Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media

by Jason Hannan

Almost forty years ago, Neil Postman argued that television had brought about a fundamental transformation to democracy. By turning entertainment into our supreme ideology, television had recreated public discourse in its image and converted democracy into show business. In Trolling Ourselves to Death , Jason Hannan builds on Postman's classic thesis, arguing that we are now not so much amusing, as trolling ourselves to death. Yet, how do we explain this profound change? What are the primary drivers behind the deterioration of civic culture and the toxification of public discourse?

Trolling Ourselves to Death moves beyond the familiar picture of trolling by recasting it in a broader historical light. Contrary to the popular view of the troll as an exclusively anonymous online prankster who hides behind a clever avatar and screen name, Hannan asserts that trolls have emerged from the cave, so to speak, and now walk in the clear light of day. Trolls now include politicians, performers, patriots, and protesters. What was once a mysterious phenomenon limited to the darker corners of the Internet has since gone mainstream, eroding our public culture and changing the rules of democratic politics.

Hannan shows how trolling is the logical outcome of a culture of possessive individualism, widespread alienation, mass distrust, and rampant paranoia. Synthesizing media ecology with historical materialism, he explores the disturbing rise of political unreason in the form of mass trolling and sheds light on the proliferation of disinformation, conspiracy theory, "cancel culture," and digital violence. Taking inspiration from Robert Brandom's innovative reading of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Trolling Ourselves to Death makes a case for building "a spirit of trust" to curb the epidemic of mass distrust that feeds the plague of political trolling.

184 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2023

About the author

Jason Hannan is an assistant professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up because, I suspect like many of you, I am just b fed up with all forms of the ugliness so prevalent on-line and in so-called “social media” posts.

Interestingly, this well-written and fascinating book makes some larger points connecting trolls and those who promote trolling as well as enjoy the “product” of trolls to larger issues about grave flaws in our society. In what follows, I will mostly be quoting from Mr. Hannon and will use that color text to so signify. If and when I have something to add I will so signify this way.

“Trolling, I will argue, is a logical, if extreme, expression of a widespread cynicism, suspicion, and paranoia deeply rooted in a culture of possessive individualism…. This book presents the figure of the troll not as some sort of cultural aberration but rather as the logical expression of a culture that valorizes the sovereign individual.” (P. 7)

Relatedly, in a work I am currently reading – American Absolutism: The Psychological Origins of Conspiracism, Cultural War, and The Rise of Dictators by Gary Freitas – that author connects our current wave of nationalist populism also to something fundamental about the current American system: to the kind of psychologically messed-up kids are capitalism uber alles economic system is producing since, Freitas maintains, it is a system that is essentially unjust and unequal. I will, of course, be writing a review of that book after I finish it, but what I wanted to mention here is how so much of our fundamental discord is due to a seriously imbalanced political, economic, and social culture.

The Degeneration of Public Discourse

Hannan says that his work builds upon Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman, a critique of how television was impacting our culture, including political issues, written some 40 years ago. Agreeing with Postman, Hannan states
“…we have come to expect that topics of great political urgency, such as the economy, foreign policy, and nuclear war, should be presented in entertaining form. Nothing should be so serious, detailed or complex as to strain a broken attention span nourished on a mental diet of sound bites, commercials, mottos, jingles, and punch lines. The result, Postman argued, was a severe degradation of public discourse: loosening of our standards of truth and accountability, a disturbing tolerance for logical contradiction and semantic incoherence, a loss of historical memory, a severely warped sense of political judgement, and a mass submission to the ideology of entertainment. Postman wrote with great shame and embarrassment for what American had become in the age of television. Would that he had lived to see what America would become in the age of social media.” (P. 8)

Referencing the dystopian fiction of Huxley and Orwell he writes “We now have real-life versions of double-speak in the form of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”
“…Our present historical moment is a mixture of the most disturbing elements of both dystopian visions…. This book is premised on the claim that we have undergone a second transformation in our public discourse: the rise of social media has once again changed the terms on which we communicate in the public sphere – and once again for the worse…. [I wish to present] a historical understanding of how our reigning economic ideology has shaped our practices of communication and warped our sense of self.

