There's nothing new about lulz. I mean, look at 4chan/b/, LiveJournal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the 8chan boards, etc. What's new is Twitter blasting it to the masses. And various players figuring out how to automate and monetize.
This is like a lot of things online now. Common knowledge for those who were there in the 90s or so, shocking for those whose only experience with the internet comes from the days of Facebook and Twitter. That's the case for everything from 'fake news' and lies to harassment and shills on community websites. None are new, they just weren't experienced by people who stayed in the old media walled garden.
The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously.
It might seem that way. But lulz always seeks to be taken seriously. And the fact that some people take it seriously, or at least seriously enough to get upset about it, is what makes it so lulzy. To those who get that, it's just lulz.
What's new is that Twitter brought lulz to defenseless masses.
Don't group everyone together like that. I used to frequent 4chan, and eventually joined in the trolly lulz threads. It was all just for fun. What made the site fun for me was the recognition of a foreign culture, the assimilation period where I began recognizing what made the site's culture unique, then a sense of being because I recognized the mentality the site formed. Like many things, it all had to do with our tribal evolution. Some may take lulz seriously, but don't assume everyone does.
> The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously.
Lolz was not backed by a state, with specific geo-political goals.
Were "Mad Magazine", and then "The Realist" Soviet propaganda? They certainly satirized American culture, and promoted understanding and peace. And we know about other such Soviet efforts. The US made comparable efforts. The CIA promoted modernism. Voice of America was very seductive.
the new thing is how people are consuming information and news, we are getting mainstream news pumped into our facebook feeds or via twitter and it accumulates all these different people pushing various views as part of the narrative in the commentary. News seems to encourage it by engineering story headlines / content to generate as much activity as they can while still trying to appear legit.
