Swallowing Misandry: A Survey of the Discursive Strategies of r/TheRedPill on Reddit by Aaron Moses Dishy A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Faculty of Information University of Toronto © Copyright by Aaron Moses Dishy 2018 Swallowing Misandry: A Survey of the Discursive Strategies of r/TheRedPill on Reddit 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