This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Quotes

“there is no guarantee that an anonymity-free Internet would be a kinder, gentler Internet.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“The claim—and it is a common claim within the troll space—that lulz is equal opportunity laughter is belied by the fact that a significant percentage of this laughter is directed at people of color, especially African Americans, women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) people.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Not only does the act of trolling replicate gendered notions of dominance and success—most conspicuously expressed through the “adversary method,” Western philosophy’s dominant rhetorical paradigm13—it also exhibits a profound sense of entitlement, one spurred by expansionist and colonialist ideologies.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“trolls] fully understand the implications of everything they say and do, and that’s what makes them great trolls. They have empathy and can work out the best way to wind people up, but that also means they are fully aware of the harm they cause.”20 What makes a troll successful, in other words, is his or her ability to empathize.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Trolls may be destructive and callous; they may represent privilege gone berserk; they may be a significant reason why we can’t have nice things online. But the uncomfortable fact is that trolls replicate behaviors and attitudes that in other contexts are actively celebrated (“This is how the West was won!”) or simply taken as a given (“Boys will be boys”). Trolls certainly amplify the ugly side of mainstream behavior, but they aren’t pulling their materials, chosen targets, or impulses from the ether. They are born of and fueled by the mainstream world—its behavioral mores, its corporate institutions, its political structures and leaders—however much the mainstream might rankle at the suggestion.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Just as Audre Lorde warned against using patriarchal rhetoric, patriarchal structures of organization, and patriarchal privileging of solidarity over difference to dismantle patriarchy,40 I too am reluctant to wholeheartedly claim for the feminist cause a rhetorical mode so thoroughly steeped in male domination. On the other hand, if the goal is to dismantle patriarchal structures, and if feminist trolling helps accomplish those ends, then are the means, however problematic, retroactively justified? I look forward to further research that tackles these questions, including the question of how best to theorize the relationship between trolling and global activism. For now, I remain simultaneously intrigued by and wary of the political potential of trolling—a fitting end to a project and behavioral practice steeped in ambivalence.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Applied to trolling rhetoric, which is predicated on highly gendered notions of victory and domination, and which is used to silence, punish, and correct “soft” or otherwise feminized speech, Beard’s conclusion is highly illuminating.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“the impulse to act like a man in order to be heard risks reinscribing precisely those structures that perpetuate gender inequality. A better approach, Beard argues, is to think critically and self-reflexively about our rhetorical operations. “We need,” she argues, “to go back to some first principles about the nature of spoken authority, about what constitutes it, and how we have learned to hear authority where we do. And rather than push women into voice training classes to get a nice, deep, husky and entirely artificial tone, we should be thinking more about the faultlines and fractures that underlie dominant male discourse.”39”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“In addition to serving an effective defensive function, something one deploys preemptively or in order to out-troll one’s critics, feminist trolling can also be used for strategic intelligence gathering. By encouraging a suspected bigot and/or chauvinist to keep talking, interjecting only to goad the target into forwarding a stronger claim than he or she intended to disclose, feminist trolls are able to draw out the target’s true loyalties—knowledge that can then be used to challenge or otherwise discredit an offending argument or person. That it also has the ability to befuddle and subsequently enrage a chauvinist—particularly when the chauvinist has taken pains to downplay his regressive political leanings—is an added bonus, at least for this feminist.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“what happens when trolling rhetoric is harnessed for explicitly feminist purposes? Is there, or could there be, such a thing as a feminist troll? In an article posted to Fembot, an online feminist research collective, digital media and gender studies scholar Amanda Phillips considers the potential lessons of trolls and other online harassers (referred to collectively as “fucknecks”) and insists that there is indeed a place for trolling rhetoric within feminist discourse. Wherever a person might go, she argues, whether online or even to an academic conference, there will be trolls. “Let’s call it what it is,” she argues, “and learn more effective strategies of provocation and deflection—to troll better, and to smash better those who troll us.”28 Given how culturally pervasive trolling has become, Phillips’ point is well taken. If feminists don’t find a way to harness existing trollish energy, it will be used against them.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“However effective trolling rhetoric might be, particularly when dealing with unwanted trolling attention, the act of trolling is heavy with ideological baggage. No matter what purpose the act is meant to serve, it is and will always be predicated on some degree of antagonism. Ryan Milner argues that there is an important distinction between antagonism that facilitates robust dialogue—as was the outcome of SAFE’s proposed book burning party—and antagonism that silences, marginalizes, and denigrates.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“trolling rhetoric is an extremely effective countertrolling strategy. This strategy—of actively trolling trolls—runs directly counter to the common imperative “don’t feed the trolls,” a statement predicated on the logic that trolls can only troll if their targets allow themselves to be trolled. Given that the fun of trolling inheres in the game of trolling—a game only the troll can win, and whose rules only the troll can modify—this is sound advice. If the target doesn’t react, then neither can the troll. But even this decision buys into the trolls’ game. The troll still sets the terms of their target’s engagement; the troll still controls the timeline and the outcome. The dynamic shifts considerably if the target counters with a second game, one that collapses the boundary between target and troll. In this new game, the troll can lose and, by taking umbrage at the possibility, falls victim to his or her own rigid rules. After all, it’s emotion—particularly frustration or distress—that trips the troll’s wire. In most cases, the troll’s shame over having lost, or merely the possibility that he or she could lose, will often send the troll searching for more exploitable pastures.