Phillips Whitney - ˜Theœ Ambivalent Internet Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online

Copyright Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner 2017

The right of Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2017 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0126-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0127-4 (pb)

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Phillips, Whitney, 1983- author. | Milner, Ryan M., author.

Title: The ambivalent Internet : mischief, oddity, and antagonism online / Whitney Phillips, Ryan M. Milner.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016047503 (print) | LCCN 2017004549 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509501267 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509501274 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781509501298 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509501304 (Epub)

Subjects: LCSH: InternetSocial aspects.

Classification: LCC HM851 .P52 2017 (print) | LCC HM851 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047503

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To Mulder & Scully

Our warmest thanks to Abby, Adrienne, Alice, April, Ashley, Bea, Becky, Biella, Brooke, Carl, Caroline, Cullen, Dave, Dave, David, David, Dennis, Elen, Ellen, Eric, Gabriel, Henry, Hilary, Jacob, Janet, Jason, Jean, John, Kaitlin, Kate, Kathy, Katie, Kevin, Keith, Leigh, Limor, Lisa, Lisa, Liza, Lynnika, Maple, Max, Michelle, Mike, Nancy, Pappaw, Patrick, Paul, Pearl, Sami, Sarah, Shira, Sophia, Stacy, Steve, Tim, TL, Wendy, and Wesley.

In the mid-aughts, a t-shirt company called The Mountain added a new item to their Amazon.com product page. Listed as Three Wolf Moon, this 100 percent cotton offering featured a mystical moon, glowing star nebula, and three vertically stacked wolf heads howling into the night. In November 2008, an Amazon reviewer using the handle Amazon Customer posted a review of the shirt. Review, however, doesn't quite capture it. Amazon Customer's assessment, entitled Dual Function Design, was more like magical realist short fiction. First, he checked to see whether the shirt would properly cover his girth. He then wandered from his trailer to the neighborhood Wal-Mart, where he was promptly flocked by women looking for love and, as he put it, mehth. Once inside the Wal-Mart, he mounted a courtesy scooter side saddle to show off his wolves and was approached by a woman wearing sweatpants and flip-flops. She told him she liked his shirt and offered him a swig of her Mountain Dew. Amazon Customer attributed these exciting felicities to his wolf shirt, and concluded that, although the shirt was pretty sweet already, it would be better if the wolves glowed in the dark.

After being posted to Amazon, Dual Function Design was linked by an amused onlooker to the forums on 2009).

The person posting as Amazon Customer who in 2009 outed himself to Peter Applebome of the New York Times as a 32-year-old law student from New Jersey wasn't alone in his desire to bizarrely review a commercial product for laughs. Beyond Three Wolf Moon, there exists an entire genre of what the online reference site Know Your Meme calls fake customer reviews, with Amazon serving as the nexus of such activities (Fake Customer Reviews 2015). The premise is simple: head to Amazon (or any other site that supports public-facing customer reviews), choose a strange product (or at least a product that can serve as a conduit for strangeness), and then post something that will highlight, criticize, or poke fun at said product. For instance, reviewing the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer, reviewer IWonder offered I would rate this product as just ok. It's kind of cheaply made. But it works better than the hammer I've been using to slice my bananas (Banana Slicer Reviews 2015). Assessing a gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk up for sale on Amazon, reviewer Prof PD Rivers commented I give this Tuscan Milk four stars simply because I found the consistency a little too milk-like for my tastes (Zeller 2006). And when the consumer plastics company BIC released a line of Cristal For Her ballpoint pens i.e. pens for some reason designed specifically for women reviewer E. Bradley gushed I love BIC Cristal for Her! The delicate shape and pretty pastel colors make it perfect for writing recipe cards, checks to my psychologist (I'm seeing him for a case of the hysterics), and tracking my monthly cycle (Zafar 2012). In these and other cases, the point is to harness customer review capabilities for a wholly unintended collective purpose: to make strangers laugh on the internet, or at least furrow their brow in consternation.

2013 was a big year for R&B artist Robin Thicke. That summer, the 36-year-old warbler took the music world by storm with his jaunty, sexually assaultive hit Blurred Lines, in which Thicke croons about knowing his paramour wants it even though she has already indicated that she does not. Then came his infamous 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) performance with then-20-year-old pop singer Miley Cyrus. During this performance, a scantily clad Cyrus rubbed herself all over Thicke, who grinded right back, smirking and sunglassed in a striped black-and-white zoot suit. Facing backlash for their performance, Thicke said he hadn't even noticed what Cyrus was doing. That's all on her, he shrugged in an interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey (Jefferson 2013).

In the year following the VMAs, Thicke navigated a very messy separation from his wife Paula Patton, whom he attempted to win back in a series of public reconciliation attempts. Thicke's efforts culminated in 2014's highly confessional (and accusatory, and salacious)