Trolls and Viral Phenomena

To me the most important aspect of these Internet memes, customs, trolls, viral marketing, etc. is the role that social interaction plays. It is what each of these concepts relies on and is the reason they are spread across the Internet. I think this arises explicitly out of the troll and grieving articles. People are using social, interactive mediums (games, forums, etc.) to manipulate others experiences on whatever media they are using to accomplish a sense of power. It’s pretty similar to bullying in meatspace where bullies torment other people to get a rise out of them and to feel something different about their own nature.

What I keep struggling with is why they actually do this… what do they really get out of it? I think the Schwartz and Gregson articles both question trolls and griefers on why they do what they do. The answer seems to be for many different reasons. These could include boredom, attention and most interestingly, a heightened sense of the media. What I mean by the last point could mean that they are aware that what they are using is a tool… whether it is a game, a forum, or a Youtube comment. They are just having fun and pointing out the absurdities of the medium. I think a lot of trolls are doing it because they feel better than the people they are messing with.

In the Schwartz article one of the trolls explains, “Trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.” If people can just ignore what these people are doing maybe they will subside, but as long as there are people getting defensive about a trolls reaction to them, there will be trolls there to counteract. I think anonymity has a big part of trolling as well. Tina’s post responded to trolling and cyber bullying to the extreme, but I think there could be something else to that. Is there a way to regulate what is being said if it goes beyond certain lines. Would trolls say the same things to a person’s face that they would post online? The Schwartz article touches on free speech on the web… Is it possible for there to be enforcement on the internet to limit what people can say to others to reduce the risk of things like someone killing themselves over a troll? How would you feasibly have the resources to do that over something as expansive as the Internet? I don’t know.

I find Internet memes incredibly interesting in how they become too popular. The main reason contagious media is so viral is because of the social aspect, as the Peretti article says, contagious media, “is the kind of media you immediately want to share with all your friends.” Along the same lines, people tend to remember things that are social rather than informative. I feel like this is the reason many companies are driving toward viral marketing because it is more often remembered than traditional advertisements. It seems to be hard to predict what forms of contagious media will be successful or be forgotten.

I cannot imagine anyone, including the creator of peanut butter jelly time, would think that it would become such a widespread Internet meme. So who decides what will be successful and what won’t? It comes back to the social aspect of memes and viral marketing… the power is no longer in the hands of the advertisers, it is up to the people on social networks, interactive mediums, forward e-mailers, and even basic internet users of what will be spread around the community. The emphasis of media on the Internet is going toward user created and manipulated content. Audiences have been a large part of what we see in media, but more than ever we are deciding what to do with the media and how it should be presented.