© Erika M. Sparby
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Cultural Rhetorics Conference 2016
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Erika M. Sparby
Cultural Rhetorics Conference
October 2, 2016
"Fake Geek Girl, Remixed: Resisting Negative Stereotypes through Counter-Memes"
For over a decade, the phrase “don’t feed the trolls” has discouraged engaging with online aggressors. The reasoning is, if you respond to a troll or an online aggressor, you will bring more trolling and aggression upon yourself. However, this tactic does not work. First, it puts the responsibility for further aggressive acts on the target, not the aggressor. Second, as Whitney Phillips has pointed out, trolls and other online aggressors have set up a game that is impossible to win because it seems like no matter how you respond (or don’t) you are giving them what they want. If you ignore a troll, they have successfully silenced you and shut down discourse, but if you respond you give them the reaction they need to escalate the situation. The troll always gets the last word. Your silence is their victory. As such, it is necessary to find ways to respond to trolls without “feeding” them, or amplifying their aggressions. My work explores methods for responding to trolls and opening pathways to civil discourse online.
One way trolls and aggressors perpetrate their online harassment is through Internet memes, specifically image macro memes. Memes are images, videos, and other kinds of digital media that spread online, and image macros are specific kinds of memes that include an image—usually of a person or animal—with text superimposed on the top and bottom, often for humorous effect.
However, what began as a medium designed to propagate jokes online has evolved into a potentially powerful form of public writing. Through studies of Occupy Wall Street memes and the use of the Human Rights Campaign logo on Facebook, Milner and Vie, respectively, have illustrated that memes can engage citizens in conversations on a national scale and provide the public with a political voice. Although memes have the power to exercise positive social influence, not all memes harness this power for good: many hinge on stereotypes to gain a cheap laugh and marginalize identities.
Today I examine Fake Geek Girl, an image macro premised on the notion that women only fake their geek identities for male attention. Sometimes called Idiot Nerd Girl, this meme exploits identity stereotypes. Later I turn to the Fake Geek Girl counter-memes that circulated in 2012 and opened discourse around gender and geek culture. Because the Fake Geek Girl meme is a reflection the fake geek girl stereotype, it is necessary to explain the uglier side of geek culture before analyzing the meme. This stereotype dictates that there is no such thing as a genuine female geek or nerd. The pushback against female geeks—and the impetus for the Fake Geek Girl meme—is highlighted in a couple recent cultural events: Tony Harris’s rant against female cosplayers at conventions and Gamergate.
In October 2012, popular comic book artist Tony Harris posted a now-deleted rant on Facebook (qtd. Hern) that belittled “Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl[s]” who cosplay at conventions. His grammatically frustrating tirade calls geek girls “pathetic,” accuses them of “needing attention,” and reproaches them for “not knowing shit about comics” despite their elaborate costumes. Harris later posted something resembling an apology that provided very little reconciliation and instead attempted to broaden his scope from fake geek girls to all fake geeks. He concedes that “the one mistake [he] made in [his] original post was that [he] excluded Men.” However, his original post clearly does not include men as its target. Not only does Harris at one point focus on specific parts of the female anatomy that some costumes reveal, but he also fails to consider that women’s geek credentials are questioned far more rigorously than men’s. Harris’s rant is a blunt and vivid illustration of the kind of misogyny geek girls frequently face.
Another moment that highlights geek community’s hostility toward women is Gamergate, a complex event in the gaming community that began in 2014 when game developer Zoë Quinn’s ex-boyfriend posted an online manifesto that accused her of sleeping with video game journalists for positive reviews of her games. Regardless of the truth of this allegation—although it is likely false—the gamers behind Gamergate use the excuse of “journalism ethics” as a thinly-veiled cover for what turned into the online harassment and abuse of not only Quinn, but also Brianna Wu (a game developer), Anita Sarkeesian (a cultural critic who runs the Feminist Frequency website), and many other geek women. All three received frequent death and rape threats across various forms of social media for their feminist influence on gaming culture. They were also doxxed—their private information was released publicly online—which made the online threats that much more distressing. Sarkeesian even had to cancel speaking events to protect her safety; she was faced with bomb threats and the promise of a mass shooting at one of her presentations.
