Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations “on the bottom half of the Internet,” he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior.
Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers, and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison), and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism, and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying, and misogyny. He considers the way comment—a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking—affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling—short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, “WTF?!?”
In the small but growing body of literature on the subject, this work stands out as a complete overview. Though academic in nature, the writing shapes an engaging topic into an approachable narrative for the general audience.
—Library Journal—The history of comment as a genre has never been treated with such care and stewardship as it is by Reagle…
—PopMatters—Reagle…offers a rollicking-yet-thoughtful tour through comment threads across the web—from book reviews to Facebook spats and from commercial contexts to intimate spaces of self-expression. Amply spiced with jokes and comics, and anchored with just enough theory to structure the discussion, Reagle's book should be read by anyone with an interest in 'the bottom half of the web.'
—Frank Pasquale, The Chronicle of Higher Education—Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In this book, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations “on the bottom half of the Internet,” he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior.
Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers, and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison), and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism, and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying, and misogyny. He considers the way comment—a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking—affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling—short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, “WTF?!?”
In the small but growing body of literature on the subject, this work stands out as a complete overview. Though academic in nature, the writing shapes an engaging topic into an approachable narrative for the general audience.
—Library Journal—The history of comment as a genre has never been treated with such care and stewardship as it is by Reagle…
—PopMatters—Reagle…offers a rollicking-yet-thoughtful tour through comment threads across the web—from book reviews to Facebook spats and from commercial contexts to intimate spaces of self-expression. Amply spiced with jokes and comics, and anchored with just enough theory to structure the discussion, Reagle's book should be read by anyone with an interest in 'the bottom half of the web.'
—Frank Pasquale, The Chronicle of Higher Education—
