A Survey of the Discursive Strategies of R/Theredpill on Reddit

Home , Adrian Chen, Ellen Pao, Imgur, Reddit, Reverse sexism, Roosh V

Swallowing Misandry: A Survey of the Discursive Strategies of r/TheRedPill on Reddit

Aaron Moses Dishy

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Faculty of Information University of Toronto

Aaron Moses Dishy

Master of Information

Faculty of Information University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

The Red Pill (r/theredpill) (TRP) subreddit lies at the heart of an interconnected network of misogynistic blogs and websites known as the manosphere. It disseminates radical anti-feminist and discriminatory content across Reddit and the broader internet. Acknowledging the community’s staggering size - with membership that numbers in the hundreds of thousands - this research fills a gap in standalone investigations into the toxic subreddit. Using mixed-methods critical discourse analysis (CDA), qualitative and quantitative research methods identify how misogynistic ideologies are constructed, consumed, and exchanged by RedPills on their virtual platform, Reddit. This study does not seek to define their discursive strategies as uniquely RedPill. Instead, it situates them in the context of a growing community based in gendered rage and the validation of violence. As result, it reveals the complex affordances Reddit provides, to create, engage, and disseminate RedPill discourses online.

ii Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor Patrick Keilty for their invaluable support and expertise, alongside my second reader Alessandro Delfanti for their generous feedback. I also must thank u/ralter, my spirit guide down the rabbit hole of online hate. Finally, thank you Wesley Chau for the support.

Funding Acknowledgement

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for- profit sectors.

iii Table of Contents i. Acknowledgments iii ii. Table of Contents iv iii. List of Appendices vi 1.0 Introduction 1 2.0 Research Justifications and Considerations 4 3.0 Literature Review 6 3.1 Reddit and Social Networking Sites 6 3.2 New Media Misogyny and Computer Mediated Communication 8 3.3 Anonymity in Online Communities 11 3.4 The Men’s Rights Movement 14 3.5 Digital Masculinities and Geek Culture 16 4.0 Theoretical Framework 19 5.0 Methodology 22 5.1 Mixed-Methods Analysis 22 5.2 Coding Strategy 23 6.0 Data 25 6.1 Dataset 25 6.2 Critical Discourse Analysis and Reddit Posts 26 7.0 Affective Narratives 27 7.1 Biological Determinism and the RedPill Male Ideal 28 7.2 Masculinity, Mastery and RedPill Orthopraxy 30 7.3 Motivating Public Participation and a Masculinity under Siege 32 7.4 RedPill Masculinity the Validation of Reparative Violence 34 7.5 Representations of Females and Femininity 37 7.6 Representations of Third-Wave Feminism 41 7.7 Conclusion 45 8.0 Anonymity and Identity Play 46 8.1 RedPill Self-Presentation Strategies 47 8.2 RedPill In-Group Ways of Knowing 50 8.3 Anonymity and the Reddit Hivemind 53 8.4 Conclusion 56

iv 9.0 RedPill Trolling, Alienation, and Identity Policing 57 9.1 Reaffirming White Male Centrality 58 9.2 Reinforcing a Christocentric Identity on TRP 60 9.3 Trolling Queer Identities 62 9.4 Trolling Gender in Metaphors of Violence 65 9.5 Conclusion 68 10.0 Interference of RedPill Community Moderators 69 10.1 The RedPill Patriarchal Meritocracy 70 10.2 The Discursive Powers of Mods and Flared Contributors 72 10.3 From Reader to Leader 76 10.4 Conclusion 78 11.0 Ecosystem Contribution 80 11.1 RedPill Leaking Out 81 11.2 Hypertext and Information Validity 83 11.3 Social Networking Sites and Hypertext Multimodality 85 11.4 Conclusion 87 12.0 Reflections on this Research 88 12.1 Summary 88 12.2 Limitations 91 12.3 Implications for the Study of RedPill Masculinity 93 12.4 Implications for the Study of the Radicalization of Men 94 12.5 Implications for the Study of Reddit 96

v List of Appendices

13.0 Appendix A Coding Dictionary 98 14.0 Appendix B List of Figures 102 15.0 Bibliography: Work Cited 109 16.0 Bibliography: Internal Sources 123

vi 1

Chapter 1

Introduction

Since the advent of the internet, manifestations of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) have surfaced online (Markwick & Caplan 2018). Over the past decade however, the participatory internet birthed a new kind of men’s social organization. In an informal network of blogs, websites, and forums, that concentrate on issues concerning men, masculinity, the male sex role, and anti-feminism, a complex community emerged. It is spoken of colloquially as the manosphere. Amongst their online forums, OPs (original posts) and comments allege that Western civilization is devolving into misandry, defined by a rejection of men and masculinity. Popular forums assert that men are oppressed by reverse sexism. Concurrently, women are corrupted by SJWs (social justice warriors), their ‘feminist ideological lies’, and the dangers of political correctness. Resulting tirades detailing graphic gendered violence and anonymous threats of harassment and rape saturate online discourse. The Red Pill (r/theredpill) (TRP) subreddit lies at the heart of this interconnected network of misogyny. It exists in plain view amongst other subreddits, tagged “awww”, “funny”, “pics”, and “mildly funny” (Cohen 2015). The subreddit derives its name from the popular science-fiction film, The Matrix (1999). It recalls the biblical moment protagonist Neo decides to consume a red pill instead of a blue pill, braving a world of new realizations about the status quo. The analogy is barefaced: “if you take the blue pill - the story ends... you take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and [see] how deep the rabbit hole goes” (Illimitablemen 2015a). In this case, the awakened reality results in entrance to an online community that promotes a potent hyper-masculinity, and anti-feminist sentiment steeped in misogyny. (Marche 2016). This research looks to contribute to understandings of this largely unstudied online community. Using mixed-method critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Wodak et al. 2001) that combines both qualitative and quantitative research, it develops a comprehensive investigation into how radical anti- feminist sentiment is communicated and contextualized by TRP. A single research question guides this study. It looks to identify how misogynistic ideologies are constructed, consumed, and exchanged by RedPills on and off their virtual platform - Reddit. To do so, this study centers the discursive strategies employed by RedPills (Foucault 1977). Discursive strategies refer to the practices and methods that allow RedPills to communicate their specific digital ideologies and subjectivities. In surveying those strategies, this study develops insight into this hate-based community, its information dissemination, and influence on the beliefs and actions of hundreds of thousands of men. Essential is an understanding how the discursive strategies of TRP relate to, and are facilitated by, the Reddit platform. The community building potentials of this subreddit reveal important calls for inquiry into the complex relationships amongst hate-based virtual communities, and the social media 2 platforms that support them. Reddit exemplifies the participatory web, with high information diffusion rates, that have led to faster content dissemination and larger audience reach (Von Behr 2013). In the case of TRP, Reddit acts as “a venue for information exchange, ideological development and training, [that] characteristically shapes a membering process made possible through the internet” (O'Callaghan et. al. 2014, 460). Reddit and the information exchange it supports uniquely inform TRP’s virtual ecosystem - a platform where this online community can develop and sustain itself. Surveying the relationship amongst Reddit’s digital infrastructures and the discourses it facilitates is paramount to this analysis. In this study, TRP is investigated in five interrelated inquiries that allow for the effective mapping of the community’s discursive strategies. They include: 1. What are the affective narratives, motifs, and stereotypes, that sustain RedPills in long-term and charged public engagement, while enticing new members with their misogynistic discourses? 2. In the context of Reddit’s socio-technical affordances for communication, with specific attention to its quintessential anonymity, how do RedPills present themselves as active and knowledgeable members of that community? 3. How do RedPills police their specific community identity and the subjectivities embedded within them? Further, who is included and excluded in that process of identity and boundary negotiation? 4. What discursive powers do RedPill community moderators have in influencing the posts and comments that result on TRP? 5. How do RedPills contribute to a broader digital ecosystem - both within and outside of the Reddit platform - in their distribution of hypertext and the resulting flow of web traffic? Each inquiry is expounded in an affiliated chapter. Chapter one builds on the narratives that engage and propel TRP. This section employs close reading to distill the resonant genres and representations that attract young RedPills. Quantitative code-based analysis then mines the dataset to gain access to the reservoir of cultural traditions that undergird this community. Posts and comments are analyzed to account for the impact and distribution of each resonant theme, and their dominance in directing the gendered narratives found on TRP. This dual analysis allows for a diverse collection of data that identifies and illustrates the affective narratives that drive community participation, while enabling further cultural creation and connectivity. Chapter two studies the self-presentation strategies applied by TRP (Jung et al. 2007). Self- presentation strategies, refer to the methods RedPills use to present themselves within the collective, while they browse and converse in this primarily anonymous averment. It reviews how RedPills represent their identities and contributions as valuable, while curating the limited amount of personal information that they choose to disclose.

Being RedPill requires active public debate, perpetually reifying community identity on Reddit’s networked ecosystem. Chapter three investigates who is included in that RedPill self-conception, and who is excluded by the trolling practices initiated by this community. The use of text-based laughter on TRP lies at its core – a force that serves to police identity in the tensions amongst inclusion and alienation (Phillips & Milner 2017). Qualitative analysis provides insight into the trolling practices and stereotypes harnessed by TRP. This is accompanied by analysis of the identities RedPills deem outside of community participation. If chapter three interprets the policing of TRP, chapter four investigates the discursive strategies that sustain this community. The section interprets the influence, power, and labour of RedPill community moderators (mods), and the members they flare or tag as valuable. In coding for the presence of mods and flared contributors in posts and comments, the complex social hierarchy developed by TRP is placed under scrutiny. In qualitative analysis, attention is directed towards the motivations of this mod hierarchy - probing the communicative and relational powers they receive to validate their volunteer labour. Specific attention is paid to ability of community mods to exploit the affordances provided to them by Reddit administration. The final chapter of analysis reviews the expansiveness of TRP’s communicative ecosystem. It expands traditional understandings of text in discourse, to survey their use of multimodal hypertext (Helmi 2016). This research investigates the links they embed in terms and claims, and where those links direct RedPill members across the internet. A quantitative analysis first maps out the potential sites where RedPills frequently direct their members. Qualitative analysis further delves into RedPill uses for hypertext, and how it is used to disseminate their misogynistic ideologies throughout. Insight is, in turn, gained into whether TRP is merely an isolated subreddit - relegated to the darkest corners of the manosphere - or instead a highly connected online community. Communities that center around the propagation of hate-based digital content are growing online (Massanari 2015). Models to interpret the discursive strategies by which TRP popularizes their radical misogyny on Reddit are increasingly relevant as this community, and communities like it, emerge and populate online. It is essential to note, that the objective of this project is not to explain the internal, anti- feminist motivations of each RedPill. Instead, it explores how their communication and community discourses operate and self-perpetuate. In doing so, methods are identified through which the community amplifies, disseminates and persuades new members to swallow the red pill online (Lily 2016).

Chapter 2

Research Justifications and Considerations

In 2009, American George Sodoni killed four people at an LA Fitness in suburban Pittsburgh (Hamill 2009). A similar shooting took place in 2014, when a young man named Elliot Rodgers took seven lives including his own, just outside of The University of California, Santa Barbara. A 26-year-old (Myketiak 2016) Christopher Harper-Mercer went to his writing class and murdered nine people (eight students and one assistant professor) injuring nine others at Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg, Oregon in 2016 (Britton et al. 2018). Most recently, Alek Minassian killed ten individuals, driving a truck down a busy sidewalk in northern Toronto, Canada (Brost 2018). Prior to their rampages, each of these men were regular visitors and active contributors to blogs and forums affiliated with the manosphere, and by extension, directly implicated within. Each of these men expressed their acts of terror were motivated by the ideologies and social practices the community espouses, whether by publishing a lengthy manifesto in Rogers case, or a brief Facebook post as in the case of Minassian. Following each of these events, TRP bustled with a dissonant mix of validation, congratulation, and denial (Marche 2016). Not only does TRP celebrate these attacks in discourse but validate their murderous motivations: “Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such… magnificent gentleman” (Rodgers 2014, 118). It goes without saying that each of these men were unstable; they did receive the mental and emotional support they required (Lily 2016). To chalk up these circumstances to mental illness alone however, ignores the impact of TRP and manosphere-related communities. Although, “[t]he manosphere does not tell people to kill… [they] reinforce [their] mindset[s], telling [them] in effect, that [they] are perfectly right to be enraged at half of the human race” (Lily 2016). Analysis into the discursive strategies employed by TRP, provides insight to understand how members of these communities impel a select group of members into murderous action. The acts of terror committed by RedPills and manosphere-related actors are cited as evidence for a variety of phenomena in contemporary politics and scholarship. The radicalization of white men in the West (Marwick & Caplan 2018; Sculos 2017; Sunden & Paasonen 2018), the essentiality of gun control (Wilkinson 2016), and the need for better regulation of online communities (Ging 2017; Massanari 2017), are each considered through the actions these men. For this reason, better understanding of their discourses to inform RedPill subjectivities and influence the perspectives of men is imperative. These considerations are of particular use to future communication policy makers, online community investigators, social media scholars, and internet security professionals. This research is not alone in its considerations. It exists alongside a collection of scholarship looking for greater understanding of gendered violence online, digital community organization, the functionalities of Reddit, and of the manosphere (Betteridge 2016; Ging 2017; Gottel & Dutton 2016;

Jane 2014; Lily 2016; Massanari 2016; Mantilla 2015; Marwick 2018). In selecting TRP, a single thoroughfare within the larger manosphere, this research fills a gap in the standalone investigations into this community. No other centralized research into the communication strategies of the RedPill subreddit exists to date. To provide greater understanding of a localized sector of the manosphere, insight into TRP is given individual consideration. The community’s staggering size, with 275, 000 members (at the moment of submission), exemplifies the importance of this research. Some dismiss the relevance of research into such radical, fringe discourses online. Granted, TRP discourses are extreme in their misogyny. Labelling a discourse radical however, assumes its irrelevance from the mainstream and “creates an artificial distinction between the dirty ‘fringe’ element and sterile mainstream ideology” (Lily 2016, 16). The boundaries of these two imagined audiences are in perpetual collapse on contextually ambiguous platforms like Reddit. With audiences leveled on a shared SNS, subreddit communities both mainstream and fringe must not be read as separate. They exist in constant interaction with one another (boyd 2011). Through investigation into the radical, understandings enable researchers to identify how and which fringe ideologies are invading the public consciousness, which is preferable to promoting an ignorance to the realities of digital platforms and the communities they harbour (Jane 2014). Note that the following paper presents racist, Islamophobic, Anti-Semitic, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic discourses. Uncensored, they are included to accurately relay the vulgar language commonly found and weaponized on TRP. It is acknowledged, that reproducing and circulating these discourses for consumption is problematic and can serve to normalize their antagonisms and marginalizations (Jane 2014). This analysis turns to scholar Emma Jane’s conclusion in unpacking misogyny online. They concede accuracy is required here; less explicit discussions of digital hate can blind readers to the existence and proliferation of hate online, implying that it circulates infrequently or in only far flung fringes of virtual life. Censored language cannot convey the hostile and hyperbolic hate that fills TRP. As such, this analysis attempts to be frank and accurate – while avoiding the traps of sterilizing and normalizing the community’s everyday antagonisms.

Chapter 3

Literature Review

Acknowledging the limited scholarship addressing TRP as a virtual community, and the manosphere more broadly, there are various bodies of literature that both inform and reinforce this study. The following literature review identifies a selection of these academic discourses. Each are informed by one another and integral to the study of TRP. The collections of research are treated separately. Their intersections and overlap however, must be considered in the production of a more cohesive vision of TRP as a digital community, the social media infrastructure it inhabits, and the ideologies it amplifies.

3.1 Reddit and Social Networking Sites

Scholarship concerning social networking sites (SNS), emerges from interdisciplinary methodological traditions. It addresses a range of topics, building on a large body of precedent CMC research. Early studies into SNS identify the characteristics of social media members, interpreting the presentation of the online self, and the impression management tools utilized. Questions of impression management, self-presentation strategies, and online performances of friendship come to the fore. In early prominent research into SNS, scholar danah boyd (2004) examines Friendster. SNS, they proclaim, acts as a platform for a publicly articulated social network that allows for the negotiation of identity and public connectivity. In 2005, Alice Marwick (2005), finds that users on three different SNS had complex methods to negotiate authenticity and validation in representing the self. They conclude that both social and technological affordances influence how members negotiate with social media. Alongside impression management, scholarship also inquiries into the wealth of social and behavioral data that permeate SNS databases. As boyd and Ellison note, when profiles communicate, they create masses of data that can be gathered using automated collection techniques or archived datasets (boyd & Elison 2007). This data enables social media researchers to explore behavioral patterns on a scale unparalleled prior to digital communication1. Equipped with new means of engaging with data, the field of research is expanding how SNS data can be utilized to create increasingly nuanced investigations of digital publics, virtual interaction, and social participation. Golder et al. for example, examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362 million messages exchanged by four million Facebook users to gain insight into friending and messaging activities (Golder et al. 2007). Kumar, Novak and Tomkins, perform a parallel investigation - studying the structural evolution of the social rhetoric on Yahoo! and Flickr. This research underpins questions relating to the collection and analysis of social data when studying TRP subreddit and its various discourses online (Kumar et al. 2006).

1 This practice has precedence in the work of CMC scholars investigating forum and blog participation online (Balka 1993, 4).

Recent studies have taken more nuanced approaches when investigating discourses, interactions and the functions of SNS sites (Hughes, et al. 2012). This research developed following questions concerning the applicability of earlier CMC theories to the study of SNS (Back et al. 2010; Parks 2011). With the rise of the participatory web and portable information and communication technologies, existing methods for the study of SNS required revisiting. Wilson, Gosling and Graham’s classifications of emerging Facebook research provide a useful model for emerging themes that run throughout this literature. Such trends include the following; a descriptive analysis of users, motivations for using SNS, identity presentation, and privacy and information disclosure (Wilson, et al. 2012). Despite its popular usage as a SNS and platform for user-generated content, Reddit is an upcoming arena for scholarship. Popularly spoken of as the ‘front page of the internet’, “Reddit has emerged as one of the most populated spaces for digital sociality on the web today” (Miller 2015, 7). Early discourses unpacking the function of the site are limited to analysis by journalists who are curious at its proliferation and unusually young audiences (Marche 2016). More comprehensive early studies into the site are limited. Scholar Kelly Bergstrom is first to acknowledge the explicit codes of conduct unique to Reddit identity construction and participation (Bergstrom 2011). Eric Gilbert similarly states the under- provisioned nature of the SNS (Gilbert 2013). Ryan Miller defines Reddit, as an “open-source platform, upon which individuals produce user-generated content that forms corresponding communities of interest2 (Subreddits)” (Miller 2015, 12). Massanari’s ethnographic work Participatory Culture, Community and Play: Learning from Reddit (2015), remains the most comprehensive study of the site. It discusses the technical functions Reddit enables, and the communicative interactions it allows. Matias makes valuable contributions detailing the complexities of community moderators and their volunteer labour in supporting the SNS (Matias 2016). The above scholarship is of essential import to this study. Other investigations into the Reddit platform coalesce around the unique communicative infrastructures of Reddit, and to its stark dedication to fundamental self-governance. For instance, Rachel Metz details the mass exodus of internet participants to Reddit from its digital predecessor Digg, founded in 20043 (Metz 2012). Investigations into the sites dedication to self-regulation follow, many highlighting how Reddit illustrates “a design oriented towards user-generated content and self-governance” (Massanari 2015, 330). Originally, the lack of regulation is seen as a neutral aspect of the site, that harbours positive and negative potentials (Mills 2015, 229). In a study about Reddit’s reaction to the Boston Marathon

2 They detail the sites function in relation to how registered community members submit and upvote content, and how that influences visibility and discursive power on the site (Milner 2015). 3 They conclude that this digital displacement occurred in response to Reddit's ability to predict user expectation in the infrastructural communication abled by the site (Metz 2012).

Bombing however, Potts and Harrison illuminate some problematic tendencies4 (Pots & Harrison 2013, 145). Alongside, this event and corresponding eruptions of hate on the platform, additional research looks to understand why Reddit popularly attracts toxic online communities (Massanari 2017). With Reddit’s position to self-regulation unchanged, interest in the unique ways individuals and amorphous online communities can leverage the SNS as a channel of harassment results (Massanari 2017). As Betteridge notes, members of Reddit communities demonstrate great technical skill in engaging with ethical grey zones online, such as doxing5, and identity theft (Betteridge 2016). Thompson also evidences these exploitation strategies in their extensive ethnography of toxicity on Reddit (Thompson 2016). Brady unpacks the neo-tribalism and sense of belonging essential to participation on the site6 (Brady 2018). What is evident from all these studies is that Reddit functions as a hotbed for toxic, hate- based communities, a quality facilitated by the SNS, in collaboration with its members.

3.2 New Media Misogyny and Computer Mediated Communication

Explicit virtual misogyny is subject to relatively little academic attention. This is unusual considering its status as the lingua franca amongst many sectors of the internet. Social media scholar Emma Jane asserts that this absence is related to the position of cyber-hate as metaphorically unspeakable (Jane 2014). Digital misogyny, they explain, “... is laced with expletives, profanity and explicit imagery of sexual violence: it is calculated to offend, it is often difficult and disturbing to read” (Jane 2014, 558). The content is located outside of the norms that define what is considered civil academic discourse. Also, as media critic Anita Sarkeesian notes, those who address forms of gendered hatred online often become victims of that same hatred; internet trolls are primed to rebuke those concerned with such hate (Valenti 2015). Regardless of impediments to the study of online misogyny, a collection of scholars (often trailing journalists and new media outlets) have developed research that centers around understanding the consumption and dissemination of virtual misogyny in text and image (Thompson 2018). As gendered hate defines much of TRP’s content, investigation into this misogyny, and the taxonomies that attempt to define it, are constitutive to this study. Discourses that exist online are governed by an alternative set of norms and ethics. They behave differently to offline discourses (Dijck & Poell 2013). Andrew Herrmann explains, “Computer mediated communication is considered a separate, isolated social world distinct from interaction in the real (read:

4 Following this event, a member created a “FindBostonBombers” subreddit that began crude vigilante investigation. A group of redditors then began attempting to identify individuals in the photographs and posted these “suspects”’ personal information (a strict violation of Reddit rules) to the site. The subreddit was shut down. 5 Doxing is the internet-based practice, of revealing and broadcasting identifiable information about an individual or organization who chose to remain anonymous. The practice can put the individual or organization in danger of trolling, personal threats, and possible violence (Pollmann 2017). 6 Centivany and Glushko come to similar conclusions in their studies of the policy infrastructures that support Reddit (Centivany & Glushko 2016)

9 offline) world”. (Herrmann, 2007, 550). Essential to this revelation is the work of scholar Susan Herring. They are among the first to acknowledge that computer mediated communication (CMC) and public debate online, are not inherently gender neutral but perpetuate structural bias and male supremacy online. According to Herring, the masculine communicative ethic accepts misogyny as it values “free speech”, above freedom from misogyny (Herring 1994. 278). The discursive norms of a masculine net culture are then codified in popular netiquette7, making cyberspace innately inhospitable to women (Shea 1994). After Herring, a movement of researchers followed suit with corresponding claims (Dwight, 2004; Herrmann, 2007; Yates, 1997). This disruption of the cyber-sphere’s pretense of a utopian neutrality is vital to this study. Preliminary research into discharges of cyber-misogyny are addressed through investigations into the practice known as flaming. Martin Lea uses the term to discuss hostile and aggressive interactions via text-based CMC8 (Lea 1992). Much of the first wave of research into flaming - which appeared in the late 1980s and 1990s - includes a broader debate surrounding technological determinism and so-called, “computer effects” (Postmes et al. 1998). This debate concerns itself with understanding whether flaming, is caused primarily by the social environments that prompt its production or computers and digital technologies independently (Kayany 1998). In their early study, “Affect in Computer-Mediated Communication”, Kiesler, Zubrow, & Moses investigate the social and psychological effects of communication online. Their findings highlight the asocial and unregulated communication that computers facilitate and place some onus on the digital for facilitating hate (Kiesler, Zubrow, & Moses 1985). Later studies however, such as Lea’s “Social Influence and the Influence of the Social…” reject precedent determinism by studying group behavior online. They observe that flaming is radically context dependent (Lea 1992, 91). This revelation about the context dependence of online hate is critical; it continues to undergird understandings of misogyny online. The second wave of flaming-related research, emerges with increased public access to information and communication technologies in the early twenty-first century. Attempts to formulate a definition of flaming that can account for all possible variations in “...producer, intention, audience reception, outside observer perception, and every participant’s individual social context” are constant (Kaufer 2000, 7). Prior research is critiqued for failing to designate flames according to strictly uniform criteria, and complex definitional rubrics are offered as antidotes9 (O’Sullivan & Flanagin 2003). Rather

7 Netiquette here, refers to author Virginia Shea’s term, referring to the boundaries of acceptable communication that exist in networked digital spaces (1994). 8 Other scholars question how the characteristics of the discourse medium (such as anonymity) facilitate flaming and affect how it is experienced by women and men (Biber et al. 2002). 9 The most influential rubric is offered by O’Sullivan and Flanagin in a journal article in New Media & Society. Their proposal is for an “interactional norm cube” which defines “true” flames only as those online communications in which the sender’s intent is to violate norms with each participant aware of the text as a violation (O’Sullivan & Flanagin 2003, 80–82).

10 than achieving its stated goal of “enabling more accurate assessments of the prevalence, causes, and consequences of problematic interactions” (O’Sullivan & Flanagin 2003, 84), the taxonomic demands made by these definitional rubrics instead prevent scholarship from making of any sort of assessment at all. With the term flaming at a discursive impasse, another digital keyword begins to cling to literature about online animus and abuse, namely the term “trolling” (Phillips 2011). Trolling in its early use, is the “luring [of] others into pointless and time-consuming discussions” according to Martin Lea (Lea 1992, 93). The name alludes to the practice of fictional trolls waiting under bridges to snare innocent bystanders. Trolling often starts with a message that is, “intentionally incorrect but not overly controversial” (Phillips 2011, 21). In this respect, trolling in its early form contrasts with flaming, which is “intended to insult, provoke or rebuke, or the act of sending such a message” (Dictionary of Computing, 1998). Although birthed as a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, as Kiesler details, “the troll quickly evolved into a menace with intention to upset and inflame online discourse” (Kiesler 1992, 90). Trolling assumes the lexicon for online hate -usurping the place of flaming entirely. Trolling as a digital practice is bound up with gendered hate since its early appearances in the most isolated corners of Usenet bulletins10. Scholar Miranda Mowbray highlights that trolls tend to disproportionately target “women, the young, and other non-traditional computer users” (Mowbray 2002, 8). The generic targets of trolling practices are assumed to be gendered as “she” indiscriminately (Andrew 1996, 1). Literature detailing the disruption of online feminist spaces for example, dates back to the origins of CMC research. They are commonly the target of negative attention from male-identifying users. Ellen Balka traces the history of four feminist forums from the 1980s, all of which experienced some degree of gender-based harassment (Balka 1993, 26). Reid reports an incident within an online community for sexual abuse survivors, in which a male-presenting character with the name “Daddy” traumatized the community by shouting graphic descriptions of violent sexual acts (Reid 1994, 141). While trolling in its early incantations remains vague and innocuous, its amplifying relationship with misogyny and gender-based hate becomes longstanding and well-documented. As participatory internet use emerges as the digital standard, a new generation of scholars looks to take a critical stance on trolling. Informed by its ubiquity as a digital practice, and its normalization as a tool for hate by sexually-explicit and misogynistic virtual communities, trolling comes to focus. Karla Mantilla for example, dubs the practice, “gendertrolling”, producing a classification scheme to identify the use of trolling by misogynistic, and hate-based communities online. Mantilla explains that through the widespread use of, “pejorative terms (‘cunt’, ‘whore’, ‘slut’), and comments designed to humiliate the female target (focusing on weight, physical appearance, and ‘fuckability’)”, the online participant wields

10 Usenet is an early digital bulletin board system. It is infamous within early scholarship around hate in digital communities. It is one of the first to exemplify the potentials seen contemporarily on Reddit (Benson 1996).

11 a powerful online sexism (Mantilla 2013, 38). Scholars including Emma Jane, in her classification of what they term “e-bile” (Jane 2014, 581), or Henry and Powell in their construction of the term, “embodied harm” (Henry & Power 2015, 758), make other attempts at new definitions for this amorphous form of gendered virtual harassment. This study acknowledges all attempts to define gendered hate online11. A decade into the participatory internet - trolling is a part of mainstream internet use. No longer the malevolent bridge-dweller, as Phillips notes, “trolls are not outside of mainstream culture, rather they are born within the dominant institutions and tropes, which are every bit as damaging as the trolls’ most disruptive behaviors” (Phillips 2015, 11). The symbiotic relationship amongst individuals, communities, and their technologies, are made inseparable from the systemic injustices of the analog world that is amplified through CMC. As Lumsden and Morgan note, the social proliferation of trolling has by no means accompanied a reduction in visible misogyny online. Instead, the practice threatens any form of female participation when entering the men’s online domain, which in practice, includes any form of internet participation (Lumsden & Morgan 2017, 8).

3.3 Anonymity in Online Communities

Anonymity is a fittingly elusive concept. Its definition is in constant flux as result of its cyclical redefinition. As the term is included in a variety of interdisciplinary vocabularies, each imbues the term with diverse interpretations. As Brazier explains, “anonymity is an interdisciplinary challenge” (Brazier 2004, 137). To distill this concept, scholars have traced the contours of anonymity in debate. More particularly, its potential for commercial gains (Hoffman et al. 1999), legal standing (Froomkin 1999), and technical composition (Wayner 1999). Considerable efforts are also expended in attempting to understand how the term can be utilized to enrich both digital and analog contexts (Nissenbaum 1999). Some consider it a tool for liberation, and the freedom to communicate. Other scholars view it as a tool for hate speech and juvenile levels of personal responsibility (Levmore and Nussbaum 2010). At its core however, anonymity is concerned with non-identifiability. This is generally the outcome of removing key identifiers such as a name, address, or image (Wallace 1999). Typically, the discussion of anonymity’s role in processes of CMC focus on its function as a facilitator of two social processes. The first is known as deindividuation (deindividuation theory) (Postmes & Spears 1998). Deindividuation promotes concern about anonymity, due to its role in facilitating “anti-normative behaviors” or what Phillips and Milner deem “shitty group behaviors”, while subsumed within a crowd (Phillips and Milner 2017). Primary attention is directed towards the understanding that the “individual norm of one person get[s] lost when that person is in a large enough

11 It turns however, to scholar Russell Belk’s explanation that in discourse, description as opposed to definition, is a superior method as this form of misogyny remains in the process of negotiating new meaning in its shifting digital contexts (Belk 2010).

12 group” (Paskuda & Lewkowicz 2016, 14). Offline, worry about deindividuation centers on violent or potentially violent groups. Common examples include mobs of white nationalists, G20 protesters, and pissed off hockey fans, all of whom pose a direct physical threat to life and property (Phillips & Milner 2017). Online, these concerns are directed at the deindividuating effects of digital anonymity, and the havoc one can wreak while sitting behind a computer screen (Meyerowitz 2010). From this view people behave badly online because they aren't physically there and can sidestep the emotional and physical impact of their actions. Deindividuation, anonymity and hate hold a longstanding relationship that saturates public opinion via a variety of concepts within academic political philosophy and social psychology. The topics have become so entangled that they are often discussed in relation to Arendt’s (1963) “Banality of Evil” thesis12. The thesis states that “a person need not be evil, psychotic or malicious to commit horrendous acts” (Phillips & Milner 2017). An individual need only to think in terms of social roles, instead of personal responsibility, and anything can happen. Anonymity is found in this context to have negative and dangerous connotations (Phillips & Milner 2017). Psychologist John Suler (2004) affirms this perspective, suggesting that the process of severing the embodied self from the dissociated and anonymous self, fosters behaviors one would avoid in embodied spaces. Discourses surrounding anonymity and cyberbullying come to similar conclusions (McKenna & Bargh 2000; Slonje & Smith 2008). Even popular internet colloquialisms facilitate this understanding. For example, the web-comic Penny Arcade’s “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” confirms Sulers hypothesis. According to the Comic “Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad” (Whitney & Phillips 2017). This is a joke to be sure, but one premised on the presumed dark-side of deindividuation, behavior, and anonymity. Evidence supporting these theories whether applied online or offline however, are mixed. Tom Postmes and Russell Spears (1998) found little to no direct correlation between deindividuation, anonymity and anti-social behaviors in their meta-analysis of sixty independent deindividuation studies. Being subsumed by a group they argue, does not in itself account for misbehavior. Rather, behavior - both beneficial and destructive - appears influenced by existing group norms (Postmes & Spears 1998). In autonomy, participants actively choose what behaviors to perform. Alex Haslam and Stephen Richer echo these findings. They contest the banality of evil thesis. They explain that it fails to account for the relational nature of tyranny; the fact that “people follow orders not blindly but as an active reflection of personal affinity” (Haslam & Reicher 2012, 6). Destructive behavior is considered not as a function of mob rule, or a sudden ethical lapse. It is about who is in the group, and how individuals in that group want to be perceived.

12 A concept proposed in response to the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the primary architects of the Holocaust (Shoah) (Phillips & Milner 2017).

These conclusions align more closely with second theory commonly used to discuss anonymity in CMC, the social model of deindividuation effect (SIDE) (Lea et al. 2002). Although SIDE is also a theory of deindividuation, it explains that the mechanisms and outcomes of anonymity in computer mediated groups differently (Cress 2005). According to this theory, members of a group do not only shed their norms and identities in anonymity, but also adapt to the norms of the anonymous collective. This occurs regardless of whether the norms of the collective conflict with the precedent social norms of the individual. In anonymous collectives, individual difference is made invisible; identification with the group is an inevitability. Anonymity is thought to strengthen group identification, which can result in both negative and positive behaviors. It acts as a conduit for uniformity in group norms (Paskuda & Lewkowicz 2016). Accordingly, SIDE theory more closely aligns with contemporary studies of anonymity and CMC. For example, while anonymity in digitally mediated spaces can facilitate toxic expression, the disinhibiting effects of anonymity can also motivate compassion and openness. In their investigation of digital participation by rural LGBT American Youth Mary Gray (2009) finds that for these youth online environments “...function as a refuge from their embodied environments often replete with unsupportive or outright dangerous individuals and institutions” (Gray 2009, 35). Similar conclusions are made by scholar Anna Poletti in their “Intimate Economies: PostSecret and the Affect of Confession” (2011) which looks to the supportive confessional practices of teenage content producers on the photo-sharing site PostSecret. What both studies demonstrate is that deindividuated, anonymous participation can facilitate every permutation of expression - from racist initiatives to random acts of kindness. Acknowledging this shift in conceptions of anonymity and CMC is essential to the following study. Beyond the two influential theories regarding anonymity and CMC, recent scholarship is taking a closer look at the potentials for accomplishing anonymity online. They probe at the previously incontestable binary dividing being anonymous and “not anonymous”. They reject the assumption that anonymity in discourse exists as a binary. It is instead, understood as performative. It is performed by members and facilitated by SNS in highly complex sociotechnical dialogue (Elison, Heino & Gibbs 2006; Rosenberg & Egbert 2011; Rui & Stefanone 2013). For example, in their analysis of Korean weblog Cyword, Jung, Youn and Mcclung identify a variety of self-presentation strategies for the curation of personal information in digital publics. Similar conclusions are found in Bareket-Bojmel’s findings about the self-presentation strategies used on Facebook (Bareket-Bojmel 2016). On the other hand, the very notion that anonymity is even possible in CMC is under scrutiny in contemporary scholarship. A body of scholars hold that anonymity is a false promise, impossible in today’s socio-technical landscape (Ohm 2009). This promise of an achievable anonymity is merely a techno-utopian ideal - ensconced in the tradition of Turing’s promise to create a communication that liberates individuals from the confines of 14 recognition (King 2015). This study addresses matters concerning anonymity - taking into account the myriad of nuance identified by precedent scholarship.

3.4 The Men’s Rights Movement

Investigations of the analog men’s rights movement tend to view the social body through two established ideological camps. The first camp analyzes canonical men’s rights texts. They hold that the discourse resembles a call and response. There is the publication of a reactionary work attacking feminist writings and ideals, and then there is a rejection of that sentiment by a feminist men’s rights activist. This back and forth provides meaningful insight into the motivations of men’s rights activism, their hegemonic tendencies, misogyny, and feelings of ostracization in the context of feminist activism. For example, in the 1990s, publications like David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (1995), defend traditional masculinity and fatherhood against egalitarian family norms. This publication, in company with Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power (1993), or Kenneth Clatterbaugh’s Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity: Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society (1997) reject feminist impulses in return to a more traditional masculinity and activism (Coston & Kimmel, 2013). To counter that anti-feminism, works like Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner's Men's Lives (1995) outline anti-feminist concepts and offer counterpoint essays from the feminist perspective13. The second camp investigates the motivations, offline organization, discourse and rhetorical tactics of Men’s Rights Groups (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012). Early scholarship identifying the motivations of that regressive misogyny coalesces around the word ‘backlash’. Coined by journalist Susan Faludi (Faludi 1991), backlash involves the men’s rights movement’s rejection of their ideological antithesis, the women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s. They characterize the anti-feminist movement as grounded in “male hostility and fear surrounding the increased possibility that women might win full equality upsetting the privileges enjoyed by men leading to a crisis” (Faludi 1991, 18)14. Faludi describes this crisis of masculinity as the experience of men who feel they have lost their foothold in masculinity, such as being the primary breadwinner. The men understand masculinity to have devolved into a perpetual state of crisis, “in constant need of trellising and nourishment” (Faludi 1991, 76). Men attempt to resolve this crisis of presumed feminization by a restorative call for a return to the traditional confines and expectations of normative gender (Blais and Dupuis-Deri 2011).

13 For an earlier example, see George Gilder’s Sexual Suicide (1973, reissued in 1986 as Men and Marriage) expressed a conservative standpoint essentializing male and female biological difference, a return to male traditionalism, and a rejection of feminist gay or sexual liberation. In response, Jon Snodgrass, a pro-feminist Men’s Rights activist, produced a work comprised if a collection of pro-feminist writings, namely, A Book of Readings for Men against Sexism (1977), that rejected the sentiments expressed by Gilder. 14 For example, see Fred Pfeil’s work, White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference (1995), which asserts the Men’s Rights as a movement is weighted in its patriarchal backlash (Pfeil 1995, 5). Also see Michael Salter’s early Australian men’s rights activists, which details multiple discursive and performative strategies used to reject feminist advance (Salter 2016, 78).

Faludi describes primary narratives utilized by men’s rights groups. These groups argue that women and men have already reached egalitarian equality and feminism has now gone too far - victimizing men in processes of reverse discrimination. Men’s rights activists also argue that women are less satisfied than they were prior to women’s liberation, by reason of gender confusion, shortages in male attention, and infertility (Faludi 1991, 45-62). The narratives explain to women “[they] may be free and equal now… but have never been more miserable” (Faludi 1991, 11). Backlash discourses thus blame feminism, rather than the hegemonic gender structures, for the unhappiness associated with the status quo. While central to over a decade of anti-feminist literature, Faludi’s explanatory framework of anti- feminist backlash is not free from criticism. Scholar Ann Braithwaite argues that in the process of defining men’s rights activism as a rejection of feminist liberation, an unintended consequence limits what women’s liberation can include. Further, the assumption of a uniform backlash from men’s rights organizations essentialize women’s liberation, erasing the multi-faceted experiences of marginalized groups, such as the various women of colour’s liberation movements, and those spurred through queer social organization (Braithwaite 2013). Canadian scholars Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-Deri also respond to the backlash theory (which they describe as the scapegoat thesis) in their investigation of Quebecois Anti-Feminist movements (Blais & Dupuis-Deri 2011). They deem the explanatory thesis insufficient as it does not provide a whole, layered explanation for the rationale of men’s rights collectivity. They explain that “masculinists not only scapegoat women and feminists for the problems men face … they also mobilize to defend male privileges and to oppose the real advances achieved by women … grounded in political, economic, and social power” (Blais & Dupuis-Deri 2011, 25). Here, the scholars explain that men’s rights activism goes beyond resistance to feminist change in fear and victimization. Instead, it rejects crisis by actively (even violently) working to regain and sustain male power and socio-economic privilege (Superson 2002). In search of a more nuanced and expansive explanatory theory for anti-feminism protest and aggression, Michael Kimmel’s Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (2013), makes significant contributions to the study of misogyny and Men’s Rights Activism. Kimmel produces an investigation of Men’s Rights Activist collectives that target women and feminism, through a unique “framework of masculinity rooted in entitlement, control and uncontested dominance” (Kimmel 2013, 31). They argue that the catalyst for expressions of misogyny is a form of aggrieved entitlement. Aggrieved entitlement, according to Kimmel, is the feeling that an individual has been robbed of their “birthright”; it is the violence and hate that amasses when one's social and economic expectations are unmet. In attempts to safeguard traditional conceptions of gender, these men “champion a return to the traditional nuclear family… queer invisibility, and gender inequality”15 (Kimmel 2013, 151). They argue

15 To frame this notion differently, Kimmel argues that when masculinity is defined by discipline and close regulation, any loss of control can challenge manhood, and male dominion (Kimmel 2013).

16 that a restoration of masculinity can only be achieved through violent means. As for men, violence is justified as “an acceptable means of conflict resolution - acceptable and admired,” (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003). The combination of aggrieved entitlement, and the belief that violence is restorative of masculinity, functions as the dangerous ideological impetus for anti-feminist violence and rejection. This conception of the state of contemporary masculinity bolsters this study (Stein 2005). Feminist scholarship into Men’s Rights Activism and its relationship to the manosphere is in a process of negotiation. These scholars identify Men’s Rights Activism as related to, but separate from, the geek masculinity found in the manosphere (Lily 2016). They are in the process of negotiating to what extent the manosphere is the digital progeny of its predecessor, or something completely different. Central questions include the shifting anti-feminist discourses of the past and their influence on what is produced and amplified online (Nicholas & Agius 2018). Notwithstanding, these limitations, the scholarship develops insight into the discursive strategies essential to anti-feminism, which are fundamental this study.

3.5 Digital Masculinities and Geek Culture

TRP functions wholly within the realm of geek masculinity online. To understand TRP, geeks and their complex cultural production is essential. The contemporary geek however, is no longer the benign, teenaged STEM aficionado once imagined. Scholarship surrounding the geek has developed over the past three decades. It centers on questions about who makes up the geek community, what their relationship to technology is, and why they sustain such a fraught relationship to gender, race and misogyny. Early research into geeks and geek culture, understate their interests as connected in one way or another related to technology, which is culturally constructed as masculine and controlled by an overwhelmingly male demographic (Massey 1995). The foremost scholar into geek masculinity, Lori Kendall explains that “...the stereotypical image of the geek, is still bound up in conflations between interests in computing, and technology with specific gender and racial formations” (Kendall 1999, 256). They assert that geeks are almost uniformly understood in the Western cultural imagination as males, who do well in school, and have an above average knowledge of gaming and computers. It is that connection to technology that leaves geeks with their second cultural determinant - a perpetual feeling of otherness. As scholar Deborah Lupton explains, the myth of the geek creates a cycle of isolation involving the human body and technology. Physical unattractiveness alongside social inability directs geeks inwards to computers. Their immersion in the digital - isolated from the real world - makes them perpetually more unattractive and socially unfit (Lupton 2000). Despite increases in numbers of individuals who identify with the geek community, geeks sustain feelings of marginalization from the mainstream. Self-perception as an outsider and dejection through assumed misandry act as a fundamental tenet of community engagement (Kendall 2002). Geek self-perception as deviant, their cultural

17 production a secret - purposefully kept from the mainstream - is essential to their exclusionary practices that follow. Laurie Penny suggests that geeks who view themselves as perpetual outsiders, are unable to recognize the privileges they yield. Any dissent or difference within that group of alienated people is made a marker of exclusion from the community (Penny 2014). Acknowledging the racialized and gendered ideological underpinnings of geek masculinity, alienation often follows those identity boundaries. Scholars Nakamura and Chow-White expand understandings of white centrality, in the context of geek exclusion practices (Nakamura & Chow-White 2013). Christopher Fan notes that the “revenge fantasies” of Silicon Valley founders, in which the lowly geek bullied in childhood gains power, and dominates their competitors through intellect, valorizes the white male singularly (Fan 2014, 3). Ryan Milner, in their exploration of politicized meme production, asserts that geek-friendly online spaces assume white male centrality (Milner 2014, 41). In the case of TRP, when investigating expressions of geek culture online, one is unpacking a uniquely white masculinity and its negotiation in virtual discourse. Recent scholarship suggests that geeks reject all individuals who do not align with their white, cisgender, heterosexual identity from digital participation. For example, Massanari explains that online spaces for geeks exhibit tendencies to view female-identifying members through two distinct lenses. They are presented unambiguously, as objects of either sexual satisfaction or as interlopers lurking16 in unwelcome spaces (Massanari 2017, 331). As scholar Roli Varma notes, regardless of this duality, women are uniformly seen as an excluded other, and told either subliminally or explicitly to stay out (Varma 2007, 359). In their analysis of the Free Culture Movement, Reagle articulates various ways in which online communities contest female participation (Reagle 2012, 31). Massanari deems these exclusive communities “toxic technocultures” as virtual subcultures based in othering and hate, that are propagated through various SNS (Massanari 2017, 332). The subcultures are not separate from other issue-based, networked (boyd 2011), or affective publics (Papacharissi 2015). They are marked however, in that they rely on the implicit or explicit harassment of those deemed other to facilitate community identity and participation. Over the past half-decade, due to internet happenings such as the infamous #gamergate (Braithwaite 2016) and #thefappening (Betteridge 2016), a rapidly developing body of research looks to understand geeks, manospheric masculinity, and their pervasiveness on Reddit. Attention to Reddit specifically, accumulates due to the geek community’s visible embeddedness amongst the platforms labyrinthine subcultures (Massanari 2017). Scholar Gabriella Coleman reiterates this understanding, in ethnographic research. They explain that geeks valorize the niche expertise and specialized knowledge

16 Lurking is understood as the practice of engaging with content, without directly participating in a community or discourse (Muller 2012).

18 available on the Reddit platform. The site, functions as a playful arena for the negotiation of humor, intelligence, and craft, amongst senses of inclusion, otherness and collectivism within geek communities (Coleman 2017). Debbie Ging investigates geek culture and its particularly toxic brand of anti-feminism present online. They position their understanding of whiteness as a baseline for participation, and the exclusion of women are two essential aspects of Geek masculinity online17 (Ging 2017). Here, gendered exclusion is made inseparable from the digital discourses of geek communities; this study is indebted to the scholarship that clarifies this understanding.

17 Alice Marwick explores, conceptions of misandry and the validation of gendered harassment in geek centered digital spaces like Reddit (Markwick 2018). Nicholas and Agius too, examine the persistence of masculinist discourses in a more global context, conceptualizing geek masculinity and a recent turn to populist traditionalism as birthed from sibling digital misogynies (Nicholas & Agius 2018).

Chapter 4

Theoretical Framework

Words serve as a platform for and through which people comprehend their individual and collective realities. Accordingly, researchers to consider how information acts within specific sociocultural contexts. These considerations form a relevant methodology for the study of TRP, namely – critical discourse analysis (CDA). This methodology is in debt to an array of scholars responsible for its development. Foucault’s studies of language and discourse ground its use for example. Foucault ties power and language - defining discourses as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1980, 54). This process of discourse formation occurs with the production of language and its understanding (Foucault 1980). Power here, is centrally linked to the production of knowledge; this knowledge owes its realization to the power relations it is produced by. As Gutting notes, for Foucault, “in knowing we control, and in controlling we know” (Gutting 2012, 41). If knowing functions to persuade, language alters perceptions of reality and understanding. This notion in the context of TRP informs much of the CDA to follow. Norman Fairclough is another scholar CDA is indebted to. Departing from what they feel are inadequacies in precedent sociolinguistic theories of language and power, Fairclough holds that scholarship does not do enough to address the complex relationships that underlie discourse (Fairclough 1992, 62). According to Fairclough, any discursive event may be seen as a piece of text to be analyzed linguistically; discourse is extended to samples of either spoken or written language. Based on social theory, Fairclough interprets discourse as language "[that is] a form of social practice” and a means of structuring knowledge (Fairclough 1993, 134). In this way, a discursive event is "a mode of action, one form in which people may act upon the world" (Fairclough 1992, 63). For Fairclough, discourse becomes not just a means of representing human reality, but of signifying that reality. Building upon precedent conceptions of the methodology, discourse scholars such as van Dijk, Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer advocate flexible, multi-methodical, and multidisciplinary approaches (Weir 2005; Wodak et al. 2008). Central here, is their focus on both larger units of communication and isolated terms. Their methods further explore naturally occurring language or language use by users, together with an analysis of a vast number of phenomena of text, grammar, and language (Dijk 2010). Communication beyond the text alone is examined, including “...coherence, anaphora, macrostructures, speech acts, interactions, signs, politeness, argumentation, rhetoric, mental models” (Wodak et al. 2001, 17). Attention to larger and isolated terms, together with naturally occurring language and factors that extend beyond the text all inform this study.

In the digital context, scholars such as Rodney Jones look to understand “the situated social practices that people use discourses to perform” (Jones et al. 2015, 17). They explain that social practices must be seen less as a collection of knowledge, and more as a matter of the concrete situated actions that people perform with particular mediational means (such as various ICT technologies), to enact membership in social groups (Jones et al. 2015). Within such approaches, “practice... refers to observable, documentable... events involving real people, relationships, purposes, actions, places, times, circumstances, feelings, tools, (and) resources” (Tusting et al. 2000, 213). Together, action and digital technologies are utilized by virtual communities to attain or enact certain social goals and identities. Digital technologies provide evidence of the need to construct new modes for communication and social engagement (Wells 2012, 7). If all networked social practices are mediated through discourse, then discourse functions as an essential document in maintaining, reproducing and transmitting those practices. Discourse analysis here, is the study of different ways “technologies of entextualization” influence the knowledge individuals construct, actions they perform, and relationships they build online (Jones et al. 2015, 11-17). What further establishes CDA as crucial to this investigation is its treatment of information as an inherently loaded artifact. Fairclough notes, “information is [understood] to be produced and disseminated in a non-egalitarian fashion” (Fairclough 1992, 64). A select group of agents propagating the discourse often wield a disproportionate amount of power. This power is of such significance, that it informs the language practices that present an idea or discourse as objective fact (Wells 2012, 8). Discourse can serve to legitimize the dominance of existing, and unequal power structures. For this reason, a crucial concern of CDA is to expose the social, cultural, economic, and political agents that leverage power within discourse. Attention to the discursive strategies that allow TRP to legitimize and purpurate unequal power structures and subjectivities, both on and off their platform lies at the center of this investigation. With its neutrality rejected, discourse is understood to mirror the expectations, ambitions and desires of specific individuals, communities, and institutions. For this reason, discourse is inextricably linked to those who produce, and disseminate it (Weir 2005). This understanding acknowledges that the scholar using CDA is neither an apolitical actor. As Matthew Wells notes, “critical discourse analysis denies that any such objectivity could ever be developed” (Wells 2012, 19). They assert that just as all information is embedded within specific contextual meanings, so too, is the researcher bound up in apolitical and non-objective processes. Communication according to this theory implicates both the communicator and investigator, in a “vast and longstanding network of meaning” (Blommaert 2005, 1). CDA provides the researcher with allowances to acknowledge the personal and political - rather than mimic an impossible objectivity. This acknowledgement of the limits of academic objectivity are crucial to the analysis of TRP.

CDA is not without limitation. There are concerns regarding the viability of CDA as a methodology in investigating virtual communities like TRP. The limitations of the methodology when applied to textual systems of communication must be noted (Wodak 2008). In the case of many Reddit discourses, statistics and ratings outside of language are essential to the construction and negotiation of communal identity. It is valid to suggest the inclusion of alternative academic methodologies are more conducive to technical actors and infrastructures (Wells 2012). Wodak argues, there is potential for further complications, proclaiming “...[h]ow do we understand/construct utterances in context? Why is the same text or utterance understood in significantly different ways by different groups of listeners/writers/viewers?” (Wodak et al. 2008, 17) They state that words, text, and discourse alone; meaning making is personal. Behavior and meaning are constructed by communities and cultures - embedded within layers of cultural memory and ways of knowing (Wodak et al. 2008, 17). This investigation acknowledges CDA’s limitations but is mindful to Wells’ assertion that although CDA lacks a master-key to unlock a discourse, it provides a series of related pathways through which it can be explored (Wells 2012, 19).

Chapter 5

Methodology

5.1 Mixed-Methods Analysis

This project utilizes mixed-methods CDA. It employs both qualitative close reading and quantitative code-based analysis (Feldon et al. 2007). Qualitative close reading first maps the community on its virtual venue - Reddit. It includes parsing through select posts and comments (see dataset), to identify the key features, characters and discursive strategies relevant to TRP (Merriam 2016). This form of close reading is subject to the influence of the researcher. It allows however, for better explication of meaning from the complex social practices of TRP. Through this practice, the primary, secondary, and tertiary nodes used in coding analysis are developed. Specific attention is paid to the complex use of discursive metaphors and in-group speech patterns that mediate social cognition and organization on TRP. Discourse in this sense, is understood not as a social practice. Instead, it is a diversity of social practices, that must be analyzed in conjunction with their various contextual elements, participants and material surroundings (Fairclough 1993). Close reading independently can lead to deficits in understanding how frequently communicative metaphors and mechanisms are distributed. Combining, qualitative close reading with quantitative code- based analysis, enables the development of a more in-depth understanding of TRP and its discourses (Krzyanowski 2011). Quantitative analysis allows for a more effective attempt at “tracing intertextual connections among areas of social life, as a necessary step to uncover genres and discourse topics spread across time and social domains” (Given 2008). This dual methodology includes the production of a coding-dictionary that accounts for the use of specific terms, communication styles, content modalities. The codes are organized under three specific but interrelated nodes that break down into corresponding subjects. As this study relies on multiple data sources (various posts and comments across TRP) quantitative coding analysis provides the most effective method to gain insight into the systems of communication that support TRP (Wodak 2009). Mixed methods critical discourse analysis is imperfect, in that attention is directed to internet phenomena in the communicative functions of a technology - from an either instrumental or theoretical approach. A focus on one of these two approaches exclusively, can limit understanding of the characteristics of the divergent spaces tailored to facilitate online discussion (Freelon 2010). To avoid those limitations, this study takes from Brock’s promotion of a critical cultural approach to internet and new media technologies. This approach combines mixed-methods analysis with information technology and virtual design, to interrogate the multimodal and semiotic complexities framed by digital discourses

(Brock 2018). This allows for the investigation of Reddit at its intersections as an artifact, practice and social text (Grint & Woolgar 1997; Brock 2018).

5.2 Coding Strategy

This section details the development of this study’s coding dictionary. This dictionary is in turn used in the collection of quantitative data. Using a close reading of the dataset (see dataset18) three primary nodes emerge; they are TRP’s affective narratives, rhetorical methods, and the sociotechnical affordances provided by Reddit. These three primary nodes form the backbone of this analysis. Each node is broken down into secondary and tertiary nodes. On completion of this dictionary, it is used to code the dataset for quantitative information. Those results provide insight into how the discursive strategies of the community, the pervasive narratives it shares, and the platform that facilitates their collective discourses. Attention to the affective narratives of TRP is the first primary node; affective narratives refer to the key ideological elements and resonant themes that develop as hundreds of thousands of men engage in collective discourse. Three secondary nodes are identified as a subset of this primary node, namely, central themes, recurring representations, and ingroup terminology. Examples of the central themes include false rape accusations, make inequality, and the decline of Western civilization19. Recurring representations include, victim narratives, villain narratives and hero narratives20. The third secondary node references RedPill’s infamous in-group terminology, used to communicate their emic perspectives and community ideology. It includes terms like alpha, Chad, and AWALT21. By way of this collection of nodes alongside qualitative contextualization, the affective narratives that drive RedPill participation, and attract new members are they a in full. The second primary node - the rhetorical methods utilized by TRP - refers to the conversational techniques that drive and sustain RedPill discourse. Rhetorical methods are broken down into three secondary nodes. The emic ways of knowing utilize to validates their claims are identified. They include appeals to personal to personal experiences, appeal to populism, and appeal to science22. The next element refers to the replies and admissions found in discourse, such as admissions of agreement, admissions of disagreement and public inquiry23. The final secondary node associated with RedPill rhetorical methods include RedPill constitutive humour which generally refers to RedPill trolling

18 See page 25. 19 See coding dictionary in Appendix A on page 98 (1.1). 20 See 98 (1.2). 21 See 98 (1.3). 22 See 98 (2.1). 23 See 98 (2.2).

24 practices. The targets of RedPill trolling are identified, and include trolling gender, trolling concepts of race, and trolling political correctness24. The third primary node that emerges refers to the socio-technical affordances provided by Reddit to RedPills. Socio-technical affordances here refer to the characteristics of the RedPill platform, and the opportunities they provide RedPills. They are broken down into three secondary nodes. The self- presentation strategies developed RedPills include pseudonyms, throwaway accounts and digital handles25. The affordances provided to RedPill community moderators in their ability to flared contributors are then presented. These categories include point flares, endorsed contributors and the RedPill vanguard26. The last secondary node affiliated with Reddit’s socio-technical affordances, are the ecosystem contribution enacted by RedPills. Ecosystem contribution refers to the hypertext links included by RedPills in discourse, that migrate members to alternative digital sites across the web. Inbound link destinations, outbound link destinations, and outbound social media sites are all reviews in this context27. This coding dictionary and the nodes recorded in it, form of the foundation this research. It develops both quantitative and qualitative data that details TRP’s affective narratives, rhetorical methods, and the sociotechnical affordances provided by Reddit. Through this data, key understandings are developed into this virtual community and the discourses it perpetuates. The data and the information it reveals will only increase in relevance with the growth of this community and others like it on participatory platforms like Reddit.

