Abstract
Weird Tweets, funny memes, absurd Photoshop-edits, or snarky comments on social media: we have all encountered them at some point in our online lives. It is precisely such ‘mediated folkloric expressions’ Phillips and Milner scrutinize in their timely and engaging volume The Ambivalent Internet (2017). Through examining these online expressions, that is, the Tweets, memes, comments among others, from a folkloric perspective the authors are able to position these practices in a broader light than seeing them as unique parts of digital culture or media.
Phillips and Milner (2017) take us through a variety of ambivalent, online expressions over the course of seven chapters, of which five are centered on cases and examples of such expressions. The authors define these online expressions as mediated versions of ‘vernacular’ or ‘folkloric expressions’. The folkloric framework is one of the core concepts of the book. This allows for examining the link between ‘folk’ (people) and their ambivalent ‘lore’ (the expressions, the stories shared). Moreover, the authors discuss who ‘the folk’ is (whose voices are empowered or not) and the ambivalence of the ‘lore’ they create, express, or share (for one person a story might be funny, while another finds it offensive or insensitive). Phillips and Milner (2017) emphasize that there is a continuity and dynamism in folkloric expression (p. 44): a previously ‘offline’ practice has now gone digital. And, with the rise of digital media folk practices are further amplified. This amplification is greatly due to digital media affordances, the authors argue. These new affordances – modularity (everyone can create content), modifiability (one can change or recreate content), archivability (content is easier to store, but also to trace and preserve), and accessibility (content is no longer confined to time or space) – seem to push folkloric ambivalence ‘into hyperdrive’ (p. 46). Moreover, with these ‘new technological affordances, new behavioral complications, and new ethical questions engendered by the ambivalent Internet’ (p. 45) are brought forward (e.g. the ethical implications of amplification, or searchable harm).
The examples discussed in the book to illustrate and examine the ambivalence of digital folkloric expressions are diverse and ample. For example, there is an examination of the hybrid identity play surrounding a practice like catfishing (creating a ‘fake’ identity online and blurring the boundaries of real and fake or online and off-line), and a discussion of constitutive humor (who decides what is generative and destructive laughter, creating an us versus them). But, the authors also scrutinize smaller examples, like the ‘democratic’ (non-)election of the name BoatyMcBoatface for a British research vessel, which eventually did not happen. This exposes the works of ambivalent power: the public thinks they might have a say in a public debate (think about the alt-right here too), but they did not have power after all. Even if the reader is not familiar with the examples mentioned, Phillips and Milner place them in such a perspective that the reader will understand their position. This makes the book very illustrative and accessible to read.
In their concluding chapter, Phillips and Milner (2017) summarize aptly how: […] online spaces are tangled with tissues upon tissues of quotations, […] densely knotted meanings hinging not on who made what thing […] but on what memetic motifs resonate with an unknown number of unseen audiences, who can further their own resonant meanings simply by posting a link. (2017: 202; emphasis added)
However, on a critical note: Internet culture is not just an American phenomenon – as the authors rightfully point out too (2017, p. 16), nor is the myriad of practices and expressions that come with it. What would be interesting for a successor of The Ambivalent Internet is an inclusion of non-Western examples and a broader outset as to how these phenomena relate to non-online expressions (like the prevalence of physical expressions and practices in cinemas upon screening Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, as discussed in one of the chapters). Although the cases discussed are recognizable for a global audience, it would be interesting to include other culturally specific examples to make stronger claims on the generalizability of the ambivalent Internet and its expression(s) of mischief, oddity, and antagonism.