LULZ

“A distortion of ‘LOL’, or ‘Laugh out Loud’, lulz are a sharper form of offensive humour directed by online activists. Exemplified by Pepe the Frog avatars and targeted ‘humour’ about ethnic and religious minorities in Europe and North America, lulz provide ironic distance where necessary.” ¹

Online trolls use lulz as a thin excuse for their hateful messaging. They argue that jokes about 9/11, the Holocaust, mass shootings, and rape are just for the lulz and shouldn’t be taken seriously. “Can’t anyone take a joke anymore?” is a common refrain among trolls. While pranking, roasting, and taboo are considered valid tactics in comedy, they require the consent of the target as well as the audience to be funny. Meanwhile, the troll’s pursuit of lulz is intended to provoke hate, outrage, and disruption rather than real laughs, often simply for the amusement of the troll community. ²

Cloaking bigotry in humor is a deliberate tactic leveraged by alt-right trolls to protect against charges of racism and their potential consequences. ³ In Andrew Anglin’s Normie’s Guide to the Alt-Right for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, Anglin advises, “Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking – like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it‘s true. This follows the generally light tone of the site. It should not come across as genuine raging vitriol. That is a turnoff to the overwhelming majority of people.” Anglin also writes, “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists. I usually think of this as self deprecating humor – I am a racist making fun of stereotype of racists, because I don‘t take myself super-seriously.”