These two events are publicized and large-scale versions of the kinds of backlash geek girls deal have dealt with on a regular basis. They represent the cultural climate that spawned the Fake Geek Girl meme. According to Know Your Meme the first recorded instance of Fake Geek Girl was on 4chan in 2010 (“Idiot”). The female pictured in the meme became its figurehead because she wears fashionably thick glasses and the original photo reveals she is wearing a cardigan, both staples of geek attire. However, with her perfectly styled hair, makeup and traditionally attractive appearance, she represents mainstream “geek chic” more so than authentic geek attire. Notably, she has written “NERD” on her hand, which many geeks consider to be her greatest transgression; if she was really a nerd, she wouldn’t need or even want to advertise it.
The top text usually makes a general reference to geek or nerd culture, and the bottom text reveals the central figure’s ignorance or inexperience while implicitly claiming that the meme-creator and his/her ilk is well-versed in this esoteric element. The first image is also the very first recorded instance of Fake Geek Girl; it shows that although she calls herself a “nerd” she is unfamiliar with World of Warcraft, one of the most popular video games of all time. Similarly, the second image depicts Fake Geek Girl’s ignorance of Oblivion, part of the popular Elder Scrolls video game series; there is no movie version. The final image portrays her mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars, an absolute sin in geek culture. As you can see, Fake Geek Girl always gets it wrong, which highlights her fakeness. The meme reflects and in some contexts even amplifies the some of the more misogynistic aspects of geek culture.
However, if a girl tries to speak up against this accused-fakeness, she is silenced through ridicule, passively shrugged off, or told she is the exception to the rule. The meme and the idea that fuels it precludes any opportunity for productive discourse on gender stereotypes in geek culture. As a result, new methods are necessary to resist memetic stereotypes and open dialog.
In 2012, Jay Rachel Edidin, former editor for Dark Horse comics, recognized that geek girls could no longer sit idly by and watch the Fake Geek Girl meme’s rise in popularity, so she remixed it to create a counter-meme and resist the stereotype. When most scholars and memers discuss meme remix, they mean changing it for survival—the objective is usually for it to last longer in the meme pool. However, the goal of remixing Fake Geek Girl was to kill it through satire. In response to questions about why she remixed the existing meme, Edidin responded,
“What other approaches could I take? All I can think of is maybe asking quickmeme to take it down, which I absolutely wouldn't do--there's a critical difference between subverting the content and challenging its right to be there, and that's a line I wouldn't cross” (qtd. Fenn). Other scholars and activists studying and working against derogatory digital texts face the same conundrum: how does one subvert damaging dominant discourses without resorting to censorship? Joel Penney, who studied the National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay-marriage video A Gathering Storm and its LGBT parody A Gaythering Storm, argues that satire is more powerful than censorship: “Rather than attempting to shut down and block out ‘bad’ images, satire resituates their meaning by embracing them and transforming them through creative cultural processes” (229).
Edidin kept the same background template, but changed the messages so that they bolster geek girl identities instead of denigrating them. Although she did not label as such, she engaged in counter-meming, or what Mike Godwin calls “crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones” and what Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear call “the deliberate generation of a meme that aims at neutralizing or eradicating potentially harmful ideas” (223). First Edidin created a few counter-memes herself, then she posted a call for more on Twitter and Tumblr. She explains, “within a few hours, [they’d] filled about a dozen pages of quickmeme.com” (Edidin). The Fake Geek Girl counter-meme satires not only the original meme, but also the notion that such a thing as a fake geek girl even exists. Edidin explains, “The new Nerd Girl memes are celebratory. They’re funny, and angry, obscure and prosaic. Some poke fun at recurring themes in the old meme; others speak from personal experience or rehash specific incidents. They’re snarky and sincere, frustrated and frank” (qtd. Zuckerman).
The images you see here represent four different approaches to the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme. The first fights fire with fire by accusing geek guys of not possessing all of the knowledge they think geek girls should, thus questioning geek guy authenticity. The second criticizes the propagators of Fake Geek Girl for being so quick to point out common knowledge gaps for any newcomer. The third implies that the inclusion of girls into the geek community will not disrupt geek guy masculinity or somehow lessen their geekhood in any way. But one of the most effective images from this meme reclamation comes from the fourth one, which boldly asks, “Who are you to say she’s not?” This image defies geek guys who challenge the authenticity of geek girls by reminding them that it’s not their decision what other people like or don’t like.