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“until the conversation is directed toward those who engage in behaviors similar or identical to those of trolls, until sensationalist, exploitative media practices are no longer rewarded with page views and ad revenue—in short, until the mainstream is willing to step in front of the funhouse mirror and consider the contours of its own distorted reflection—the most aggressive forms of trolling will always have an outlet, and an audience. And so long as it does, these behaviors will implicate far more people than the trolls themselves. They will also, and just as damningly, implicate those who pick and choose when to affect outrage and when to shrug noncommittally. Or worse, when to sit back and chuckle cynically.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“so long as mainstream institutions are steered by people who behave like trolls, there will always be an audience of trolls primed to maximize mainstream ugliness.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“This, ultimately, should be the goal—to maximize effectiveness and minimize lockdown.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“the establishment of a basic categorical distinction between ephemeral and persistent abuse would allow lawmakers and site administrators to respond thoughtfully and efficaciously to all forms of aggressive online behaviors.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“in cases where a person’s reputation is not threatened, and where data disappears or at least doesn’t “stick” to its target, site- and community-specific interventions are often the best avenues for remediation. These interventions can include amended Terms of Use agreements, efficient comment moderation protocols, and of course liberal use of the banhammer”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“the best practices for dealing with ephemeral, one-off interactions are not necessarily the best practices for dealing with persistent (i.e., searchable) harassment.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“From my perspective, the best criteria for helping guide these responses are the persistence and relative searchability of data. Simply put, do the offending behaviors affix themselves to a target’s name? Are they Google search–indexed? Do they threaten a person’s private or professional reputation?”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Banning anonymous expression would therefore have little impact on groups already steeped in violence and abuse, and would risk stifling much more than online aggression—a high price to pay, especially when one considers the overwhelming political and social benefits of a free and open Internet.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“a basic definitional criterion is needed, even if its primary use is to demarcate the subcultural variety of trolling from the effects-based variety. Hastily conceived interventions designed to thwart trolling—especially when the term “trolling” is bandied about as a haphazard buzzword, don’t help anyone, least of all the targets of antagonistic online behaviors. The question is, which solutions are the best solutions?”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“a practical response to the so-called troll problem, the summary of which could be understood thus: at bottom, the troll problem isn’t a troll problem at all. It’s a culture problem, immediately complicating any solution that mistakes the symptom for the disease.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“In 2014, one is as likely to encounter trollish behavior on Tumblr or reddit or Twitter as on 4chan, some of which flags itself as such via subtle memetic references and some of which does not. Some self-identifying trolls don’t even bother trolling anonymously.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“The ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask, once a symbol of failure (the mask was first worn by “Epic Fail Guy”) and then a symbol of lulz, had undergone yet another transformation—it was now a rallying cry for social justice.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Anonymous was credited with turning a “fledgling movement” into a “meme,”30 and was lauded for transforming the Occupy protests into a “distinctive new movement,”31 with little acknowledgment paid to the other groups and individuals propelling the movement forward, both off- and online.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Previously framed by the media as the Internet Hate Machine, post–Wikileaks Anonymous has become synonymous with so-called hactivism and is frequently lauded as a progressive force for good. Or if not a force for “good,” then a force for something—that is, some political position or ideal.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“The idea that a person has a right, and perhaps an obligation, to take advantage of others for their own personal gain is the American dream at its ugliest—and is exactly the dynamic the most offensive forms of trolling replicate.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Just as it places assumptions about free speech in a new and perhaps uncomfortable light, trolling also reveals the destructive implications of freedom and liberty, which, when taken to their selfish extreme, can best be understood as “freedom for me,” liberty for me,” with little to no concern about how these actions might infringe on others’ freedoms.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“Regardless of how unlikely the connection between trolling and free speech might appear, however, and regardless of what message they intend to send by embracing such a cherished American ideal, trolls’ more extreme actions call attention to the ugly side of free speech, which so often is cited by people whose speech has always been the most free—namely straight white cisgendered men (i.e., men whose gender identity aligns with cultural expectations for their biological sex)—to justify hateful behavior towards marginalized groups.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

“In these types of cases, particularly cases where the behaviors in question meet the legal definition of harassment (which, for the record, is not protected by the First Amendment), the idea that what trolls are actually doing by tormenting strangers is “fighting for free speech” is absurd, and might itself be an act of trolling.”
― Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture