How does race play a role in online trolling?
In the Netflix documentary Antisocial Networks, most of the 4chan users/moderators being interviewed were white men. Although there was one person of color who participated in the community and the Otakon convention, he acknowledged the negative turn the community started to take and distanced himself. In contrast, the other members use the excuse of their age and the humor of the time to excuse their past behavior. Race plays a role in online communities even if users don’t acknowledge it, it is not unusual for online communities to assume the majority of participants are white or predominantly male. This can make members of color and women feel alienated or hide their identity in order to fit in. Two of the women interviewed admitted that it was challenging to fit in if you identified as a woman. Fostering the environment of an online boys club created an echo chamber of insensitive jokes and behavior under the guise that it was just jokes. Although some of the members moved on to political activism, they are more focused on issues that they felt affected them. Even when they put a white supremacist in jail, it wasn’t because of his violent or hateful beliefs they simply targeted him because he was reactive.
How is 4chan responsible for some of the online behavior we still see today?
4chan’s behavior and lingo are ingrained in internet culture. For users who are not familiar with its impact, it is easy to fall for its trolling and toxic culture fueled by anonymity. The documentary explores how QAnon gained many followers through Reddit and 4chan by spreading misinformation and feeding into political anxieties. It reincorporated old memes, like cheese pizza, into full-blown conspiracies that led to events like January 6th. Raids are also integral to the history of 4chan, users have raided online games, servers, and websites. This behavior is still done online and has expanded into doxing and trolling.
How does cyber harassment affect victims' lives?
Although cyber harassment targets victims online, it can have extreme consequences in the real world. Victims of digital harassment are often affected by reputational damage, lose job opportunities, and risk of being doxxed. Cyber harassment leaves a digital footprint, making its victims' personal information, nudes, or false claims easier for others to find. Adolescent victims are even more vulnerable to cyberbullying and more likely to attempt suicide.
How does cyber harassment affect women and men differently?
Cyber harassment tends to target women in a sexually aggressive way, while men are often emasculated or made fun of for their ideas. The victims of cyber harassment are disproportionately women, as they more likely to be threatened with violence, rape, and/or sexual extortion. “ Women—and especially young women – receive sexualized forms of online abuse at much higher rates than men. Some 21% of women ages 18 to 29 have been sexually harassed online, a figure that is more than double that of men in the same age group (9%). Further, 53% of young women say that someone has sent them explicit images they did not ask for (compared with 37% of young men)." (Duggan, 2017). Women are more likely to report higher emotional impact and fear of posting online, while men are more likely to post online and feel less distress from their harassment. Part of this mindset is different perspectives on online harassment, “ Seven-in-ten women (70%) say they see online harassment as a major problem, compared with 54% of men. Younger women – those ages 18 to 29 – are especially likely to say this: More than eight-in-ten (83%) say it is a major problem, compared with 55% of men in the same age group."(Duggan, 2017).
Duggan, Maeve. “Men, Women Experience and View Online Harassment Differently.” Pew Research Center, 14 July 2017, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/07/14/men-women-experience-and-view-online-harassment-differently/.
“The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem” (2024). Directed by Giorgio Angelini and Arthur Jones