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This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (MIT Press) by Whitney Phillips is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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Why the troll problem is actually a culture problem: how online trolling fits comfortably within today's media landscape. 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,

Who reads This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (MIT Press)?

Author

Whitney Phillips

Publisher

The MIT Press

Published

2015

Language

EN

ISBN

9780262329002

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Science, Computer Science, Sociology

Rating

4.4 / 5 (89 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14