Edidin underscored the importance of leaving gatekeeping practices out of the new meme: “I’m not fond of the ones that are really hostile or depend on negative stereotypes of geeks—for me, the point [of the remix] is challenging the cycle of gatekeeping, not just changing its direction” (qtd. Fenn). Many of these satirical remixes expose the latent—and sometimes the painfully obvious—misogyny present in geek culture in an attempt to subvert and reverse it. Although women continue to receive pushback from those within geek culture, the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme marks the first time that geek girls banded together to fight these negative stereotypes on a global digital scale. For a short time between 2012 and 2014, there were more instances of the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme in a Google Image search than there were of the original Fake Geek Girl meme.
Unfortunately, the counter-meme’s influence was short-lived. Although it dominated Google Image, Quickmeme, and Meme Generator for the better part of two years, the original meme has re-gained momentum and re-asserted itself on all of these sites. Some of the more recent versions on Quickmeme have hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter. The Fake Geek Girl counter-meme changed the course of the meme for only a short time, but its contribution to resisting misogyny in geek culture continues to have a resounding impact. In fact, it seems as if both the original meme and the counter-meme were necessary to open dialog around the treatment of women in geek culture. The original meme uncovered decades-old prejudices and brought them to mainstream attention, and the counter-meme represented the moment when geek girls had had enough of being marginalized.
Since the inception of both, countless articles, blog posts, vlogs, songs, and other media have been produced to address “The Fake Geek Girl” phenomenon. Some respond directly to the memes, and some simply comment on the idea of the fake geek girl. Some are legitimate attempts to open constructive discourse, and some simply re-hash the tired assumptions behind the fake geek girl. But since a Google search for the phrases “idiot nerd girl” and “fake geek girl” returns virtually no results that pre-date the original meme or the counter-meme, it seems possible—probably even—that all of this media and the discussions they incite may find their impetus in the memes.
Although the Fake Geek Girl memes and counter-memes may have been relatively invisible in the grand scheme of things, but they have become a vital part of conversations geared at lessening and eventually eliminating geek misogyny. Counter-memes will not change the world instantly, but their influence has the potential to ignite and re-open important discourses around key issues like gender, race, ethnicity, and other identity factors.
Works Cited
Edidin, Jay Rachel. “Idiot Nerd Girl Has a Posse: Taking Back the Meme.” Feminspire. 12 Oct 2013. Web. 13 Oct 2013.
Fenn, Mike. Interview with Rachel Edidin. “Why a Comics Editor is Taking Back the Idiot Nerd Girl Meme.” The Daily Dot. 13 Sep 2012. Web. 26 Jan 2016.
Godwin, Mike. “Meme, Counter-Meme.” Wired. 1 Oct 1994. Web. 15 Feb 2016.
Hern, Alex. “Nerds: Stop Hating Women, Please.” New Statesman. 13 Nov 2012. Web. 13 Oct 2013.
“Idiot Nerd Girl.” Know Your Meme. 9 June 2010. Web. 10 March 2016.
Johnston, Rich. “ Hey! Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl, You Are More Pathetic Than The REAL Nerds’ – Tony Harris (UPDATE).” Bleeding Cool. 13 Nov 2012. Web. 15 Sep 2016.
Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear. “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production.” A New Literacy Sampler. Eds. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 197-227. Print.
Milner, Ryan. “Pop Polyvocality: Internet Memes, Public Participation, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 2357-2390. Print.
Stryker, Cole. Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web. New York: The Overlook P, 2011. Print.
Vie, Stephanie. “In Defense of ‘Slacktivism’: The Human Rights Campaign Facebook Logo As Digital Activism.” First Monday 19.4 (2014). Web. 25 Nov 2015.
Zuckerman, Esther. “Taking Back a Meme: Idiot Nerd Girl.” The Wire. 10 Sep 2012. Web. 25 Jan 2016.