24 See coding dictionary in Appendix A on page 98 (2.3). 25 See 98 (3.1). 26 See 98 (3.2). 27 See 98, (3.3).

Chapter 6

Data

6.1 Dataset

This analysis investigates the content, conversations, and conflict produced by TRP over twelve sequential months during the year 2015. The sampling is contained to these twelve months so that the findings are representative of TRP over a defined period of communication and community development. Amongst the twelve months, this study codes the top three posts and their affiliated comments. These posts have comments rose to the top of the subreddit monthly queue under the subreddit’s “top” category. These posts rise to the top of the queue by way their popularity, decided through a combination of upvotes, comments, and Reddit’s administrative algorithms (Massanari 2015). They can also rise if sticked28 to the top of the queue by a community moderator (mod). As the posts and comments are decided by way of Reddit, community members, and TRP community mods, it is assured that the data remains free from the influence of the researcher’s selection bias. This is essential to prevent the researcher from unfairly selected more visibly radical or misogynistic posts to develop a polarizing study of the community. It also ensures a collection of sources that accurately represent the ideals of the subreddit community, the perspectives of their mods, and the influence of Reddit’s technological infrastructure. In total, 36 posts and their affiliated 6,744 comments are coded for in this discourse analysis. In total, this accounts for 6,780 posts and comments held fixed in 36 internal sources on NVivo data analytic software. The comments coded are limited to those that appear on the first page of each of the 36 posts used in this study. The first page according to Betteridge’s accurately depicts how discourses are communicated and consumed on Reddit (Betteridge 2016). As well, limiting the scope in this manner practically allows for a diverse dataset to be surveyed over the course of this analysis. In this way, Reddit posts and comments serve as an ideal discursive space to explore the perspectives and discursive strategies of TRP members. As forums rely on the contributions of commenters for understanding, unlike a standalone blog post, each of the 36 sources are read in unison, while acknowledging diversity of the users; each voice contributes to a post or comment in an active process of curation and consumption.

6.2 Critical Discourse Analysis and Reddit Posts

Given that CDA holds disciplinary roots in linguistics, the specificities of text and language constitute a core element of this research (Given 2008). Most often, this methodology is applied to stable texts, published in a fixed manner, by a single or small collection of authors (Wodak 2009). The

28 Stickied posts are those highlighted by a community mod. It remains the top post on a subreddit front page independent of votes or time since posting until the mod removes it (Miller 2016).

26 discourses of TRP are antithetical to this standard for textual analysis. Produced in collaboration, RedPill posts and comments play out like live conversations; they are subject to constant development in community engagement. As members engage with posts and comments, discourses and the perspectives conveyed therein are subject to indefinite change, with perspectives perpetually moved in and out of view. In text and hypertext, authorship is also largely unidentifiable. Even the discourses themselves are vulnerable in the face of Reddit’s administration. Regardless of Reddit’s hands-off approach, TRP remains on the fringes of acceptability on Reddit, in perpetual fear of being deleted without warning, along with a variety of other manosphere affiliated Subreddits. The instability of RedPill discourses, as such, creates a host of challenges when using CDA as a methodology. To mitigate the challenges associated with Reddit posts and comments, this study takes several steps. To obtain the constancy of text in discourse, this analysis looks exclusively to RedPill materials that are archived. Archived posts and comments represent the aftermath of live public debate playing out on TRP, and are closed to additional tampering in comments, upvoting, downvoting, in addition to mod interference. Reddit materials are archived approximately six months after their production (Reddit 2016). The exact moment a post is archived remains unclear and undeclared - likely to avoid trolls. This period is at its longest, six months, therefore posts from 2015 are free from additional tampering. To access these archived sources, this study looks with gratitude to the Internet Archive’s affiliated Wayback Machine29. Using this web archive, the service enables engagement with a lengthy collection of RedPill posts that date back to the community’s origins in late 2012. These posts are then captured and coded for using NCapture30 and affiliated discourse analysis software NVivo31. Through this process, the stability of RedPill posts and comments are guaranteed and made valuable as texts for CDA.

29 The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the world wide web. It is designed to “crawl” the web and create stable downloads of all publicly accessible web pages (Internet Archive 2016). 30 NCapture is a web browser extension that allows for the capture and upload of web pages into PDFs for social media analysis (QSRInternational 2014). 31 NVIvo is a digital tool used for qualitative data analysis. It is particularly useful in coding web pages from social media sites, through its affiliated analytic software (QSRInternational 2014).

Chapter 7

Affective Narratives

The impact of narrative - both individual and collective - is commonly overlooked in virtual community scholarship (Phillips & Milner 2017). RedPills are familiar with the irreverent power of narrative; they craft them indefinitely. Their narratives however, do not appear ex nihilo. They result from a chorus of actors within TRP and the broader manosphere. Self-contained and densely referential, they hold “cultural references, textual call-backs, narrative motifs, each influencing further call-backs and motifs in a dizzying, fundamentally hybrid, and heteroglossic process of creation and negotiation” (Phillips & Milner 2017, 55). At the intersection of precedent men’s rights activism, twentieth century biological determinism, and novel RedPill narratives of misogyny, TRP circulates an unstoppable ideological corpus. Essential to RedPill narratives are their uniquely digital development. As Jenkins and Purushotma (2009) explain, digital spaces only “provide people with faster and easier ways of doing what they were already doing” (31), sharing and producing narrative content. Online spaces harness an existing narrative energy that allow more participants to tell and respond to more stories. Contributing members and redditors who only listen32 (Henneberg et al. 2009), both assume roles in a process that facilitates a “strong sense of us” (Dijck 2013; Phillips & Milner 2016). Mutually agreed upon narratives and motifs bind the collective as ‘instruments of agreeability’ (Allen 2004). These narratives allow communities with conflicting views to unify in ideology. Replies amongst like-minded voices cyclically reinforce identity (boyd & Yardi 2010). The affective nature of this community, its language and narrative ripe with emotional sentiment, forms a circulatory drive that enables further cultural creation and connectivity (Papacharissi 2014). Narrative elements draw upon and produce a reservoir of cultural tradition. This does not result in a post-structuralist free for all. “Resonant genres, interactions and motifs - the conservative elements of collective storytelling - persist” (Phillips & Milner 2017, 78). This chapter explores the resonant elements, that underpin TRP narratives in discourse. These elements flow from results obtained in close reading, followed by vigorous coding analysis, to make visible which gendered narratives are the most potent when communicated on TRP. In analysis, narratives coalesce around three specific RedPill actors – the RedPill male, RedPill perceptions of women, and representations of feminists. The narratives reveal the goals and motivations of the collective, provoking a sense of urgency in RedPills, while luring and entrapping new members. As the community’s divergent perspectives are streamlined into remarkably

32 Listening here, refers to social media scholar Kim Crawford’s understanding that listening functions as an effective metaphor for paying attention online. This as “lurking” fails to capture the experience of navigating online environments. Instead, the concept of listening on social media, allows for more productive means of analyzing forms of digital engagement, which are previously overlooked (Crawford 2009). 28 uniform conclusions, the narratives of TRP are revealed as powerfully convincing and dangerously toxic (Massanari 2017).

7.1 Biological Determinism and the RedPill Masculine Ideal

TRP is made up of a community of men who assert their desire to reclaim their masculinity. Masculinity is defined specifically and repetitively by RedPills. Its performance is at the core of their public debate and orthopraxy. RedPill masculinity is unique and incorporates ingroup narratives and ideological elements in its self-conception. RedPills understand ideal masculinity to be innately tied to biology, or biotruths. These biotruths determine all aspects of masculinity and male worth. This brief section outlines results in coding analysis and close reading that reference a biologically determined masculine ideal, and narratives that shape RedPill conceptions about masculinity. In these instances, the RedPill masculine ideal is constructed through a mix of the biological determinism of precedent generations of MRA’s33. It is beholder to the fallacy that “human behavior is solely or overwhelmingly dictated by someone’s genetic makeup with little to no influence from one’s social environment” (Nicholas & Agius 2018, 16). In the context of TRP, this portrayal of the RedPill male is primarily used to justify the permanence, innateness, and instinctiveness of traditionally masculine behaviors in men. In its narrative popularity, a corresponding template develops; males are biologically predetermined to act in a specific way, and if those tendencies are not acted upon, an individual is less male. Biology, masculinity and self-worth culminate in RedPill understandings of a man’s sexual market value (SMV). SMV as a male is dependent upon one’s looks, with specific attention to a man’s height, musculature, and the size of their genitalia. SMV permeates a significant portion of RedPill discourses mentioned 121 times, accounting for 4.2% of all narratives representing RedPill men found in this study (see figure 1 in appendix). A man’s SMV is dependent upon where they sit within the RedPill Greek system of desirability. At the top of the system lies the infamous alpha male. Alphas, and the mission to become an alpha, is of the utmost important to TRPs. Mentions of the term total 270 instances or 9.4% of all representations of men. This is the third most pervasive term in discourse, surpassed only by the terms RedPill and beta. The alpha - born to be an alpha - is a man who gets all the sex he desires. Due to his attractiveness, he moves through life with women clinging to him. As u/burgandycarpet notes, “no woman can resist their innate sexual attraction to the alpha and their dominance” (BPtoRP 2015). Lower than alphas on this ladder of social worth are betas34 and omegas.35 If an individual is not an alpha,

33 Informed by popular texts like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s neo- eugenicist tract, The Bell Curve (1994), and the alt-right rehabilitation of the concept by 8chan founder Fredrick “Hot Wheelz” Brennan, and Daily Stormer Editor Andrew Anglin - the ideology motivates and justifies the narratives of TRP. 34 Betas are men who are inept at relationships with women. Central to their self-conception is the understanding that they do not have “enough” sex. This is due to their low SMV, and lack of game (Lily 2016).

29 they remain in constant societal submission to them and their control over women. As such, TRP sets out a series of steps to improve one’s SMV and help RedPills transform from omegas and betas into alphas. To motivate public participation amongst RedPills, stereotypes personifying the alpha are distributed widely. Commonly referred to as Chad, or by his full name, Chad Thundercock, he is the archetypal alpha bad boy. Chad isn’t kind to women (bsultansalt 2015). Instead, he is aware of the revelation that they will reward him with sex despite (or because of) his behavior as the quintessential jerk (Lily 2016). Women are understood to be irresistibly attracted to his charm, looks and sexual experience. RedPills have a complex relationship with Chad (fizolof 2015). Although only mentioned 49 times, accounting for 1.7% of all narratives involving men in this study, he has everything RedPills desire36. In turn, he is a mode for expressing jealousy and rage at the “sexually successful” in the West. Through his presumed whiteness, tall stature, good looks, and game37 (GayLubeOil 2015), he sits at the top of the patriarchal order - a position RedPills both desire and feel entitled to. Real men, alphas are in tune with their ancient, biological, sexual impulses. This true masculinity is characteristic of an ancient, natural sexual dimorphism. They know how men are supposed to act38. Here, gender order fundamentalism, and a longing for a primitive, authentic, distillation of an animalistic maleness, is presented as essential to the RedPill masculine ideal. As Nicholas and Agius note (2018), manospheric “...masculinity collapses into a romanticized and patronizing ‘nativism’” (16). This myth allows for the assertion that any non-normative gender performance goes against natural order and should be criticized. As TRP member u/CQC3 explains, “shut the fuck up about this gender equality non-sense. Ok Ladies, how many of you want to risk your life hunting a wild animal, or would you rather pick berries” (Illimitablemen 2015). In this way, traditionalism, biological determinism, and RedPill masculinity create an ideal that community members strive to achieve. Innate, biological understandings of maleness are useful for TRP for a variety of reasons. The discourses “appeal to grand (often binary) narratives”, that incorporate myths and motifs from generations of precedent Men’s Rights activism (Nicholas & Agius 2018, 31). For RedPills, if certain sex differences are innate, hardwired within the genetic structures of the brain through millions of years of sexual selection, they are resistant to change. If they are resistant to change, according to TRP’s logic, feminism

35 Omegas are men who have no prospects of having a fulfilling sexual or romantic relationship with women. They exist at the bottom of the RedPill imaginary sexual hierarchy (Ging 2017). 36 The reason the term, Chad, might be used such a small number of times in discourse is because the term alpha is often used in its place. 37 Game is the art of seduction popular amongst RedPills, members of the manosphere, and pick-up artists (PUA). It involves using conversational and pseudo-psychological “techniques” to make a chosen female vulnerable to unwanted sexual advances (Marwick 2018). 38 As notable RedPill u/Red_August explains in a lengthy rant, “hunter gatherer society was very sucessful because women knew their place. There was absolutely no room for “equality” - that’s the error… place females in dominant leadership roles and you’ll wind up with tent cities made of yoga matts in no time” (Red_August 2015).

30 as a practical ideology is discredited. These narratives however, do more than discredit feminism (BPtoRP 2010). Biotruths form the masculine ideal that all RedPills work towards. Becoming Chad - a masculine alpha with high SMV - motivates all future RedPill participation.

7.2 Masculinity, Mastery and RedPill Orthopraxy

To become TRP’s ideal alpha male RedPills develop a specific orthopraxis. If followed diligently, a lowly beta will transform into a sexually satisfied alpha. This process centers on accumulating control and mastery over all aspects of life. Scholar Mary Lily adeptly notes, “with its emphasis on mastery (over nature, over women, and over one’s body), the masculine ideal championed reproduces a model that is marked by control” (Lily 2016, 64). This concept of control is understood to stand in contrast to the lack of control, whether biological (menstruation), emotional, or sexual, that defines femininity and the female body. The soft, fluid, and malleable is all rejected in favor of the hard, embedding practices of self-moderation and stoicism into mundane daily life (Whisper 2015). Coding analysis illustrates three dominant narratives that promote mastery in control. They reveal how RedPill narratives motivate perpetual action in community members. The concept of RedPill control over all aspects of one's life first coalesces around the male body. Men’s physical development (lifting) is mentioned 167 times over the course of all posts and comments coded for. This reveals that 5.8% of RedPill narratives about males surveyed held a reference to men's physical development, the largest of any strategy of control. Most of these posts revolve around bodybuilding or lifting as it is referred to on TRP. Masculinity and lifting are mythologized on TRP. It is considered essential to raising one’s testosterone and making a person ‘more of a man’. Lifting is a vital way to reassert control over one's masculinity39. RedPill u/Obio1 explains, “lifting is an extremely powerful way of raising your testosterone… [g]et lean and you literally get more male from a chemical perspective” (Whisper 2015). In lifting, a RedPill is in control of their masculinity, ideologically and chemically closer to the alphas they envy. In working to harden the body, RedPills also work to harden their minds through the practice of holding frame. Defined variously, the practice is understood as the control an individual has over how others (especially females) perceive them. “Always maintain frame!”, is a common phrase on TRP (Praecipuus 2015). The term itself mentioned 58 times, and accounts for 2% of all male representations found in analysis. In practice, holding frame seems to function like a specialized stoicism - never allowing a female to become aware of a man’s feelings or emotions. RedPills understand frame as something

39 It is unsurprising that RedPill celebrity u/GayLubeOil claims to be a personal trainer; he is addicted to fitness and abstains from fast food, smoking and alcohol. His staunch dedication to hardening one’s body is embedded within the masculine ideal of the collective (GayLubeOil 2015).

31 women unconsciously desire to be upheld. As u/colovick explains in the post “Never show weakness. She is not on your side” (2015): “Something I learned about frame is that it’s a poker face. Most people learn stoic and distant for their poker face because that’s standard and easy and works for almost everyone. But if you ever watched Texas Holden on the world series you’ll be familiar with a guy named Daniel Negreanu. He’s very outgoing and personable at the tables, but he doesn’t show weakness, only searches for it in others. His poker face is hiding behind a carefully constructed wall of emotion and personality, and this works better than the stoic eye averting norm”. (Archwinger 2015b) In holding frame, RedPill narratives of control are embedded into the mundane, daily thoughts and actions of subreddit members. Tethered to the practice of reclaiming control over the male body, RedPill masculinity also demands control over female bodies. Control of female bodies is acquired using the second most visible method of control; RedPills call this practice plate theory or spinning plates. The term, is found 98 times in discourse, present in a significant 3.4% of all male narratives in this study. It holds that an alpha should be sleeping with, and in-effect control, the sexual attention of as many women as possible at one time (Praecipuus 2015). The more women a RedPill commands, both through attention and sex, the more masculine they are, and the more attractive they are to other women. Key to its success is remaining aware of the active mission to manipulate and control, while hiding that information from the woman being pursued. As u/dr_warlock notes, “unlike women, a man who spins plates is a man who consciously knows what he is doing, he follows the rules of the game because he has to” (dr_warlock 2015). Here, mastering this process of control over the minds and bodies of as many women as possible, creates a masculinity based in dominance and deceit. The RedPill narratives and social practices that implore members to reclaim control over their masculinity are expansive. u/Redpillsare explains the phenomenon well, “RedPill teaches you how to “expand”. The first logical step is to be the master of just yourself. Next you spin plates. Finally, you get to the point where you know you can hold frame for your life… each step is an expansion of control. Go at your own pace” (bsultansalt 2015). In lifting, spinning plates, and holding frame, the promise of shedding one’s beta skin to become an alpha motivates serious community action. The dominant narratives of the collective infiltrate all aspects of the mundane daily actions of the subreddit members. While the narratives are presented as means of reclaiming control over one’s masculinity, they in turn become methods by which TRP develops complete control over the lives of its members.

7.3 A Masculinity Under Siege

In narratives that detail RedPill masculinity, the collective also demonstrates the recurring and persuasive understanding that masculinity is under siege. Masculinity is being reduced and diluted as part

32 of an active program of misandry and female supremacy (TheThrowAwayRedPill 2015). Blue pills are those individuals who have not woken up to society’s blatant and active discrimination towards men - the sheeple40- comfortable with the realities of contemporary masculinity. Then there are red pills – those individuals who have swallowed the more difficult truth; they are enlightened to the West’s project of misandry (Red_August 2015). This narrative centers around two essential themes revealed in analysis - the feminization of Western civilization and the biological feminization of men. Tracing these themes provides direct insight into the community’s affective public debate and its function in unifying the collective through agreement that there is a shared threat. In the context of Western societies, RedPills contend that the masculine nature of civilization has been disrupted by feminizing forces. This topic is mentioned often, present in 146 posts and comments, accounting for 5% of the narratives about men coded for. It is surpassed only by narratives regarding alphas, betas, anti-feminism, marriage and lifting. They argue that the supremacy of men in leading and directing Western life is not only preferred, but essential to the correct functioning of any human populace. They explain, it is “men… who create, build, and maintain thriving societies. Men are responsible for all human achievement, and human civilization is dependent upon men and masculine virtues” (Lily 2016, 83). RedPills hold that, the rise of the Industrial Era foolishly gave women emancipatory powers. This led a corrupt few to gain influence in government and positions of strategic leadership. Emancipation in turn, extinguished the “masculine virtues that had propelled Europe out of the Dark Ages and colonized the New World” (Red_August 2015). According to RedPills, once the patriarchy unraveled, it motivated a matriarchal framework of social organization that excludes and marginalizes men. RedPills refer to this as the pussification stage, leading to Western civilizations inevitable decline (redpillschool 2015b). With progress now understood as a menace, disrupting traditional social norms, it too is displacing the traditional family. Mentioned 124 times in 4.3% of the total representations of men, the perceived threat is immediate. With gender roles confused by women being told to work, a process of diluting masculinity commences - effeminizing men and boys for generations to come. As RedPill u/flexiblehold describes, this system of ‘Blue Pill Farming’ makes the progressive family dangerous and corrupting. This system is understood as follows: “With mothers empowered to raise their sons according to feminist leanings, they become unthreatening to women. Dad, already emasculated, has a friendly yet unsatisfying, sexless relationship with Mother. Once the son hits a certain age, he emulates his parent’s sexual relationship. He then enters the dating pool submissive, deferential, meek and indecisive with the

40 The term sheeple is an amalgam of the words “sheep” and “people”. It is used primarily by communities who consider themselves at the fringes, awakened to the true nature of things, as opposed to the mainstream, blind to the realities of the status quo (TheBluePill 2014).

women he meets. He puts them on a pedistal41… operat[ing] from the conditioned fear Mom has installed”. (Dark-Ulfberht 2015) The family is transformed under feminism and the matriarchy, from an incubus for strong, sexually dominant young men to “pussies” or betas, with no positive sexual strategy to gain command over women’s sexuality. With the primary locale for social interaction - the family - feminized, TRP’s perceive a mass process of feminization to be underway. This process results in the eponymous rise of the beta. Betas are of utmost concern to RedPills, the term mentioned 292 accounting for 10.2% of all representations of men. It is how most RedPills identify before they are accepted into the community. They are the nice guys. Friendzoned42 by the women in their lives, they do not get female attention (sexual and otherwise). Not only are betas often submissive to women, but they worship them - desperate for their attention

(GayLubeOil 2015). They are geeky, isolated, and anti-social43. The tragedy for the beta is that no matter how desperately they want a girlfriend or long-term relationship (LTR), they will always place second to the alpha. While beta’s have always existed, under the matriarchy, an increasing number of men have no positive role models for masculinity and end up beta, or pussified (Dark-Ulfberht 2015). RedPills are a uniquely conspiratorial collective. Unlike other sectors of the manosphere (Ging 2017), many in the community are convinced that in addition to becoming socially and culturally feminized, the contemporary man is also undergoing a process of biological feminization. Discourses around ‘genetic feminization’ are frantic, mentioned 91 times in this study representing 3.1% of the narratives about men. As u/Obio1 explains: “Testosterone levels have dropped 30% since the 1980’s due to phytoestrogens, plastic water bottles, soy products in foods, birth control pills in municipal water systems… men are literally less male than the were 50 years ago -- and that’s on a biological level … there’s a very real society/political war on men. But there’s [also] a seldom mentioned chemical war on men as well”. (highlivin 2015) Conspiratorial thinking places masculinity in crisis; anti-feminism is made essential to fight an ongoing war directed at men. Urgency, collective action, and group motivation to act follow suit. Through narrative, RedPills are informed that there is an impending threat. Quantitative and qualitative analysis evidences the belief that RedPills perceive their masculinity to be under siege. A total

41 Please note in each of the quotes and comments included in this research, the spelling errors of RedPills are left purposefully. 42 The friendzone occurs when a male is friends with a female, and the female is not “providing” any sex for the female in return. It is the determinate cause of the involuntary celibacy experienced by many low SMV men. It is considered an infuriating part of being submissive to alphas who do not get friendzoned (Ging 2017). 43 Interestingly, descriptions of betas often relate closely to Reddit user’s self-conceptions (Massanari 2015).

34 of 22.6% of the narrative representations of men depict a threatened masculinity44. RedPills are therefore intent on actively rejecting that perceived process of societal, social and biological feminization that is imposed on men and Western civilization broadly. In doing so, these narratives support an affective process of membering, reinforcing RedPill identity in shared threat. It also imposes an urgency on RedPill participation. Community-based action is made not only essential to RedPill self-improvement, but to the rescue of civilization from its decline.

7.4 Masculinity and the Validation of Reparative Violence

The dangerous motivational potentials of TRP are felt no more acutely than in their narratives validating violence, and its innate bind with masculinity. For RedPills the interdependence between masculinity and violence is framed as common sense, natural and intrinsically known. RedPill “narratives [hold] that men need to and should be violent, that men enjoy violence, and that men are naturally violent is taken as fact” (Lily 2016, 79). Only 62 posts and comments coded for hold direct and clearly stated statements of violence towards an individual woman or feminists more broadly. Following the media attention caused by Elliot Rodger’s murderous rampage, such accusations stated openly can get a member in trouble with law enforcement (Massanari 2017). Instead, violence is cloaked in narrative and in-group language. Rather than proclaiming violence, what RedPill does so pointedly is validate violence, making it not only acceptable but lauding it as essential to - and reparative of - contemporary masculinity (Kimmel 2013). The ties that bind masculinity and violence in narrative are most often affirmed through the common veneration of a precedent warrior culture on TRP. Mentioned 114 times and accounting for just under 4% of the male narratives, the veneration of warrior culture is used to construct a masculine ideal that mourns a lost masculinity of the past. In the post “whores and daughters”, u/Erpiii’s rant exemplifies this concept. They begin by lamenting “our great grandfathers bled in the trenches so that we may have an easy life. They were called the greatest generation because of the inhumane times they had to live through” (highlivin 2015). Violence through war is understood as an essential aspect of sustaining masculinity. He continues, “[o]ur generation is a severely wattered down 3rd version of what they once were. Generations of men raised by women deprogrammed of all their pain and suffering gave rise to the beta generation we know today” (highlivin 2015). The mythical perfection attributed to those at war laments at the progress and peace afforded to some nations today. For RedPills, as the West renounces violence, men are afforded fewer and fewer opportunities for violence. As result, men are transformed into cowards, the masculinity they are entitled to, in crisis.

44 This includes narrative representations of the decline of western civilization (5%), the decline of the contemporary family (4.3%), representations of betas (10.2%), and understandings of the genetic feminization of men (3.1%).

In a 2015 post discussing the ban against TRP in New Zealand that results from a new social policy legislating hate online (redpillschool 2015b), a particularly illuminating conversation arises demonstrating RedPill conceptions about violence and anger. The collective jokes about starting a RedPill army to actively fight the perils feminism is wreaking havoc on the West. As RedPill u/GayLubeOil explains, “[We have] 4,500 regulars. Im sure there is an asshole somewhere who is willing to arm, train and fund our anger phase boy army. My guess is North Korea, Iran maybe China or Russia. We can’t be too picky” (redpillschool 2015b). Here, most plainly, anger and violence are validated in their mundane acceptability. Cloaked in irony, RedPills look to regain their masculinity by training as warriors in preparation for the inevitable and essential violence they hope to face. As they sit in their bedrooms, in their parent’s homes or college dormitories, RedPills contemplate a future marked by violence, as betas and omegas rise up to reject their sexless predicament. While most men understand that RedPills are not serious about these claims, the ones that do not are celebrated by the collective; the blood they shed is understood to be reparations for their contemporary struggle as men (redpillschool 2015a). To repair the masculinity that has been stripped from men, and reinforce their entitlement to it, anger and violence is made a part of what is known as the RedPill lifecycle. This period of anger and rage is referred to as the anger phase. This is the second stage in a RedPills development. It is referred to 101 times over the course of this analysis, representing 3.5% of the representations of men. It occurs just after they have accepted the community and begin to understand the injustices of their current predicament (Kimmel 2013). This phase is associated with ranting in discourse45. The rants - in misanthropic anger and misogyny - advocate for hate and violence towards women in direct and unadulterated terms (often from throwaway accounts). As RedPill u/whisper notes, it is essential that these rants are not policed with concern (concern trolling). They explain: “[E]xtremeism is not in the community banner… venting, discussing and understanding anger is a legitimate part of phase 2… if I were to say “don’t be so angry” to someone who comes here to say “all women are bitches and whores”, then I would be interupting his process of coming to terms with the loss of his illusions. It would be dar better to tell him that his feelings are important (because feels actualy sometimes are important)”. (Whisper 2015) In this way, actively expressing anger and even partaking in violence towards women becomes a reparative process in the RedPill life cycle of reconstructing their masculinity. The dangers inherent to the validation of discourses that advocate violence, comes to the fore if a RedPill is not able to move past their anger phase. In this case, they lash out in what is known as beta or

45 The self-described deflation of masculinity, their status as a beta, and how “unfair” it is that they are not provided with the satisfaction (sexual, emotional and otherwise) they are entitled to (RedPillWatchTower 2015)

36 omega rage. Collectively, the process is known as the beta uprising46. It asserts that a revolution is coming, whereby betas and omegas are so angry, that they pursue revenge against women and alphas who subjugate or dishonoured them (Massanari 2017). Each of the murderers - George Sodini, Elliot Rodgers, Christopher Harper and most recently Alek Minassian - are considered examples of this rage - catalyzing the inevitable revolution. What is critical is the means by which RedPills validate their actions as triggered by the pent-up repression of masculinity. They justify this violence as the inevitable response some men will have to their supposed oppression under feminist processes. Women and feminists are in turn made responsible for, and deserving of, that violence. As RedPill u/Cyralea notes about Elliot Rodgers: “There are no stable socieities with disenfranchised men. You can push a man into a corner with absolutely nothing to lose, you will get results like this. Feminists ignorantly think they can indefinitely push people around without conseuqneces, that people will just accept misery in peace. Such is the critical thinking skill of women”. (IllimitableMen 2015b) Here, u/Cyralea justifies the beta uprising as an expression of repression, rather than an example of radicalized misogyny and entitlement gone berserk. RedPill discourses validate violence when it is directed at all individuals who lie outside of the boundaries of the group. This exemplifies the groups’ most dangerous potential. In mythologizing a precedent warrior culture and longing for a time when men were forced into battle, violence is made essential to masculinity. Through expressions of violence towards women, BluePill men, made inherent to the RedPill life cycle, violent content marks a member as within the community. Violent sentiment is rewarded on TRP RedPills, marked as valuable in expressions of future bloodshed. Most worrying is their validation of real acts of terror. In doing so, the collective considers acts of terror in response to an unseen war as an inevitability to be prepared for. Those who express beta rage are positioned as martyrs to the larger cause of repairing Western masculinity.

7.5 Representations of Females and Femininity

This section shifts to results from analysis that detail RedPill narratives about women. These narratives are charged, accounting for 38.8% of the total narrative representations coded for in discourse. They sustain community debate, entrapping new members, and dominating the minds of RedPills. First, the female ideal on TRP is illuminated. It examines the few positive or neutral representations of women present in this community. Disparaging representations about women, are shown to be far more common motivator for discursive unity and emotional resonance on TRP. The representations motivate unity and collective action in misogyny, in turn presenting women as a locus for violence and hate.

46 The concept emerged as a joke turned meme and holds a well-established meme culture depicting visual representations of betas’ rising up in anger against the West.

The ideal RedPill female is rarely discussed on TRP. These representations are significantly rarer than negative representations of females on TRP. Only 10.7% of total posts hold positive representations of females. Correspondingly, 89.3% of all mentions of females are tied to disparaging sentiment. This disparity shapes the discourses of TRP deeply. TRP is not like other centers of the manosphere, such as Pick-Up Artist (PUA) communities like Roosh V’s ReturnoftheKings and Rollo Tomasi’s TheRationalMale. Talk of finding a traditional, loyal wife, dedicated to selfless housework and unmitigated sexual availability does not resonate on TRP (Lily 2016). Instead, negative representations dominate almost all depictions of females. With little room for variance, disparaging sentiment forms the backbone of RedPill discourses. When the female ideal is discussed on TRP, it is spoken of primarily in terms of female biology. This directs any positive attention exclusively towards women’s bodies and their physical appearance47. On TRP, this concept is often referred to as looksism. The term is mentioned infrequently, found only 38 times in discourse and representing 2% of the narratives detailing women (see figure 2 in appendix). It explains that “a person’s appearance is the primary determinant of their attractiveness as a mate” (IllimitableMen 2015a). The appearance of a woman is then rated on a scale from one to ten. Ten out of ten (also known as a dime piece), referring to a very attractive female, and one out of ten referring to an unattractive female. Often these descriptions follow a corresponding formula; a throwaway account explains “I met [a female] who I thought was HB8 (she was a 10 to me at the time) unicorn when I was 24” (Omlala 2015a). HB8 in discourse refers to a “hot babe” in the 80th percentile of attractiveness. Beyond reducing the spectrum of female attractiveness to ten numbers, the scale binds a female’s worth to her body exclusively, and perpetuates reductive and objectifying representations of women on TRP. It is difficult to make assumptions about all women, even for RedPills. To avoid this concept - that women share individual differences - RedPills understand that all women are tethered to their biological, ‘natural’, instinctual position as women. The community constructs a powerful essentializing narrative that allows all women48 to be discussed in uniformity. This narrative is referred to through the acronym “AWALT” or “all women are like that”. It is relatively common, accounting for 2.5% of the representations of women in discourse, mentioned 45 times in the posts and comments surveyed. According to RedPill u/Bortasz, this concept alludes to the idea that “...all women are hardwired, biologically/ evolutionarily conditioned to respond to certian situations in certain ways. They will react not because they are evil. But because this is there nature” (fizolof 2015). While many RedPills state the term’s neutrality, referring to one’s biology its negative and deterministic connotations are impossible to

47 A female’s value is understood only by way of what she can give a male through her sexual market value (SMV) as an attractive human specimen. 48 Of course, RedPills do not mean all women, biotruths create a trans-exclusionary and heterosexual understanding of womanness that refers to cisgender, heterosexual women exclusively.

38 ignore49. Any action, behavior or perspective a woman holds can be chalked up to their biologically predetermined actions. Consistent with the assumption that all women act and behave in a particular way due to biologically pre-programmed instincts, is the concept of the hamster. The hamster is mentioned 76 times in discourse, accounting for just over 4.2% of all narrative representations of women. According to RedPills, the hamster is responsible for AWALT, it is the biological drive motivating uniformity in the actions and behaviors of women (redpillschool 2015a). Like a hamster running cyclically on its wheel so are the minds of women according to the group, creating perpetual justifications for immoral, promiscuous, misandric, and illogical behaviors. In discourse, the concept rids women from having any capacity for autonomy or individual thought. As RedPill u/MattyAnon describes, “the image of the hamster in a wheel scampering wildly and the wheel tuning at light speed… i.e a woman frantically thinking hard for a rational justification for her feelz based actions” (redpillschool 2015d). The hamster signifies the falsified urge that motivates female behavior. It homogenizes and essentializes the behavior of all women, while paternalistically reducing them to their “biological urges”. Rational thinking is thereby made an impossibility. While the hamster is a discursive tool used to vilify any action performed by a woman, the biological urges it facilitates according to TRP, revolves around the concept of female hypergamy. Mentioned 41 times in discourse, it is not a popular concept. However, it is a well-established tenet in RedPill discourses. Hypergamy is the perceived instinctive tendency for females to try and date, engage in a sexual relationship, and/or marry a male of higher sexual market value than themselves (Garl_Vinland 2015). In RedPill, u/Garl_Vineland’s post “Hypergamy 101 - Woman See Men the Way Men See Jobs”, they explain the process as follows: “You have spent the better part of your life learning the skills necessary for your career. You’ve landed at a decent company, and over several years you have proven your value at what you do. Now that you are in your prime, opportunities are opening up… better companies are courting you with better packages… do you stay with your current company out of loyalty? Fuck no. You make the proper business decision and go with the best offer, because that's all it is; a business decision… Most women have spent their majority of their lives learning one skill above all others: How to attract and manage men. Their hypergamous nature leads them to the same conclusion about men as I described regarding jobs”. (Garl_Vinland 2015) According to this theory, regardless of a woman’s personal beliefs, they partake in this practice if given the opportunity. The processes are considered responsible for the involuntary celibacy of many low status men (Gadnuk_ 2015).

49 As u/agmatine notes, “Wait, AWALT means ‘All Women Are Like that’? I always thought it was ‘All Women Are Lying Traitors’” (TheRedPillThrowAway 2015).

Closely associated with the concept of hypergamy is Alpha Fux Beta Bux (AFBB). AFBB holds that in the process of practicing a hypergamous lifestyle, women from the ages of 18-25 ride the cock carousel. The term cock carousel is often used to refer to women, amounting to 3% of narratives relating to them in discourse. Here, women have sex with as many alpha males as possible trying to secure one in marriage or relationship. That is until the inevitable wall. The wall occurs around a woman’s twenty fifth birthday. At this point according to TRP, women experience a drop in their sexual market value and get flung off of the cock carousel (Garl_Vinland 2015). If they have not secured an alpha, they panic and settle for a beta man with a well-paying job. They then remain with this man, using them for love and support as a placeholder until they find another alpha fix (dr_warlock 2015). This two-phase mating strategy is considered the goal of all women pursuing relationships. The sentiment is clear for RedPills; women are biologically driven, instinctively manipulative, and not to be trusted by men. If all women are driven by this biological process of sexual social climbing, according to TRP, all females are considered “sluts”. For RedPills, a slut is a woman with sexual autonomy, their sexuality unbound to the pleasure of a male. The term, is thrown around frivolously, and mundanely on TRP (Jane 2014). It, along with its synonyms, “whore” and “cunt”, are found 173 times in discourse, accounting for 9.5% of the total representations of women. According to TRP, all women are instinctually driven to be sluts by way of their instinctual hamster and desire for pleasure. According to RedPills, “traditionally” women have been forced to control this instinct to preserve their sexual value (redpillschool 2015a). RedPill u/Ronin11A describes this notion, as they claim that “women are the gatekeepers of sex. Sec is something men inherently value. They view it as something worthy of incredible effort... slut’s disregard all of this, she gives that value freely to as many men as she can based on fickle feelz” (redpillschool 2015d). In doing so, RedPills also see sexually autonomous women in processes of decline, becoming inherently less valuable with each sexual encounter. According to TRP, as women accumulate loss in value, they become more and more despicable. Representations of women as “sluts”, constructs their worth as derived from their low partner count (LPC). LPC refers to the understanding that the more men a woman has slept with the less she is worth. According to TRP, a woman cannot escape their sexual history (redpillschool 2015b). The collective understands the metaphorical “ejaculations of men [like] dark stains on females who begin as clean”, establishing a method for shaming a women's sexual autonomy (down_with_whomever 2015). As u/DoxtasticPoo explains, “With every new guy a girl fucks, a peice of her dies” (Omlala 2015a). With this misogynistic dehumanization of women, they are made effective targets for shaming. This shaming often accompanies the practice of trolling females (Described in full on page 65) and follows a corresponding template in crude statements about females. Statements like, “will you wait for me Billy, while I just get all this hot alpha Chad Cum out of my system” (Illimitablemen 2015b), and the corresponding upvotes they receive validate that shaming, which perpetuate it as a valid mode of representing women on TRP.

As is evident, representation of the hamster, hypergamy, AFBB and sluts, give women little room to practice free thinking. The understanding that females are innately intellectually inferior to males, accompanies each of the previous representations. It is one of the most common representations of women found on TRP, only surpassed by their representation as feminist villains at 7.1%, mentioned 129 times over the course of this dataset. Accusations that “...women can’t even choose between two given restaurants” (TheRedThrowAwayPill 2015), that they “sort of stop maturing between 14 and 24” (redpillschool 2015a), are commonplace on TRP. Femininity too, is considered unintelligent by TRP, with logic and truth made inherently masculine qualities. Feminine understanding is based on feelz, or emotional thinking, while masculine understanding is based in realz, or evidence and truth. Anyone acting feminine (expanded to include LGBTQ2 people, SJWs, and liberals) is thought by TRP to reject the realities (realz) of a given situation, acting in accordance with their feelings (feelz) (redpillschool 2015a). For TRP, this propensity for allowing guidance by feeling, makes women and the feminine incapable of introspection, unable to know right from wrong. TRP’s saturation with vitriolic representations of women, facilitates a space hostile to any kind of female participation. With a woman’s worth bound to their biological body, all are essentialized in the concept of AWALT. RedPills then construct complex narratives in the hamster, hypergamy, and AFBB that mark all females as individuals to be mistrusted, shamed, and alienated. In their assumed promiscuity, and the detrimental effect sexual experience has on a female’s worth, they are then made the worthy target of shaming, trolling and punishment. In upvoting and commenting on those radical claims, the shaming of women is further validated by the collective. Unaware of their misguided biological nature, females are then considered intellectually inferior by TRP, to be mistrusted and belittled as result. Through representation in narrative, females are branded as a valid target for exclusion, shaming, and hate.

7.6 Representations of Third-Wave Feminism

Feminists are the single most significant target of TRP. Although anti-feminist representations of women only account for 28.4% of the total narrative depictions of women, they are the object of absolute vitriol. Ging notes (2017), that manosphere discourses often target what RedPill’s call Third Wave Feminists or gynocentric feminists. This form of feminism is understood as separate from its two precedent waves. For RedPills, second wave feminism succeeded in securing equality for all women, and third wave feminism has weaponized that ‘ideological’ energy, directing it at men and the patriarchy (Ging 2017). As u/hoodwinked explains, “3rd wave feminism is feminism reinterpreted as a weapon” (redpillschool 2015a). This feminism, fights for equality by positioning females as victims, infantilizing them as child-like, as “if they can do no wrong” (Dark-Ulfberht 2015). It simultaneously attacks the precedent rights of men for their own social, legal, and economic benefit (Faludi 2006). As

41 u/PrinceOfSpades explains “3rd wave feminism is literally a cancer; progress now tied to misandry through feminism, steps must be taken to help cure the infectious movement” (Archwinger 2015a). This section explores RedPill representations of this perceived attack by feminists, on men’s rights and autonomy. Third Wave Feminists are imagined as quintessential villains. Their depictions as villains responsible for all social woes accounts for 52.8% of all representations of feminists. They are described as “unintelligent, manipulative, dishonest, entitled, attention seeking, hysterical, [and] scratchy” SJW’s that hypocritically whine about female injustices (Lily 2016, 71). Empowered by way of Teen Vogue and Jezebel to shave their heads, and grow their body hair, they are physically repulsive, overweight, and scorned by men. As RedPIll u/throwawaysteve123456 jokes: “When we look at extreme feminists… almost all of them are quite unattractive… thee women are bonafide 1s and 2s… could being overweight and ugly cause women to develop more feminist beliefs?”. Feminists are made into social pariahs. Their unattractiveness and inevitable scorn, responsible for their disdain for men. The conclusion follows that they must be treated “as diseased creatures… sickly and dying”. (Silvestroyer 2015) Dehumanized, MRA’s are validated in their vitriolic hatred for and missions against feminists and their cause. In contrast to RedPill expansion of the social control of males, RedPills believe that feminist utilize a series of methods to control men. This begins within the institution, specifically legal institutions. Narratives depicting feminist infiltration of legal institutions account for 5% of all representations of women. The narratives follow a corresponding template; the system as infiltrated by feminist lawyers and government officials who use influence to prioritize women and women’s rights. They proclaim, “in a feminist dominated America, the law affords women a pussypass even for the most heinous and horrific crimes” (redpillschool 2015a). u/smegma_cheese reiterates this claim, announcing that “in places infected with extreme feminism… a woman could murder someone in cold blood” (Red_August 2015). For RedPills, this prioritization leaves women with opportunities to escape any crime, especially those committed against men. It positions “men as always guilty and girls as always helpless victems” (Red_August 2015). The invasion of systems of authority becomes of increasing urgency as feminists provide women with legal supremacy in court, and therefore control and dominate over men. The feminist led mission of control over males is also communicated through what RedPills consider a feminist invasion of male spaces. These narratives feature prominently on TRP, and account for 3.6% of all gendered representations - mentioned 67 times across the dataset. The narratives of infiltration are dual in feminists attempts to control analog and virtual spaces. In relation to the physical world, feminist led infiltration of male spaces such as the “Western technology industry”, “American military”, and various “sporting industries” (fizolof 2015). For RedPills women are not biologically

42 advantaged in these areas of expertise, and in imposing themselves into these spaces, weakening the collective. As endorsed contributor u/Cyralea explains: “Women derive value by affizing themsleves to men. A woman who marries the king becomes a queen. Groups of males have historically been the only thing to ever effect change. Woman have known this since the dawn of out species. By infiltrating (and eventually controlling) a male space, women derice actual power for themselves”. (fizolof 2015) Women are not considered introspective enough to engage in this process consciously. Instead, it is understood as a process motivated by malicious feminists in positions of power, eager to weaken and feminize previously strong Western institutions (Archwinger 2015a). RedPills also look to prevent women from invading the gendered virtual spaces they hold dear. These spaces include Reddit, and locals within the manosphere. The essentiality of virtual spaces like Reddit and the manosphere give men who wouldn’t otherwise engage with one another, such as alpha RedPill sages and BluePill betas, a space to share their experiences about women. They can converse in collective knowledge away from female view (boyd 2010). As u/dr_warlock explains “unlike a tangible space, the internet is a place where a ‘provider male’ can easily access ‘top-secret’ information for long periods of time without a women’s knowledge, where her vagina has zero influence” (dr_warlock 2015). This concept of the essentiality of female exclusion exists throughout TRP. Extreme reactions to the construction of female-centric subreddits like r/TwoXChromosomes by feminists for example, function as evidence of Reddit’s conception as a male space (fizolof 2015). The aggressive trolling tactics directed towards the group and its members, meant to fight the feminist push for female participation on the SNS. A warning of the anger and rage possible when men are not given exclusive access to digital platforms they feel entitled to (Kimmel 2013). RedPills are also convinced that feminists are scheming for complete control of the male body. They assume this via discourses around rape hysteria and false rape accusations. These narratives are pervasive and account for 10.3% of the total narrative representations of women. Discussions about feminists and rape usually begin by the assertion that rape culture50 is false. This lie is used to restrict male autonomy and bodily control by criminalizing all of men’s actions. Women are infantilized, made irresponsible for their actions. u/redpillschool describes this sentiment clearly as they note “the latest feminist push, has obviously been expanding the borders of the term ‘rape’, one such frontier has been deciding that drunk sex is rape” (redpillschool 2015a). With the expansion of the definition of rape, RedPills also promote the understanding that feminists have empowered women to choose when they have been raped. For example, RedPills contend that following a drunk sexual encounter, women will claim rape so as to not be labelled “sluts”

50 Rape Culture refers to the understanding that society can covertly normalize, trivialize and rationalize rape or acts of sexual violence.

(Betteridge 2016). A RedPill explains, “there is a new logic theory [about consent], entitled ‘men are just plain fucked’. It states, “drunk woman + sober man = rape, drunk woman + drunk man = rape, drunk man + sober woman = rape, sober woman + sober man = consensual, unless she regrets it” (Archwinger 2015a). In this statement, RedPills reaffirm that feminists have allowed personal shame to become a motive for accusation of rape. They claim this is especially common in cases where a woman is cheating and covering up their infidelity. As u/RPinCA, explains, “[the feminist cause] is part of an ongoing battle to legally make regret = rape… that is if a woman later decides she regrets the sex that consent can be retroactively removed” (Gadnuk_ 2015). In this way, RedPills fear feminists are leading a movement to control the male body and its sexual autonomy. Feminist definition of rape according to RedPills also infringe on a man’s rights to claim rape. In a move to appropriate the ‘language of the left’, they assert that feminists essentialize rape in a binary that positions men as villains and women as victims. Gottel and Dutton (2016) note this trend in their investigation of Men’s Rights Activism on the manosphere in Canada. They document the phrase, “Theft isn’t black. Bank fraud isn’t Jewish. And rape isn’t male. Rape isn’t gendered”, demonstrates this point clearly (Gottel & Dutton 2016). RedPills claim that “being hard doesn’t make you willing” (redpillschool 2015a). As u/moose_war explains: “yo just to recap: if a woman rapes you, no one will care. If a woman accuses you of rape, you are fucked because everyone will believe her. If a woman hits you, people will laugh, and if she is arrested she’ll get a warning. If you rape a women, you will get beaten by 12 white knights and go to jail”. (Mucle6 2015) This conception of rape is used by RedPills as an example of feminist led male inequality. For the collective, it demonstrates how feminists infringe on the rights on men by imposing a dangerous acquisition of control over the male body. Narratives about feminists, and their clandestine mission to accumulate control over men, serve an essential purpose on TRP. The group is provided with an affective scapegoat for the woes. In expanding an active mission against the rights of men, RedPills are given a target for their rage. As feminists allegedly impose control over all male social systems, the repudiation of feminism becomes urgent. By framing feminism as an attack on men, RedPills claim that their rejection of feminists is merely a push back in favour of egalitarian equality. As u/Independantmale notes: “I was for equality [and] I still am. 100%. Women need to be held accountable exactly as men are. No more special favours, preferential treatments and so on. They should be sentenced just as harshly in criminal cases are we do. Bitches want equality let's give it to them” (redpillschool 2015a). In the minds of RedPills, since everyone already has rights, collective activism against feminists is a positive, equalizing mission, to restore gender equality and the rights of males.

7.7 Conclusion

A collection of the charged narratives that motivate TRP’s discourses are outlined above. They tell an alarming story. RedPills exist in a state of dissatisfaction (social, sexual and otherwise) with the status quo, and their individual masculinity. TRP provides them with a masculine ideal to aspire towards. To achieve that ideal, TRP sets out a series of beliefs and active practices in narrative. This RedPill orthopraxy promises an effective method to repair one’s masculinity, through an expansive and highly gendered program of control over all aspects of one’s life. These charged practices are not limited to personal development. They clarify a reason for RedPill rage; their masculinity is under siege by malicious gynocentric feminists. Feminists scheme to assert control over all aspects of the lives of men. In TRP’s validation of a reparative violence, those who act out in terror, are too seen as contributors to the cause. The origins of the narratives, motifs, and resonant themes developed by TRP in collaboration with other denizens of the manosphere are uncertain; the mystique is a purposeful part of their charm. Content however, is not all that is revealed through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of TRP discourses. Their affecting narratives are also made available while tracing the contours of their flexible cultural reservoir. In repetitive telling and retelling the motivations and beliefs of the community are continuously reinforced, creating uniformity across the charged subreddit. The community is also able to sustain the resonant emotional energy required to motivate public participation on TRP. That emotional energy however, is jointly responsible for directing RedPills into misogynistic action both online and offline. The potential to motivate such a large and angry community, creates dangerous potentials on the Reddit SNS.

Chapter 8

Anonymity and Identity Play

Reddit is a performative and experiential platform (Massanari 2017). Driven by a commitment to creating an online space for all content distribution, anonymity is facilitated for its members (Miller 2015). There is no requirement for the redditor to incorporate any personal information in content or username when making an account. The only fields used to identify a member are an email (which remains optional) and a username (Scott & Orlikowski 2014). Anonymity in this instance, fosters a sense of security and privacy amongst Reddit members. It provides them with the freedom to share opinions and feelings openly, with little fear of social repercussion or personal endangerment. At the same time, through the username, members can share their perspectives, build reputational capital, and allow others to follow their personal contributions to Reddit (John 2018). For this reason, anonymity functions as the keystone sociotechnical affordance provided by Reddit that shapes and motivates participation on the SNS. This section explores how anonymity in discourse influences TRP and their corresponding communication styles. Three considerations are outlined below. First, the self-presentation strategies utilized by the community to control how members present themselves to the TRP and broader Reddit ecosystem are surveyed. As anonymity in discourse removes most identifiers validating a community actor, it then looks to understand the means by which RedPills authenticate their posts, claims, and community contributions. By using specific in-group proofs, it investigates how RedPills validate their own identities and ingroup positions in contrast to normies or lurkers51 (Wilkerson 2016). Last, it centers on Reddit’s infamous hivemind - to explore how anonymity and community identity, facilitate a worrying uniformity of belief on TRP. In this chapter, insight is developed into how anonymity as a sociotechnical affordance provided by the SNS is bound up in the discourses of TRP. It enables particular cultural interactions and communication styles as result (Massanari 2017). This chapter holds various limitations. Most significant is its attention to discourse alone that ignores the impact of Reddit’s karma system. This is due to karma’s visibility outside of the text-based communication of TRP. Karma, is considered one’s digital legacy by Reddit. It is “... a point system that purports to represent how much redditors value a particular accounts content contribution52” (Massanari 2017). Posts and comments are accompanied by a total score which is some variation on upvote and downvote accumulation. Scores then affect the visibility of a given post. Comments that are more upvoted

51 Lurking is the digital practice of engaging with a web page or forum, without directly contributing or interfering with that content as it is made visible online. It is a primary means of engaging with digital environments yet treated with suspicion on Reddit (Wilkerson 2016). 52 There are two kinds of karma: link and comment. Link karma is accumulated by posting links, and comment karma by posting comments.

46 attract large karma points and are listed higher in the queue than posts and comments by other users. Consequently, the system has great potential in directing the discourses that follow from a given post (Gilbert 2013). As this study only looks to anonymity and text alone, it ignores the potentials of the karma system. To counter this limitation, this section must be understood to complement research into the discursive influence of karma.

8.1 RedPill Self-Presentation Strategies

In analysis of anonymity’s influence on the discourses of TRP, the self-presentation strategies employed by the community are outlined. Self-presentation strategies refer to the spectrum of practices and performances, SNS members take up to actively curate how much personal information they share (Jung, McClung & Young 2007). On TRP, the three most common strategies identified in qualitative and quantitative analysis, are pseudonyms, throwaway accounts, and digital handles. Surveying the self- presentation strategies of the community, develops insight into how anonymity influences and is exploited by RedPills, in turn it evidences the unique methods employed by the community to present their identities within the group. The first self-presentation strategy interpreted in this analysis is the monolithic Reddit pseudonym. Online pseudonyms, also called usernames, or avatars, is the dominant self-presentation strategy on online forums across the web (Ellison et al. 2011). The popularity of the pseudonym carries onto TRP. Of the 6780 usernames coded in analysis, 5977 are pseudonyms. This accounts for 88% of the total usernames on TRP - by far the largest conglomerate of self-presentation strategies (see figure 3 in appendix). The popularity of the pseudonym reflects their usefulness on Reddit. As Stutzman and Hartzog (2012) note, “the privacy benefits of maintaining at least one pseudonymous profile are two-fold. Pseudonymity both conceals information and encourages disclosure” (769). The pseudonym is imagined protection, shielding the SNS member and their personally identifiable information - such as a given name, date of birth, address, or contact information. As result of this dissociation with primary identity, individuals can disclose their thoughts and perspectives with relative freedom. (Froomkin 1999). Unlike complete anonymity, pseudonyms accomplish a goal impossible with true anonymity - partial identifiability. As scholar A.M Froomkin notes, “perhaps the most important difference is that the pseudonym allows for the creation and continuity of a nym - an alternative identity” (Froomkin 1999). When a pseudonym is used members can accumulate social capital, develop a following, and have an engaging publicly visible posting history. Scott and Orlikowski note, “pseudonyms allow others to follow a person’s contributions and build up reputational capital; in contrast to anonymous contributions that

47 stand alone” (873). The pseudonym becomes a potential model for gain, whether of a fan base, social capital, or a poor reputation53. In contrast to other subreddits, pseudonyms on TRP take on a performative element. They read “rougepelle”, “redcurtis”, “redpilldad”, “crimzonlossenge”, including the term redpill cloaked in humour or irony directly within the pseudonyms themselves. Pseudonyms also can include other aspects of RedPill in-group language. Usernames such as “socialjusticewhinner”, “ciswhitemaelstrom”, “silentalpha” or “ChadThundercockII” are effective examples of this practice (redpillschool 2015a; dr_warlock 2015; highlivin 2015). For RedPills, pseudonymity is transformed into a method for presenting the self as a member within the collective. By including in-group language within a pseudonym, the members are immediately identifiable as someone who has “swallowed the red pill”. Complicating the pseudonym, is its exploitative sibling practice, the throwaway account. Throwaways refer to a temporary account on Reddit to be deleted after a single post or comment (Choudhury et al. 2014). Scholar Tiffany Gagnon, provides a helpful mode of identification. Throwaways contain the word “throwaway” in some iteration, and only include one comment in their related history. In archival posts, deleted accounts are by proxy considered throwaway accounts by nature of their deletion (Gagnon 2013). Used for a single, specific, digital interaction, “its intended use is to provide increased anonymity and the freedom to communicate with complete impunity” (Nagel & Firth 2015, 5). As a temporary technical identity, throwaways benefit redditors in the separation of content shared, from their representative or primary digital identity. It provides new opportunities to post personal information, entirely separate from one’s normal account54. In the context of TRP, throwaway accounts are not uniform. They do however, follow a corresponding logic. Common examples include, “RPthrowaway123”, “my-redpillthrowaway”, “blatantTRPthrowaway” and so on (Garl_Vinland 2015; down_with_whomever 2015). The temporary accounts are notable for their obviousness55 (Leavitt 2014). On TRP, visible throwaways accounts make up 574 or 8.5% of the total 6780 usernames coded for on TRP. They are ubiquitous, found in all of the 36 sources coded. Their pervasiveness demonstrates the ease with which redditors users utilize throwaways to foster heightened anonymity, and the intensity with which many want to entirely avoid recognition. As an exploited pseudonym by nature, they expand anonymity, as intentionally subversive tools. They go

53 Similar communication strategies are evident in the online behaviors of illegal prescription drug buyers within online chat forums. Pseudonyms allow drug buyers to identify one another, while keeping their private selves separate and anonymous (Barratt 2012). 54 As Leavitt explains, the criteria for what counts as a throwaway remains in flux; stark definitional boundaries are unhelpful given that temporary could refer to single use or short-term use (Leavitt 2015). 55 In Leavitt’s analysis, 1/10 throwaways included in their dataset prefaces with posts such as “using a throwaway for this post for obvious reasons” or “sorry for the obvious throwaway”.

48 beyond the expectations of Reddit administration, to provide additional options for redditors to present personal opinion and information. There are no verifiable studies, quantifying the total percentage of throwaway accounts on the entirety of Reddit. Yet it is assumed, that RedPills gravitate towards this mode for identity presentation in particularly resonant ways and utilize the strategy more than the average redditor. This assumption reflects scholarship that points to the use of throwaway accounts as a means of disclosing personal information that would otherwise put a member at risk (whether of trolling, doxing or physical danger). As scholar Adam Joinson notes “the likeliness to disclose [personal information] increases when the risk is lower… one may expect that individuals who are uncomfortable disclosing personal information would use multiple profiles, especially temporary ones” (Joinson 2001, 181). In a community as volatile as TRP the imagined risk56 is high: complete anonymity may seem like an obvious and preferable self- preservation strategy. The remaining self-presentation strategy depicted on TRP is the use of handles. A handle is a username that corresponds with a larger, separate digital identity, such as a website or blog. It is a proxy for an affiliated website on TRP - there being an assumed connection between the writer of the website or blog and the person behind a specific handle (Illimitablemen 2015). Its use gives a member the opportunity to express the perspectives of their site on the arena like platform. Handles popular on TRP include, u/TheRationalMale, u/avoiceformen, and u/ReutrnoftheKings. In the posts analyzed, digital handles were rarest, accounting for only 229 or 3.4% of the total usernames coded for. They are widespread however, in 80% of the total posts. Manosphere site, u/Illlimitablemen was the most active handle within the TRP discourse. This is followed by u/TheRationalMale. While also technically pseudonyms, being associated with a larger digital site or identity gives handles new potentials to influence the discourse accordingly. The use of digital handles, even in their rarity must be noted. As the relationship between those using handles and TRP itself is mutually beneficial. When the handle of a manosphere affiliated site engages in a TRP discourse, they bring with them a previously accumulated reputation. Their followings provide handles with more attention than supplementary pseudonyms, which gives their comments more weight online - often rising to the top of the vertical comment queue (Illimitablemen 2015b). For TRP, the handle brings with it new readership. It also positions the subreddit as an arena-like discursive platform, where the voices and perspectives of the broader manosphere can trade narratives, terminologies, and engage in public debate. With an increase in members, the subreddit increases its content circulation on the Reddit platform, with the possibility of attracting a larger membership base.

