jeninmotion 's review for:

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett

DID NOT FINISH

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I have to abandon this, because in creating (well-written) vignettes of the "Dark Net", there is minimal interest taken in the victims of the various groups he is profiling. The EDL and the antifa are basically made equivalent and Bartlett declares, "neither is as bad as the other thinks it is." OK...but one side is *actually the fash*, mate. You are playing down *the actual fash* here. Likewise, in being fascinated by chan culture, the victims are suddenly disappeared as the overwhelmingly white and male culture of the "Dark Net" as Bartlett describes it are romanticized. The chapter on pro-ana/pro-harm focuses on young women (as demographically, that makes sense), but the young woman composite is a victim of Wetherization, whereas the trolls and fascists and Galtian cypherpunks are given an aura of doing, of making, of cleverness. Obviously this also went to press before G*merg*te, but if we're going to talk about how clever trolls are, maybe we can talk about how clever their victims are. Let's talk blocklists on twitter, let's talk counterops. There is more to the "dark net" (a term also rather misused by Bartlett) than white men behaving controversially (actually more like being complete racist jerks in various ways while trying to avoid all the rest of us peasants), and the way Bartlett covers it, it's just...so incredibly biased.