Erika M. Sparby
Cultural Rhetorics Conference
October 2, 2016
"Fake Geek Girl, Remixed: Resisting Negative Stereotypes through Counter-Memes"
For over a decade, the phrase “don’t feed the trolls” has discouraged engaging with online aggressors. The reasoning is, if you respond to a troll or an online aggressor, you will bring more trolling and aggression upon yourself. However, this tactic does not work. First, it puts the responsibility for further aggressive acts on the target, not the aggressor. Second, as Whitney Phillips has pointed out, trolls and other online aggressors have set up a game that is impossible to win because it seems like no matter how you respond (or don’t) you are giving them what they want. If you ignore a troll, they have successfully silenced you and shut down discourse, but if you respond you give them the reaction they need to escalate the situation. The troll always gets the last word. Your silence is their victory. As such, it is necessary to find ways to respond to trolls without “feeding” them, or amplifying their aggressions. My work explores methods for responding to trolls and opening pathways to civil discourse online.
One way trolls and aggressors perpetrate their online harassment is through Internet memes, specifically image macro memes. Memes are images, videos, and other kinds of digital media that spread online, and image macros are specific kinds of memes that include an image—usually of a person or animal—with text superimposed on the top and bottom, often for humorous effect.
However, what began as a medium designed to propagate jokes online has evolved into a potentially powerful form of public writing. Through studies of Occupy Wall Street memes and the use of the Human Rights Campaign logo on Facebook, Milner and Vie, respectively, have illustrated that memes can engage citizens in conversations on a national scale and provide the public with a political voice. Although memes have the power to exercise positive social influence, not all memes harness this power for good: many hinge on stereotypes to gain a cheap laugh and marginalize identities.
Today I examine Fake Geek Girl, an image macro premised on the notion that women only fake their geek identities for male attention. Sometimes called Idiot Nerd Girl, this meme exploits identity stereotypes. Later I turn to the Fake Geek Girl counter-memes that circulated in 2012 and opened discourse around gender and geek culture. Because the Fake Geek Girl meme is a reflection the fake geek girl stereotype, it is necessary to explain the uglier side of geek culture before analyzing the meme. This stereotype dictates that there is no such thing as a genuine female geek or nerd. The pushback against female geeks—and the impetus for the Fake Geek Girl meme—is highlighted in a couple recent cultural events: Tony Harris’s rant against female cosplayers at conventions and Gamergate.
In October 2012, popular comic book artist Tony Harris posted a now-deleted rant on Facebook (qtd. Hern) that belittled “Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl[s]” who cosplay at conventions. His grammatically frustrating tirade calls geek girls “pathetic,” accuses them of “needing attention,” and reproaches them for “not knowing shit about comics” despite their elaborate costumes. Harris later posted something resembling an apology that provided very little reconciliation and instead attempted to broaden his scope from fake geek girls to all fake geeks. He concedes that “the one mistake [he] made in [his] original post was that [he] excluded Men.” However, his original post clearly does not include men as its target. Not only does Harris at one point focus on specific parts of the female anatomy that some costumes reveal, but he also fails to consider that women’s geek credentials are questioned far more rigorously than men’s. Harris’s rant is a blunt and vivid illustration of the kind of misogyny geek girls frequently face.
Another moment that highlights geek community’s hostility toward women is Gamergate, a complex event in the gaming community that began in 2014 when game developer Zoë Quinn’s ex-boyfriend posted an online manifesto that accused her of sleeping with video game journalists for positive reviews of her games. Regardless of the truth of this allegation—although it is likely false—the gamers behind Gamergate use the excuse of “journalism ethics” as a thinly-veiled cover for what turned into the online harassment and abuse of not only Quinn, but also Brianna Wu (a game developer), Anita Sarkeesian (a cultural critic who runs the Feminist Frequency website), and many other geek women. All three received frequent death and rape threats across various forms of social media for their feminist influence on gaming culture. They were also doxxed—their private information was released publicly online—which made the online threats that much more distressing. Sarkeesian even had to cancel speaking events to protect her safety; she was faced with bomb threats and the promise of a mass shooting at one of her presentations.
