Dalia Hatalova Core Post #3/5 Blog Post #11/15

 In Meme Wars: The Untold Stories of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg describe the interactions between the online space and the physical world as two separate but reinforcing entities. This cyclical action between the two is defined by them as meme wars, where "politically fringe ideas expressed online move from the internet into public space; and conversely, public events shape online coordination" (Donovan et al. 20). While I have already critiqued the separation between the online and offline worlds, I agree that this distinction is useful for understanding how social formations in physical spaces are formed from discrete groups, though examining how such understanding impact the way we approach the internet is also crucial. To the authors, despite increasing platforms attempting to prevent the far-right from organizing online, when once formerly separated right-wing "groups had finally met each other in person [they] were bonded by their shared experiences and by public condemnation" (211). However, without the internet, unification over some issues of people with distinct geographical, class, and social affiliations would not have been possible. 

This morning, looking at the Los Angeles Times article on the attack on the home of Nancy Pelosi, it is easy to see how these thresholds are continually made more permeable. Online communities were initially unbounded by conventions but also seemingly unimpactful, where red-pilled internet users posted on discussion boards where "everything up to the line of illegality was permitted, including 'jailbait' pictures of teenage girls, horrific deaths caught on camera and highly organized anti-Black racism" (71). But while the initial conditions for these were highly metaphorical - with the red-pills intangible ideological nature being but one aspect - the hypothetical space that was an alternative to the real world began to mix as the authors describe in relation to the Capitol. Thereby, viewing the specificities of the online world in enabling the events of Jan. 6th is essential. Yet, today seeing the article about how Pelosi was targeted as a result of these online discussions and because (according to the perpetrator) she was a "'leader of the pack' of lies told by the Democratic Party" (LA Times), no one raises eyebrows now. The subsequent fake news of her husband, who was alone at the house and wrestled with the perpetrator over a hammer (I hope I'll be able to do that when I am over 80), was immediate. As a BBC reporter recounts, "the most viral false claims about the attack suggests that Mr Pelosi, 82, and his attacker David DePape, 42, were in a same-sex relationship and had a drunken quarrel" (BBC News). Yet, even this part of the cycle had become routine compared to just a few years ago when the darker parts of the internet appeared self-contained. Previously, only the comparatively innocuous social media sites had an intimate and active relationship between the real and the online world. 

These points bring to mind how viewing the internet as separate and metaphorical for the real world at most is being ruptured. While, as I said, it remains useful for research purposes, legislation and law enforcement that seems to construct a seemingly separate standard for threats online versus those 'in the real' world might cause greater complications. Doxxing and threats of violence appear to be in a separate world that only indicates but does not interact with the physical - something that is already uprooted by incidents ranging from the Capitol to Nancy Pelosi. By drawing a separation between the two spaces, the internet appears to be an immaterial indication of the real world but one that is not formative of that world. If we view the internet in the older tradition of manifestos and scrolls, the implications of the content become much clearer. While the authors draw a firm distinction for analysis between the online and the offline, they do point in this direction with their Epilogue, where they write, "another way to think of memes is linguistic: as units of culture that, like words or phrases in a language, can be used to transmit ideas through and across generations" (333). It's unfortunate that this traditional linkage comes at the end of the book rather than in the introduction (as Sebastian pointed to in his point, the emphasis on the newness of memes seems to negate some of the historical links that can be drawn). However, overall I was intrigued by the authors' deep research into the space between the two, which from what I can observe, is rapidly obliterating the distinction.