Angela Nagle: Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-right (2017)

“Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battle ground is the internet. On one side the “alt right” ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, a culture of struggle sessions and virtue signalling lurks behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures right through to its mainstream expression. Kill All Normies explores some of the cultural genealogies and past parallels of these styles and subcultures, drawing from transgressive styles of 60s libertinism and conservative movements, to make the case for a rejection of the perpetual cultural turn.”

Publisher Zero Books, Winchester, UK, 2017
ISBN 9781785355431, 1785355430
120 pages

Reviews: Leif Weatherby (Jacobin, 2017), Olivier Jutel (Overland, 2017), Cameron L Fantastic (2017), Gareth Watkins (Queens Mobs, 2017), Catherine Liu (LA Rev of Books, 2017), Jen Isakson and Ross Speer (Radical Philosophy, 2018).

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Stefan Krappitz: Troll Culture: A Comprehensive Guide (2012)

Trolling is a art!

Sadly, most authors don‘t recognize the beautiful side of trolling and describe trolls as bored teenagers or fat unemployed basement dwellers. While this may be true in some cases, other trolls are just normal people that see the Internet as a playground or a canvas.

Troll Culture shows the history of trolling and aims to draw a new differenciated picture of trolling as a constant part of internet culture that has ugly, but also lots of beautiful sides to it. It gives instructions on both how to defend from trolls and on how to become a good troll yourself. In the end it also explains trolling as a memetic concept, that has spread virally all over the Internet.

Diplomarbeit (not Master thesis as stated earlier, fixed on 2012-6-4 after ???)
Neue Medien, Merz Akademie, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart, 2011/2012
Supervisor: Prof. Olia Lialina
134 pages
via Marcell

conversation with the author (Matei Samihaian, Pool)

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Brad Troemel: Peer Pressure: Essays on the Internet by an Artist on the Internet (2011)

Peer Pressure is a collection of essays previously published online between 2010 and 2011. In the author’s words, “each essay is an impassioned description or prescription to understand the digital space we inhabit differently.” Most of these writings have been highly influential for the (relatively) small community the author addresses, eliciting many heated debates. The texts idealistically address creative platforms, image aggregators, relational practices, internet memes and much more.

Publisher LINK Editions, October 2011
ISBN 9781470915612
138 pages
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

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PDF (Lulu.com)