Internet Culture Quotes

“They kept raising their hands excitedly to high-five, for they had discovered something even better than being soulmates: that they were exactly, and happily, and hopelessly, the same amount of online.”
― Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This

“The Google self and the Facebook self, in other words, are pretty different people. There's a big difference between "you are what you click" and "you are what you share.”
― Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You

“It took less than three generations of children online to wipe out the part of the brain that’s hard-wired for awe.”
― Leone Ross, Come Let Us Sing Anyway

“Trolls do not build.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Much like Sylvia's Plath's famous line in The Bell Jar, as Esther tries to reassure herself of her place in the world - 'I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am' - the fervour with which we create content, capture ourselves, our rooms, our outfits, our possessions, and the ardour with which we turn ourselves inside out in the digital realm feels like a repeated reassurance: I was here, I was here, I was here.”
― Ellen Atlanta, Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women

“Everyone roots for the underdog to win, but once you start winning, you’re no longer the underdog, and then everyone wants to see you lose.”
― Monique Turner, Island of Influencers

“I know I've got self-worth issues. I just found out I was chosen as an emissary by an alien envoy to represent and protect the human race, and still I spent the afternoon searching for validation on Twitter.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Internet culture can change so quickly.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Message board culture is largely stupid.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Trolls do not build.' - Aragorn (as Strider)”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Trolls do not build. - Aragorn (as Strider)”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The imitation and transmission of media texts is only part of memetic participation. Bricolage and poaching—the social processes that guide these multimodal texts—demonstrate the inadequacy of an emphasis on imitation in memetics. At the least, they force us to acknowledge that imitation is only the beginning of reappropriation.”
― Ryan M. Milner, The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media

“For every community of angsty kids who pretend they are secretly vampires, there are seven different forums of white nationalists who sincerely believe that Jewish people are secretly vampires. For every Kiki and silly toy collectors community, there are forums full of dudes collecting upskirt photos of random women and girls who had no idea that they were about to become porn.”
― Zoe Quinn, Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate

“Like all cultures, internet culture is referential, baffling to outsiders, relying more on shared history than explicit instruction. Like all cultures, it's not truly a single culture: it has some parts that are widely shared and others that occupy tiny niches. Like all cultures, importantly, it's in flux, however neatly we archive our favourite parts and attempt to pass them down to our offspring.”
― Gretchen McCulloch

“For this reason, entering into the cool, safe bubble of Otakon, where adolescents attempted to commune with the comforting kids' fantasy on the other side of the screen felt slightly unsettling to me, though I couldn't put my finger on why.”
― Dale Beran, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, Karl Marx wrote, correcting Hegel. But what's next? There's no word for a farce of a farce.”
― Dale Beran, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office

“This was, of course, the function of art, to reveal the nuances of imagination hidden under shame. But it was also art sans art, as 4chan negated everything, even itself. Art born from some insistent, frantic need mixed up with the Lost Boys nonsense of a generation of children who raised themselves online, sometimes Never Never Land, sometimes the carnival island in 'Pinocchio' where wayward children, indulging in every excess, slowly metamorphosed into braying asses.”
― Dale Beran, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office

“Were the future leaders of the United States who had won coveted tickets to the highest echelons of the neoliberal meritocracy — the ones who were supposed to take over the newspapers, high political offices, and corporations — really demonstrating in the quads not about the military-industrial complex, wealth inequality, or America's endless foreign wars, but cosplay?”
― Dale Beran, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office

“For those of you who aren't fans, and I'm sorry for the rabbit hole I'm about to introduce you to.”
― Cat Voleur, Revenge Arc

“I am a three social media posts a day kind of guy.”
― Steven Magee

“Nearly everything that happened in the plaza was common knowledge. Trying to keep a secret in this place was like trying to keep a millennial off social media.”
― Vivien Chien, Dim Sum of All Fears

“People should not be talking about social media and "real life" as though they're distinct. They are not. What is happening online is happening offline, and what is happening offline is happening online. What happens offline bleeds into the online world, and vice versa.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“It is against the background of such warfare [between medical professionals] that we must evaluate modern medical ethics. There has been much criticism of the code - which makes doctors, whatever their disagreement, present a united front to the public, and it has often been pointed out that by frowning on publicity the medical associations make it difficult for newspapers to find any one who will sponsor the truth about public health, but we must remember that the alternative is continual internecine warfare which makes an ignorant public the judge of matters beyond its comprehension.”
― James Thomas Flexner, Doctors on Horseback: Pioneers of American Medicine

“If a gun embodies everything that's wrong with humanity, the internet is a festering mirror that shows us what happens when humanity has been completely lost.”
― Gabino Iglesias, The Devil Takes You Home

“The default digital world tone is one of hyperactive friendliness, artificial empathy, emoji-based validation, dopamine-rich feedback loops, toxic positivity, and veiled cruelty. They assume communication is always good, that speaking is a virtue, and that interaction is life. Because they know nothing.”
― Sov8840

“In the digital age, we may become self-important enough to be recognised, but never truly important enough to be known or valued.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The numbing effects of scrolling down an endless newsfeed are both the problem and its own relief. Over time, this works to delirious effect. Periodically, after long projects or particularly lengthy binges, I feel saturated and dissociate. No longer able to process information, I let my unread messages pile up in my inbox and notifications from friends accumulate whilst I lie for hours on my sofa during the weekends, unable to do anything, but unable to do nothing either.”
― Olivia Yallop, Break the Internet: The Truth About Influencers

“It can be quite lonely at the bottom of a rabbit hole.”
― Jay Caspian Kang