Belonging to the ‘Darkness’: Dark Memes, Light(heartedness), and Post-irony to Express Subcultural Belonging

• In Event: Roundtable: Crime Refracted?: Online Deviance in the New Platform Ecosystem

Abstract

The digital study of youth crime and deviant subcultures has been transformed, if not revolutionized, by the affordances of social media platforms.
Based on netnographic research within closed and semi-private fora on Facebook and other online spaces, traditional subcultural theories of values, identity, and belonging are applied to online users who create and share “humorous” hateful content.

This will show how contemporary deviant youths rely on the theme of “darkness” to express conformity with an alternative moral positionality that clashes with mainstream values. Specifically, the use of “darkness” refers both to a literal usage of the word in the context of blatant racism (which is denied), and in the metaphorical sense to “dark” humour, providing further contrast between darkness and light(heartedness).

More broadly, interviewed creators and sharers of such content spread memes carrying veiled forms humour and post-irony to express subcultural belonging while simultaneously (and strategically) avoiding the use of incriminatingly explicit forms of racism or other hate-based ideologies. If confronted, they can use this double-edged, hateful humour to pretend that, after all, they were “only joking”.

Authors

• Alessandro Moretti, University of Copenhagen

• Keith Hayward, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Law