Paper short abstract:

Online world-making necessitates the reconstitution of ethics, often allowing for the prevalence of discussion tabooed offline. This paper will examine the growing prominence of hate speech within online communities, and reflexive practices of justification through re-made ethics.

Paper long abstract:

Within the past 10 years, anthropological work has proposed that there is something significant about online world-making. Digital practice is not merely a reflection of our offline life, but instead a refraction of ourselves; a distorted reformation of cultural and ethical norms in spaces not censored by face-to-face interaction. Subsequently, when addressing ethics as the reflexive process encapsulated by questions such as "what kind of person should one be?" we must consider how the answer may be two-fold to one individual: referring to how one should conduct themselves as a public individual in certain online spheres verses within offline interactions. This paper presents an anthropological tracing of digitally mediated practices of shaping narratives, and the ethical permissions that follow. Specifically, I will examine the emergence of violent anti-feminist abuse online, as was seen in high profile cases such as #Gamergate and Reddit vs Ellen Pao. As well, I plan to briefly investigate the correlation between these cases and the emergence of the Alt-Right, exposing their re-branding of terms such as "Counter-Semite" as reflexive maintenance of their ethical personhood while touting White nationalist ideology. In this discussion, I will stress how it is increasingly important for academics ask questions such as: "How are ethics re-formulated within online worlds?", "To what extent do the textual practices of online communities influence the evolution of ethics in digital discursive spheres?" and "What happens when these re-constituted digital ethics enter the offline world?"