“This book synthesizes Postman’s insights with those of another cultural critic: Alasdair MacIntrye…. In his classic work After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, MacIntyre diagnosed a crisis of communication in modern democracies. He observed that public discourse had become fragmented and disordered. Public reasoning had come to follow a hopelessly circular pattern of assertion and counterassertion. Interlocutors in public debate, he noticed, became uneasy when pressed to justify their moral standpoints, and tended to veer into loud, sanctimonious, and defensive speech. At some point, democratic citizens were no longer talking to each other but seeking to unmask and expose each other’s ulterior motives.

“The root of this impasse, MacIntyre argued, was the absence of a shared morality and moral language…. We lack a shared framework for public moral reasoning. Our culture has therefore become deadlocked in intractable disagreement. (P. 10)

“When MacIntrye writes about the degeneration of discourse… [his] story is one not of development but of decline, not of growth but of decay. It is the story of the unfolding not of reason but of unreason, a process of putrefaction that ends in the collapse of communication. Our present historical moment – the plague of trolling, the loss of trust, the epidemic of paranoia and antisocial hostility, the deterioration of public reasoning, the mass contempt for truth, the spread of conspiracy theory – can be seen as the fulfillment of MacIntyre’s dark and foreboding warning forty years ago.” (P. 11)

[Accordingly] “This is a story about the emergency not … of Spirit but of Demon [and this Demon] can be understood as the collective unconscious of a growing culture of irrationalism: the rabid, sordid, and twisted psyche of the troll; the hivemind of neofascists, white nationalists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and the Boogaloo Bois; the mass delusion of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and climate change deniers; and the mania of gun-toting, flag-waging, and Bible wielding proponents of ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom.’ [This] is the monster that Trump awakened and actively fed for four straight years. It’s the monster that will survive long after he recedes into political oblivion.” (P. 12)

The Role that Television and Social Media have played in this Degeneration

“Marshall McLuhan…argued that the key to understanding a culture lies in its dominant media and that the study of media forms is more profitable than the study of media content. According to McLuhan, the form communicates more than the content, the latter being of negligible significance to the meaning of the overall message. Hence … ‘the medium is the message.’ Postman took up this classic insight to… [argue] that the form of television (i.e., entertainment) negated the seriousness of its ostensibly serious content, such as nest and political debates.” (P. 17)

“The discourse promoted by television is different from that promoted by books. Television promotes a discourse of dazzling and enchanting visual content, which takes little time and even less mental energy to process. The fragments of information, the fleeting images, and the rapid transition from one bit of data to the next are conductive not to deep, critical, and challenging reflection but rather to its opposite – to shallow, uncritical, and unchallenging mental preoccupations….

“Postman’s concern was that … every subject of public discourse, including politics, religion, health, and science, had been converted into a form of entertainment. To compete for the public’s increasingly short and fragmented attention span, it was necessary to conform to the medium to which those attention spans are most accustomed – television…. [Accordingly] we came to treat public discourse much like the way we treat television, as something that requires minimal effort to grasp, that must be presented in an entertaining format if it is to be given the time of day, and that can be switched off and disregarded as it suits us…. (P. 18)

“Television debate is not thought but excitement…. Television debates are therefore theatrical arenas for the performance of thinking, not the actual act of thinking itself. The drama of discussion sells, and the more superficial and meaningless the discussion, the better…. Credibility becomes a matter of performance….

[Portman concluded] “that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anti-communication, featuring a type of discourse that abandones logic, reason, sequence, and rules of contradiction.” (P. 19)

“If television turned politics into show business, then social media might be said to have turned it into a giant high school, replete with cool kids, cheerleaders, losers and bullies.” (P. 20)


Trolls and the Alt-Right: Made for, and of, Each Other

“Because social media feed a hyperemotional environment of visceral reactions and paranoid instincts, they encourage the psychology of reactionary right-wing movements.” (P. 25)

But what is the root cause “of our angry and defensive speech?”

