THE INTERNET IS TRASH: MAKING SENSE OF TOXIC NETWORKS

Dumpster Fire. Garbage Site. Trash Heap. The flotsam and detritus of the unfettered growth and transformation of digital life. Particularly since Brexit and the American presidential election of 2016, which brought this digital refuse to the forefront of public discourse, Internet scholars have been coming to terms with the societal consequences of some of the issues they have been warning about for years, including online harassment, surveillance, and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. Whitney Philips (2020) recently described the internet as a “toxic hellscape” in Wired magazine, arguing for collective problem solving and our own agency in working together to fix the internet’s problems. Lisa Nakamura’s 2020 TED talk called the internet a “trash fire,” before suggesting solutions like content moderation. Artist Jenny Odell (2019), on the other hand, has advocated for disconnection as a solution to toxic spaces and the attention economy itself.