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A review by vimcenzo
The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online by Whitney Phillips, Ryan M. Milner
3.0
This book is as aggravating as it is great. If ever a book earned a middle-of-the-road score, it would be this one.
It is hard to hate the authors who have finally taken an analytical lens to things like Tommy Wiseau's The Room and creepypasta and even less colorful Internet trolling like the "Delete System 32" meme. Such a thing is possible only by natives of this digital age, and when it came to many things I was familiar with, I was very impressed with how well they understood and tracked the source material. Their comparisons to historical precedent are hit-or-miss. I can buy memes and the comparison to Xeroxlore and folklore. I'm less inclined to buy comparisons of Trump to violentincensed politicians of the 1800s, particularly given that this book came out before the January 6th insurrection attempt. I wonder if the authors ever regret they couldn't have published this work in the wake of that...
On the other hand, the constant bias was infuriating to deal with if one had any familiarity with the topics at hand. For example: When reporting on 4chan to start, they bifurcate their arguments to strictly /b/ and /x/, as those are simply the more interesting ones. There's no mention of the site's history, its start on SomethingAwful, and some of its more good, if ambivalently motivated, activism. The "Don't Fuck With Cats" territory, some of earlier Anonymous's work against Scientology, and so forth. This is by-and-large intentional on the authors' part, frequently citing the principle that to restate or give an in-depth overview of something is to proliferate it, and the authors felt uncomfortable doing so. Fair enough. So why are all of Trump's racially charged offenses given light? Why is there a painstaking beat-for-beat transcription of all of "Trump Effect" given? The portrayal there is completely ambivalent (save for pithy, and irritating, quips pleading with an imagined international audience for the book not to judge all Americans when it came to the democratically elected President) and incapable of swaying anyone who wasn't going to be swayed in the first place. It's proof the authors CAN do it if they apply themselves. So why don't they? At the end of the day, what it infuriatingly belies is that the writers simply failed to do the prerequisite research, and this faded half-picture of the complete truth, if not an outright misrepresentation, is going to be what gets cited and, itself, proliferated.
This is a frustration I have because when they do know a topic and they are passionate about it, it is presented with an impeccably traced lineage, notable offshoots, and the occasional connection to greater rhetoric or a historic precedent.
The interjections from the authors' lives hover on the 3-star borderline themselves, for as the reader, you recognize these are the people who are writing the book. When they do well, you identify the circles you both share (A fan of The Room, an interest in creepypasta, some bemused horror at the fact that, oh Jesus, there used to be Erin Esurance inescapably in banner ads and Newgrounds) and when they do poorly, the more insipid banalities of their lives grate on you, like (for lack of a better word) the millennial smugness at putting "FUCK" in every book because a presumably WASP-y upbringing frowned upon it but now that they're "adulting" and have a degree or two, they get to make the rules. It's an entry-level faux-punk post-Mormon/Catholic running into a tattoo parlor to get an oh-so-original pentagram tattoo. You're not as cool or edgy as you wish you were, and considering the trolls and slur-slinging laissez-faire ambivalent people you're reporting on, you should second-guess why you would even want to be. It's pathetic. That childishness seeps into every noncommittal half-assed overview of a more complex topic, whereas that same person or persons can write something demonstrably good when they apply themselves.
It is hard to hate the authors who have finally taken an analytical lens to things like Tommy Wiseau's The Room and creepypasta and even less colorful Internet trolling like the "Delete System 32" meme. Such a thing is possible only by natives of this digital age, and when it came to many things I was familiar with, I was very impressed with how well they understood and tracked the source material. Their comparisons to historical precedent are hit-or-miss. I can buy memes and the comparison to Xeroxlore and folklore. I'm less inclined to buy comparisons of Trump to violentincensed politicians of the 1800s, particularly given that this book came out before the January 6th insurrection attempt. I wonder if the authors ever regret they couldn't have published this work in the wake of that...
On the other hand, the constant bias was infuriating to deal with if one had any familiarity with the topics at hand. For example: When reporting on 4chan to start, they bifurcate their arguments to strictly /b/ and /x/, as those are simply the more interesting ones. There's no mention of the site's history, its start on SomethingAwful, and some of its more good, if ambivalently motivated, activism. The "Don't Fuck With Cats" territory, some of earlier Anonymous's work against Scientology, and so forth. This is by-and-large intentional on the authors' part, frequently citing the principle that to restate or give an in-depth overview of something is to proliferate it, and the authors felt uncomfortable doing so. Fair enough. So why are all of Trump's racially charged offenses given light? Why is there a painstaking beat-for-beat transcription of all of "Trump Effect" given? The portrayal there is completely ambivalent (save for pithy, and irritating, quips pleading with an imagined international audience for the book not to judge all Americans when it came to the democratically elected President) and incapable of swaying anyone who wasn't going to be swayed in the first place. It's proof the authors CAN do it if they apply themselves. So why don't they? At the end of the day, what it infuriatingly belies is that the writers simply failed to do the prerequisite research, and this faded half-picture of the complete truth, if not an outright misrepresentation, is going to be what gets cited and, itself, proliferated.
This is a frustration I have because when they do know a topic and they are passionate about it, it is presented with an impeccably traced lineage, notable offshoots, and the occasional connection to greater rhetoric or a historic precedent.
The interjections from the authors' lives hover on the 3-star borderline themselves, for as the reader, you recognize these are the people who are writing the book. When they do well, you identify the circles you both share (A fan of The Room, an interest in creepypasta, some bemused horror at the fact that, oh Jesus, there used to be Erin Esurance inescapably in banner ads and Newgrounds) and when they do poorly, the more insipid banalities of their lives grate on you, like (for lack of a better word) the millennial smugness at putting "FUCK" in every book because a presumably WASP-y upbringing frowned upon it but now that they're "adulting" and have a degree or two, they get to make the rules. It's an entry-level faux-punk post-Mormon/Catholic running into a tattoo parlor to get an oh-so-original pentagram tattoo. You're not as cool or edgy as you wish you were, and considering the trolls and slur-slinging laissez-faire ambivalent people you're reporting on, you should second-guess why you would even want to be. It's pathetic. That childishness seeps into every noncommittal half-assed overview of a more complex topic, whereas that same person or persons can write something demonstrably good when they apply themselves.