In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre argues “that the rage of our public discourse has its roots in the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century philosophical movement that set the terms and conditions of the modern world as we know it today. [Its primary philosophical task] “was to furnish a rational and secular foundation for morality, an alternative to the theocratic order of the premodern world…. [However, MacIntyre claims that the] Enlightenment failed to produce such a code – a rational and secular foundation for morality. The ensuing void, he says, was filled instead by the morality of the marketplace – the logos and ethos of capitalist individualism. The defining feature of capitalist individualism is instrumental social relations: treating each other as a means to our personal ends. It is here, MacIntrye argues, that we can find the roots of our communicative chaos. It is here also, I will argue by extension, that we can locate the roots of political trolling.” (Pp. 31-32)


What the Enlightenment Got Wrong;
the Ongoing Costs of It and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions

While Hannan expends some ink discussing the Enlightenment he only glancingly references the Scientific Revolution. So I am briefly going to express my opinion at this point: While I agree that the Enlightenment “failed” – insomuch as its doyens posited that a) we humans were primarily rational beings, and b) that we could resolve any problem by using reason – when, in fact, it is abundantly obvious that we are primarily emotional and instinctively reacting and thinking beings, it was not alone in discombobulating established order or in “causing” a flight to the “morality of the marketplace.”
Actually, both the industrial and scientific revolutions began before it, and I believe their most lasting destabilizing effects were these:
• Ongoing industrialization upset both time-honored agricultural/rural and urban work by substituting larger-scale production for individual farming and skilled crafts persons alike. This not only contributed to the depopulation of rural areas but also the migration of rural folk to the cities where they joined the now replaced skilled home workers in becoming “units” in factories where individual skills were not needed by the ability
• It is hard to underestimate the social costs involved! Not only did many communities effectively vanish – see Wordsworth’s Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey – but also self-image was badly damaged. Men and women who had formerly taken pride – and, indeed, marked and obtained their individuality by – various forms of home industry (shoemakers, weavers, etc.) now found their individually produced wares not only flooded by mass-produced goods at lower prices, but also that such were valued as signs of status and modernity by consumers.
• Meanwhile, for the most part and for a long time their rulers not only did nothing to stop the march of industrialism but, even worse, did nothing to help those displaced or socially and economically “demoted” by it.
• This process – which continues today – is the real source of the widespread disillusionment, resentment and rage of modern nationalistic populism!

Evan as modern biblical scholarship weighed in to further destabilize what had once been unassailable – confidence in the unerring “truths” found in the Bible that were preached from multiple pulpits – their religious authorities for the most part counseled “acceptance” to their flocks who were reeling from loss of traditional jobs, social status, place rootedness, and self-worth.

All of this, Hannan maintains – again quoting MacIntrye – “reduced complex human beings to mere workers, one-dimensional creatures whose entire existence was now devoted to survival. Instead of living for the goods of communal life, workers lived for personal acquisition…. The deliberate creation of a culture of vicious competition…is what led to the vice of pleonexia, or acquisitiveness, being elevated to the status of a modern-day virtue.” (Pp. 39-40)
“The capitalist paradigm envisioned a social world of competition, in which workers and bosses alike were driven by self-interest and the pursuit of private wealth. …[Accordingly] Locke’s conception of rights, in which everyone, by virtue of being an individual, possesses a natural and inviolable right to ‘life, liberty, and estate,” is the morality of commerce. MacIntyre argues that the doctrine of the individual is the ideological root of the breakdown of public discourse today.”

[For] if individuals are sovereign, then they decide for themselves what counts as the good and the right. Morality, like religion, becomes a private affair…. But in a social universe composed of sovereign individuals not bound by a shared moral framework, what becomes of human relationships? On what basis do so many sovereigns, lords, and masters relate to one another? [The ultimate effect?] “…the obliteration of any genuine distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations…. We are tempted to employ whatever rhetorical devices, tricks, and gimmicks will be the most effective in bending others to our individual will… We become architects of deception, seeking to persuade, influence, convince, control, shape, mold, deceive, and manipulate each other for the realization of private and individual gain.” (Pp. 40-41)

“…What this means is that public reasoning is not a rational practice. Our moral disagreements are not disagreements at all but rather a clash of personal wills, desires, and preferences…it should come as no surprise that we become loud, angry, defensive, and repetitive. In a battle of wills, the louder and angrier we are, and he more defensive and repetitive we become, the more likely we are to prevail. [All of this] inevitably encourage[s] ever more extreme forms of political speech in the public sphere.” (Pp. 41-42)

“Rights are a mixed blessing. They have aided the most important social movements in modern history. But they have also become the rhetorical weapons of choice for those who oppose those very same movements. The reactional turn to antisocial rights serves to entrench power, protect privilege, and dig one’s heels deeper into the ground to oppose and resist social change….