These two events are publicized and large-scale versions of the kinds of backlash geek girls deal have dealt with on a regular basis. They represent the cultural climate that spawned the Fake Geek Girl meme. According to Know Your Meme the first recorded instance of Fake Geek Girl was on 4chan in 2010 (“Idiot”). The female pictured in the meme became its figurehead because she wears fashionably thick glasses and the original photo reveals she is wearing a cardigan, both staples of geek attire. However, with her perfectly styled hair, makeup and traditionally attractive appearance, she represents mainstream “geek chic” more so than authentic geek attire. Notably, she has written “NERD” on her hand, which many geeks consider to be her greatest transgression; if she was really a nerd, she wouldn’t need or even want to advertise it.
The top text usually makes a general reference to geek or nerd culture, and the bottom text reveals the central figure’s ignorance or inexperience while implicitly claiming that the meme-creator and his/her ilk is well-versed in this esoteric element. The first image is also the very first recorded instance of Fake Geek Girl; it shows that although she calls herself a “nerd” she is unfamiliar with World of Warcraft, one of the most popular video games of all time. Similarly, the second image depicts Fake Geek Girl’s ignorance of Oblivion, part of the popular Elder Scrolls video game series; there is no movie version. The final image portrays her mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars, an absolute sin in geek culture. As you can see, Fake Geek Girl always gets it wrong, which highlights her fakeness. The meme reflects and in some contexts even amplifies the some of the more misogynistic aspects of geek culture.
However, if a girl tries to speak up against this accused-fakeness, she is silenced through ridicule, passively shrugged off, or told she is the exception to the rule. The meme and the idea that fuels it precludes any opportunity for productive discourse on gender stereotypes in geek culture. As a result, new methods are necessary to resist memetic stereotypes and open dialog.
In 2012, Jay Rachel Edidin, former editor for Dark Horse comics, recognized that geek girls could no longer sit idly by and watch the Fake Geek Girl meme’s rise in popularity, so she remixed it to create a counter-meme and resist the stereotype. When most scholars and memers discuss meme remix, they mean changing it for survival—the objective is usually for it to last longer in the meme pool. However, the goal of remixing Fake Geek Girl was to kill it through satire. In response to questions about why she remixed the existing meme, Edidin responded,
“What other approaches could I take? All I can think of is maybe asking quickmeme to take it down, which I absolutely wouldn't do--there's a critical difference between subverting the content and challenging its right to be there, and that's a line I wouldn't cross” (qtd. Fenn). Other scholars and activists studying and working against derogatory digital texts face the same conundrum: how does one subvert damaging dominant discourses without resorting to censorship? Joel Penney, who studied the National Organization for Marriage’s anti-gay-marriage video A Gathering Storm and its LGBT parody A Gaythering Storm, argues that satire is more powerful than censorship: “Rather than attempting to shut down and block out ‘bad’ images, satire resituates their meaning by embracing them and transforming them through creative cultural processes” (229).
Edidin kept the same background template, but changed the messages so that they bolster geek girl identities instead of denigrating them. Although she did not label as such, she engaged in counter-meming, or what Mike Godwin calls “crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones” and what Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear call “the deliberate generation of a meme that aims at neutralizing or eradicating potentially harmful ideas” (223). First Edidin created a few counter-memes herself, then she posted a call for more on Twitter and Tumblr. She explains, “within a few hours, [they’d] filled about a dozen pages of quickmeme.com” (Edidin). The Fake Geek Girl counter-meme satires not only the original meme, but also the notion that such a thing as a fake geek girl even exists. Edidin explains, “The new Nerd Girl memes are celebratory. They’re funny, and angry, obscure and prosaic. Some poke fun at recurring themes in the old meme; others speak from personal experience or rehash specific incidents. They’re snarky and sincere, frustrated and frank” (qtd. Zuckerman).
The images you see here represent four different approaches to the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme. The first fights fire with fire by accusing geek guys of not possessing all of the knowledge they think geek girls should, thus questioning geek guy authenticity. The second criticizes the propagators of Fake Geek Girl for being so quick to point out common knowledge gaps for any newcomer. The third implies that the inclusion of girls into the geek community will not disrupt geek guy masculinity or somehow lessen their geekhood in any way. But one of the most effective images from this meme reclamation comes from the fourth one, which boldly asks, “Who are you to say she’s not?” This image defies geek guys who challenge the authenticity of geek girls by reminding them that it’s not their decision what other people like or don’t like.