56 Stutzman and Hartzog’s investigation of how imagined audiences (and imagined risk) impact the functional decisions SNS members make to disclose information is also useful here (Stutzman & Hartzog 2012).

In this section, the self-presentation strategies of TRP are explored in their use and distribution. Pseudonyms are shown to dominate the discursive plane. They allow RedPills with a means of accumulating reputational capital, while simultaneously facilitating a predominantly anonymous environment for discourse. In analysis however, RedPills are also shown to exploit the sociotechnical affordances provided to them by Reddit administration, expanding the digital toolkit to include throwaway accounts and digital handles. Beyond demonstrating RedPill awareness of the subreddit’s reputation, it illustrates the resourcefulness of members in expanding their capacities for anonymity, while positioning themselves within the collective.

8.2 RedPill In-Group Ways of Knowing

RedPills claim privileged access to truth and rationality (Nicholas & Agius 2018). According to the collective, in swallowing the RedPill they are awakened to the realities of the feminist threat and male inequality (Dark-Ulfberht 2015). Their conception of maleness and masculinity is considered innately good, rational and level-headed. In contrast, female is delusional and their femininity irrational (Garl_Vinland 2015). This section interrogates that assumption. In unpacking accumulated quantitative analysis alongside close reading for context, this section investigates how TRP produces specific evidentiary claims for information verification and develops community-based ways of knowing. It looks to Elliot and Squires understanding that specific narrative claims act as in-group ways of knowing on social media, positioning a member within the collective (2017). The claims facilitate validity and authenticity in the context of Reddit’s anonymous digital landscape, while positioning a member as within the collective. In analysis, it is revealed that the community’s tight grasp on truth is far from reality, with affect, and a charged emotional pulse driving communication and public participation. This study identifies nine common methods used to validate RedPill claims. Each method corresponds with a given node in quantitative analysis. (see coding dictionary57). They are grouped into four collections. Namely, the personal experiences of RedPills, the all-pervasiveness of biotruths, populist common-sense, and the use of traditionally valid source materials - like appeals to statistics and experts. It demonstrates how those evidentiary claims create facades of factuality. While these categories are by no means mutually exclusive, building upon them separately reveals the lengths to which RedPills go to legitimize their affective testimonies in text. It also demonstrates how the production of in-group ways of knowing in anonymous environments with low accountability, fulfills dual roles. It perpetuates community standards for authenticity and truth, while creating a remarkably low bar for verifiable information, blurring distinction between the personal and political, truth and falsity.

57 See page 98 for coding dictionary.

Proving the truth or validity of a claim by way of the retelling of a personal experience, is by far the most common method for providing evidence on TRP. These posts, which Papacharissi calls autobiographical performances, construct rhetorical narratives representing the self in the context of everyday life (Papacharissi 2014). They account for 58.5%, of the total evidentiary claims, being 695 times of the total 1188 attempts to authenticate a claim (see figure 4 in appendix). Uniquely personal, appeals to personal experience follow a corresponding template. This throwaway account provides an example: “I’m 32, will never get married/have kids, have fucked around 70 women and [their sexual] partner count still very much matters for me. Problem is that 99% of the high-partner-count women i’ve met possess obnoxious characteristics, serious emotional problems and behave like the vulgar used up sluts they are… i’ll stick to my LTR’s with feminine, demure women with no tattoos… i’ve already had my fair share of annoying sluts”. (ChanThunderwang 2015) Evident in this statement is the emotional potency essential to retellings. They cultivate subsequent emotions, attitudes, and behaviors in readership. Members proclaim emotional sentiment as fact, measures for truth are limited to their personal experiences with women. Through this form of proclamation, the community is bound together in the telling and retelling of men’s affective experiences. It is illustrated, TRP is not the cult of rationality that it claims to be, instead affect and intense emotion are the most common way RedPills verify their posts. RedPill biological determinism is a constant ideological undercurrent motivating affect and governing community participation. Appeals to biotruths account for 10.6% of the total evidentiary claims found in coded posts. They are widely distributed - found in 28 of the total 36 discourses coded. They are the second most common method for RedPills to verify a claim. They provide RedPills with the unwavering correctness they associate with “science”, “biology”, and “genetics”. For RedPills, science holds unparalleled weight as a measure of truth. What the boundaries for credible science are however, is unclear. Take u/through_a_ways comment describing the genetically predetermined basis for women’s sexual behavior. They explain: “Men evolved to desire women, women didn't evolve to desire men. Men that desired women fucked many women and birthed many sons with their desirous genes. Women that fucked many men had the same number of children as women who didn't fuck many men, since ancestrally a woman could typically only have a dozen or so children without dying… [thus] women have to have environmental indicators telling them that a man is worth desiring, and (internal) attraction… [and] women's (environmental) attraction is more subject to change than men's”. (Garl_Vinland 2015) Notable here is RedPill appropriation of science as a system for truth and meaning-making. RedPills incorporate biologically deterministic ways of knowing to prove theories of sexual difference, cloaked in

51 misogyny and male-supremacy as fact. With citations rarely present, the loosely policed borders for what is considered science, reinforce an already low standard for verification.

Appeals to traditionalism and populist common sense58 are also popular methods for RedPill validation. They account for 7.9% of the total evidentiary claims in this study. These rationales pander to the invariable correctness of traditional gender norms, the essentiality of anti-globalist resistance, and protectionist sentiment. Note, u/Neoreactionsafe’s comment discussing their approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent decisions in government. They claim: “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including traditional values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation”. (Dark-Ulfberht 2015) By turning to this radical traditionalism, any claim can be made valid, regardless of its truthfulness. Upon closer introspection, the appeals hold nothing but emotional sentiment. There is no emphasis on proof or evidence. Yet, in populist personal declarations, facades of factuality are created; the distinction between fact and feeling is blurred. Sophisticated RedPills who are adept to in-group ways of knowing, take greater steps to perform validity in their posts and comments. This is accomplished through three interrelated methods for validation, with reference to “academic research”, “statistics”, and “claims by experts”. Collectively, they account for 22.9% of the evidentiary claims in discourse. Appeals to statistics are most common of that group, accounting for 9.7% of the total evidentiary claims. A statistic in the RedPill context refers to the act of verifying a specific claim with a piece of data supposedly pulled from another study. The statistics used to verify RedPill claims however, are empty of empirical value. RedPill u/trpftw for example, claims “...no [the pregnancy rate] is 17% with improper condom use. Because nobody is perfectly good at putting on condoms, just as nobody is perfect at holding their orgasm” (Archwinger 2015a). Here, the use of statistics is colloquial, they are not to be understood as fact, but instead to emphasize the seriousness of a claim. RedPill u/needless_pickup_line provides further evidence of this practice in their statement, “90% of women are basic bitches whose lives revolve around Netflix, wine, shopping, and naps” (needless_pickup_line 2015). The statistic functions as a symbol of credibility, inserting authenticity into a claim that would otherwise appear emotive. To prove a point, RedPills also look to those who they hold in high regard - experts. Appeals to experts account for 8.5% of the evidentiary claims in discourse. RedPill have specific criteria for who qualifies as an expert. Only knowledgeable RedPills are familiar with this select group of men. The figures cited most often as experts are a group of manosphere related comedians and academics who

58 Nicholas and Agius call this “populist correctness” (Nicholas & Agius 2018, 57).

RedPills idolize. Included in this group, are American stand-up comedians Bill Burr, and Patrice O’neal. u/TheDialecticParadox demonstrates this process as they explain, “[As} God, aka Patrice O’Neal once said: Women are the fuckee, and Man are the fuckers. Physically, sexually and mentally we are superior to women” (redpillschool 2015b). In referring to these in-group experts, a member positions themselves as a knowledgeable RedPill, while simultaneously proving a point. It is fitting that RedPills would turn to comedians to get sound information about the relationships between men and women. The way in which this information is understood as factual however, demonstrates the blurred relationship between jokes and truthful statements on TRP. This section identifies the in-group ways of knowing perpetuated by TRP. In the context of anonymity, these evidentiary claims allow RedPills to prove a certain post or comment as factual, while identifying themselves as knowledgeable members of the community. In surveying these claims, it is shown that unlike the factual realz RedPills claim ownership over, their discourses are dominated by affect and emotional resonance. In appeals to personal experience, biotruths and populist common sense, proving a claim or a rant through emotional sentiment accounts for the large majority of statements made by the group. Even those RedPills aware of more traditional means of proving a statement, only use such methods – statistics and appeals to experts - to create facades of factuality. Legitimization is more of a performance than an attempt to arrive at any kind of truth. In-group ways of knowing in anonymous environments create remarkably low standards for information verification.

8.3 Anonymity and the Reddit Hivemind

Journalists, social media scholars, and redditors have developed many terms for groupthink on the SNS. The “Hivemind”, or “CircleJerk” (note the gendered assumptions embedded within the term) (Betteridge 2016; Lamberson et al. 2014), are catch-all phrases to describe the platform’s Orwellian tendencies. As Massanari interprets, “the patterns of interaction made possible on Reddit, turn into a kind of echo chamber, where ritualized behaviors become almost empty signifiers, with participants unaware of the origins or purpose of the ritual[s] in which they are taking part” (Massanari 2017, 14). This section surveys how anonymity on Reddit facilitates echo chamber like digital tendencies whereby communication is reiterated and amplified. Insight is developed into how RedPill discourses function as a hivemind in text, and the conversational processes through which the collective motivates ideological uniformity. This analysis singles out conversational processes enacted by RedPills in discourse. Special attention is paid to those that allow RedPills to promote or reject specific ideas. In quantitative analysis, three specific communication strategies emerge as methods for the amplification of RedPill concepts. First, RedPill declarations of agreement with a specific post or comment are explored. Analysis also turns to public declarations of disagreement with a specific post or comment. It surveys the dangers of

53 dissenting communication in RedPill dialogue. Last, the use of public facing questions on TRP is considered to reveal how dialogue reinforces specific themes and comments that connect members in affective debate. This analysis gains insight into intersections amongst anonymity and CMC that allow processes of validation and ideological standardization to unfold on TRP. Public declarations of agreement with a particular post or comment follow a code of conduct that is familiar to most RedPills. Admissions of agreement include statements like “THIS!”, “quality post”, “I have the weirdest boner right now”, “haha, so true”, “this is exactly me”, and so on (Massanari 2015). They are bound up in the Reddit’s cultural schema, and are ubiquitous on TRP. They are found in 832 or 12.3% of the total 6780 posts and comments. They are also present in all of the 36 discourses surveyed. These findings are significant as declarations of agreement are amplificatory. Through constant proclamation, agreement functions as a mundane digital practice on the site. They act like upvotes. Declarations of agreement however, are entrenched in text, and hold more established ties with the member who post them (unless they use a throwaway account). Beyond demonstrating the unique tendency for redditors to mimic the technical affordances provided by the site, the posts commonly cluster around a specifically well-liked comments. This form of agreement is demonstrated in a post titled, “Amy Schumer admits to raping a guy, feminists support her, /r/askfeminists decide the guy raped her…”. Here, u/EeeeeeevilMan comments, “A woman blatantly "rapes" a dude by their own retarded feminist definition of rape and somehow they manage to spin it--with a straight fucking face--that he's the rapist” (redpillschool 2016a). Comments then pour in admonishing the commenter’s sentiment with redditors proclaiming, “Yes. 100% correct”, “completely”, and “I lost my shit at this!” (redpillschool 2016a). There are two visible benefits to this practice. First, as uniformity in perspective coalesces around a specific comment, the post is accelerated to the top of the linear queue - expanding its influence on the rest of the discourse. Second, blatant and repetitive agreement functions as an “easy way for novice redditors to feel part of the community, which can be an overwhelming place given the often quick wit and playfulness… [common] to more seasoned redditors” (Massanari 2015). This collective conciliation binds the community in affective sentiment. The significance of this practice can again be lost in its obviousness (TRP members agreeing with and commenting on things they like) (Phillips & Milner 2017). Agreement however, inhabits a specific role on TRP. It allows RedPills to convey community membership, while amplifying popular perspectives. Processes of community affirmation are also facilitated in asking questions to the RedPill public. As a forum-based platform, questions to the public are common to all spaces on Reddit. The same goes for TRP, where public questions are included in 11% of the posts and comments in this analysis. On TRP, this conversational process follows a common pattern. The dialogue, in the post “Hypergamy 101 - Women See Men The Way Men See Jobs” demonstrates this process (Garl_Vinland 2015). u/tuxedoburrito first asks, “[t]he girl i’ve been interested in is 28 and has hinted at marriage and wants

54 children. I’m 24. Think this is a bad idea?” (Garl_Vinland 2015). RedPill u/Reddthrown follows explaining: “A woman will want saftey and your time. After 28, she’ll also want kids… this means less time to do other things, such as work, go to the gym, or otherwise develop yourself” (Garl_Vinland 2015). Another flared contributor u/GC0W30 takes this claim even further, explaining, “Unless you're already a multimillionaire who has seen dozens of countries and had hundreds of awesome adventures, a woman (LTR or wife) will just hold you back at this point in life...I got married close to your age instead of just spinning plates. Big mistake. Stalled my career and kept me from a ton of adventures. Don't even CONSIDER a wife until you're 30” (Garl_Vinland 2015). Following this response, an additional eleven usernames comment restating the same sentiment are reject marriage in favor of personal development. In this way, RedPill question and answer takes on influence as a way to motivate ideological uniformity. With a variety of different authors repeating the same response to a given question, that response is established firmly within the identity of the collective. It streamlines what RedPill’s are supposed to believe. As each individual RedPill engages in dialogue, they are also bonded with other members in an affective process of meaning-making. The relationships fostered by public questions bond community members in shared perspective. In responding to public questions, variance in belief is halted, and uniformity streamlined. Public declarations of disagreement are less uniform in structure. They can include statements, like “nope!”, “are you for real?” and the common “dude, fuck this”. Public declarations of disagreement are a significantly less common of a practice on TRP. They are visible in only 1.6% of the total posts and comments. In accounting for only one tenth of the declarations of agreement found, a few observations are evident. Public declarations of disagreement halt a discourse consolidating around a specific perspective or comment. Unlike with admissions of agreement, disagreement signifies that a member’s beliefs are not in line with the rest of TRP. It alerts novice RedPills to stay away from that perspective. Not only does this practice slow additional comments, but it also prevents the perspective from gaining momentum and moving up the post’s linear queue. As agreement is a safe practice because it associated with bettering one's digital reputation, disagreement can actually put a TRP member at risk. Agreement with precedent community perspectives becomes not just a way of amplifying the community discourse, but of staying safe within it. In this sense, going along with the hivemind, is as much a self-preservation strategy, as it is a method to promote a certain perspective. The realities of disagreement on TRP are made evident in the archived post “Prenups can be overturned. Don't get married (Mucle6 2015). In this post a RedPill brags about their personal sexual history, declaring “I stopped counting over ten years ago, can’t even remember them all but at last count it was over 100. Honestly, I am surprised I don’t have every STD known to man. I’ve never had one”

(Mucle6 2015). Another RedPill responds to this statement with a comment proclaiming that the individual has probably contracted HPV without knowing it. The unfolding argument continues with the OP (original poster) commenting, “listen up dumbass. I wasn’t on a mission to fuck that many sluts, but shit happens. Can’t help it is girls want to drop their panties and spread wide for men than bail” (Mucle6 2015). The debate becomes so heated, with a variety of other RedPills trolling the despondent commenter, not only do they delete their posts but their corresponding account. With their reputation on the line, disagreement comes with the possibility of danger. This section singles out three discursive strategies utilized by TRP members. Each couched in anonymity, uniformity in RedPill perspective is extended. As is demonstrated, in repetitive agreement a method for novice RedPills to position themselves within the group is developed. In public facing questions another method for the amplification of community ideology is established. A small group of experienced members are placed in control of the thoughts and perspectives of the larger community. In contrast, proclamations of disagreement are shown not only to halt discourses around a concept but come with the possibility of social ostracization. The safety in uniformity become preferable in discourse for RedPills. Although these processes are not unique to TRP, they evidence the processes of amplification that accompany anonymous participatory environments on Reddit.

8.4 Conclusion

Three fundamental consequences of anonymity in discourse are made visible here. First, anonymity is not something that RedPills passively engage with. The collective actively utilize and play with anonymity, finding new and engaging strategies for personal benefit in the context of TRP’s sociotechnical ecosystem. Second, anonymity sets an incredibly low standard for truth and verifiability in participatory digital environments. As validity is often provided by the person we are speaking to in debate, with appeals to personal experience dominating the discursive environment, affect (feelz) rather than factual evidence (realz) is the central motivator behind community meaning-making. Third, demonstrated through perpetual agreement, and public questions directed at the RedPill public, anonymity is shown to facilitate powerful uniformity in perspective. Although anonymity allows RedPills the capabilities to share their innermost perspectives without fear of repercussion, anonymity also creates a discourse dominated by low accountability, emotional resonance, and uniformity.

Chapter 9

RedPill Trolling and Identity Policing

RedPill discourses and their rigid in-group identity, are inseparable and co-constitutive. Swallowing the red pill is not an individual act; it is only possible in negotiation with other men online. As u/self.theredpill explains, “RedPill sexual strategy requires continual engagement with the teachings of men deemed sexually successful” (Omlala 2015b). Identity construction on TRP includes the constant envisioning of collective self-conception in mediated social discourse. This process forms an ongoing mission to define what makes a RedPill man59. Acknowledging the anonymity provided by Reddit’s socio-technical infrastructure, and the inevitable context collapse60 that affects virtual communities (boyd & Marwick 2011), the following question emerges: how do RedPills shape and police their masculine ideal, and who is included and excluded from that identity? To develop insight into processes of RedPill identity formation, this analysis explores the emic humour and trolling practices of the community. It uses scholars, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner’s conception of constitutive humour to aid in analysis. As they explain, “the tensions between generative and destructive laughter are especially conspicuous online where digital divergences… [reinforce conceptions] between them and us” (Phillips & Milner, 111). The demarcation of who is laughing, and who is being laughed at, creates shifting the boundaries of community identity. Laughter to facilitate alienation, what they call lulz, is the act of “participatory collectives to detach and dissociate from amusement at others’ distress” (113). Conceptually, lulz form the fundamental logic of trolling. As an essential method to police community identity, this section investigates how RedPill trolling in discourse exploits the resonant social dynamics of the collective. It reveals who is alienated, considered outside of the boundaries of community identity, while reinforcing who is included in TRP’s self-conception. On TRP lulz are not equal opportunity; some individuals and groups are targeted more frequently as desecrators of community identity (Nakamura 2002). Unsurprisingly, considering the community’s misappropriation of PC (politically correct) language, their narratives of hate and alienation align with misinformed understandings of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. Results from coding analysis around these essentialized groups make visible RedPill practices of disaffection. Quantitative analysis however, is only used to guide qualitative understanding. It is not the goal of this section to make numerical comparisons amongst the identities RedPills find most menacing. This section seeks to understand how RedPill community identity is made synonymous with a white, male, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual ideal. It also conceptualizes why any identity outside of that ideal is perceived a

59 Communications scholar Donal Carbaugh, calls this connective process, membering (Carbaugh 1996). 60 Context collapse is a concept spoken of in relation to digital ethnography, that relates to the collapse of disparate audiences on social media being conjoined into one (boyd & Marwick 2011).

57 menace to the survival of the group. Malicious trolling functions as a necessary process that reifies the RedPill man on Reddit. Trolling practices directed towards a large collection of inherently problematic identity categories are discussed in this section. This analysis looks to a closed dataset. The entirety of all TRP discourses, are not surveyed. Therefore, this is not a complete intersectional study. It only presents the narratives and identities represented in the dataset. Considerations regarding ableist alienation are particularly absent from this review. Discussions about women of colour are also invisible in discourse, subsumed under the essentialized umbrella of AWALT (All women are like that) (see AWALT on page 40). Additional ethnic and religious stereotypes likely exist in discourse and they are just not present in the closed dataset. Thus, the purpose of this section is not to produce a complete picture of the identities trolled by TRP. Instead, it looks to develop models that are exemplary of the systemic alienation and identity policing that occur on this subreddit.

9.1 Reaffirming White Male Centrality

White male centrality is not a new phenomenon for participatory media collectives. Documented in early forum and blogging communities like Usenet (Herring 2001), and Bluesky MUD (Kendall 2002), this tendency continues in spaces like Reddit. TRP is specifically recognizable for its saturation within aforementioned geek cultures that hold whiteness as innate to digital participation (Nakamura 2002). As Nakamura notes (2002), “the racial category of ‘whiteness’ is assumed to be a default option, thus creating a guided reading of the web that assumes the reader is white” (105). RedPills hold a heightened understanding of this. Here, the repetitive narratives and stereotypes used to troll those outside of whiteness on TRP are explored. Whiteness is shown to be the essential standard for RedPill inclusion and participation. In quantitative analysis, trolling racialized individuals is widespread in its distribution on TRP. Trolling identities outside of whiteness are found in 21 or just over one one-half of the sources. This finding suggests that posts and comments on TRP are saturated with trolls eager to alienate identities outside of whiteness. Qualitative analysis reveals this trolling takes three repetitive forms on the Subreddit. The first, includes the use of racist stereotypes and representations in TRP discourse that play on populist validation of white supremacy. Racial slurs and their use in discriminatory rants or claims are also commonly represented on TRP. Last, any kind of civil rights activism is seen as antithetical to RedPill participation. It is understood to infringe on the rights of white men and to be trolled as a form of reparative justice. Nowhere is white centrality more visible on TRP than in the stereotypes surrounding Chad Thundercock’s exotic counterparts, “Tyrone” and “Javier”. The two stereotypes are trolled to discuss any non-white alphas. They are separate from the standard set by Chad, and reaffirm their difference as non-

58 white, with race tied innately to these offensive stereotypes. Javier is described as the built, tall, dark and handsome type, with whom white female tourists cheat on their partners while vacationing in the Caribbean, Europe or Latin America (Garl_Vinland 2015). The popular term comes from the name of Javier Bardem, the actor who played a Brazilian businessman in the 2010 film, Eat Pray Love (Lily 2016). Tyrone, his African-American counterpart, exists only to steal attractive white women away from white alphas. In their assumed predation on white women, the stereotypes are thought to lessen the available dating pool for RedPills (Garl_Vinland 2015). Whiteness is bound up with RedPill masculinity. In trolling racialized men through offensive and essentializing stereotypes, they are considered innately different from the RedPill man. Othering racialized men on TRP through trolling practices is not benign. Many representations pander to antiquated and biologically deterministic claims that people of colour are less intelligent, “civilized”, and “hypersexualized” compared with their white counterparts. In this way, trolling takes on dangerous discriminatory overtones (Silvestroyer 2015). For example, a comment by RedPill u/through_a_ways explain “...most people who are labeled racist aren't… to believe that every white person is smarter than every black person is by definition racist… [But] to believe that the vast majority of whites are smarter than the vast majority of blacks is not racist, but simply dictated by data” (Gadnuk_ 2015). Here, white supremacy is made explicit. While the sincerity of the post is unclear, its discriminatory sentiment is undeniable. u/WingTuneO provides a more explicit example of racist trolling that is thinly cloaked by humour. When commenting on a post about a rape victim in Sweden, they note “Gang-raped by niggers. Just another day in multicultural Sweden lol” (Silvestroyer 2015). Here, the joke serves to troll a community unrelated to the rape in question, at the same time reinforcing the understanding that TRP is an unsafe space for men of colour. With racism is normalized, men of colour are told via derogatory terms, and a lulz to stay quiet or leave. The exclusion of men of colour is similarly accomplished by way of RedPill disdain for organized civil rights movements, and campaigns directed against systemic racism. They claim that such campaigns infringe upon the rights of white males, promote male inequality, and facilitate reverse racism (Silvestroyer 2015). As u/NeoReactionSafe explains, the “Blue Pill has a racism branch (African Civil Rights)” (highlivin 2015). The RedPill jokes that blue pills (liberals) who value organized civil rights have a reverse racism branch that infringes upon the rights of white men. This infringement is said to restrict white male freedom of speech. As u/vacationlife jokes, “in the UK, you can get arrested for calling a soccer player a nigger in a tweet. You can get arrested for making a joke about Nelson Mandela dying… the Western world is in decline” (redpillschool 2015b). The self-expression of RedPills is positioned in conflict with civil rights organization, and campaigns against racism. Trolling functions as an effective means of establishing that fact. A chorus of usernames like “u/Black_Lives_Matter_LOL” perpetually verify TRP’s othering message (Silvestroyer 2015).

Each of the above stereotypes for people of colour address men alone. Racialized women are not mentioned in the dataset and are not found in any of the sources analyzed. Scholars Nicholas and Agius mention, that in representations of the manosphere more broadly racialized females are either exoticized or go unmentioned - made invisible in the essentialized category of women (Nicholas & Agius 2018). Racialized men however, are alienated constantly in trolling. Through stereotypes, slurs, and suspicion of civil rights activism, men of colour are told to stay quiet on TRP or leave promptly. In repeated trolling, those outside of RedPill whiteness are perpetually alienated from the collective. At the same time RedPill masculinity and whiteness are knotted together, inseparable and co-constitutive.

9.2 Reinforcing a Christocentric Identity on TRP

As with racialized men, the RedPill imagination only holds enough room for essentialized, stereotypes of religious men outside of Christianity. This section unpacks RedPill representations of religious men. This analysis looks exclusively to those represented in this study’s dataset, and therefore considered only representations of Islam and Judaism in relation to the RedPill Christocentric norm. For RedPill trolls, Islam and Judaism are both ideological and innate, inescapable and othering. These identities are also racialized; however, trolling follows religious motifs and stereotypes. Muslim men are shown as militantly alpha, uniformly named Muhammad, intent on “outbreeding”, and implementing sharia across the West (Dark_Ulfbehrt 2015). Conversely, Jewish men are considered determinately beta, looking to scam, infiltrate, and “conquer their host societies from within” (Gadnuk_ 2015). In positioning both identities beyond the pale of RedPill identity, they are rejected from participation in the community. RedPills are strangely interested in Judaism and its practitioners, Jewish peoples. Jewish men are presented as meek, effeminate, liberal, and the quintessential beta, unable to take on the alpha personas RedPills work towards (TheRedThrowAwayPill 2015). This is explained to be due to their family structure and early relationships. As RedPill sage u/GayLubeOil explains, “Jewish mothers publicly humiliate [Jewish] fathers… [making] Jewish men too meek to put bitches in their place” (TheRedThrowAwayPill 2015). Some RedPills pathologize this concept, tracing this relationship between Judaism and betahood as far back as the Second Temple Period. They explain that betahood and Jewishness is caused the biblical master/slave relationships they had with Greeks and Romans in antiquity (Dark_Ulfberht 2015). The detail and specificity used cloaks Anti-Semitism in lulz, presents it as ‘just a joke’, and not hateful content. This comical legacy of betadom, impossible to overcome, leaves Jewish men in a precarious situation on TRP, because they are innately unable to achieve the goals of the collective. Jewish men are also trolled due to their perceived ‘minority group status’. In attempts to prove the fallacies of liberals around white autonomy and self-determination, Jewish people become the target of lulz directed at progressivism, social justice and liberalism. This trolling practice is dually playful and

60 alienating. u/gekkozroz explains this sentiment, “we have a fun game [on TRP] ... we sub in ‘Jew’ for ‘white/male’ in SJW propaganda. Shit gets funny. ‘Since Jews basically run the world, it’s not racist to hate them. We’re just fighting for justice from our tyrannical overlords’” (Gadnuk_ 2015). The game trolls and trivializes Jewish oppression. It aims to demonstrate the truth of white oppression, while simultaneously undermining and performing Anti-Semitism in discourse. This process creates a differentiation between RedPills and Jewish men - marking them as alienated - while informing the community that TRP is unfriendly to Jewish participation.

Islam, like Judaism61 is not entirely invisible on the broader manosphere. Bloggers such as the Dubai based Nabeel Azeez, who runs the site “Becoming a Muslim Alpha”, in addition to popular forums on ummah.com or salafitalk.net, evidence a growing number of Muslim men who feel their masculinity is under threat (Kesvani 2016). This presence however, is entirely absent on TRP. With Jewish men shown to be too beta to participate in TRP, Muslim men are depicted as militantly alpha - taking things ‘too far’ - in rejecting male sexual promiscuity and promoting female subservience (Gadnuk_ 2015). As Azeez explains, “anti-Muslim sentiment comes from the fact that Western, White TRPers are afraid of Muslim men. [As] the personification of the ‘alpha’, conquering the weak, feminized, ‘beta’, societies” (Kesvani 2016). This sentiment is the narrative backbone for Islamophobic trolling on TRP and is commonly presented in discourse. The practice places Muslim men as unwelcome on TRP. Their assumed religious perspectives are understood to be too radical for integration into the community. This trolling is expressed plainly, mired by Islamophobic humour. As u/warcroft explains, “the huge difference between Islam and TRP is, although we may disagree with Blue Piller’s life choices… we respect that everybody has the freedom to live how they want, make whatever decision they want, without fear of persecution or having their fucking head cut off” (Omlala 2015b). Ironically, RedPills conceive of Islam as extremist, and therefore incompatible with community identity. Tropes which understand Islam as a singular, radicalized, and violent identity are utilized to explicitly reject Muslim men from participation. The boundaries for who counts as a RedPill, and what that identity looks like is restricted to include white, Christian, cis-males. Unusually, RedPills hold diverse perspectives about religious communities and practices (highlivin 2015). Yet this diversity includes only a variance in Christian belief. Certain members of the community are traditionalists - determined to uphold Christian values - while another portion of the community practice a strain of New Atheism62 that is common throughout the manosphere (Matas 2018).

