In regards to Mez Breeze' piece on the Internet Rage Machine, I am more inclined to posit that net.rage has at least two manifestations, as Mez writes, but is not quite as pervasive as is suggested. Certainly, in many areas of the Net, rage, trolling, and "Sea-Lioning" (lest I create a very strange neologism) is more prevalent. In my genre, trolling is well known in Second Life. Response to certain artists' projects featured in mass-market blogs have encountered scorn and net.trolling, and in some ways, current (and former) staples like Max Herman and Brad Brace seek/sought response, only to find that much of their semiotic power had long been exhausted. In contrast, Alan Sondheim's work is nearly daily, but one learns that it is not intended for irritation at all, but the product of a wildly creative mind who compulsively creates. I think Goffman's idea of the mask is very much a cause of this behavior, and a cognitive dissonance between the commenter and what may be at stake for the content creator, or there may be a desire to topple the "important" in a near-Futurist fashion, except without the ideology.
But conversely, I also do not feel any negative dialectic should not be thrown away as trolling or "Sea Lioning". While this is a very fine line, there seems to be a bit of a backlash to critical theory that is replaced with a positive discourse that almost seems like the old axiom, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". Not that it's that simple, but I find a positivity in new work that is either strategic or naïve in its acriticality which perhaps doesn't sell as well, either economically or discursively. I see a continuum of positions that are potentially constructive and disruptive, ones I call the positive, critical, jamming, and negation/troll. I take some issue with the culture eschewing of anything negative as either possessing the "salesman's smile" or trying to ignore the news out of fatigue. There is a thin line between critical discourse and "Sea Lioning" which seeks to dominate a dialogue through volume or steering the dialogue into solipsistic forms. Trolling vs. the Tactical can also be a tough call, but again, the former often lacks ideology, and is done for status or personal enjoyment. Ideology and position for me are also a hard call, especially in the age of ISIS, who I feel are the world's most masterful trolls who are using the Net to spread a viral ideology via the exertion of infopower via media. Stakes seem to be the issue, whose and which direction the action is seen from. For example, I'm sure groups like The Yes Men and Critical Art Ensemble are seen as threats and trolls by their targets, but freedom fighters to the left. By no means do I mean to compare the two cases, as the stakes are lives and the conventional vision of the nation-state in one case and money and corporate reputation on the other. Rarely does the future turn out the way we envisioned it, and I purposely problematize the "we" here. Mez illustrates this, and in my third day of living solely on the liquid food substitute Soylent, I am not sure whether some near-future visions are any more "-topian". However, I did take note when at the EFF Austin party discussion panel at SXSW Interactive, I witnessed Bruce Sterling cry out, "THIS ISN'T THE FUTURE I WROTE ABOUT!" If the oft-dystopian fantastic speculators on the future are protesting the shape of the future emergent, then I consider Mez' words quite closely. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