[Given all of this,] trolling can be seen as one more symptom of the instrumental nature of social relations and the abandonment of even the pretense of moral argument…. Trolling…is not a popular atactic among those who have given up on the idea of public reasoning and the common good. Trolling is the habit of those who have succumbed to cynicism, distrust, and paranoia, who have taken social division and enemyship as their moral starting point. It is the proud and defiant embrace of malice, childishness, boorishness, nastiness, and sheer viciousness, the celebration of chaos and mayhem. Trolling is the felicitous abandonment of even the pretense of logic, integrity, and principle, the dismissal of any concept of shame.

“…Political conservativism easily slides from contempt and antipathy into the unreason and physical violence of far-right trolls [as we can see seemingly everywhere today.] (Pp. 43-45)
Hannan then goes on to describe how the methods, language and aim of trolls has come to be the methods, language, and aim of the far Right and of today’s Republican Party.


The Solution: The Restoration of Trust

Hannan says that the most effective vehicle for this are our schools. I concur – in part – but I also note that the Right has – as something logically flowing from their program of warring against the other – has, clearly moved aggressively into efforts to control our schools, too, so that they not only convey only the “right” message and “true” history, but also that more and more of their teachers embrace such understandings as well.
So, yes, we must fight to make our schools once more the training grounds for democracy – which will not be easy, since history has been dumbed down for a long time and civics essentially forgotten – but there is another fundamental change needed, too, something to which Hannan has regularly referenced in his book: the need to restore social and economic democracy to our Republic!

In truth, a whole lot of our people – conservative or on the Right or not – have reason to be upset with the way things are! We have abandoned the many to the wishes of the few. As long as wealth is concentrated in the upper tier of the 1% our people – all of “us” – will not have the means to pursue happy and stable lives. Each day will continue to be a struggle for food, shelter, and hope.
If we want to restore trust, then we must give each other reason for it.
I am more certain than ever that this is going to require that we rededicate ourselves to social and economic justice, necessary conditions for the survival of democratic republics but no guarantee by themselves that such will be achieved or preserved.

Time to stop whining and complaining; time to get to work to change the “way things are” to the “way things should be”!

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Jason Hannan presents a bleak assessment of how social media has degraded public discourse. The central thesis of the book is that digital culture has evolved into an environment where trolling—provocative and destructive behavior—is no longer a marginal phenomenon but a fundamental feature of contemporary communication. He argues that this transformation is not merely a technological consequence but is also deeply rooted in broader societal trends such as neoliberalism, individualism, and epistemic decay.

While this is a valid premise, the book has several structural weaknesses. The analysis, though extensive, often lacks nuance. Hannan rightly identifies the ways in which social media exacerbates polarization and misinformation, but he fails to provide a sufficiently detailed examination of the mechanisms driving these processes. His conceptualization of trolling is particularly problematic: he treats it as a monolithic practice with purely negative consequences, without adequately distinguishing between irony, satire, strategic provocation, and outright malicious manipulation.

A major flaw in Hannan’s argument is his excessive focus on trolling as the primary cause of the decline in public discourse. This suggests a monocausal explanation: if trolling dominates the public sphere, reasoned discussion becomes impossible. However, this is an oversimplification. Trolling is a symptom, not a cause. The structural dynamics of digital platforms—algorithmic curation, engagement-driven revenue models, and the commercialization of outrage—are mentioned in the book but are not sufficiently explored as the primary drivers of these changes.

Furthermore, the definition of trolling becomes problematic when Hannan categorizes figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk as “trolls.” While they certainly employ tactics associated with online trolling (provocation, ironic denial, deliberate violation of norms), their success is also contingent upon broader social and economic structures. It is misleading to attribute their rise solely to a "trolling phenomenon" without considering factors such as media framing, economic incentives, and political strategy.