61 Jewish participation within the broader manosphere is also growing. Bloggers like Avi Woolf, My Orbiter Dicta, and Emmes Ve-Emmunah, each consider manosphere related questions within the Jewish context (Woolf 2012). 62 New Atheism is a development in Atheist thinking, advanced by thinkers and writers who advocate the view that religion is irrational and superstitious. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris proclaim that religion should therefore not be tolerated, and instead, be countered, and exposed when influence arises in education, government and politics.

The tension between the two strains of the community manifests in the invisibility of Christianity in discourse. As a point of contention, it is avoided. Assumed to be nothing but a system of belief, it does not define its practitioner; plus “at least it encouraged women to procreate and raise their kids” (highlivin 2015). Contrarily, Islam and Judaism are biological and inescapable, regardless of individual belief. In Islamophobic and Anti-Semitic stereotypes, both collections of men are alienated from RedPill identity and rejected from the community.

9.3 Trolling Queer Identities

The use of anti-LGBTQ2 slurs cloaked in irony and offensive in-group humour is ubiquitous on TRP. Embellished into usernames like u/cuntymcfagnuts69, and u/GayLubeOil, RedPills use hateful and pejorative terms like, “faggot” and “dyke” as if they were adjectives. This section examines results in the trolling of LGBTQ2 individuals. While this study coded for a broad variety of queer63 identities, analysis disclosed only three targeted groups. First, this study unpacks the trolling of gay cisgender males, and their positioning as separate from real maleness and masculinity. Second, trolling directed towards lesbian cisgender females who are understood to be synonymous with feminists is outlined. It then turns to the blatant vitriol faced by transgender women. Their existence is interpreted to be a direct threat to the RedPill community, and thus met with hate. In trolling members of those communities in discriminatory lulz, RedPills alienate those individuals from discursive participation, while reinforcing the borders of gender expression and sexual orientation essential to TRP. This section is sensitive to a collection of limitations and considerations. In addressing gay cis- male, lesbian cisgender female, and the identities of transgender women, all of the intersection identities that exist within those groups are discussed in uniform. In this way, the study regrettably reinforces the essentializing categories used by RedPills to address LGBTQ2 peoples. In addition, the inclusion of the trolling of lesbian cisgender women, and transgender women in this section of analysis, as opposed to the trolling of heterosexual cisgender women, reinforces their otherness and questions their realities as women. This problematic must be understood in the context of RedPill homophobia and transphobia. RedPills conceive of gender to be essentially tied to sex at the moment of one’s birth and heterosexuality. Thus, lesbian cisgender women and transgender women are trolled differently when compared to heterosexual cisgender women. To account for that difference in alienation, they are included in this section. This analysis moves forward acknowledging the problematic nature of these identity categories in relation to RedPill trolling.

Journalist and researcher Caroline Matas finds that 70% of manosphere members actively identify with religious indifference, agnosticism, or new atheism (Matas 2018). 63 The term queer in this context acts as an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who do not identify as heterosexual or cisgender (Ahmed 2006).

The trolling of gay cisgender men is expansive on TRP. These findings contrast supplementary research that identifies manosphere members as less hostile to gay cisgender men - understanding their “rejection” of women as sexual partners (Lily 2016). Gay men are perceived as a threat to RedPill understandings of maleness and masculinity. As Kimmel notes in their investigation of masculinities in MRA movements (2013), masculinity, maleness and heterosexuality are bound up in their mutual exclusivity. If gay men are sexually attracted to men, they are more like women. For RedPills, gay cisgender males are therefore more “biologically” female than heterosexual men (highlivin 2015). This motive for trolling reflects the culmination of various strands of digital and analog homophobia. It is driven by rising populism, historical and contemporary traditionalism, and the durable homophobia present throughout of men’s rights communities. Since gay cisgender men are considered more female than heterosexual cisgender men, they are understood by RedPills to be defective and unable to attain RedPill masculinity. For example, gay cisgender men are commonly represented as afflicted with a specific mental illness in TRP discourses. As u/protoss--OP explains, “homosexuality meets every criteria for being a mental illness” (highlivin 2015). RedPills imagine homosexuality to be an illness symptomatic of the feminist-imposed matriarchy. According to TRP, gay cisgender males exemplify the inevitable feminization (faggotization or pussification) of Western Civilization. RedPill u/mojo-juju explains, “gay people… are shown to increase as liberalism in society increases” (Silvestroyer 2015). As a symptom of feminist influence and liberal ideology, gay cisgender men are marked by their difference. They are unwanted on TRP, regardless of their acceptance of other philosophical tenets of community ideology. To ensure gay cisgender men are aware of that dejection from the group, slurs and discriminatory claims flood RedPill conversations. Lesbian cis-women are represented less often than other queer representations in analysis. That group’s lack of attention can in part be attributed to their understanding as being synonymous with feminists. The terms are often used interchangeably. When lesbian cisgender women are trolled directly, they are understood to be predatory (Illimitablemen 2015b), and conceptualized as scorned women affected and directed in man-hate. A post trolling former Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Siguradottir titled “put a lesbian feminist in charge of your country: get an outright war on men”, explains how lesbianism is considered as man-hate exclusively. u/Illimitablemen notes “feminist/dykes are big business, they want your daughter to be a vapid, man-hating whore… to make her tap into her inherently fluid (bisexual) sexuality so she’ll whore herself to predatory lesbians… lol” (Illimitablemen 2015b). Here, RedPill sentiment is clear. Clouded by lulz and conspiratorial thinking, lesbian cisgender women are understood to be a predatory menace entirely separate from RedPill participation. Transgender women are the third essentialized group of queer individuals trolled by TRP. The invisibility of transgender men is evidence of their complete disregard by TRP. Like gay cisgender men and women, the identities of transgender women are seen to disrupt RedPill understandings of

63 biologically determined sex and gender. As u/tengu38 explains “gender is biological, static, immutable value assigned to people at birth. Society’s indulgence in the concept of ‘gender identity’ is another reinforcement of this ridiculous special snowflake mentality we see everywhere” (Silvestroyer 2015). Transgender identities, alongside gay cisgender men, are represented on TRP as a symptom of the feminization of Western civilization. RedPill u/BannedBandit explains “are there any starving kids in Africa who are trans?” (Silvestroyer 2015). To prevent transgender women from infringing on the fundamental identity of the collective, they are invalidated. The constant proclamation of their otherness reifies the stark borders of gender identity for RedPills. Ironically, the invalidation of the identities of transgender women is often accomplished in the RedPill practice of claiming transgender identities. In this context, RedPills appropriate the ‘language of the left’ for comic relief. Stating that RedPill’s themselves are in fact “pre-op transgender dominative- lesbians who are uncomfortable with their femininity” is not uncommon (redpillschool 2015b). It also utilizes their identities as a means of critiquing the broader community of feminist SJW’s, whom they feel transgender individuals are associated with. A darker, more violent method of trolling also takes hold on TRP in the trolling of transgender bodies. RedPills commonly proclaim that transgender women are misguided. Addressed as “castrated men with breast implants”, they affirm their perception that presenting as women “doesn’t make you an actual woman, and neither do breast implants or castration” (Silvestroyer 2015). This section interprets the trolling practices of TRP directed at three essentialized LGBTQ2 identities. It is illustrated that in lulz, gay cisgender men are restricted from RedPill masculinity. Their queerness positions them outside of heterosexuality, and bars them from the ability to develop the masculinity essential to RedPill identity. In parallel, lesbian cisgender women are considered synonymous with Western feminism, predators of heterosexual women, and therefore entirely separate from TRP. Similarly, Transgender women disrupt RedPill understandings of a biologically determined masculinity, are trolled as mentally ill, and viewed as a symptom mass social feminization. As their identities are invalidated, they are made pariah – being considered an ideological threat to RedPill conceptions of sex and gender. By practicing this alienating trolling in discourse, RedPills reify the conceptions of gender and sexual orientation essential to RedPill participation.

9.4 Trolling Women

The relationship between gender and trolling is well-established in scholarship. Trolling women64 has, since the emergence of participatory virtual communities, acted as a primary method for the dissemination of virtual misogyny (Herring 1994). This is indisputable in the posts and comments of

64 Women in this context, refers exclusively to heterosexual, cisgender women and their discussion in TRP discourses.

TRP. This section examines trolling gender in this context, the diverse set of methods it includes, and those groups targeted to receive this spew of online misogyny. The resonant narratives, and stereotypes central to RedPill trolling practices are also developed; these practices include trolling a woman’s sexual history, appearance, and the perpetuation of metaphors of violence. Trolling women is shown a multifaceted tool for the collective. It alienates all female participation, and reaffirms the group’s highly moderated self-conception, while directing misogyny within and outside of the boundaries of TRP. To discuss the RedPill trolling of women, it is essential to define who is included in their TRP’s of femaleness. RedPills hold a special disdain for heterosexual cisgender women. Although the Western woman is often targeted specifically by this trolling - with their whiteness assumed in discourse - the term refers to all heterosexual, cisgender women. Under the concept of AWALT (all women are like that), all identities encompassed by the umbrella of heterosexual, cisgender woman are referred to by TRP. The actions of all women are considered by TRP to be motivated by their biological sex and sexual orientation. This specific homogenized identity must be kept in mind. Heterosexual cisgender women are a common target of RedPill trolling. The discourses of TRP are heavily shaped by negative sentiment directed towards women. Although difficult to define, these trolling practices are participatory, gender-based, explicit, threatening, intense, and reactionary (Mantilla 2013). This trolling is not uniform and includes a diverse collection of methods. Most prominently featured are the infamous and hateful pejorative terms used by TRP to describe women. “Bitch”, “whore”, and “cunt”, are used so frequently that they almost lose meaning in discourse65. Use of these terms becomes a mundane aspect of a hateful in-group virtual dialect. It serves to form loose symbols that signify in-group understanding and community literacy. In attempts to elicit lulz, RedPills also rant. Ranting is included in the creation of long-posts that inflame “strong emotional reactions from the chosen target” (Mantilla 2013, 563). The rants include large collections of incendiary language, that send other RedPills into emotional tantrums, who comment, upvote, and troll further. This throwaway account’s rant provides an effective example: “When I first swallowed the red pill, I hadn't had that much experience with women and I didn't really believe they were like this. I don't even mean like whores, I knew that already. I mean that I had no idea they were such entitled little pieces of shit that they'd consider a man abusive just because there are consequences to their actions. It's disgusting. Every fucking woman I talk to is an absolutely vapid and disgusting whore with absolutely nothing to talk about. They talk about themselves for fucking hours on end in that obnoxious uppity fucking voice as if they're asking a question. They don't even have anything to say; they just talk about what people they know are doing. Why the fuck do they care so much? Luckily, if you hold frame you can get them to shut

65 Emma Jane calls this form of discourse, “rapeglish” to affirm the constant saturation of the discourse in offensive and pejorative language (Jane 2014).

the fuck up for a few hours except maybe to laugh or agree with you. Still, not much of a conversation. I'd rather just talk to my friends and not worry about those vapid fucks. How on earth did we get half the population to have nothing to say, to be accountable for nothing, and to be so fucking useless? On top of it, we've made them all into such vile little prostitutes. Honestly, I shutter a little bit when I stick my dick into one of those used up vile fucking vaginas. They're not clean, the woman's usually not healthy, and half the time they're not even well kept. The last chick I fucked was even decent looking but I couldn't come inside her defective vagina. You know I read a study the other day that said they don't even keep their hands clean on average?”. (Illimitablemen 2015b) The misogynistic content in trolling is normalized by repetition. As trolling is perpetuated by the group, ranting becomes an all-purpose response for men’s objections to any aspects of women or their behavior. In this way, ranting becomes a means of performing RedPill identity: it shapes group discourses around disparaging representations of women. Of the significant resonant genres for trolling women, shaming their sexual history, slutshaming is the most common. As all women are perceived to be “sluts” on TRP, it is an easy claim to make, and functions as a method for young RedPills to present themselves as knowledgeable community members. With all women “morally and ethically corrupt” (down_with_whomever 2015), RedPills validate their hate by claiming the moral high-ground by imposing a return to traditionalism and a rejection of female promiscuity66. Using this community stereotype, trolling the promiscuous woman gives RedPills the opportunity to move beyond simple pejoratives and demonstrate in-group skill. Proclaiming that women are “only good at talking about dicks, periods, and being a slut” (TheRedThrowAwayPill 2015), or presenting imagined scenarios about women “letting men gang-bang [them, only to] cry rape” (redpillschool 2015a) positions a RedPill within the community to garner status and respect. Simultaneously, in discussing such affective and hateful sentiment, the collective is bound together in its perpetual disdain for all women. Another common narrative tool used to troll women includes posting dehumanizing claims that critique their appearances67. This is a common practice on other virtual communities inhabited primarily by men (Mantilla 2013). In proclaiming that one has “seen piles of dogshit that look better than this creature”, RedPill finds new and engaged ways to troll women (TheRedThrowAwayPill 2015). Angry trolling separates the committed members of the group from the normies just visiting. The insults are sexualized for affect. As moose_war comments “being that close to this fat, ugly, slob’s hairy vagina? I’d probably start throwing up”, multiple sentiments are expressed (redpillschool 2015a). Anger identifies a

66 This claim is of course, oxymoronic considering of RedPills troll Muslim men for being too alpha, and not allowing for female promiscuity. 67 These insults relate to weight and hair length primarily (redpillschool 2015d).

66 member as having swallowed the RedPill. Their hate also represents their knowledge of community discourses, staying within or moving slightly beyond the boundaries of acceptability. Any woman who comes across the RedPill subreddit will know immediately to stay out or remain quiet by abstaining from visible participation. Discourse adopts explicit threats of physical and sexual violence when used to troll women. Often proclaiming violence metaphorically - as a joke - RedPills describe graphic and disturbing physical acts towards women. The distinction that divides trolling from dangerous and antagonist threats is murky. The comments threaten female participation virtual spaces and validate violence towards women in the physical world. For example, as u/foldpak111 goes on a tirade about female promiscuity, they come to the conclusion that if a girlfriend cheated, they would respond by “maybe even kidnap[ping] her and cut[ing] her clit off”, they continue proclaiming “yes, I deserve sex you stupid cunt” (redpillschool 2015a). As Kimmel notes, with each violent comment validated, the boundaries of what constitutes acceptable men’s rights discourses are expanded (Kimmel 2013). Further research is essential to validate what effect these discourses have on violence in physical spaces. Its influence on the identities of RedPills however, is distinct. Violent misogyny is made inseparable from the collective and the discourses which it disseminates. As a RedPill details an imagined violent encounter with comedian Amy Schumer, explaining “[s]he’s lucky that we live in a matrix because if we lived in the animal kingdom still, i’d be coming for her with extremely violent intentions”, metaphors of violence are directed at women (redpillschool 2015a). In this way, females on TRP are given few options in relation to RedPill participation. They must either leave the community or remain an invisible witness of online misogyny. In analysis this section demonstrates the diversity by which RedPills troll. By posting pejorative terms, ranting about women’s sexual histories, appearances, and detailing acts of metaphoric violence, female rejection is made essential to TRP. Through trolling, a chorus of hate and alienation is felt across the subreddit; this is made a requisite model is constructed for other manosphere-based and men’s rights affiliated online spaces.

9.5 Conclusion

Becoming a RedPill requires engagement with other RedPills online. The identity is digitally constructed and negotiated on Reddit’s participatory platform. As discourses are perpetuated, RedPill collective identity unfolds in constant negotiation. Through analysis of the collective, how RedPills effectively police their community identity, and who is included in that identity is made visible. It is demonstrated, that through an imagined alienating laughter or lulz (Phillips and Milner 2017), the RedPill man is constructed. In trolling, individual members utilize pejorative terms, and demonstrate in-group knowledge to communicate belonging for themselves, while alienating those considered a menace to the survival and correct functioning of the group.

This is not a complete intersectional analysis. It only presents the select narratives and identities trolled on TRP in this study’s dataset. The collection of identities represented above must not be interpreted as the only groups trolled and alienated in TRP discourses. Instead, by detailing how TRP targets and rejects specific identities from participation, models to understand their systemic alienation and identity policing are developed. In briefly reviewing the trolling of those outside of whiteness, select religions, certain members of the LGBTQ2 community, and essentialized representations of women, RedPills are shown to have a very specific and heavily policed self-conception. In that process, the RedPill is made synonymous with a white, Christian, cis-male, heterosexual ideal.

Chapter 10

Interference of RedPill Community Moderators

Reddit’s approaches to community governance are a fruitful area of scholarship. Over the past half-decade, they have been subject to analysis by a collection of leading social media scholars (Betteridge 2016; Massanari 2015; Miller 2013). Scholarly largely considers Reddit’s attempts to police and govern their subreddit communities to be negligible. As Massanari explains, “Reddit administrators loath intervening in the happenings of the site, citing Reddit as a ‘neutral’ or ‘impartial’ platform for discussion” (Massanari 2017). Former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong demonstrates this tendency, in an off- colour post addressing Reddit’s decision not to ban r/thefappening68, regardless of the photographs of nude celebrities the subreddit was sharing online. Wong explain that “...every man is responsible for his own soul” (Massanari 2017, 335). The sentiment is unmistakable: although administration might personally feel that certain content is objectionable, each Reddit member must have the opportunity to choose for themselves what content to engage with or ignore69. In place of any administrative policing by Reddit, a group of supplementary actors take the reins in policing subreddits across the SNS. They are referred to as community moderators (mods). Mods exist across all subreddits. TRP mods are provided with a range of controls by Reddit administrators to configure the communities they moderate. Mods control what content is made visible on their subreddits, and who is able to read and engage with that content. They receive no payment for their time, labour, and managerial skill. Yet, mods continue to maintain and curate the information and social interactions facilitated by their specific subreddits. Apparently, “each [TRP mod] volunteers his time out of a genuine desire to help men find freedom and happiness in a culture that lacks a positive identity for [men]” (RedPillWatchTower 2015). Reddit functions as what journalist Adrian Chen calls a moderatocracy (Chen 2015). The potential for mods to dominate the discourses of massive online communities is almost limitless. This section turns to specific powers allocated to TRP mods. It pays attention to the ability of moderators to mark RedPill members with symbols of status, or flares. The flare is a small digital sticker placed beside a username that classifies a member’s social and relational importance on TRP. This survey investigates each category of flared contributor in TRP discourse. Flared contributors include point flares, endorsed contributors, senior endorsed contributors, the RedPill Vanguard, community sages and mods themselves. It does so through mixed-methods analysis, coding for each flare in an affiliated node,

68 The Fappening occurred on August 31st, 2014, in which a collection of 500 private images (many containing nudity) of various celebrities, primarily women were posted on image boards like 4chan, only to later be disseminated throughout Imgur and Reddit (Fallon 20. 15) 69 In the aftermath of this event, Reddit administrators also stated that they feel it necessary to maintain as neutral a platform as possible, to let subreddit communities be represented by the actions of the people who participate in them (alienth 2014b).

69 alongside qualitative analysis to gain contextual insight into their discursive power. In this way, the extent to which mods and flared contributors dominate RedPill discourses is ascertained. Through relational capital in flares, TRP mods are shown to direct and dominate community debate with misogyny and hate. The attainment of a position within this select tier of individuals is revealed powerful incentive for community participation on TRP (Duffy 2017). It serves to motivate and sustain long-term online participation.

10.1 The RedPill Patriarchal Meritocracy

There is no established list of steps a member can take to gain discursive influence in the community. It is purposefully ambiguous, likely to prevent trolls from gaming the system TRP labours to maintain. If a member does manage to convince community mods and high ranking RedPills of their worth, through flares they are allocated specific powers and responsibilities in discourse. At the same time, they are entered into a system of labour distribution which functions to sustain, influence, and police TRP discourses. This section considers results in coding analysis for RedPill flares. Determining the impact of TRP’s upper echelons, reveals how mods and flared contributors exploit Reddit’s sociotechnical affordances, to motivate public engagement, and expand their reach. At the bottom of the TRP feudal system are unflared RedPills. They are the plebs that keep RedPill discourses active. Unverified by the community at large, they are treated with ambivalence. If an unflared member attracts some attention by posting perspectives deemed valuable by mods and flared contributors, they are awarded a point flare. Distributed to members for “insightful comments” and “constructive participation”, the awardee of flares is the primary method for the attribution of validation to a young RedPill (RedPillWatchTower 2015). Insight is measured by adeptness to in-group language, personalities, and RedPill ideology. Point flares account for 36.24% of the total flares coded for in this analysis (see figure 5 in appendix) and are present in 3.6% of the total usernames (see figure 6 in appendix). While their influence in shaping debate is relative, point flares are widespread. In being recently validated for the first time by the collective, their posts and comments are often charged and emotional. It is incentive that drives further participation, to gain more knowledge about communication norms, and to align one's perspectives with more influential contributors. Once a community member gains even a single point flare, they are promised great future visibility (Duffy 2017). Their labour is briefly valorized by a system that leaves them wanting more. If a RedPill accumulates enough point flares (the amount is unspecified), they are flared as an endorsed contributor (EC). According to RedPill community mod u/EpicLevelCheater, “endorsed contributors are members who have demonstrated a strong grasp of RedPill ideals” (RedPillWatchTower 2015). They carefully follow discursive norms, using a dizzying mix of in-group terminology, and approved trolling methods. As EC u/dr_warlock notes, “we are the knights of TRP” (dr_warlock 2015).

EC, u/MachiavellianRed explains further, “[endorsed contributors] help [RedPills] up quality of discussion. [They] can’t stop inexperienced guys from posting, but [they] can give their words less weight with the endorsement system by highlighting known users” (RedPillWatchTower 2015). They represent a large faction of devoted community members, many of whom live and breathe TRP. The group accounts for 25.63% of the flared contributors coded in this analysis, and 3.1% of the total usernames. Their ubiquity places the group as one of most significant tiers of RedPill community members. They work in moderating and influencing community debate, and continually increase their reputational capital, with the promise of in-group celebrity close at hand. The next tier in this feudal system are senior endorsed contributors (SEC). Formally, EC’s these are members who have been promoted once they “…remain active in the community for a long time… [and] have a colourful posting history of informative and original content that is well worth reading” (RedPillWatchTower 2015). Through their long-term participation and investment in the group, they are understood to have mastered the principles of TRP. Vetted twice, they chime into discourse randomly, to dish out point flares to certain members, and share their opinions that motivate public debate. Representing 16.42% of the total flared contributors coded for in this analysis, and 1.8% of the total usernames they are smaller in population and distribution. Their usernames however, are uniformly recognizable to active RedPills and include notable personalities like u/existsandman and u/vengefully_yours (RedPillWatchTower 2015). This status represents a goal for most RedPills. Marked as authentically red, their flare acts as conduit for social and reputational capital, attracting thousands of RedPills eager to be engage with their thoughts and perspectives. Above senior endorsed contributors are a diverse group of members. These contributors include, the RedPill vanguard and RedPill ‘sages’. The boundaries of these identities are difficult to discern. In discourse, there are allusions to the fact that these identities are multiple profiles used by the same individuals. For example, some RedPill sages are occasionally flared as RedPill vanguard, and vice-versa. The titles are simply meant to establish one within the highest ranks of TRP’s “meritocracy”. Vanguard members come from the first generation of endorsed contributors (RedPillWatchTower 2015). They are the oldest members of the community. Vanguards are not vetted: they are the ones doing the vetting (BptoRP 2015). Collectively, the RedPill vanguard, and community sages, represent 12% of the total flared contributors and 1.3% of total usernames. Members like u/Archwinger, u/Cyralea, and u/JP_Whoregan, receive notably more upvotes than any other flare (Archwinger 2015). They guide the discourse when it strays away from men’s rights activism and anti-feminism. They also reward those who continue to align closely with TRP ideals through flares. While these groups are fewer in membership and participation when compared with other RedPill classes, their labour and community contributions comprise the backbone of TRP.

At the top of the RedPill feudal system are community mods. Mods are the only RedPill contributors with full permissions, and technical affordances provided by Reddit administration. They have the potential to reward with flares, shape the discourse by adding and deleting posts, and erase certain perspectives by shadowbanning70 certain members. Although they only account for 9.7% of the RedPill flared contributors, and a meager 1% of the total usernames found, their influence lingers, bolstering the correct functioning of the entire community. Most remarkable about the community mods is not their celebrity, with usernames such as u/MachiavellianRed, u/EpicLevelCheater, and u/bsutansalt recognizable to men on an international scale. Neither is it their ability to influence the digital participation, actions and beliefs of a subreddit community with membership that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Instead, it is their ability to exploit the powers provided to them by Reddit’s administration. As result of flares, they produce a small army of RedPills following their every word. They amplify their influence in discourse tenfold, from a meager 1% of all usernames coded for to 9.7%, with flared contributors and mods accounting for 739 posts out of the total 6780 posts and comments in the dataset. The powers of the mod are expanded, their influence in discourse multiplied through a system of distributed flares. Although each flare holds individual duties, reputational capital, and technical affordances, their labour is performed in a uniquely collaborative and co-constitutive process. Contributors are dependent on the correct actions - in this case, influencing, policing, collaborating, and rewarding - of precedent and more influential flared contributors. In a cyclical process, RedPills continuously rise and fall within the ranks of their system of labour distribution. Over the course of this coding analysis, flared contributors become endorsed contributors, RedPill Vanguards become mods and vice versa. For this reason, it is essential to acknowledge flares as an unstable symbol of discursive power, and more likely as signifiers of a larger administrative system of labour distribution and control.

10.2 The Discursive Powers of Mods and Flared Contributors

On July 2, 2015, thousands of volunteer moderators on Reddit effectively went on strike. This strike protested a severance in communication between Reddit administration and subreddit mods. Mods began switching their subreddits from public to private. This prevented millions of subscribers from accessing basic parts of the SNS. The “Reddit Blackout,” or “AMAgedon” as it became known, choked the company from advertising revenue and forced Reddit to negotiate over moderators’ digital working

70 Shadowbanning (sometimes referred to as ghost banning) is the act of banning a user on Reddit, from a specific subreddit community. The user can still follow the discourses of a subreddit, however their posts, comments and contributions to the subreddit are made invisible without their knowledge. In making a user’s contributions invisible, it is assumed that the lack of engagement with their content will leave them frustrated or bored enough to leave the group (Miller 2015).

