9gag: where trolling triumphs

Sitting in the morning lecture, I was trying my best to stay awake. Despite having enough sleep last night, the materials discussed in class puts overwhelming weight on my eyelids. (I swear it is not CAS283) At last, I came up with a solution. I pulled out my phone and entered the 9gag app. As I browsed through, I came across this really great joke. I had a good laugh, but it didn’t stop there. I tapped the comment button just to see how people think about it and was not disappointed. Commenting is one of 9gag’s best features.

9gag has grown up a lot since its first day of release. The site started off as a webpage, then gradually became popular among net surfers of all age range. As of now, 9gag has its own mobile app, which can be downloaded and installed on most popular platforms including iPhone and androids. The page consists mostly of funny pictures with descriptions, but its best features are called memes. The dictionary definition of the term goes like ‘a humorous piece of text, image, or video that is copied, often with slight variations, and spread rapidly by internet users.’ Memes are pictures of anything, mostly humans and animals, which appear quite uncommon and funny. 9gaggers will then apply certain characteristics to them, making them a kind of expression just like emoticons. You can Google names like Confession Bear, Doge, Advice Mallard, Socially Awkward Penguin and much more, which are among their well-known memes. We can call 9gag a kind of social network, because as the community grows it develops its own norms, values, and unique ways of communication.

In our lab section, we discuss whether or not commenting on social network sites can be offensive or even harmful. How, then, does 9gag’s comment section which mostly consists of the world’s greatest trolls is referred to by somebody as ‘9gag’s life’? Unlike Popular Science’s comment section where thoughtful and intelligent comments are desired, 9gag’s comment section is a great sanctuary for various kinds of opinion including bad jokes, opinionated (or not) raging, even offensive and discriminating comments of all origins. There are times that interesting facts and ideas pop up in 9gag, but mostly it’s a place where people literally let it all out. As we discussed in the lecture, the concept of identity and self-management actually show up a lot. You can choose your own username and avatar, which can either be yourself or your symbolic markers representing your interests. As most people are not using their real names, it is very easy to make nasty comments and simply troll. Most 9gaggers surely appear braver and more daring than their real selves. The acts of trolling, specifically in 9gag, however, are not frown upon. On the other hand, people will upvote you if your comments give them a good laugh. 9gag has developed its own social rules and norms, attacking instead those people who try to make themselves look cool or morally ‘sound’. I’m not the commenter myself and I don’t even have the 9gag id. I just have a good time reading them. All in all I think it comes down to gratification approach, for basically 9gag is just a place to have fun, not actually having to worry about anything.

However, no matter how much fun I can get out of it, sometimes I can still feel some kind of discomfort. 9gag is a cyberspace where playing bad and offensive jokes are tolerated, even encouraged. People even like it the way it is. If we look at it from a certain perspective, the site itself is the major contributor to the perpetual discriminations including sexism, racism, and abusive acts in general. Someone might argue that those trolls might act differently in the real world, being more conscious and thoughtful about their actions. Hence, the content of the site itself is still an issue which can result in social problems.

9gag is just like other technology, there are the goods and the bads attached to it. The issue I mentioned above is not common at all, but sometimes I’m concerned of the apathy people have towards those issues. In these later days, 9gag has become an organism, a social construction that is forever changing according to its members. It might turn us into nonchalant group of people but who cares as long as it gives us a good time?