The Philosophy of Trolling: an Interpretive Review

Abstract

The growing interest of social sciences and humanities in the phenomenon of Internet trolling has focused on its conceptualization, modalities, explanations and cultural backgrounds. Under the premise that trolling constitutes a transdiscursive, disruptive, delusional and self-replicating practice, this article aims to make explicit some of the historical traditions and cultural frameworks of understanding under which the phenomenon is conceived in the bibliography. Methodologically, an interpretative bibliographic review of a corpus selected for convenience was carried out. From the perspective of the symbolic scripts and traditional cultural practices that trolling updates, it can be associated with the privatization of buffoonery, universalization of slander, democratization of censorship, lynching virtualization and hybridization of conflict. It can be concluded that, rather than enabling a type of culturally transgressive and subversive practice, trolling would constitute a toxic exacerbation of moral panic and vain irony.