Another weakness of Trolling Ourselves to Death is that it adopts a tone of moral indignation while simultaneously criticizing the outrage-driven nature of social media. Hannan denounces how online discourse is dominated by controversy and emotional spectacle, yet his own argumentation is highly normative and emotionally charged. He claims that social media has become a breeding ground for cynicism and destruction, but he overlooks the counterarguments: social media has also enabled democratic engagement, amplified marginalized voices, and proven instrumental in social and political activism.

Hannan advocates for a return to reason and rationality in public debate, yet his own analysis exhibits a certain rigidity. He portrays digital culture as inherently corrupt without seriously considering what positive aspects might be preserved or how social media structures could be improved without outright rejecting them.

The book asserts that contemporary public discourse is characterized by a fundamental loss of truth and rationality, which Hannan attributes to the decline of shared moral and epistemic norms. However, this is not a phenomenon unique to the digital age. Epistemic conflicts—disputes over what is recognized as “truth”—have been an integral part of political and social history. The difference is that social media accelerates and amplifies these processes.

Hannan fails to sufficiently explore the complexity of this dynamic. For instance, the rise of alternative media and citizen journalism is primarily presented as a threat, rather than as a response to the limitations of traditional media. Instead of offering a reflexive analysis that considers both the weaknesses of mainstream institutions and the rise of new media forms in relation to one another, Hannan frames the issue in a binary opposition where anything outside the traditional epistemic order is inherently problematic.

One of the book’s major shortcomings is the absence of realistic solutions. In his final chapter, Hannan advocates for a “pedagogy of trust,” emphasizing the role of education and critical media literacy in restoring public discourse. While this is a noble idea, it remains abstract and lacks practical applicability. How can a fundamental shift in digital communication practices be achieved without significant structural changes to platform design, regulation, and economic incentives?

The book acknowledges that social media platforms operate on business models that reward conflict and polarization, but it does little to outline how these incentives might be restructured. How should algorithms be redesigned? How can a social network function without the commercial exploitation of user engagement? How can users be encouraged to engage in constructive discussions rather than conflict? Hannan leaves these critical questions unanswered.

Trolling Ourselves to Death provides sharp and at times unsettling insights into how social media is reshaping public discourse. However, its analysis of causes and effects is overly simplistic. Hannan presents a narrative in which trolling is the primary culprit, while the structural and economic factors shaping digital platforms receive insufficient attention.

Moreover, the book is highly normative and lacks the necessary reflexivity to fully grapple with the complexities of digital communication. While Hannan criticizes outrage and polarization, his own style is rhetorically charged and dismissive of counterarguments. The proposed solutions remain vague and impractical.

For readers interested in the intersection of digital technology and democracy, this book is certainly relevant, but it should be approached with a critical eye. It offers a compelling case for a more ethical and rational public discourse but ultimately falls short of fully unpacking the deeper mechanisms driving today’s media landscape. In this sense, Trolling Ourselves to Death serves as a valuable starting point for a broader discussion rather than a definitive answer to the challenges of the digital public sphere.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is definitely an important topic, but it just didn't hold my attention. It felt more like information dumping without any sort of narrative to follow.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for audiobook access in exchange for my honest review.

[Logan Macnair]

Using the political philosophies of heavy-hitters like Buckley, Hegel, Foucault, Locke, and (especially) Neil Postman, the deterioration of political/civic discourse in the modern digital media age is explored through explorations of Trump, trolling, cancel culture, social media, misinformation, and the ongoing evolution of politics as entertainment/identity.

Note - Published toward the tail end of 2023, the book presupposes that the Trump years are over and the autopsy on his presidency can begin, seemingly dismissive of the possibility that he would win a second term in 2024, which, somewhat ironically, actually might provide further evidence for one of the author’s central arguments (that Trump is the personification and model of this new model of political discourse).