Edidin underscored the importance of leaving gatekeeping practices out of the new meme: “I’m not fond of the ones that are really hostile or depend on negative stereotypes of geeks—for me, the point [of the remix] is challenging the cycle of gatekeeping, not just changing its direction” (qtd. Fenn). Many of these satirical remixes expose the latent—and sometimes the painfully obvious—misogyny present in geek culture in an attempt to subvert and reverse it. Although women continue to receive pushback from those within geek culture, the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme marks the first time that geek girls banded together to fight these negative stereotypes on a global digital scale. For a short time between 2012 and 2014, there were more instances of the Fake Geek Girl counter-meme in a Google Image search than there were of the original Fake Geek Girl meme.
Unfortunately, the counter-meme’s influence was short-lived. Although it dominated Google Image, Quickmeme, and Meme Generator for the better part of two years, the original meme has re-gained momentum and re-asserted itself on all of these sites. Some of the more recent versions on Quickmeme have hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter. The Fake Geek Girl counter-meme changed the course of the meme for only a short time, but its contribution to resisting misogyny in geek culture continues to have a resounding impact. In fact, it seems as if both the original meme and the counter-meme were necessary to open dialog around the treatment of women in geek culture. The original meme uncovered decades-old prejudices and brought them to mainstream attention, and the counter-meme represented the moment when geek girls had had enough of being marginalized.
Since the inception of both, countless articles, blog posts, vlogs, songs, and other media have been produced to address “The Fake Geek Girl” phenomenon. Some respond directly to the memes, and some simply comment on the idea of the fake geek girl. Some are legitimate attempts to open constructive discourse, and some simply re-hash the tired assumptions behind the fake geek girl. But since a Google search for the phrases “idiot nerd girl” and “fake geek girl” returns virtually no results that pre-date the original meme or the counter-meme, it seems possible—probably even—that all of this media and the discussions they incite may find their impetus in the memes.
Although the Fake Geek Girl memes and counter-memes may have been relatively invisible in the grand scheme of things, but they have become a vital part of conversations geared at lessening and eventually eliminating geek misogyny. Counter-memes will not change the world instantly, but their influence has the potential to ignite and re-open important discourses around key issues like gender, race, ethnicity, and other identity factors.
Works Cited
Edidin, Jay Rachel. “Idiot Nerd Girl Has a Posse: Taking Back the Meme.” Feminspire. 12 Oct 2013. Web. 13 Oct 2013.
Fenn, Mike. Interview with Rachel Edidin. “Why a Comics Editor is Taking Back the Idiot Nerd Girl Meme.” The Daily Dot. 13 Sep 2012. Web. 26 Jan 2016.
Godwin, Mike. “Meme, Counter-Meme.” Wired. 1 Oct 1994. Web. 15 Feb 2016.
Hern, Alex. “Nerds: Stop Hating Women, Please.” New Statesman. 13 Nov 2012. Web. 13 Oct 2013.
“Idiot Nerd Girl.” Know Your Meme. 9 June 2010. Web. 10 March 2016.
Johnston, Rich. “ Hey! Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl, You Are More Pathetic Than The REAL Nerds’ – Tony Harris (UPDATE).” Bleeding Cool. 13 Nov 2012. Web. 15 Sep 2016.
Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear. “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production.” A New Literacy Sampler. Eds. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 197-227. Print.
Milner, Ryan. “Pop Polyvocality: Internet Memes, Public Participation, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 2357-2390. Print.
Stryker, Cole. Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web. New York: The Overlook P, 2011. Print.
Vie, Stephanie. “In Defense of ‘Slacktivism’: The Human Rights Campaign Facebook Logo As Digital Activism.” First Monday 19.4 (2014). Web. 25 Nov 2015.
Zuckerman, Esther. “Taking Back a Meme: Idiot Nerd Girl.” The Wire. 10 Sep 2012. Web. 25 Jan 2016.