We’re running the internet on the values of a frat-house, my friends. And that’s being generous. But the internet is not a frat-house. It is now the mainstay of our public sphere, the place where most of us spend most of our public time. But having become something pretty close to a mental pigsty — is it any wonder our democracies and societies are in such disarray? That everything seems pretty terrible these days?

Chief to the frat-house culture of the internet is the notion of “shitposting.” Roughly, it means something like “saying terrible things that you don’t mean (or maybe you do, but people are supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt), so that you get attention.”

Shitposting, extreme trolling, which has come to dominate our public sphere so much that the President literally trolled his way into power…isn’t just a random thing. It’s the emergence of a norm. It has become normal, acceptable, and perfectly OK to “shitpost”, which in this essay I’ll simply use to mean “extreme trolling, designed to hurt and provoke and incite.” Every culture produces its own norms, and “internet culture”, the modern variant, which is thoroughly capitalist, run by and for big tech companies, has produced the emerging norm of “shitposting.”

That’s not a coincidence. Big Tech is basically a big frat-house — Google, Twitter, Facebook. They’re owned, operated, managed, by men of a certain kind. They employ, largely, young men of a certain kind, with a very narrow and specific outlook and set of attitudes. Mostly young mostly white mostly Ivy League dudes who don’t read books, who think women are objects, who think they’re entitled to be at the top of everything, who think money and power are all that matter in life, who think the biggest problems in life are how to get hotter dates, faster cars, and bigger bank accounts — and they can all be solved with better “code.” These companies are made of bands of preening, self-absorbed narcissists, who think the world rightfully belongs to them — and if you think I’m kidding, ask yourself how many Google execs have received multi-million dollar payouts after they sexually harassed their colleagues. And yet they’ve been left to build and maintain what’s left of our public sphere according to their assumptions, their values, their norms — in the name of profit.

The frat-houses that make up Big Tech — Google-YouTube, which is OK showing kids suicide videos, Facebook, which couldn’t care less about massacres and hacked democracies, and Twitter, which has never met an extremist it would actually ban — are more interested in partying over more clicks than in, oh, democracy, the planet, civilization, or you and me. They mostly can’t be bothered to care about anything that can’t be represented on a computer screen, in understanding how power and harm work, in history, in society — in anything beyond the idea of using technology to amass power and money. Hence, the emergence of their frat-house norms on a mass social scale, thanks to their “tech” legitimizing them, literally building algorithms to recommend it — far from policing any of them.

But when giant frat-houses are the ones given the responsibility of building and maintaining our public sphere…why would anyone expect anything other than a giant frat-house to emerge?

The problem, though, is this. There’s no such thing as shitposting. “Shitposting” is a funny word — it’s contains a four-letter word, but it exists to sanitize something much more disgusting.

Imagine that I walked into a bar, and proclaimed: “All nonwhite people are inferior! Racially and genetically! Many of them should be killed!” Am I “shitposting”? I’d probably be punched in the face (multiple times.)

Imagine that I walked into a (synagogue or) mosque, with a group of friends, and we all shouted: “Death to all Muslims (or Jews)!” Am I “shitposting”? The police would probably be called.

Imagine that I stood on a crowded street, and shouted, with a gang of friends: “Children who are vermin should be put in camps!” Am I “shitposting?” Just trolling? Totally OK?

Imagine that I stood in a packed square, got up on a bench or fountain, and shouted: “Women are dirty sluts! Put them back where they belong — in the bedroom!” I’d probably be arrested.

In any of these cases, am I merely “shitposting”, just trolling, “kidding around”? Of course not. Here’s what I’m doing. I’m inciting violence. I’m speaking hate. I’m crossing lines. I’m promoting real harm to real people. I’m dehumanizing, demonizing, and scapegoating. And it wouldn’t be an excuse, at the bar, at the synagogue, on the street, in the square — to then say, “Hey! I was just joking!”, would it? After all, the damage would be done.

So why do we minimize all this as “shitposting” or “trolling”, when it comes to the internet? After all, there’s precisely zero difference between my examples, and between what “shitposting” consists of the internet. Zero. None. Go ahead and find a point of difference if you can — I would be very surprised if you can. My examples are precisely and exactly the same thing that we accept as perfectly normal now, if wearying, when we go online.

What that tells us is that there is a great double standard at work in society. We accept behavior online that is far, far worse than we’d ever accept in the “real world” — to call it toxic would be an understatement. We accept the incitement of violence, hate speech, dehumanization, demonization, scapegoating. We accept literally the worst, most inhumane, most violent, most destructive sentiments human beings can possibly express or imagine as just everyday kinds of environmental pollutants, and therefore, we encounter them on a daily basis too, en masse. Sound healthy to you? Compatible with democracy? Sensible? Sane?

But “the internet” and “the real world” are not two different things. They are the same thing. The white nationalist terrorists recently “inspired” by the internet are vivid proof that “the internet” and “the real world” do not exist in ways which never intersect. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. What we do and say and how we act on the internet has more “real world” consequences, often, than the things we say and do in the “real world.” So there is no reason for a double standard to exist — if there ever was.