The topic and premise are interesting and relevant enough, though Hannan’s proposed solution to the degradation of political discourse – that being a reorientation of the public education system toward the values of trust, openness, collaborative learning/meaning-making, and critical thinking/media literacy skills – seems just a touch unconvincing here. Not that education-based approaches do not and could not have merit, but their implementation would require more detail than what has been provided here as well as the reconciliation of certain inevitable questions that would come up in such an implementation (the American public education system already being an increasingly politicized minefield that teachers need to carefully navigate). Not to mention the fact that the ‘success’ of these education-based initiatives, regardless of how well-informed or well-intentioned the people designing/delivering them are, remains questionable.

Still, I genuinely appreciate that Hannan has at least provided a solution here. So many books/studies/individuals that approach or discuss these topics are largely cynical about the future or only offer vague/underdeveloped platitudes about how these things can be fixed, so it’s nice to see optimistic outcomes being explored.

Good read for the political theory nerds out there.

[Amal Aziz · Rating 5 out of 5]

المراجعة من حساب حامد على منصة x
معرف @hss-443

‏تقرير عن كتاب
‏(نتصيد أنفسنا حتى الموت- جيسون هانان)

‏الهشتقة والكنسلة وتشويه السمعة (التصيد الالكتروني) وصلت مستويات مخيفة في أمريكا.

‏يعالج الكتاب هذه المشكلة، بدايةً من أسبابها وظواهرها، إلى اقتراح الحلول لها.

‏اعتمد الكتاب على أطروحات عدد من الفلاسفة والكتاب، حيث استطاع أن يوظّف عددا من الأفكار ببراعة، وأن يلخّصها بوضوح، لتدعم رأيه.

‏ترى في الكتاب انقسام الأمة الأمريكية (من خلال وجهة نظر شخص يساري طبعا) وكيف أن الاستقطاب والانقسام وصل لمستويات حادة.

‏يشتمل الكتاب على أفكار ذكية، منها:
‏1- أن هذا الصراع والانقسام يُعزى لفشل عصر التنوير في صياغة أساس علماني للأخلاق (الكتاب أيضا لا يقترح حلا لذلك!)

‏2- الربط بين المتصيّدين المعاصرين وأيدلوجيات حزب المحافظين (المؤلف لم يكن هنا محايدا).

‏3- ربط التصيد الالكتروني بأفكار نيتشه حول الشعور بالعار والعقاب (أحسن في تجلية وجه نيتشه القبيح).

‏4- نظريات المؤامرة هي نتاج واضح لانهيار الثقة الاجتماعية والاغتراب والتفكك الاجتماعي والتشاؤم (الفصل هذا رائع).

‏5- اقترح المؤلف حلا لمعضلة التصيّد من خلال مفهوم الثقة، وذلك بتقوية التعليم ودَمْقَرطته، إلا أن هذا الحل غير واقعي، إذا عرفت أن المشكلة عميقة جدا جدا.

‏الكتاب يتضمن أفكارا متداخلة، وهو ذكي في استجلاب الأفكار لصالحه، وبارع في تبسيطها ووضعها في سياق مناسب.
‏كما أنه من جانب آخر عديم الحياد، فجٌّ في الهجوم على الجمهوريين.

‏كان الكتاب مقالا ثم دراسة ثم كتاب، وهكذا نستفيد من المؤلف أنه لا يشترط أن تولد الكتب مكتملة فلا مانع من أن تكتب مقالةً ثم تطورها مع مرور الوقت حتى يولد كتابك.

‏في الكتاب تلك اللمسة الذكية التي تنبهنا إلى أن السياسة غارقة في سيل من الأفكار الفلسفية والاجتماعية، وأنه لا يمكننا فصلها عن سياقاتها وجذورها.

‏تقرأ في الكتاب أمريكا المنقسمة، المتشظية، أمريكا التي تتجه للتفكك.

‏أشيد بوضوح الترجمة وسلاستها✅

‏لم يناقش المؤلف التصيد الالكتروني والهشتقة في العالم العربي، والذي يتخذ مسارا آخر تماماً عن الواقع الغربي، وإن كان يمكن توظيف بعض أفكاره في السياق العربي.

‏الكتاب يهمّ المنشغلين بالتغيرات الاجتماعية، ووسائل التواصل، وحملات التشويه، والهاشتاقات الموجهة.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great meditation on our contemporary cultural climate through the lenses of political theory, historicity, pedagogy, and philosophy.

