The Internet is often assumed to be full of unprecedented antagonism: nasty memes mocking anything from a death in someone’s family to terrorism and mass shootings, trolls harassing others just for fun, and over-the-top insults and slurs are used in public debates on Twitter and Facebook. Encountering this avalanche of antagonism every day may make some cultural critics, academics and journalists think, ‘the Internet is making everything worse!’ But, is
this really true? To answer the question, Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner’s ‘The Ambivalent Internet’ explores the world of Internet subculture and memes through the lens of the folklore and communication traditions. In doing so, they recognise that a lot of online activities embody seemingly contradictive dimensions and is therefore ambivalent. As they explain, Internet activities are happening now but have similar historical precedent from the past; they happen online but have an impact offline; individual users co-create contents collectively; the results of such participations are generative for some users but destructive for others at the same time