[LINK] "A critique of troll culture"

[rfmcdonald]

The very enjoyable French sociology blog Une heure de peine's Denis Colombi has posted a long analysis in two parts (1, 2) of the culture of Internet trolling. In it, he concludes that trolling is often driven by reactionary impulses, by taking for granted that the position of particular traditionally norm-defining individuals in a society is neutral (as he notes in the second part, white men have generally played that role) and then taking anything that challenges this hegemony, even implicitly by (say) presenting oneself as not a member of that dominant group, as justification for rhetorical savagery.

Go, read. Google Translate is your reasonably competent friend.