72 conditions (Matias 2016). The SNS, already struggling with pressure from racist and hateful subreddit communities it had recently banned, conceded to moderator demands within hours. CEO Ellen Pao resigned one week later, and within two months, the company had hired its first Chief Technical Officer, in part to improve the platform’s moderation policies (Matias 2016). This happening demonstrates the collective and individual powers afforded to mods, in influencing and modifying Reddit as a SNS. This brief section centers the activities of RedPill community mods and their flared contributors. To do so, it turns to qualitative analysis of the presence of mods in posts and comments. Regrettably, this analysis is unable to survey the individual technical actions of the mods, as they exist outside of the text- based discourse. Instead, it identifies three potentials in discourse that demonstrate their all-encompassing power. It interprets their ability to influence, reward and police in text. By highlighting those spheres of discursive power, insight into the ways Reddit’s socio-technical infrastructure allows misogynistic digital cultures and communities to incubate on its platform is developed. This research mirrors concomitant scholarship identifying the monopolies that Reddit moderators demonstrate over their communities, whereby groups of early members consolidate positions of formal authority and power as the collective grows (Shaw & Hill 2013). The first affordance allotted to those within the upper tiers of TRP is the potential to shape community discourses around a specific topic, individual, or RedPill concept. This potential depends on the conversation in question and is utilized by both community mods and flared contributors (dr_warlock 2015). It is facilitated by Reddit’s socio-technical infrastructure, which prioritizes members with higher karma points, and reputational notoriety. As their comments tend to drift towards the top of the Reddit comment queue, they take up space as the first comments a RedPill engages with and set the tone for each resulting discourse. This power to influence is visible in endorsed contributor u/vandaalen’s comment on a post entitled “The Covert Reasons Women Hate Men. They explain: “My personal consipracy theory is, that this hate is deliberatly fueled by the elite's mass media propaganda machine. Spaces where men come together and are safe to think and speak freely do not only pose a threat to women's power, but also to that of those who are actually in charge" (dr_warlock 2015). The post follows with 53 affiliated comments citing complaints about (Western) society’s general fear of male-dominated spaces, and the puppet media’s saturation with feminist trolls (dr_warlock 2015). As mods share their beliefs, lesser RedPills echo their perspectives, to position themselves within the group, and engage with a discourse and community with whom they are not entirely familiar. A corresponding power allocated to mods and flared contributors is the potential to amplify and mentor less experienced RedPills, by promoting their content and helping them integrate into TRP community. Mentorship can take various forms; it often involves a mod responding to a less experienced RedPill content with praise and appreciation. For example, in the post “Plate Spinning – The Other Side

73 of the Coin”, young RedPill u/CrimsonTideCosby details a complex analogy explaining how sex spoils the female body with the practices of scoring during a game of basketball and soccer. They write: “I think a good analogy for sex using up women the more they have it would be scoring in basketball vs soccer. In basketball, scoring happens about every 15 seconds or so throughout a 48 minute game and is very easy to do relative to other sports (especially soccer) which cheapens the value of each score. If you look at NBA vs NCAA, scoring happens much less in NCAA basketball and therefore each made basket is that much more important. In soccer, scoring happens very seldom and is very difficult to do, if at all, therefore making each score vastly important. If you apply that thinking to a woman's sex life, lots of easy sex makes each encounter less and less important and serves to desensitize the woman to the act of incredible intimacy that is intercourse. On the other hand however, sex with few partners that requires work to achieve makes those few encounters very special and serves to illustrate the importance and gravity of a woman's decision to have sex”. (Praecipuus 2015) RedPill vanguard u/IllimitableMen replies proclaiming their appreciation for the post, and its message. u/CrimsonTideCosby replies further proclaiming “Thank you. Means a lot coming from you. I really enjoy your posts. I'm one of these ‘I suspected all this stuff before RP but couldn't articulate it’ new guys” (Praecipuus 2015). Following this interaction, the two RedPills are seen commenting on one another’s posts repeatedly, creating a visible process of mentorship in discourse. The more experienced member guides the perspectives of the new member to effectively align with RedPill ideology. RedPill community mods alone hold the potential to actively curate the posts and comments visible to community members. Reddit administration provides them with affordances to both censor specific content and delete certain members. Thus, RedPill mods are given free rein to decide what goes against the guidelines that structure community discourses. Expectedly, RedPill mods exploit these affordances, to censor certain voices and communication styles from view. For example, RedPill mods are known to heavily censor any content that “moralizes” or accuses a RedPill of being immoral or too fanatical. In the post, “Final Warning: Keep Your Damn Morals To Yourself” they explain: “The mod team, led by /u/redpillschool, continues to walk a fine line between keeping the message on track, whilst also trying not to be too "censor happy". When we remove too much, we are told we are "censoring". When we allow borderline posts to stand, we are told we aren't doing our jobs…. I say that to say this...KEEP YOUR DAMN MORALS TO YOURSELF. I'm here to tell you that your moral judgements have no place here. If a man posts about fucking a married woman, that's his own prerogative, not yours”. (RedPillWatchTower 2015) The privileges attributed to RedPill mods by Reddit administration are exploited. They expand the definition of community guidelines to censor any post that questions an individual's morality or fanaticism. Beyond creating a space where it is impossible to claim any statement as radical, it

74 demonstrates the remarkable powers attributed to community mods to curate and censor the discourses of the collective. A more targeted result of the opportunities to censor provided by Reddit administration to RedPill mods, is the practice of censoring all self-proclaimed female voices from RedPill participation. Included in community rules, is the explicit understanding that any post which exposes a RedPill member as female will be deleted. Posts that open with “woman here”, or “as a female” are made invisible upon being shared. RedPills claims this is as, “[w]omen frequently use their sex to try and seize special attention on the internet. This does not fly [on TRP]. Having a vagina does not afford words special weight or wisdom or give [a Redditor] any inside understanding of how men should deal with women” (TheRedPill 2013). In rejecting any explicitly female voices from TRP, a model for misogynistic censorship is produced, that is actively reproduced across most71 manosphere related subreddits. By exploiting the affordances provided by Reddit administration to community mods, misogyny is able to pervade through community policing and maintenance practices. In qualitative analysis, a selection of the powers allocated to mods and flared contributors in discourse are explored. The potentials of RedPill mods to influence and dominate community discourses are first demonstrated. Reward is also detailed, in the practice of RedPill mentorship, allowing mods the opportunity to select certain RedPills who’s community contributions they like, and to amplify their perspectives through engagement. The potentials of RedPill mods to police their community are also made (in)visible in their censorship practices, that delete content which goes against community guidelines. In this case, community guidelines bar any form of “moralizing” or public female participation (RedPillWatchTower 2015). The findings of this research are consistent with precedent scholarship’s claims that community mods demonstrate a monopoly over their subreddits and consolidate control in positions of formal authority (Chen 2015; Shaw & Hill 2013).

10.3 From Reader to Leader

For RedPill mods and flared contributors, the creation, distribution, and promotion of content together with managerial and administrative efforts, bears many of the hallmarks of traditional media work. Upholding the community requires a complex chorus of labour and time spent. As Matias notes, the upper tiers of TRP membership must “satisfy and explain themselves to all three parties, sometimes simultaneously: the platform, their communities, and their fellow moderators [and flared contributors]” (Matias 2016, 4). In qualitative analysis, two promises are perpetuated by the collective to motivate participation. The first promise holds that with RedPill participation, a member will attain physical and sexual satisfaction through Reddit. A virtual promise is simultaneously made, that with RedPill

71 Female voices are “allowed” on one RedPill affiliated subreddit called r/RedPillwomen, which is due for scholarly investigation.

75 participation members will climb the ranks of TRP, gaining social capital and responsibility in its feudal system of power distribution. Each promise is motivated by what social media scholar Brooke Erin Duffy calls aspirational motivations72 (Duffy 2017) They dangle the prospects of material rewards, personal development and social capital. Parallel to beauty bloggers on Instagram working towards mainstream notoriety, RedPills too labour with the expectation of future reward. All RedPills, flared and unflared, work towards their own personal development. As the group advocates in its community description, developing “a positive sexual strategy for men” is what each of these individuals strives toward with their community participation. As they engage in the charged discourses that exist on TRP, they pursue a RedPill promise. The promise that with active participation RedPill methods for personal development will fulfill their delusions of personal, social, and sexual satisfaction. As RedPill vanguard, u/Illimitablemen explains, “TRP is a fucking hospital for fucked up guys” (Illimitablemen 2015). In practicing RedPill personal development methods - such as maintaining frame (see frame on page 36), lifting, and utilizing tactics to manipulate women - a RedPill can “become who and what [they] want to become” - the athletic, sexually satisfied alpha males they hold such jealous rage towards (Illimitablemen 2015). The ubiquity of posts that proclaim personal development due to RedPill participation make evident the power of this RedPill promise. In analysis posts that included proclamations of self- improvement were present in 361 or 5.3% of the total posts and comments coded for in this analysis. This places self-improvement as one of the most widely discussed topics on TRP, with members are eager to gush about how practicing RedPill orthopraxy has changed their lives for the better. As this throwaway account rants about methods for male self-improvement, a fundamental motivation for community participation is exemplified. They explain: “Men, YOUR dating/sexual problems will be well on the way to being solved when you focus on yourselves, your wants, needs, hopes, dreams and desires. Your dating/sexual problem is that…[y]ou're overweight, you don't eat well, and you don't take care of yourself. You don't exercise, you don't take care of your body and you don't dress well. You don't look and feel your best. You don't like your job or you're not all that good at your job. You don't have anything in your life you really enjoy being or doing, just for you. You don't need to be nicer; you need to hit the gym. You don't need a girlfriend; you need more men around you to sharpen and hone you. You don't need to spend time figuring out how to be what she wants; you need to spend more time deciding who you are. You don't need to spend money on her; you need to get some better clothes and a haircut. Her problems are not YOUR problems. Let her figure out that Chad's not coming back. Let her figure out how to get commitment from a suitable man. YOU need to figure

72 Aspirational, refers to that work in participatory publics which shifts content creators’ focus from the present to the future (Duffy 2017).

out how to be the most awesome man you can be. When you are, then you'll be the one who decides on commitment or not; you'll decide how and when and where your resources are best allotted”. (PemBayliss 2015) The sentiment in this rant is unmistakable. If one practices RedPill methods for self-improvement, engaging with community discourses, self-actualization is close at hand. While sex and personal development motivates, there is an additional ideological pull, driving RedPill participation. This drive is motivated by community appreciation of individuals deemed skilled in RedPill theory and perspective. As u/SocialJusticeWhiner explains, “All TRP Endorsed authors are very capable men who could spend their time making money instead of writing you free content” (GayLubeOil 2015). Critically, if one is appreciated enough by community mods and members, they are awarded with upvotes, and flares. Reputational capital undergirds the oxymoronic feudal distribution of labour detailed above. The system closely relates to what Preece and Schneiderman notes, is a common false promise within engaged online communities - “promising an imagined ‘reader to leader’ process where more active participants gain greater responsibility over time” (Preece & Schneiderman 2009). Posting perspectives that closely align with the precedent ideologies of the mods and flared contributors, are continuously rewarded with community privileges, responsibilities, and reputational capital in flares. Once a RedPill has been included in the select group of individuals verified by the community with flares, they are inaugurated into a system of social influence and reputational gain that they aspire to increase in discourse. Sustaining and improving one’s position in the RedPill hierarchy becomes a fundamental motivation for community participation, the potential for reward enough to overpower the overwhelming uncertainty attached to public engagement. As flared contributor u/savoryprunes explains, “[until] I got my lil ol’ point [flare]. I didn’t realize my perspective on a matter was worth recognition. [Then] I offered it and it was recognized” (GayLubeOil 2015). This system of content creation and reward in social influence then entraps those lower on the hierarchy to commit time and energy into the group, with the promise of eventual payoff in becoming a member at the top of that hierarchy. Their recently developed sense of belonging in the group is powerful, especially for individuals who proclaim their alienation from society regularly. As the flared contributors aspire to mod status, and mods to in- group fame, they are suspended in the consumption and promotion of RedPill ideology. Processes of reputational accumulation, discursive influence and celebrity on TRP are demonstrated most notably by RedPill sage, u/GayLubeOil. The beloved contributor, whose posts and comments are engaged with and upvoted vigorously by hordes of fans, began posting on TRP sometime in early 2014. They soon gained a following for their brazen misogynistic perspectives and blatant trolling practices. Quickly their content gained status through upvoting and karma. With RedPill moderators enamored by the personal trainer by day and manipulative alpha by night, they administered a unique flare to GayLubeOil, the title “Avatar of Brodin”. Social capital soon clustered around the pseudonym

77 beyond TRP, and they began writing for sites across the manosphere including TheRationalMale and IllimitableMen. After their own Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), their status as celebrity culminated with a guest spot on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (GayLubeOil 2015). They continue to function as integral to TRP, acting as a role model for hundreds of thousands of Reddit members, eager to gain insight from their crass perspectives and hate. Attaining u/GayLubeOil’s level of fame and popularity an unspoken motivator for other RedPills eager for influence and respect online. The labour of mods and endorsed contributors includes a diverse collection of creative, administrative and managerial roles that require longstanding public participation and content distribution. This section reveals the aspirational motivations that facilitate this labour. It highlights the physical and sexual prowess promised to RedPills after lengthy in-group participation. This promise is the front-facing motivation that upholds RedPill participation, with men striving towards personal and physical development, alongside domination over all aspects of their lives. Simultaneously, RedPills, and community mods specifically, hold a more covert aspirational drive. They expect, that with longstanding participation, they will rise the ranks of TRP. With each point flare they move from reader to leader with increased social capital, relational power, and discursive responsibility (Preece & Schneiderman 2009). In ingroup influence across Reddit and the broader manosphere, celebrity is also made a fundamental motivation for RedPill participation.

10.4 Conclusion

This section centers the potentials of RedPill community mods. First, the practice of flaring RedPill contributors is analyzed. In doing so, it reveals how mods bolster their discursive influence from a mere one percent of the community discourses, to a resounding eleven percent by flaring contributors, and longstanding community voices. The section then establishes a selection of the powers wielded by mods and flared contributors to influence discourses, reward members for contributing content that aligns with RedPill ideology, and censor voices - specifically the voices of women and the concerned - from visibility on community discourses. By way of that investigation, RedPill mods are shown to actively exploit the technical affordances provided to them to consolidate discursive power. This study exists alongside a collection of additional scholarship, investigating the rise in moderatocracies across the Reddit SNS (Chen 2015). Beyond the exploitation of the discursive capabilities provided by Reddit, mods are also shown to influence TRP in the promises that they represent. The aspirational promise that with sustained and skillful ingroup participation, a RedPill can make their way to the top of the group’s reputational hierarchy, motivates continued community participation. This promise then entraps new members in the expectation that TRP can act as a platform for the collection of fame, respect, and perpetual validation from the community.

Chapter 11

Ecosystem Contribution

Popular conceptions of TRP imagine the collective - like its individual members - to be disenfranchised to the darkest corners of the internet (Marche 2016). That assumption is to be scrutinized. Mixed-methods analysis surveys the group in relation to its larger digital ecosystem. As journalist Stephen Marche explains, “the manosphere is an online neighbourhood [inhabited by men] wandering the digital ruins of an exploded masculinity” (Marche 2016). Although a dramatization, if the manosphere is a neighbourhood, TRP is a busy thoroughfare, using multi-modal hypertext73 to distribute members to personalized avenues across the internet (Landow 1992). Members move simultaneously in and out of digital spaces or may inhabit a variety at once. This section surveys the digital activity of RedPills on TRP, and their direction to sites across the internet. It develops a comprehensive understanding of the interactions made possible by community discourses and maps out TRP in their digital ecosystem. To map the online migration of TRP, hypertext links shared by RedPills on Reddit are identified. The inclusion of hypertext, an affordance provided by Reddit, allows members to embed a link in a post, comment, word, or phrase on TRP. Hypertext is an essential communicative tool on Reddit. As Eisenlauer mentions (2013), “unlike text alone, hypertext is not a secluded cultural artefact, but exists as a process involving interactive elements and rhetorical constructions that offer new degrees of interaction” (18). Readings combine verbal signage with diverse representational formats, moving from one digital space to another by clicking through hypertext (Eisenlauer 2013). This enhanced level of interaction results in a highly engaged text structure that shapes the discursive strategies associated with TRP (Storrer 2000). Investigation into the inclusion and distribution of hypertext reveals the ecosystem RedPill’s inhabit together with its impact on the discursive strategies of the collective. The digital ecosystem contribution of TRP members is analyzed through the primary node hypertext. Looking to scholar Helmi Noman’s method for investigating ecosystem contribution74, hypertext is divided into three secondary nodes identified in the coding dictionary; inbound link destinations, outbound link destinations, and links to outbound SNS (Noman 2015). Inbound link destinations code for any instance of hypertext that directs a member to TRP’s immediate ecosystem on Reddit. Outbound link destinations include nodes that code for TRP’s interactions with the broader manosphere and internet outside of the Reddit SNS. The final collection of nodes, surveys links to outbound SNS. It sheds light on the multimodal social media platforms that RedPills are utilizing within

73 Hypertext is text that is displayed on digital divides embedded with references to other texts that can be immediately accessed by a reader. Hyperlinks is the term used to refer to those references (Landow 1992). 74 Their analysis utilized a collection of three primary nodes to investigate the broader ecosystem of Arab atheists online (Noman 2015).

80 their discourses. In mapping the digital ecosystem of TRP, this study moves closer to developing understanding of the discursive strategies that RedPills discuss their ideology, influence online environments, and recruit new members. There are limitations in studying the ecosystem contribution of TRP. Acknowledging the dynamism and rapid pace at which communities like TRP shift their sites for community engagement, the ecosystem that supported the manosphere in 2015 is likely different from that of 2018. New SNS, such as GAB and Discord, have emerged as prominent sites of interaction for TRP and the broader manosphere (Marche 2016). To address such limitations this study turns to scholars Gray and Schubert’s understanding that regardless of the seeming insignificance of a platform’s historical interaction, it is more dangerous to fail to critically examine histories of platforms in use (Gray & Schubert 2012). Massanari reiterates this claim (2015); they explain, “it is essential not to treat an investigation of the (historical and current) “ephemera” of new media as unworthy of critical engagement” (Massanari 2015, 12). Instead, analysis must turn to underscoring the lasting or enduring aspects of SNS in practice. This study holds those conclusions in mind in the study of TRP’s ecosystem contribution.

11.1 Inbound Link Destinations and RedPill Migration on Reddit

The inbound link destinations surveyed in this study consider TRP’s contribution to its local digital ecosystem on the Reddit SNS. Each node in this collection indicates an additional subreddit(s) that linked to TRP. All inbound link destinations, except for the miscellaneous category, are associated with the manosphere. Many of these additional subreddits’ include TRP in the group name to demonstrate their close affiliation, such as r/askTRP, r/thankTRP and r/redpillparenting. In coding for the inbound link destinations communicated in discourse, TRP’s relationship with their closely affiliated subreddit communities, and their relationship to the broader platform are identified. The popularity of including inbound link destinations in discourse is made clear in this study. Inbound link destinations account for 32.3% of the total hypertext links in discourse (see figure 7 in appendix). The way in which these hypertext destinations are utilized demonstrates worrying consequences. TRP and the subreddits it is affiliated with share a corresponding user base, administration and in-group culture (including terminology, resonant narratives, and ways of knowing etc.) (Betteridge 2016). For this reason, it is easily assumed that the online spaces are closely related in ecosystem contribution via hypertext. Analysis however, reveals that in discourse TRP rarely holds links that send its members to RedPill affiliated subreddits. Archival TRP posts hold the largest amount of inbound link destinations to a RedPill affiliated subreddit being 10.6% of those coded for. The large majority of inbound hypertext (82.2%) instead, link RedPills to a variety of miscellaneous subreddit’s loosely or unaffiliated with TRP and the broader manosphere. Notable sites of online traffic include r/atheism, r/movies, r/politics, and r/askwomen. This realization reveals that TRP is far more connected to the

Reddit platform as a whole than previously assumed. RedPills often move beyond their organized community spaces, to participate and share their perspectives with the broader Reddit platform. RedPill venturing out into the Reddit SNS can only be speculated upon through qualitative analysis. Their activity affirms Massanari’s claim that toxic technocultures “tend to ‘leak out’ into more mainstream areas of Reddit” (Massanari 2015, 179). The subreddit directs RedPills to engage with other subreddits, and in turn, shift their discourses to reflect those of TRP. RedPills do not stay put. Instead, they actively pursue influence as a part of the larger culture of Reddit. This informs the ways in which women are discussed and treated on the rest of the site (Massanari 2015). This finding also reflects journalist Bridget Todd’s conclusions investigating the hateful subreddit r/niggers. They explain, “while the subreddit’s postings were unquestionably racist and offensive, what was really disturbing about r/niggers was the way group commentary and subscribers seeped into the broader Reddit community at large” (Todd 2013, 4). In moving beyond the confines of their local digital ecosystem, RedPills develop opportunities to draw in other Reddit users with their seductively charged discourses and influence the broader digital culture of the platform. It is difficult to pinpoint a single reason for RedPill migration beyond the confines of their immediate digital subculture. Innocuously, they too are members of other subreddits. It makes sense that RedPills engage with supplementary parts of the platform. In qualitative analysis however, this study leans towards a more malicious conclusion. RedPills understand themselves as implicated in the broader happenings of Reddit. They mythologize themselves as its protectors from unwanted (read: feminist) influence. “Some individuals [on Reddit] demonstrate an almost myopic focus on Reddit’s own inner workings, its drama, and eccentricities” (Massanari 2015, 76). As the community takes interest in monitoring the happenings of the site, they look to actively deter the influence of discourses about equality, feminism, or civil rights issues. Jointly, in their protectionist attitudes towards Reddit, they attempt to reject any female participation. They interpret Reddit is an SNS created by and for men, and men alone. The group demonstrates the practice of motivating RedPills to scour the platform in the hopes of deterring feminist influence. For example, in the post “In a rare moment of drunken honesty, a poster in r/TwoXChromosomes admits she prefers assholes to nice guys”, RedPills are directed through hyperlink to ‘check out’ the subreddit r/TwoXChromosomes (fizolof 2015). As the largest female-oriented subreddit, members discuss feminist issues, women’s rights and the happenings of the day from a feminist perspective. Through hypertext, posts on TRP, and r/TwoXChromosomes are strung together in dialogue through shared web traffic. RedPills are motivated to police and negate the perspectives of women on the subreddit. In directing RedPills to this post, they actively troll its users and their perspectives (fizolof 2015). In this instance RedPill migration across the platform is demonstrated with intent to adversely influence how women are treated the platform - deterring their digital participation in the process.

The inbound link destinations considered, demonstrate a crucial revelation in the study of RedPill migration through discourse, and the affordances provided to SNS members in hypertext. Rather than migrating to and from their affiliated subreddits, RedPills are far more interested in engaging with sites across the broader Reddit platform. In their migration from TRP, they along bring with them their thoughts and perspectives regarding misogyny and female online participation. As they are directed through hypertext to specific digital spaces associated with feminist ideals or female online participation, they proceed to troll and disparage female Reddit members. The dangers of inbound links are evident. They facilitate the spread of RedPills across the platform, rather than clustering around the supposedly fringe discourses of TRP.

11.2 Outbound Link Destinations and RedPill Meaning Making

This section surveys the outbound link destinations included in hypertext on TRP. Outbound link destinations direct RedPill web traffic to sites outside of Reddit and any other SNS. The nodes identified in the coding dictionary pay specific attention to RedPill links directed towards alternative sites within the manosphere. Such forums and blogs include, TheRationalMale, and ReturnoftheKings. This section however, also holds miscellaneous categories to interpret RedPill migration across the broader internet. Outbound link destinations are popular in use for RedPills, accounting for 43.3% of the total hypertext. This section probes into that popularity, to illustrate the uses and exploitation of hypertext as a discursive tool on TRP. Beyond use in discourse, it explores the connective relationships they facilitate with sites and subcultures across the internet to more effectively map the community. There is no doubt that TRP contributes to the web traffic of the broader manosphere digital ecosystem outside of the Reddit SNS, through its outbound hypertext links. Coding analysis demonstrates that links to external manosphere related sites, make up 18.8% of the total outbound links. Most significant was TheRationalMale (TRM), Rollo Tomasi’s infamous blog intent on “demystifying intersexual dynamics” which itself accounted for 10.3% of the total outbound links (Lily 2016). ReturnoftheKings, is another commonly linked to space in the manosphere, with 2.8% of the total outbound links. Notwithstanding the web traffic of TRP into the manosphere, there is significantly less interaction than would be assumed, accounting for only one fifth of the total outbound links. Given the tightly bound in-group language and topics of discussion in manosphere discourses, these results stand in contradiction to the considered relationships binding TRP to the manosphere. Coding analysis makes evident that most RedPill outbound link destinations direct membership outside of the manosphere and into the broader internet. Outbound link destinations that led outside of the manosphere account for 81.2% of those link destinations found in discourse. On the site, outbound destinations can be grouped into three. The first includes hypertext to various news sources. These include popular sites like CNN and Fox News, but also online blogs and forums. The second collection

83 includes hypertext that link RedPills to content in medical and academic journals, primarily scholarship about men’s health. Examples include, articles about falling testosterone rates in men, the biologically predetermined aspects of gender identity, and studies related to the biology of women’s bodies. The third and final collection of outbound links includes hypertext directed towards Wikipedia. It is used as a kind of habitual source citation, or as a means to explain a longstanding concept. The dispersal of news and academic scholarship amongst the masses of misinformation on TRP creates jarring juxtapositions. The hypertext facilitates a disorienting mash-up of fact, fiction, and the unintelligible. In qualitative analysis, rather than a tool to direct RedPills migration as with inbound links, outbound links serve in processes of RedPill meaning making. Like certain in-group ways of knowing, they serve as a tool to reify the pseudonymous author with enough credibility to convince the reader of intended meaning. In an environment where gatekeepers for truth are scarce, outbound links to “credible sources, [significantly] increase online perceptions of expertise and credibility” (Sundar 1998, 56). Links to newspapers, academic journals, and Wikipedia, provide a source for a post, and in turn imbue a claim with the credibility75. Perceptions of credibility differ amongst individual TRP members. For most RedPills, a news source, any news source, is enough for the verification of a claim. The news sites included in outbound link destination are NY Daily New, Vice, Hollywood Reporter and the Daily Mail. Each source is a marker of validity, regardless of where the information is published. Outbound links directed to news sources account for 60% of the total outbound links. This practice is the dominant method for sharing outbound links. RedPills here, turn to hypertext not as a means to migrate elsewhere, but instead, to verify their claims. In play, this functions as another way to extend the affordances provided by hypertext on Reddit. RedPills, intent on creating a facade of factuality in their posts and comments harness symbols of validation. As an outbound link destination, Wikipedia is also commonly cited and sourced on the Reddit platform. Hypertext directing members to Wikipedia accounts for 12% of the total number outbound destination links. These results echo the well-established relationship between the two sites. Cheng- Moyer, note Reddit’s influence on Wikipedia’s dynamic web traffic76, utilizing the r/todayilearned subreddit (Cheng-Moyer et al. 2015). On TRP, the links are used largely to cite, large or expansive concepts that cannot be explained in a post but are required to make a specific point. What is evident is that as a corpus of knowledge, RedPills trust and value Wikipedia, as a ‘people driven’, open-source body

75 As Kiousis (2009) notes, unlike with email, in which credibility often arrives through direct knowledge of the sender, the pseudonymous forum requires alternative intervention for credibility (381). 76 Vincent, John and Hecht come to similar conclusions, asserting that traffic on Reddit has serious effects on the views, shares and edits visible on Wikipedia. Further, they demonstrate that Reddit posts that include links to Wikipedia are especially valuable in gaining validation in comments, upvotes and replies (Vincent et al 2018)

84 of information. They interpret it as free from the contributions and manipulations of elites and feminists. It also shows another example of RedPills utilizing the affordances provided to them to authenticate their perspectives in the context of anonymity (Vincent et al. 2018). Hypertext directed to outbound link destinations accomplishes various digital actions. First, coding analysis demonstrates that these links are surely used to direct RedPills to alternative realms within the manosphere. The relationships and connectivity shared by TRP and manosphere affiliated sites like The Rational Male evidence this claim. What is notable through analysis however, is that far more RedPills wield outbound hypertext as a verification and authentication tool. They serve to demonstrate RedPill claims as truthful contributions to the community discourse. Beyond providing additional evidence of the RedPill obsession with finding means of validating their posts and comments, the practice reveals the abilities of the community to modify the affordances provided to them by Reddit, to suit their online desires.

11.3 Outbound Social Networking Sites and RedPill Multimodal Communication

The third collection of nodes in this analysis, survey each outbound link destination directed to another social networking site (SNS) on TRP. Each link directs RedPills to content on an SNS. This node is conceptualized SNS around boyd and Ellison’s understand of social media platforms as “web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, that articulates a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison 2007, 210). Through qualitative analysis, it identifies commonly hyperlinked SNS by RedPills, and established corresponding nodes for links to Facebook, Twitter, Imgur, Tumblr, and YouTube with an additional node to code for miscellaneous SNS. Here, the relationships in migratory web traffic amongst TRP, it’s participatory platform Reddit, and other SNS are disclosed. There is specific intent to gain insight into the multi-modal processes that support RedPill meaning making, alongside more detailed insight into the community’s sites for interaction and ideology dissemination. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are entirely absent from outbound link distribution on TRP. Collectively, no evidence of any links to these popular SNS were accounted for. Reasoning for this is speculative, however these SNS are heavily tied to normative means of identification. They are connected to an individual’s real identity, and their collective social network. The sites hold divergent policies surrounding identity disclosure when compared to Reddit. Facebook adheres to a staunch real-name policy. That policy contrasts with Reddit’s dedication to anonymity. This variance in self-presentation strategy amongst Facebook and Reddit members creates entirely different digital environments for privacy and personal information distribution. This sharply divides the SNS. In this way, linking to a Facebook post, or tweet would inevitably put a RedPill in danger of identification, and by proxy danger of

85 doxxing, trolling or worse. The anonymity essential to TRP however, make revealing personal information both outside of community norms, and a practice even novice RedPills know to actively avoid. YouTube holds the most outbound links directed an SNS. 73.6% of the total links to outbound SNS coded for, migrate a RedPill to that site. This is no surprise to RedPills (Omlala 2015b). Beyond YouTube’s long-standing position as an androcentric SNS, housing sixty-eight million more male than female members, TRP makes extensive use of YouTube (Gottel & Dutton 2016). YouTube and the manosphere are tightly bound up. The YouTube channel RedPillPhilosophy for example, led by Chris Delamo for example has a staggering, 189,274 subscribed members and a sum, 997 videos (at the moment of submission). While not entirely affiliated with the Reddit RedPill community, their members overlap undeniably (Jane 2017). Related channels such as RedPillPsycology (140,274 subscribers) RedPillWisdom (16,569 subscribers) and RedPillInterviews (12,296 subscribers) create a broad collection of RedPill related content on the site (Omlala 2015b). This RedPill related content makes YouTube a fruitful arena for in-group learning of RedPill terminologies and ideologies. Beyond contributing to the broader ecosystem of RedPill and manosphere related content, YouTube links also function as a multidimensional tool. As TRP does not allow for the posting of videos directly, by hyperlinking to YouTube, the capabilities of the discourse are expanded. In a resourceful act, RedPills facilitate the inclusion of video content in discourse. The links can also function as a verification tool. They provide a RedPills with a means of “being taken seriously”. The RedPill benefits from the pre- existing social and relational capital of the YouTube content producer. Credibility is also assured through knowledge of niche RedPill YouTube videos. Awareness of the intricacies of the community on a variety of platforms solidifies a pseudonym as a knowledgeable in-group member of the community. Here, the multimodal potentials that links have to embed multiple layers of meaning within a single piece of hypertext are evident. Imgur is also is heavily engaged with by RedPills. Imgur held 18% of the total outbound links. Like YouTube, in qualitative analysis it becomes evident that the links are not used as a method for the migration of RedPill web traffic. Instead, it acts as a discursive tool. Imgur is a social media site dominated by visual images, specifically memes and gifs. By linking to Imgur, a RedPill can share a picture, meme or gif with the larger community. As no images can be presented on TRP - their discourse only allowing for text - this method for communication fills a technical gap on TRP. RedPill skill can also be demonstrated, in posting a link to a well-liked meme, in-group knowledge or humour is communicated. Above all else, this innovative use of hypertext demonstrates the resourcefulness RedPills adopt on TRP, and the affordances hyperlinking provides them in discourse. RedPill use of outbound hyperlinks to SNS is a complex practice of individual negotiation. They are revealing, in illustrating how RedPills engage with the technical affordances provided to them. First,

86 in engaging with SNS, RedPills are shown to carefully curate their personal information. With links to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr completely absent, RedPills are intent on protecting themselves from doxing or targeted trolling. Also of interest, YouTube is shown an active space for RedPill web traffic. YouTube is dually useful for RedPills in discourse. With hypertext directed to a video shared, RedPills are able to expand their opportunities for communication in discourse, simultaneously presenting themselves as knowledgeable members of TRP and the broader manosphere. Imgur holds parallel potentials through the sharing of meme and gif content. When engaging with links to outbound SNS, RedPills are shown a resourceful and considered community. They extend the potentials of hypertext, while sustaining their anonymity.

