throw rocks then go private: internet dark humor and edgelord culture
part one of a three part essay series about twitter trolls, edgy (racist) white girls, and self-dehumanization as an alternative to self-improvement
on days where pastor eli went over the allotted 55 minutes for his sermon, you could feel the annoyance in the sanctuary. men refreshed google to see the score of the premier league match they’d planned to watch while their wives stealthily snapped a photo or two of the makeup and jewelry they had combined that day. the sound of children would grow louder and louder as the sunday school teachers eventually gave up on trying to contain them. once pastor eli spoke that last ‘amen,’ families would bid other churchgoers goodbye and bolt for their cars while trying to decide which fast food restaurant to head to on the drive home.
it wasn’t one of those days. pastor eli was nearing an hour and ten minutes when he finally wrapped and was met not with a flurry of feet but instead with uproarious applause. he’d railed against the recently passed equal marriage decision by the supreme court, citing this decision as the latest piece of evidence that there was an attack on the family and that traditional values were decaying. his african congregation nodded and yeahed, and the sanctuary remained full of small groups discussing the truest parts of what he had said after the last amen.
it was another hour before the last churchgoers cleared out. my brothers and i had been waiting in the car, debating amongst ourselves if we wanted chicken fried rice or chicken fingers and fries.
“are you guys ready to go?” pastor eli asked once he reached the car.
“yes, dad! we decided on chinese!”
i whipped out my phone, opened tumblr, and continued reblogging rainbow flags and wlw-couples kissing in front of their local city hall, just as i’d done on my way to church that morning, as we pulled away.
claims that “the internet isn’t real” are about as old as the internet itself. it is a statement with many meanings. some use it as a reminder to connect with real-life communities when the temptation to scroll is more and more enticing; others use it as a hedge against accountability when they want to speak loosely and carelessly. while the former meaning is also worth investigating (especially from a historical perspective; the parental panic around the internet making satanists and drug addicts of their children in the 1990s for one1), my focus here is on the latter meaning and on the unhinged subcultures that have grown around their use of this responsibility-shirking mantra.
through the years and platforms, incels have posited that what they say and do on the internet is immaterial in response to criticism of their fantasies of violence. now armed with generative ai, they’ve used the mantra to claim that women who don’t know that clothed photos of themselves are being run through programs to create pornographic photos and videos will be unimpacted by the content produced in their likeness because it isn’t really them. such bold claims are to be expected from the crowd that matured on the internet through honing their rape jokes.
except, unfortunately, such coarse humor about sexual violence is no longer unique to these communities and they are no longer the only internet populations clinging to the doctrine of internet inconsequentiality to avoid consequences for their actions. the recent response to a tweet by neon—one of the production companies behind the 2024 film anora—foregrounding one of the film’s minor stars was much more negative and way further reaching than i imagine the social media and marketing manager intended. i was one user shocked to see that neon had tagged comedian ivy wolk’s twitter account—the account from which she had been tweeting crass, edgy jokes for years now. as recently as june of this year, i remembered seeing this account receive backlash for the tweet below in which she makes light of sexual violence.
the response to neon’s tweet unveiled another of wolk’s deleted tweets:
backlash to the second post was swift and sharp. the level of depravity at sex parties hosted by diddy had resulted in the raid of his properties, his arrest and indictment, and over a dozen lawsuits including many from former victims whose lives he derailed. some of these victims were underaged at the time of their assault at these parties, and their transportation to and from the secluded locations of some of diddy’s parties amounted to sex trafficking.
while wolk has been an uncouth presence on the internet for years, and thus this behavior can only be so surprising, i did find myself shocked at the defense of such tweets. passive viewers of the internet controversy unfamiliar with wolk’s brand of brash “comedy” were surprised that these tweets garnered such a large response. given the incel barbarity referenced above, in a world of generative ai porn and actual diddy parties, aren’t jokes like this harmless? comedy that occurs via online mediums and thus distances the joke from the teller, the subject, and the audience seem especially inconsequential, no? to see a sizeable number of twitter users concede that there is an acceptable level of rape joke underscored the degree to which comedy has been accepted as a less impactful form of speech and “no one gets hurt by the internet” has taken root outside of extremist, incel spaces. when female comedians, who have long been victims of the misogyny within the industry themselves come to rely on misogyny for humor, their words demand a critical eye.
