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A review by ksilvennoinen
It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump Into Office by Dale Beran
3.0
The subtitle of this book was initially a turn-off, because it's a very stupid argument. However, the book starts off with a great history of social internet and its forums all the way to 4chan and Reddit. The book is understandably only focusing on the US but treats the internet as mainly an American thing. This is fair to a point, considering that the forums it talks about were created and visited by North Americans.
However, the book starts to lose its footing once causes and consequences of the forums are projected on the real world. The rise of alt-right globally is more complex than 4chan and the rise of authoritarian leaders is not because of memes. Just like the book fails to imagine the world outside of the US, it also fails to consider that forces outside of the social internet could co-opt its users, that the forums were a fertile ground to existing ideologies and not a necessarily a birthplace of a new one.
One of the better books when it comes to the history of the internet and its denizens, but falls apart when it starts to explain last decades' political development to a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds. The internet has very likely been a big factor in upending the traditional political order but the book's thesis feels shaky for US and is completely unaware of the rest of the world.
However, the book starts to lose its footing once causes and consequences of the forums are projected on the real world. The rise of alt-right globally is more complex than 4chan and the rise of authoritarian leaders is not because of memes. Just like the book fails to imagine the world outside of the US, it also fails to consider that forces outside of the social internet could co-opt its users, that the forums were a fertile ground to existing ideologies and not a necessarily a birthplace of a new one.
One of the better books when it comes to the history of the internet and its denizens, but falls apart when it starts to explain last decades' political development to a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds. The internet has very likely been a big factor in upending the traditional political order but the book's thesis feels shaky for US and is completely unaware of the rest of the world.