To troll or not to troll: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in cyberspace to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous exchanges, Or to take arms against ourselves by saying nothing at all, And by going along with them, the herd.
The verb “troll” has entered the modern day lexicon with the online battles of twitter. These exchanges are now pervasive throughout the culture; you can’t escape it. Trolling has been around for centuries, but now the meaning is expanded. It’s always exciting to see a word grow from its primary incarnation. Obviously, trolling (as we know it now) wasn’t around in Shakespeare’s time, but it would have been cool if it were. Artists during the days of monarchies had to keep their messages hidden under layers of symbolism. Some of my favorite artists had strong opinions, but had to be careful to not blurt them out carelessly. Now, everything is immediate. We have lost much of the innuendo that came about with the immediacy of social media. It is ironic that with more tools to disseminate speech we lose the nuance of language. Twitter seems to promote the dumbing down of discourse through 140 character diatribes. The world is forever changed, and we are changing with it. As a romantic, I can’t help but dream of the past (even the past I wasn’t alive for). I always look back to the great masters to study what they did to make work with layers of satire. I am forever a student of these artists.
One of my favorite artists lived during the Inquisition (b. 1746 d. 1828). Francisco Goya de Lucientes was said to be the father of modern art born centuries before the term was even coined. Goya was trained in the classical European tradition. He found employment as a painter of the Spanish court. His paintings of the royal family are done in the Spanish palette. Goya’s paintings of deep crimson, sepia and oily black depict the Spanish milieu viscerally. To encounter a Goya up close is to witness a frozen picture begin to crawl; it’s like witchcraft. I was fortunate to see a show in Miami twelve years ago in the freedom tower as an aspiring art student. The show pulled together all of Goya’s major prints from his four series of work. One of his series, “Los Caprichos” was his big critique of the Spanish monarchy; he pulled no punches. Goya had printed up images depicting coded imagery of the royals. He sold 27 of the prints before pulling them for fear of retaliation by the state. The people were sophisticated, and an image is worth a thousand words. They had the literacy to navigate the meaning under the images. This is where Goya got his credit of being the first of modern artists. Big institutions (the state and the church) almost exclusively employed the artists. There was no other way to be an artist at that time. All artists were commission artists; they were not making work for themselves. Goya was the first artist of his ilk to depart from the institution. His stand in “Los Caprichos” revolutionized what it was to be an artist. Now, artists can be auteur in their work, and we forget the past. We forget that the world wasn’t always so open for discourse. I also want to add that Francisco Goya de Lucientes was the father of modern day trolling. Yes, you heard it here first. They may not have used that term back then, but that’s what he was doing. His images are layered, appropriate cultural symbols and subvert the discussion (or lack thereof). Simply put he was putting it out there to confuse, challenge and piss people off. Goya was a noble troll though, and used his wit to make a cogent point.
We have absolute freedom of speech in the U.S.A. We don’t have hate speech laws. It’s all on the table for better and worse. Adversely, we are hyper sensitive. So, we no longer take the time to understand the argument. The fear of the mob can paralyze us. It is a problem for every artist to tackle. How does one express an idea honestly without self-censorship (which I might add is the worst form of censorship)? We must go back to the masters, and look to them for guidance. Mostly, the modern day artists kowtow to the mushy headed mobs.
Matt Furie created Pepe the Frog in 2005. He generated a series of comics by the name of “Boy’s Club,” that included the feel good frog. Furie is an accomplished illustrator, and he has been disheartened by the appropriation of Pepe. Now, this is where the story becomes muddled. Wikipedia would have you believe that Pepe now stands as a symbol of racism. This is not entirely true. Pepe the frog doesn’t really mean anything; he’s an innocuous cartoon frog. He was co-opted by the visitors of the sight, 4chan along with others. Their memes, including the image of Pepe, are inane. Most of these visitors are in their teens, and grew up with the World Wide Web. They don’t remember a time before social media. Their sense of the world is different than generations before. There is a separation of responsibility in the anonymity of shitposting. This becomes sport to them. They don’t have strong convictions one way or another when they shitpost. Their goal in posting Pepe as an appropriated image is to agitate. They know what they need to do to get a reaction; that’s all they’re looking for. It’s like when a child misbehaves to draw attention from their parent. They simply look for a validation of their existence. It’s an existential approach to trolling. The modern day troll doesn’t wish to do much of anything other than gain attention. The attention comes without artistic skill, intelligence or values. Their reward comes from the reaction; it simply comes down to that. On the other hand, Goya trolled with an ethos. He had disdain for the monarchy, and he created images to rouse the people’s sentiments. There was nobility in his work, ownership and pride. Furie is still upset about the way Pepe has been utilized by these 4chan children. He even sued Alex Jones for appropriating the frog. The symbolism of Pepe has little to do with any left or right political ideology. It has more to do with nihilism, and the cheap thrill of upsetting people without accepting the onus.
I post my own imagery with the full accountability of authorship. I know what I am doing, and where my head is at when I do it. I look to Goya as my inspiration. The shitposters are artists of a sort. They are artists in the Dadaist fashion. They diverge from the classical tradition in order to present their work free of explicit signature. Most of these shitposters do not have a concrete ethos to their process. They merely look to gain attention, good or bad. I can almost admire the precocious artists, but they lack anything of substance to say. So, it really isn’t worth our time. Artists are guided by a sense of purpose. Mostly all of the artists I admire have an ethos. Goya created work to express his opinion; he had to hide it in plain sight at times. The state did not tolerate heresy during the Spanish Inquisition. They executed between 3,000 and 5,000 people who dissented. There was good reason for Goya to be very calculated in his authorship. One wouldn’t want to lose their head by using their hand to create a statement. The shitposters have no real reason to hide behind their screens. The state will not be imprisoning them for lewd content. They avoid accountability, because they lack the conviction of their art.
The art of trolling is the highest form of expression in our modern times. Sadly, the modern incarnation of trolling lacks merit. There is inherently no merit in nihilism. It is the lazy man’s ethos. If nothing is important than why even bother? Maybe the safe basements that mom and dad supply create a lack of spirit. The screens are numb unfeeling realms where we lose a sense of touch. So, what’s a troll to do without a connection to the physical world? They get any reaction they can to feel something; that’s it. In general, they don’t have real values to express. We can see this in the work they disseminate, and that they don’t attach their signature onto it. All they can do is try to feel something by making nihilistic collages. It’s sad. Goya lived truly, and had no other choice but to participate in life. He experienced loss, had empathy and saw life as it was, precious and worth fighting for. I wish we could bring trolling back to what it was intended to be. It wasn’t about shitposting. It was about getting people to engage in the world with humanity, humility and most of all humor (Let’s not forget our sense of humor as the world goes mad).