[مروة الجزائري · Rating 5 out of 5]

يركز هذا الكتاب على أحد الشخصيات المضطربة التي ولَّدَتها وسائل التواصل، يروي قصّة كائن خرجَ من مستنقعات أنشأتها وسائل التواصل الاجتماعية، كائن ازدادت قوته وتكاثر عدده، وأصبح شخصية مألوفة في مشهدنا الثقافي والسياسي: إنّه المتصيّد The Troll.
نواجه المتصيدين في كل مرة نفتح وسائل التواصل، ونعتبر وجودهم في حياتنا الرقمية أمرًا مفروغًا منه. نعرف عاداتهم وأنماطهم وهوسهم الغريب وخصائصهم. يمكننا تمييز تصرفاتهم السخيفة على الفور، وتكتيكاتهم المميزة لاستدراج المستخدمين المطمئنين إلى مصائدهم الضارة النتنة. نعرف جيدًا حبهم للسخرية والضحك وعادتهم في نشر الهراء، وهوسهم بالميمات، وميلهم إلى الخلاف، وسعادتهم باستفزاز الآخرين والسخرية منهم وإذلالهم وإساءة معاملتهم من خلف الشاشات. نعرف اضطرابهم النفسي (الرباعي المظلم) المتمثل بالنرجسية والميكافيلية والاعتلال النفسي والسادية.

ما هو التصيّد بالضبط ومَنْ هو المتصيّد؟
تصف ويتني فلبس التصيّد بأنه «ثقافة فرعية فريدة وواعية بذاتها يمكن فهمها من خلال معرفة خصائص المتصيد. ومن الخصائص التي حددتها فلبس أن المتصيدين مدفوعين بالضحك الغريب والمنحرف الذي يكون على حساب الآخرين (lulz)، الضحك على كل شيء، بما فيها مقدسات الآخرين ومعاناتهم الإنسانية وبؤسهم وعنفهم ومأساتهم. كل شيء معرض للضحك والسخرية. ثانيًا، يستهدف المتصيدون المجموعات ذات الالتزامات الأخلاقية والسياسية الصريحة. بما في ذلك الجماعات المهمشة التي تناضل من أجل المساواة والكرامة. وأخيرا، تؤكد فيليبس على أن المتصيدين يستمتعون بإخفاء هويتهم، ويفترسون أولئك الذين يُظهرون هوياتهم الحقيقية للعلن. وبالتالي يزدهر المتصيدون على عدم التماثل الأساسي بينهم وبين ضحاياهم.
وتعرّفه غابرييلا كولمان بأنه «نشاط يسعى إلى تدمير سمعة الأفراد والمنظمات والكشف عن معلومات محرجة وشخصية». يُحاول المتصيدون إثارة حفيظة ضحاياهم من خلال نشر محتوى مروع أو مزعج أو مهين أو إثارة الفتن أو النزاعات. وما يُمكِّنه من هذا السلوك هو مجهوليته التي أتاحتها له وسائل التواصل، التي تمكنه من الاختباء وراء شخصية مزيفة، لم يعد ملزمًا بالمعايير والتوقعات الاجتماعية الأساسية التي تحكم حياته الواقعية. ما منحه الحريّة في أن يكون شخصًا آخر، يمكنه التحدث والتصرف بطرق لا يفعلها في الواقع عادة.

[Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent exploration of trolling culture and the moral foundations (or lack thereof) in our society that allowed it to flourish. However, I expected this book to propose a more total, grand unified theory of how the medium of the internet created the metaphor for all culture and discourse today, just as Postman did (given the title of this book is a direct update of Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death). Trolling is not the single, driving impulse that explains what’s happening in our discourse today—not in the same way that “amusing” captured the 1980s. It’s a manifestation of the underlying impulse created by internet but not the most apt label for the whole thing. I’m *just* a high school English teacher who teaches a course on 21st century media—not a professor—but I’d say “being known” is probably the best way to frame the underlying impulse: to fame, to troll, to seek attention. All that said, this book is a compelling, informative, important contribution to both 21st century media studies and political philosophy conversations. Absolutely loved the suggestions in the final section on Trust—use of hooks and Freire could not be more apt.