i began this piece with a story about being young and growing up in small, religious, immigrant community. maturing at the nexus of misogyny, immigrant poverty, and christian belief about women meant a lot of isolation. my saving grace, however, was that the risks posed by social media were still yet unknown at at that time, especially to parents like mine who only really focused on work and religious responsibilities. after school assignments, cleaning the house daily, and preparing meals for my younger siblings while we waited for our parents to return home late from work, i crashed into bed for hours upon hours of online time. scrolling on tumblr, reading stories with black teenage girl leads on wattpad, watching a season of tv in a single night (especially pre-2011 when full length episodes of basically anything could be found on YouTube without needing to screw up the pitch and invert the picture), these things kept me from feeling too separate from the rest of the world. i couldn’t relate to other kids at school about what i would wear for halloween—i wasn’t allowed to celebrate it—but we could laugh together as i recited jokes from the latest halloween-themed vine the entire class had all been repeating for a week.
as i entered my preteen years, social media took up a larger fraction of my time on the internet largely because this enabled me to develop friendships with other queer kids. i couldn’t tell anyone at school about the feelings stirring in me, too afraid of word getting back to my pastor father. i would expose myself and shame the family in the process. in the digital age, this is not a unique experience of discovering one’s burgeoning queerness. research shows that queer youth especially have made use of the internet for self-discovery and expression. self-reported functions of internet with regards to queer youth include: increasing self awareness of sexual orientation, providing education about gay/bisexual community life, offering avenues for communication with other gay/bisexual people, creating opportunities to meet other gay/bisexual people, helping people find comfort and acceptance with sexual orientation; and facilitating the coming out process.2
queer communities are also not the only marginalized group to have benefitted from the development of the internet and social media. online social support has been found to be a helpful tool in moderating social exclusion for those with chronic diseases who are often excluded from participation in in-person social events and actually has positive impacts on quality of life. 3 victims of intimate partner violence are another group that have been found to benefit from connecting to others of similar experience online. online IPV forums may actually bridge a gap between survivors and resources, as users often share advice and resources.4
i don’t intend to paint a picture of the internet as a positive place of boundless opportunities for connection; like any tool with immense potential, the internet can be dangerous and can have effects outside the cyber world. take the online disinhibition effect, for example, which refers to the tendency of some people to behave with less restraint when communicating via online platforms.5 in combination with disembodiment and limited accountability6, disinhibition drives online toxicity. the internet is a space wherein people can speak and be heard without being seen, where values and ideas don’t necessarily have a corporeal being to associate them to—merely a username. as online bots proliferate in social media spaces like twitter, ideas and statements made online are further distanced from a human making them. unless a statement made online meets a threshold of threatening, and an algorithm or analyst is alerted to the threat, negative online comments rarely yield any tangible consequences.
