disruption into a distinctly social activity with its own norms, hierarchies, and persistent identities - a stark contrast to the ephemeral anonymity of forum trolling. Unlike the blind anonymity of /b/ trolling, Facebook's structure necessitated the creation of strong affinity networks among trolls. To maintain community ties after profile deletions, trolls developed consistent naming patterns for their "respawn" accounts.
RIP trolls found their most rewarding lulz in creating fake memorial pages, allowing membership to grow, then ambushing mourners with offensive content or "flipping" pages from innocuous tributes to outrageous statements. These trolling behaviors, even when targeting only "grief tourists," remained fundamentally asymmetrical and revealed trolls' privileged worldview. Yet they simultaneously provided fascinating insight into mass-mediated tragedy narratives, both harnessing and challenging media practices.
Chapter 8
Race, Politics, and Trolling: The Obama Era
The disproportionate targeting of dead white teenagers by RIP trolls directly mirrored mainstream media's own biases. A troll named Soveri Ruthless highlighted this by creating a "Chelsea King Fans: Why Aren't You Helping to Find Jalesa Reynolds?" page, noting that Reynolds, an African American student who disappeared the same week as King, barely registered in media coverage.
Though individual trolls can't be identified or differentiated, the trolling collective functions as a self-contained upvoting system where popular content spreads while unpopular content fades away. The prevalence of racist humor within trolling spaces indicates trolls enjoy racist expression, though whether individual trolls are themselves racist remains unverifiable. Trolls' use of racial slurs, particularly on 4chan's /b/ board, demonstrates this dynamic. The n-word appears with such frequency that it takes on an almost Dadaist quality - used as various parts of speech and sometimes as meaningless filler.
Despite exploiting racist language, trolls often dismiss their role in perpetuating racist ideologies. Like Jane Hill's concept of "everyday white racism," trolls claim they aren't being racist - they're "just trolling," which they consider entirely different. They position themselves as the sole authority over what their words mean, blaming targets for being "oversensitive" about "harmless" words.
On August 3, 2009, the Los Angeles Times reported mysterious posters appearing on Los Angeles freeways featuring a photoshopped image of Barack Obama styled after Heath Ledger's Joker, with "socialism" emblazoned across his chest. What media outlets failed to recognize was the image's connection to trolling culture on 4chan's /b/ board, where Ledger's Joker had become an unofficial mascot due to the character's chaotic nature and memetic potential.
The line between trolling content and corporate media became increasingly blurred during Obama's presidency. Fox News personalities like Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, and Tammy Bruce made statements about Obama that mirrored trolling rhetoric - Beck called Obama "racist," while Bruce referred to the Obamas as "trash in the White House." Even CNN's Lou Dobbs persistently questioned Obama's birth certificate despite evidence confirming its authenticity. These mainstream figures engaged in inferential racism through dog-whistle tactics, while trolls trafficked in overt racism. The striking visual parallel between Fox Nation's Obama-in-turban image and similar troll-created content demonstrates how mainstream media and trolls were often expressing the same racist attitudes - the difference being that trolls shouted what corporate media merely whispered.
Chapter 9
The Cultural Logics of Trolling: We Learned It By Watching You
Trolling behaviors mirror and expose problematic aspects of mainstream culture. Rather than viewing trolls as aberrations, their actions reflect and amplify existing cultural logics and systems. The relationship between trolling and mainstream culture is like the 1980s anti-drug PSA where a son tells his father "I learned it by watching you," suggesting trolls' behaviors reflect broader cultural norms pushed to extreme conclusions.
Drawing on Christie Davies' work on disaster joke cycles, trolling humor connects to mass mediation and emotional distance. Davies argues that the first major disaster joke cycle followed Kennedy's assassination and coincided with television's dominance, creating three effects: disasters became packaged with "rubbish" media that undermined empathy; television blurred reality and fiction; and spatial/temporal distance facilitated emotional detachment. The internet "outmediates" television by amplifying these effects. Trolls' engagement with 9/11 exemplifies this relationship - creating fetishized, detached humor through photoshopped memes and ironic captions.
The mask of trolling emerges not just from disjointed multimediation but from social media's cultural logic that simultaneously values transparency while enabling objectification. Online content easily becomes unmoored from context - everything is "one hotlink away" from losing its original meaning. This decontextualization transforms real people into memes and caricatures. Rather than democratizing, the web creates what Eli Pariser calls "filter bubbles" - personalized information ecosystems reinforced by algorithmic curation. Trolls simply take this privilege of selective emotional attachment to its extreme, engaging only with content they find amusing while ignoring their targets' feelings.
Trolling exemplifies androcentrism - the naturalized male-focused worldview described by Bourdieu as "continuous, silent, invisible injunctions." Trolls replicate what feminist philosopher Janice Moulton calls the "adversary method" of Western philosophy: privileging cool rationality, assertiveness and dominance (male-gendered traits) while delegitimizing emotionality and conciliation (female-gendered traits). They embrace Schopenhauer's "Art of Controversy," where winning arguments trumps truth-seeking. Trolls deliberately provoke emotional responses, then mock these "feminized" reactions as weakness, taking pride in "knowing how to rhetoric."
