Get Laid or Die Trying: Pick Up Artists, the Manosphere, and Online Misogyny

• In Event: Malicious Scripts: Investigating Online Harassment and Networked Abuse

Abstract

Online harassment is often framed as an issue of individual people engaged in abhorrent behavior. In reality, much online harassment can be traced to larger networks. One such network, known as the manosphere, is a sprawling community comprised of pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, anti-feminists, and men interested in discussing changing gender roles. Broadly, participants have developed a common language, discursive worldview, and set of techniques to spread their perspectives and combat those who disagree. This paper explores the manosphere and its discourse, practices, and links to online misogyny and gendered harassment.

First, we examine the vocabulary of the manosphere. Using critical discourse analysis of blogs, forums, and websites like A Voice For Men and the Red Pill subreddit, we examine the origins of terms like misandry, cuck, and social justice warrior; analyze how they represent gender; and trace their infiltration into more mainstream conservative circles. We pay particular attention to the “seduction community” and how it reinforces a misogynistic ontology which, in turn, fuels both geek masculinity and the Men’s Rights Movement, both hostile to feminist perspectives. Second, we describe communities and chat rooms devoted to offensive tactics against feminists and social justice activists, namely organizing brigades, dogpiles, or “cyber mobs”. We demonstrate that the same social media affordances that facilitate participation and collaboration allow for a coordinated, participatory set of crowdsourced attacks.

Authors

• Alice Marwick, Data & Society

• Robyn Diane Caplan, Rutgers U / Data & Society