eventually, the actions of an increasingly unhinged online presence can have real world consequences. cyberbullying has resulted in several horrifying, high profile suicides such as that of 18-year-old tyler clementi after his college roommate filmed and then publicized videos of tyler being intimate with a man in 2010.7 the 2012 death of 15-year-old amanda todd by suicide after she was sextorted by a dutch pedophile and then shamed online for the photos by classmates similarly bears out the dire real-life consequences of unprincipled internet use. amanda’s story was especially heartbreaking because we were able to experience how amanda’s sorrow felt in her own words. shortly before taking her own life, amanda uploaded a video wherein she used a series of flashcards to describe her cyberbullying, its crossing over into her real world, troubles in school and with classmates, self harm, and loss of hope.8 suicide is the second-leading cause of death in those aged 10 to 34. from 2006 to 2016, the incidence of suicide in this group increased more than 50 percent.9
years of radicalization that take place completely unchallenged in online echo chambers can also have homicidal impacts. researchers analyzing the online presence of public mass shooters found several commonalities: some displayed a fascination with violence and may have posted about previous mass shooters, some mass shooters were radicalized into becoming such in online spaces, some actually posted while perpetrating their crimes (in line with theories about fame-seeking among this group), and some had previously made posts that put them on the authorities’ radar.10
the internet can be a space for connection, self-discovery, and freedom from repression. however, its potential to draw people with harmful views together to radicalize one another into taking harmful action requires that we take the internet and its uses seriously. while i recognize that 4chan forums and twitter mutuals responding in a thread are very different social environments where posts carry different tones, when these spaces begin to espouse similar rhetoric, it is worth investigating the rhetoric even if comedic.
the internet is not separate from real life, and this makes fighting online harm worthwhile.
and it seems internet edgelords understand this too. after days of defending her tweets and balking at what she felt to be excess criticism, wolk went private (as private as is possible on an account with tens of thousands of followers) in order to post the following:
like the comedians who throw trans people and fat people and immigrants and disabled people under the bus and then whine about aggressive criticism of the “left,” internet edgelords reveal that they too understand the extent of the internet’s potential for harm when reflecting on the consequences of their words. in saying “no matter how many people call for my death and how tempting it is to give in,” wolk concedes that the internet is an impactful enough space to make one consider taking their own life as a result of an onslaught of deprecating messages. despite this, wolk refuses to extend this understanding to the rape victims she makes the butt of her failed jokes.
perhaps more personally devastating for wolk, she also fails the most serious of the edgelord tests: she displays earnestness. when you opt to be a troll online and make a name for yourself making light of the experiences of others, you lose your ability to ask for sympathy. why should we care for your pain when you disregard the pain of others?
in future parts, we will discuss the social functions of comedy. specifically, we will discuss the role rape comedy plays in crafting social norms of acceptability. we will also discuss the blurring of lines between survival sex work and posting nudes online that app-based sex work has facilitated. this phenomenon resulted in an asinine (but worth interrogating) defense during this discourse: that having posted 18+ content online places wolk within the same class of sex workers as diddy’s victims and grants permission to make such jokes. we will discuss the social cost of apology, why edgelords with over a decade of racist and sexist content under their belts shrink away from accepting responsibility. all in all, we aim to situate twitter shock comedy into a larger context that will help us develop a better understanding about why edgy white female twitter comediennes think rape is funny.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/magazine/the-return-of-the-techno-moral-panic.html
Harper, Gary W et al. “The Internet's Multiple Roles in Facilitating the Sexual Orientation Identity Development of Gay and Bisexual Male Adolescents.” American journal of men's health vol. 10,5 (2016): 359-76. doi:10.1177/1557988314566227
Yao, Tang, et al. “The Impact of Online Social Support on Patients’ Quality of Life and the Moderating Role of Social Exclusion.” Journal of Service Research, vol. 18, no. 3, SAGE Publications, 8 May 2015, pp. 369–383. Crossref, doi:10.1177/1094670515583271.
Whiting, Jason B et al. “Online Conversations About Abuse: Responses to IPV Survivors from Support Communities.” Journal of family violence, 1-11. 22 Jul. 2022, doi:10.1007/s10896-022-00414-5
Moore, Alexander. Online disinhibition and its influence on cyber incivility. MS thesis. Clemson University, 2019.
Pandita, Swati, et al. "Three roots of online toxicity: disembodiment, accountability, and disinhibition." Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2024).
https://tylerclementi.org/tylers-story-3/
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-story-of-amanda-todd
Schonfeld, Ariel, et al. "Cyberbullying and Adolescent Suicide." The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (2023): JAAPL-220078.
Peterson, Jillian, et al. "How mass public shooters use social media: Exploring themes and future directions." Social Media+ Society 9.1 (2023): 20563051231155101.