Early online activism excused cruelty and fascist imagery as ironic lulz

Evidence

Yet Anonymous’s contradictions were impossible to ignore. While supporting Occupy Wall Street, members freely used homophobic slurs. They protested racism in the online game Habbo by arranging a group of Black avatars into a swastika. Their nihilistic pranks often veered into outright cruelty, from harassing grieving families of dead teenagers to targeting epileptics with flashing lights. But in the techno-optimist spirit, these flirtations with fascist imagery were again excused as ironic. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 271

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s broader omnivore-monoculture thesis: irony as cover for everything signals erosion of stable meaning. — connects to: Ridicule and mockery defeated early feminist political campaigns
• SEED: The ‘irony as moral exemption’ mechanism — how tech-optimism laundered trolling into activism — could anchor an essay on the cognitive cost of irony.