This list of horrific things that we are taught by Big Tech to accept casually as “shitposting” or casual “trolling” says something like this: we are to laugh glibly at the worst kinds of sentiments human beings can possibly express. (Can you think of something worse than calling for murder, rape, violence? That’s what’s normal these days.) It tells us double standards are perfectly alright. In that way, it corrodes our values and norms — the good ones. The civilized ones. The ones decent people hold. It corrodes all those with frat-house values and norms, which it holds up as innocent and boyish fun, to be had in every sphere and domain of life. The values of the frat-house are now the values we are told are to govern every single interaction we have with one another. It’s OK if you tell me I need to be tortured, maimed, and killed — and my whole family, too. Just shitposting! I was just kidding, man! Were you? Does it matter that you didn’t “mean” it? Am I harmed any less?

But it’s a mistake to think that the values and norms of the frat-house are innocent boyish fun. They exist for a very specific reason, just like all rhetorical violence has. The most violent one, the one who dares to cross the most lines, the one who intimidates the most, emerges as the leader of the pack. Those are frat-house values, and the endless list of scandals so familiar to American cultural life shows it in no uncertain terms. The values of the frat-house are the values of American patriarchy — and those values teach us violence is power, because it establishes dominance in hierarchies, and bonds the tribe together.

That is what “shitposting” really does. It establishes patriarchal hierarchies through male violence, teaching us that violence is the only way to gain power and control, that dominance is all that matters. (You’d be right to observe all that a historic characteristic feature of American life, from slavery through segregation right down to today). “Shitposting” isn’t just telling dirty jokes: It teaches young men (and old ones) that the same old logic of male violence still applies: threaten the most harm, intimidate the most people, and you will be the most powerful. That is why “shitposting” is so extreme that it has to threaten genocide and mass torture and so on — it is a competition to see who can be the most threatening and intimidating, and therefore, the leader. But this arms race is out of control — and normalizing it is utterly incompatible with democracy, as Americans are learning the hard way these days.

But that’s not even the real problem, though we’re getting a little closer.

Which kinds of insults and slurs does “shitposting” consist of? A very specific kind: dehumanization, demomnization, scapegoating. It’s goal isn’t just to “insult a person.” That would be far too tame. It’s to a) create collective responsibility b) for a lack of inherent worth c)

In order to strip away the humanity of whole groups and c) wish the most extreme kinds of punishments on them, from genocide to torture to annihilation. Hence, “shitposting” isn’t “Miley Cyrus is ugly” — it’s “kill all the Jews! Torture Muslims kids!”

In other words, to put it simply, my friends, “shitposting” is a genuinely, authentically fascist norm — and it’s casual acceptance is the creeping normalization of fascism that so many have warned about. Here it is, right before our eyes — fascist norms becoming acceptable by the day, sanitizing them in language which removes their sting. But that sting is very real.

Am I saying you “don’t have the right to offend people”? Of course not. This juvenile response is the primary defense of “shitposters.” Sure, you have the right to offend people. But when you say “Kill all the Jews!” Or “Muslims should be tortured!”, you are not insulting people. An insult is “disrespect” — and “disrespect” is only to say that I will not show you courtesy, manners, civility. I will be impolite to you, rude. An insult says that I want to sunder or forego a relationship. But shitposting goes far past this — it’s in another galaxy.

“Shitposting” dehumanizes people — that’s what hate is. It incites violence — expressing a wish to see people harmed. And do you know what, therefore, it really insults? Not a person. But democracy itself. The ideas of equality, of freedom, and of justice. To say that people should be harmed for their religion, creed, skin color, or anything else, really, isn’t “insulting” them. It is rhetorical violence. It is cultural fascism. It is the literal language of genocide, atrocity, and murder. The parties “shitposting” really insults are democracy, history, progress, and civilization, as ideals, values, practices, and aspirations — not people, but much more than people.

Far from an innocent, harmless thing, telling dirty jokes, boyish fun, “shitposting” is a problem. A big one. Something we should take seriously — those of us interested in a) the internet b) a decent society c) a civilized culture. It’s a fascist norm going mainstream. It’s the normalization of the rhetoric of extreme violence — genocide and mass murder and systematic torture. It points to a great degeneration of our public sphere.

There’s no such thing as “shitposting.” There’s hate speech. There’s inciting violence. There’s doing both to establish one’s self as a real man, a leader of the pack, to climb to the top patriarchal hierarchies, thus reproducing them. There’s using the literal rhetoric of the fascist, the concentration camp, and the genocide, with abandon and glee. There’s legitimizing all the above as a perfectly acceptable norm (because it’s wildly profitable on the one side, and a cheap, quick, easy way to gain attention and the social power of constantly threatening extreme violence on the other). There’s all that — but there’s no such thing as “shitposting.”

The Big Tech companies are basically Big Frat-Houses. We shouldn’t expect them to do anything about shitposting, except normalize it, promote it, propound it. Can’t you see most Googlers and Facebookers and so on laughing ironically — just to be part of the gang, the cool kids, the knowing ones — if somebody says “Kill all the Jews!” I can. Just shitposting!! These companies have shown they are not capable of acting like really educated or caring adults, mature and whole people — they’re mostly just like the adolescent fratboys who they employ, who manage them, who control them, whose attitudes still, therefore, prevail at them. They don’t appear to even be capable of understanding — much less care — that the normalization and legitimization of the rhetoric of fascist violence is a tragic and terrible thing for our democracies, a chief reason our societies are breaking down now.

That leaves, I suppose, you and me. And I have to confess I’m a little dubious about you.

Umair

March 2019