Phillips connects trolling to Western culture's normalized drive for discovery and progress. Early internet users were described as "digital homesteaders" staking claims in cyberspace. Trolls embody this expansionist ideology's dark side - they view the internet as their personal playground and birthright where no one should dictate their behavior. Through raids and platform repurposing, trolls expose the violence and exploitation inherent in progress narratives that are typically celebrated or rendered invisible in American culture.
Chapter 10
The Mainstreaming of Trolling: Subcultural Death and Rebirth
As agents of cultural digestion, trolls directly reflect shifting political, historical, and economic conditions. Between 2012-2015, two key factors transformed trolling culture: the mainstreaming of participatory meme culture and profound shifts within Anonymous. These changes highlight the inextricable relationship between trolling subculture and mainstream culture.
Early meme culture was deeply intertwined with trolling, particularly on 4chan's /b/ board. The presence of memes on a site almost guaranteed trolling was afoot. However, this relationship gradually shifted as memes became mainstream cultural artifacts. 4chan initially resisted corporate commodification due to its reputation as "the dark, disgusting underbelly of the Internet" - a space where advertisers feared to tread.
The transformation from subcultural to mainstream content accelerated with the rise of Know Your Meme (KYM), which democratized previously insider knowledge by providing detailed, clinical explanations of Internet memes for novices. This accessibility increased visibility and marketability, leading to "memejacking" - marketers appropriating existing content for branding purposes. The mainstreaming process culminated with university Facebook "meme pages" in 2012, where students often misused meme formats like Advice Animals, causing purists from reddit and 4chan to complain that newcomers were "doing it wrong."
Despite the perceived decline in lulz, trolling subculture actually became more visible than ever. 4chan's traffic doubled between 2010 and 2012 to over 22 million monthly visitors. High-profile trolling attacks continued, including the GNAA's "Sandy Loot Crew" hoax after Hurricane Sandy and /b/'s 2014 operations like "Bikini Bridge" and "freebleeding" campaigns targeting feminism. 4chan also played a significant role in the 2014 celebrity nude photo scandal. However, unlike the 2006-2010 period, trolling no longer emanated from a single hotspot but spread across platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, and Twitter.
Chapter 11
Where Do We Go From Here? Confronting Our Cultural Mirror
The term "trolling" has been applied to such a wide variety of behaviors that it's nearly meaningless in mainstream discourse. As research collaborator Paulie Socash explains, "trolling is dying" because original trolls have moved on, while the term has become "an all-encompassing term for being an ass on the internet" with "shit to do with anonymity or guile or art." He worries this provides a convenient excuse for "real dirtbags who claim they were 'just trolling.'"
If lawmakers truly want to combat racist, misogynist, and homophobic trolling, they should first tackle these same discourses in mainstream media and politics. Every Todd Aiken claiming women's bodies can "shut down" "legitimate rape" spawns a thousand rape-joke trolls. Every Fox News segment framing racist propaganda as legitimate news creates a thousand racist trolls. As long as mainstream institutions are steered by troll-like figures, audiences of trolls stand ready to amplify this ugliness.
Media outlets themselves incentivize trolling by providing national platforms and validating trollish behavior. After the Aurora shooting, media outlets transformed a tiny group of "Holmies" (6-10 Tumblr trolls supporting shooter James Holmes) into a perceived phenomenon through sensationalist coverage. These stories generate page views and advertising revenue, creating a symbiotic relationship between trolls and media companies. Until exploitative media practices stop being rewarded financially, aggressive trolling will always find an audience.
Despite trolling's effectiveness as a rhetorical strategy, it carries heavy ideological baggage. It's fundamentally predicated on antagonism, and there's a crucial distinction between antagonism that facilitates robust dialogue versus antagonism that silences and marginalizes. Trolling is inherently asymmetrical - the troll forces targets into a game they haven't consented to play. This power imbalance is compounded by the fact that most trolls are privileged white males, while their targets are often from marginalized populations.
This book is ultimately less about trolls themselves and more about the culture that allows them to thrive. The final takeaway challenges the false security of binary thinking that positions "us" (reasonable, civil internet users) against "them" (aggressive, cruel trolls). Trolls may be destructive and callous, representing privilege gone berserk, but they ultimately replicate behaviors and attitudes celebrated in other contexts ("This is how the West was won!") or dismissed as natural ("Boys will be boys"). They amplify mainstream ugliness rather than creating it from nothing - they are born of and fueled by the mainstream world, however much we might resist acknowledging this connection.
Like mythological trickster figures, trolls reveal uncomfortable truths about dominant culture, regardless of whether individual trolls are consciously aware of this function. By holding up a distorted mirror to society, they force us to confront the darker aspects of our shared cultural values - the exploitation, the callousness, and the asymmetrical power dynamics that often go unacknowledged in mainstream discourse. The problem isn't just that we can't have nice things; it's that we need to question what "nice things" we actually want, and what cultural values we're willing to uphold to get them.