11.4 Conclusion

Individual TRP members utilize the practice of including hypertext in RedPill discourse in a diversity of ways. An affordance provided by Reddit’s technical infrastructure, RedPills engage with hypertext eagerly. In inbound links, hypertext is shown ubiquitous. Instead of demonstrating high engagement with other manosphere related subreddits however, 71.5% of inbound link destinations direct RedPills across the broader Reddit platform. This finding confirms RedPill self-conceptions as protectors of the Reddit platform, and demonstrates the use of inbound links as a migratory tool. It directs RedPills to leak out across the SNS in search of online female participation, to inevitably troll and police how women are discussed across the site. Outbound links show similarly mixed use. While 18.8% of the total outbound links coded for do direct RedPills to alternative sites across the manosphere, the large majority are instead directed towards news media, medical journals and Wikipedia. They are used far more as verification tools, to authenticate specific claims that RedPills make in discourse. Through outbound links to SNS, TRP and YouTube are shown to have particularly active ties in shared web traffic. Beyond connecting the two manosphere related venues, linking to an image or video expands the potentials of RedPill discourses. It allows members to engage with entirely new forms of content. Beyond RedPill awareness of the broad potentials of hypertext, there resourcefulness and play with the opportunities provided to them are evident. Hypertext, is used to police the platform of female participation, verify their claims, and expand the platforms communicative potentials. Here, hypertext acts as a multifaceted digital tool that RedPills wield expertly.

Chapter 12

Reflections on this Research

12.1 Summary

TRP is an expansive community of over two hundred thousand redditors. Each RedPill engages in a fast paced, networked public discourse about women and their supposedly misandric ideology - feminism. The phenomenon is baffling. Never has a community of this size organized around gendered rage with such transparency. Its banality as just another geeky subreddit cloak the community (and its virulent misogyny) from the view of scholarship. This study, in tandem with an emerging collection of researchers interrogating the manosphere, looks to fill this gap77. In discourse analysis of TRP’s posts and comments across the dataset, this study develops insight into the discursive strategies that perpetuate this community. It centers their narratives, self-presentation strategies, alienating humour, internal organization, and hypertext destinations, to interpret how the community communicates, sustains participation, and entraps new members in discourse. Analysis is initially undertaken in lengthy investigation of the affective narratives that propel RedPill participation. To accumulate data depicting the narratives that drive TRP, this study builds upon two collections of information. First, in qualitative close reading, a large selection of posts and comments are engaged to gain insight into topics of conversation, resonant motifs and in-group terms found in community discourses over the course of twelve months during 2015. In this qualitative close reading, a coding dictionary is developed. Quantitative analysis aided by data analytic software NVivo then builds on precedent findings. Coding analysis allows for the identification of the narratives that resonate most with RedPills – perpetuating misogyny over the course of the posts and comments in this dataset. Mixed- methods analysis aids this research in revealing narrative in use, without ignoring the contexts and communication styles essential to RedPill discourses. Analysis reveals the emotional narratives of TRP to coalesce around three interrelated representations. These representations pertain to “males”, “females” and the villainous “feminist”. When read in collaboration, they paint a near apocalyptic picture of the status quo. According to RedPills, all men are led astray by Western civilization’s feminizing (pussifying) forces. A process underway in which, alpha warriors of a mythologized past are being transformed into self-hating betas – socially, economically, and (crucially) sexually dissatisfied. Women are understood defined by their bodies’ uncontrollable nature, intellectual inferiority and promiscuity. Feminists meanwhile, propel this ongoing process of feminization and misandry. They attempt to control men through false rape accusations, and

77 See: (Betteridge 2016; Lily 2016; Jane 2014; Massanari 2017; Marwick 2017; Nicholas & Agius 2018)

88 the infiltration of male spaces (including Reddit) – rapidly accelerating the collapse of the West. RedPills understand three responses to these perceived threats: remain a beta BluePill, commit an act of reparative violence, or join TRP. Chapter two centers anonymity - Reddit’s keystone technical affordance. It allows RedPills to contribute any grievance to TRP without fear of identification and implicates their communication profoundly. It questions how TRP harness a variety of self-presentation strategies to present themselves as experienced RedPills, while actively curating their personal information. If being BluePill is worthy of such disdain, what are the discursive strategies that allow RedPills to present themselves within the group. To develop insight, quantitative analysis maps the distribution of RedPill self-presentation strategies, in- group ways of knowing, and conversational styles. Qualitative analysis builds on their context in use, and influence on resulting discourses. Anonymity is shown catalytic of cultural interactions and communication styles. Analysis reveals three self-presentation strategies by which RedPills present themselves to the subreddit community. Pseudonyms, throwaway accounts and handles together provide RedPills with a diverse toolkit with which they can represent themselves, while retaining the impunity they prize. Research then points to the in-group ways of knowing perpetuated by the community in discourse. It demonstrates affective appeals to personal experiences with women to be the primary method for RedPill communication, to verify their claims, and position themselves within the collective. To conclude this section exposes the repetitive practices of agreement that serve to promote uniformity in RedPill identity on the subreddit. Anonymity on TRP functions as a non-binary discursive tool. It reveals the complex and resourceful methods by which RedPills affirm their identities. Although anonymity is not responsible for RedPill discourses, it is inseparable from it, as it valorizes impurity affect, and uniformity in discourse. RedPill discourses and in-group identity are co-constitutive. Being RedPill necessitates engagement with other RedPills online. Chapter three investigates that membering process. It interprets how RedPills produce and police their community identity, and who is included or excluded from that identity. It does so through discourse analysis of RedPill trolling practices. In trolling, this study centers the demarcation of who is laughing and who is being laughed at, making visible the active policing of community identity. Quantitative analysis accounts for the pervasiveness of anti-social trolling practices. It codes for the trolling of identities considered antithetical to RedPill participation (see coding strategy). Qualitative close reading then unpacks that trolling, to reveal models for systemic alienation in the community. This section does not provide a complete intersectional analysis, limited to the dataset in question. It demonstrates however, the resonant ways identity policing, trolling and RedPill masculinity intersect on Reddit. In analysis, four problematic identity categories are found subject to alienating trolling practices. First, RedPill conceptions of racialized men are trolled through the alienating stereotypes of Javier and

Tyrone. Men of faith are also trolled in the alienation of Muslim and Jewish men, considered either too alpha or beta to be practitioners of RedPill tenants. Next, select members of the LGBTQ2 community are shown to disrupt RedPill understandings of sex, gender and human sexuality. In turn they are represented as beyond the pale of RedPill participation, presenting an active threat to the survival of the community. Last, essentialized visions of cisgender women are shown to face relentless trolling on TRP. They are rejected through proclamations of physical and sexual violence. In community trolling RedPill identity is made synonymous with a while, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual masculinity. Any member outside of that identity is considered a menace to the survival of the group. Chapter four develops analysis into how RedPills sustain their active community. It accomplishes this by investigating the powers and labour affiliated with RedPill community mods. Coding for evidence of these discursive powers in text, draws specific attention to the contributors they flare, and the hierarchies of social capital they perpetuate on TRP. In understanding their distribution and domination in posts and comments, it is revealed that mods expand their potentials through flaring. They create a diverse system reputational capital and social responsibility on the subreddit. This system allows a handful of mods accounting for only 1% of the posts and comments in discourse, to accumulate a variable army of RedPill socialites that dominate 11% of the communication surveyed in this dataset. In flaring contributors, RedPill mods expose their mastery in the exploitation of the discursive powers provided to them by Reddit. Flaring contributors does more than briefly validate a community member. It creates a tiered system of respect and reward that motivates aspirational incentive for community participation. It promises that with skilful debate, movement from ‘reader to leader’ in the community is possible. Assurances of eventual belonging and worth act as powerful motivation for a community of men starved for validation. Here, insight is developed into the different ways, design, policies, technical affordances, and community norms encourage specific kinds of cultures and behaviours to coalesce on Reddit (Massanari 2017). This final chapter of this study reviews the use of hypertext in discourse by TRP. It investigates the potentials of embedding additional layers of meaning into statements in discourse, and the opportunities for digital interaction and personalized meaning making that offers. To do so, this study surveys three collections of hypertext destinations found in discourse. They include inbound link destinations, outbound link destinations and links to outbound SNS. In mapping RedPill activity across a variety of digital spaces, a more cohesive understanding of the digital ecosystem this community inhabits is made available. It also questions whether RedPills move beyond the confines of their immediate subreddit, spreading misogyny across Reddit and the broader internet, or whether RedPills are really confined to the bleakest corners of the manosphere. Analysis reveals that networked online communities are rarely isolated. As the large majority of inbound links are found to direct RedPills to subreddit’s outside of the manosphere, the community is

90 shown to take an active role in influencing and policing discourses across Reddit. They use hypertext to migrate throughout the platform and troll accordingly. RedPills reject dormancy and leak out into the shared culture of the platform. They influence the ways in which women are treated and spoken about on the entire site. When used to direct RedPills to any outbound sites, rather than link to the manosphere, the majority are used as tools for validation and communication. In the case of linking to news media, journal articles, and Wikipedia, they serve to verify specific claims or cite a source. When directing RedPills to a YouTube or Imgur, they function as a multi-modal method of including image and video, in TRP’s exclusively text-based discourses. In its diverse use, hyperlinks demonstrate the resourcefulness of RedPills, to police the Reddit platform, validate their claims, and expand their potentials for communication. The discursive strategies employed by TRP are not unique to the subreddit. The collective storytelling of resonant narratives and affective stereotypes is ubiquitous to online communities. Many anonymous subreddits produce diverse self-presentation strategies to maintain recognisability without revealing personally identifiable information. Trolling is ubiquitous as a method for policing the acceptable and unacceptable online. Mods police and regulate all subreddits, their exploitation practices and labour are essential in motivating the entire SNS. Last, no virtual community exists in isolation, each a part of a broader networked collection of sites and relationships that create new potentials for personal meaning making online. What this study looks to accomplish is not to reveal these practices as uniquely RedPill. Instead, it is to situate them in the context of a growing community based in misogyny, gendered rage and the validation of violence. As result, it reveals the complex potentials Reddit provides, to create, engage, and disseminate RedPill discourses online.

12.2 Limitations

A host of limitations to this study must be considered to contextualize the significance of this research. In the study of any online community, there are certain qualities of digital discourses that must be considered as separate from the realities that govern analog conversation. One of these considerations is known colloquially as poe’s law. This popular tenant explains that in digital communication “...without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism, and a parody of [that] extremism” (Phillips & Milner 2017, 86). Put simply, the sentiment behind an extreme or radical statement cannot be verified in discourse analysis. It can be understood as a serious, sincere statement, or as a brilliant parody of a precedent radical claim. For example, RedPill u/ChadThundercockII explains “[p]unching a homosexual for walking the street with makeup and a skirt will fend off others who want to behave the same”. Here, it is impossible to know if they are expressing homophobic sentiment, advocating violence towards LGBTQ2 peoples, or parodying

91 that extremism (Silvestroyer 2015). In interpreting the results of this study, it is acknowledged that the researcher is implicated in processes of analysis. Another fundamental limitation of this research is its consideration of archival posts exclusively. TRP is a fast-paced community. Its discourses and membership are subject to perpetual change. In attempts to avoid being just another BluePill, Redditors are drawn away from heavily populated digital sites (Coleman 2013). It is likely that in the time since these posts and comments were made, with the widespread identifiability of TRP, many devout members have moved elsewhere. Additional RedPill communities on new anonymous platforms such as GAB and Discord are currently popular for members of the manosphere (Marche 2016). To account for this limitation, this study must be read not as a complete analysis of TRP discourses. Instead, this study identifies the unchanging communication strategies and resonant narratives employed by the community. In this way, models for analysis are developed, alongside insight into a unique moment in the self-perpetuating history of gendered rage and digital misogyny. The limited dataset utilized by this investigation, and limitations in representations that result, also problematize this data. Developing a dataset that is a representative sample of TRP’s population is complex, notably in a community as chaotic, affective and active as TRP. This study includes 6780 posts and comments written by TRP members over the course of a single year. This dataset is overshadowed when compared with the totality of posts created and sustained by the community since its founding in late 2012. The dataset provides a broad illustration of TRP. It does not intend to provide complete understanding of the community’s expansive beliefs. Not accounting for all representations however, limits the understandings developed by this study. For example, in chapter three, only the identities trolled by TRP in this dataset are explored. Other identities are undoubtedly trolled in posts and comments unstudied by this analysis. Regrettably, to analyze the community’s full textual production would require engagement with a massive collection of unstable text in perpetual change, and therefore moves beyond the scope of this study. This study’s analysis of text exclusively forms another limitation. Reddit’s karma system, which includes the upvoting and downvoting of original posts and comments, is not included in this analysis. This system inscribes numerical value onto Redditors, depicting how much their previous posts and links have contributed to the Reddit ecosystem. It dramatically influences the discursive strategies of redditors, and informs them of what, and who, is worthy of attention on Reddit. This is particularly important in the context of anonymity on Reddit, as members are dependent on finding alternative methods to validate content and identity. Further research is required inquiring into the dramatic influence of karma and sociotechnical attributions of worth on Reddit. Questions surrounding how this technical system undergirds the communication strategies of TRP and Redditors however, move beyond the confines of this study.

This research fills a gap in scholarly understandings of TRP. It develops insight into a community that has received little scholarly attention. As the same time, this study also makes calls for further research into this massive online community and its broader network in the manosphere. Future research that expands the dataset of TRP discourses to make more comprehensive conclusions about the representations and realities of the subreddit is essential. Social network analysis of the technical or karmic actors at play in shaping RedPill discourses and the amplification of their ideology would also contribute to gaps on the topic. Ethnographic accounts of community demographics to account for the realities of their white, cisgender, heterosexual membership also remains unstudied. This study is a single arm in a sustained collection of scholarship looking to understanding virtual hate, misogyny and the online spaces that facilitate it.

12.3 Implications

12.3.1 Implications for the study of RedPill Masculinity This study builds on a series of revelations about RedPill masculinity. It contributes to a furthered understanding of how the gendered ideals of the community motivate and entrap a community of hundreds of thousands of (primarily) young men. First, RedPill masculinity is driven by affect that demands specific actions be taken out both on and off the internet. This masculinity is also shown to be heavily policed by RedPills, its boundaries in constant negotiation in discourse. Critically, this negotiation happens exclusively online, this masculinity is therefore a uniquely digital development bound up in the affordances provided by digital communication, and online community development. In this way, RedPill masculinity is demonstrated a unique heteroglossic development in contemporary Western masculinity. It is undoubtedly influenced by precedent men’s right activism, and contemporary populist traditionalism, while amounting to an entirely new development in a longstanding tradition of a masculinity in crisis. RedPill masculinity is a potent identity that requires performance through specific performance and behaviors. To be RedPill first a member must accept its fundamental tenants, accepting that realities of feminist subjugation, misandry and male inequality. A member must then undertake a series of established steps to reify the masculinity that has been stripped away from them. Offline, they must begin lifting – to increase their testosterone, masculinity and subsequent SMV. Concurrently, they must practice holding frame, presenting a stoic and unemotional face to the individuals (specifically females) in their lives. They must also try to sleep with women casually or spin plates, accumulating the attention of women for validation. Online, they are required to engage with other RedPills who have already achieved alpha status, while venting their frustrations with the status quo. RedPill men must constantly perform the masculinity they desire - creating an all-consuming community orthopraxy. As this masculinity is under siege by an army of third-wave feminists eager to feminize the broader male populace, and brainwash them via SJW language and political correctness, this masculinity

93 is also heavily policed. With 21st century femininity expanding its ambiguous borders, RedPill masculinity is purposefully restricting those who can participate in their conception of RedPill masculinity. To do so they troll those identities understood to be beyond the pale of community acceptability. This trolling is diverse and centers on alienating insults or accusations of violence directed at any individual outside of RedPill’s white, cisgender, Christian heterosexual, masculine ideal. All other identities are simultaneously considered a menace to the survival of the community itself and told whether blatantly or covertly to either leave TRP or remain quiet. RedPill masculinity is also innately tied to the Reddit platform. It depends on the SNS as a necessary arena for negotiation. As the platform is unstable - formed by malleable posts and comments – so too are the beliefs and perspectives of RedPills, in constant negotiation with one another. Reddit is also made up of (pseudo)anonymous individuals trying to prove their worth in the context of the SNS. TRP is also constructed by hundreds of thousands of anonymous members perpetually trying to validate their identities through in-group knowledge and skillful use of community ideology. As the platform hosts a variety of celebrities and supplementary actors in their AMA’s (Ask Me Anything), RedPills follow; their subreddit acts like a discursive arena for the personalities and perspectives that dominate the manosphere. In this way, Reddit and TRP are tightly bound, development is co-constitutive. In surveying the discursive strategies of TRP conclusions about the state of RedPill masculinity are revealed. Using affective narratives of a masculinity under siege, they promote a “reconstruction of white supremacy, male supremacy, and the supremacy of those traits considered historically masculinity” (Nicholas & Agius 2018, 37). In the process, they create a powerful alienating force that is uniquely tied to the Reddit platform, rejecting participation from those they see as outside of their community. In collective or individual gesture, they look to push back feminism, their aim to protect patriarchy; that is the power and privileges of men (Dupuis-Deri 2016, 23).

12.3.2 Implications for the Study of the Radicalization of Young Men This study is hesitant to discuss its implications in relation to the radicalization of young men in participatory online communities. This topic is not addressed plainly in this study and requires lengthy definition and contextualization. That said, it is evident in this study that affective discourses, misogyny, and the validation of violence, can motivate young men to commit acts of terror. In surveying the communication strategies of TRP, a selection of considerations relating to online processes of radicalization are identified. First, it is evident that communities driven by charged affect are vulnerable to the radicalization of young men. Affecting narratives, appeals to personal experiences, and aggrieved entitlement create a particularly potent cocktail of rage in RedPills (Kimmel 2013). At the same time, charged narratives are shown to bind community members in a carefully articulated identity that perpetually reifies conceptions

94 of us and them. As RedPills spend countless hours engaged in discussion about feminist misandry, false rape accusations and the biological feminization of men, hate for anyone outside of that community identity escalates infinitely. Affect in constant with the validation of gendered violence is particularly worrying. On TRP, radical content that contains threats of violence towards females or the broader public, rather than being met with concern, are validated as a natural part of RedPill anger phase. Rage is understood as essential and inseparable from RedPill identity – only to be upvoted and replied to with similarly toxic content. Violence is considered reparative. It allows men to reaccumulate the masculinity being stripped from them by feminists. The repetitive posts and comments advocating violence, the boundaries of community acceptability are expanded. In the context of the Reddit hivemind, with agreement constant and uniform, community discourses move perpetually towards the radical. This tendency is compounded, as hate on TRP is obfuscated by its understanding (or misunderstanding) as just a joke78. While anonymity does not facilitate hate innately, it does cloud a member’s ability to parse out content that is factual, when compared to content that is speculative. For the most part, RedPills understand that the narratives they share are exaggerated – made radical for emphasis and reputational capital. Danger arises in those members less adept at recognizing the aggrandizement of misogyny. If an individual RedPill believes that there is a feminist conspiracy to biologically feminize men, reducing their testosterone by tampering with tap water, their response is going to vary from those who view this content as exaggeration or parody. The dangerous potentials of disseminating a constant and absorbing stream of toxic content are evident here. The Reddit platform itself also problematizes that stream of toxic content. This as TRP is not engaged with in secrecy. It is instead found on the screens of iPhones and Androids, available on a public library desktop, to be accessed easily and anonymously. Reddit is a one-stop shop for any information a RedPill seeking to carry out violence might seek out, in an instantaneous and continuous process (Bergin 2009). As Bergin explains, “direct access to a community of like-minded individuals around the world with who they can [share content] and provide them with further instigations to carry out specific activities” is particularly dangerous in hate-based communities (3). In TRP, and the broader manosphere’s ubiquity and accessibility its potentials are amplified. These considerations require further scholarship in relation to public safety, and the radicalization of young men online.

12.3.3 Implications for the Study of Reddit As of July 2018, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors. It is ranked as the 5th most visited website across the United States, and the 7th most popular website globally according to Alexa Internet. During 2015 - the year this study investigates - Reddit saw 82.54 billion page-views, 73.15 million

78 Ryan Milner calls this concept the logic of lulz (Milner 2013).

95 submissions, and 725.85 million comments (Alexa 2018). Reddit exists alongside Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as an essential platform by which individuals across the English-speaking world navigate the internet. This study contributes to a growing body of research inquiring into that SNS, and the opportunities it provides its members. Analysis centers on the understanding, that the design, internal policies, and technical affordances provided by the platform, facilitate specific cultural production and public engagement as result (Massanari 2017). Revelations are made available that provide insight into how a toxic community like TRP is able to incubate hate-based content on Reddit. It must first be established, that toxic communities like TRP are not relegated to the darkest corners of Reddit as popularly imagined. Instead, they are a part of the platform’s mainstream usership, engaging with subreddits across the SNS. In this study, the large majority of inbound links included by the collective, direct members to ulterior subreddits, providing fruitful opportunities to engage with the Reddit public, and attract new members. Neither are RedPills complacent while they browse. They perceive themselves as protectors of the Reddit platform; they are eager to disseminate hateful content, and troll Reddit spaces that hold public female participation. In the process, they reify their own community identity, while making the platform hazardous for those who do not align with TRP’s white, cisgender, Christian, heterosexual ideal. RedPills accomplish this task in the exploitation of the sociotechnical affordances provided to them by Reddit. For example, while redditors have the opportunity to embed hypertext into their posts and comments, it is RedPills who use that affordance to direct trolls to feminist subreddits. In parallel, although redditors are motivated to present themselves through pseudonyms, it is the community who expand that potential to include throwaway accounts, and digital handles. In turn, this allows for the amplification of more explicit and derogatory content. Most prominently, although community mods are given the opportunity to censor subreddit content, it is the upper tiers of TRP that use this affordance to make any explicitly female voice invisible once being posted on the site. In this way, RedPills expand the opportunities provided to them, to align with their desires in discourse. Although the technical affordances provided by the platform are essential to this problem – so too are the site’s policies regarding free speech. They embolden redditors to engage with and disseminate hateful content. As Reddit’s general manager Erik Martin explains, “having to stomach occasional troll [sub]reddits like r/picsofdeadkids or morally questionable [sub]reddits like r/jailbait are part of the price of free speech on a site like this”, RedPills feel they are given licence to share damning metaphors of violence directed at women and members of minority communities (Moyer 2016, 2). They feel Reddit is the essential space for them to share narratives glorifying historical gender divisions, and a return to a mythologized masculinity. Reddit perpetually validates its denizens; it is aware of and implicated in the dangerous content they share.

Toxic online communities based in hate and alienation are unlikely to be eliminated soon. Their pervasiveness in anonymous digital spaces is longstanding and has existed since the rise flame wars of Usenet forums. That said, this research makes calls for attention to nuanced and playful ways redditors engage with the potentials provided to them. In doing so, a clearer picture of the SNS and the hate it facilitates in discourse can be developed. Instead of perpetually (and selectively) banning subreddit’s deemed too radical or hateful by Reddit administration, understanding how that hate is facilitated can lead to improvements in the site's future digital policy development, and infrastructural modifications. Considered modifications in the powers allotted to community mods, or potentials for anonymity for example, could sway Redditors away from potent hate and motivate a less toxic social media platform.

Appendix A

Coding Dictionary

Variables • Source • Date Published • Age • Region • Author • ICT Technology

Codes

• 1. Affective Narratives • 1.1 Collective Storytelling • Censorship • Chivalry • Decline of Men (Biological) • Decline of Civilization • Domestic Violence • False rape accusations • Fatherhood • Females in Male Spaces • Anti-Feminism • Male Inequality • White Male Inequality • Marriage • Men’s Health (lifting) • Misandry • Misc. • Pick-up Artistry • Political Correctness • Reddit • Sexual Frustration • 1.2 Recurring Narratives • 1.2a Villain Narratives • Liberal/ Elite Villain • Feminist Villain • Woman as Villain • Man as Villain • Society as Villain • Other as Villain • 1.2b Victim Narratives • RedPills as Victim • Men as Victim • Civilization as Victim • Women as Victim • Feminist as Victim • Children as Victim

• Other as Victim • 1.2c Hero Narratives • Alpha as Heroes • RedPill as Heroes • Male as Heroes • Women as Heroes • Feminists as Heroes • Other as Heroes • 1.3 In-Group Terminology • AWALT • Alpha • Alpha Fux Beta Bux • AMOG • Alpha Widow • Anger Phase • Androphile • Beta • Beta Uprising • BluePill • Chad • Cock Carousel • Close • Comfort Test • Covert Contract • Dark Triad (DT) • Looksism (HB) • Field Report • Frame • Friendzone • Game • Gaslight • Hamster • Hypergamy • Incel • IOD • Kino • LTR • Manosphere • MGTOW (men going their own way) • Monk Mode • MRA (men’s rights activist) • Oneitis • Orbiter • Plate • PUA • RedPill • Shit Test • Sexual Market Value (SMV) • Snowflake • Solipsism • Unicorn • 2. Conversational Techniques

• 2.1 RedPill Ways of Knowing • Appeals to Personal Experience • Appeals to Biology (biotruths) • Appeals to Faith • Appeals to Tradition • Appeals to Populism • Appeals to “Common Sense” • Appeals to Expert • Appeals to Academic Research • Appeals to Statistics • 2.2. Replies in Discourse • 2.2a Admissions of Agreement • Admission of Agreement • Partial Admission of Agreement • 2.2b Admission of Disagreement • Admission of Disagreement • Partial Admission of Disagreement • 2.2c Public Inquiry • Questions for RedPill Public • Hypothetical Inquiries • 2.3. RedPill Constitutive Humour • 2.3a Prosocial Trolling Practices • Trolling Gender • Trolling Faith • Trolling Liberalism • Trolling Political Correctness • Trolling Race • Ableist Trolling • Trolling LGBTQ2 • Trolling Intersectional Identities • Trolling Alternative Identities • 2.3b Anti-Social Trolling Practices • Irascibility • Cowardice • Hyper-sensitivity • Puerility • Endangerment • Rationalization • Fanaticism • Overgeneralization • Misogyny • Instability • Superficiality • 3. RedPill Sociotechnical Affordances • 3.1 Self-Presentation Strategies • Pseudonymity • Throwaway Accounts • Digital Handles • Miscellaneous • 3.2 Flared Contributors • Point Flares • Endorsed Contributors

100

• Senior Endorsed Contributors • The RedPill Vanguard • RedPill Sages • RedPill Community Moderators • 3.3 Digital Ecosystem Contribution • 3.3a Inbound Link Destinations • r/RedPillWomen • r/askTRP • r/RedPillParenting • r/ThankTRP • r/Becomeaman • r/altTRP • r/geoTRP • r/TRPOffTopic • Archival RedPill Posts • Alternative Subreddits • 3.3b Outbound Link Destinations • AVoiceForMen • Breitbart • Illimitablemen • Puerarchy • ReturnOfTheKings • TheRationalMale • Journal or News Article • Wikipedia • Miscellaneous Outbound Links • 3.3c Outbound SNS Destinations • Facebook • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube • Wordpress • Imgur • Alternative SNS

101

Appendix B

Figures

Figure 1

102

Figure 2

103

Figure 3

104

Figure 4

105

Figure 5

Figure 6

107

Figure 7

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