Never Give ’Em What They Expect
Never Give ’Em What They Expect
The Joker Ethos as the Zeitgeist of Contemporary Digital Subcultural Transgression
We move into the realm of digital and ludic paratexts with Vyshali Manivannan’s analysis of the “Joker ethos” as one that “prizes cleverness, inventiveness, and Dadaist absurdity as much as the destabilization of social and emotional expectations,” making it largely coterminous, Manivannan argues, with the ethos of “lulz.” Defined as a kind of online emotional schadenfreude, lulz is the primary objective of those who antagonize interlocutors for the joy of sparking a reaction and partake in a “disrupter culture intrinsic to both trickster mythology and contemporary phenomena such as hacker culture and trolling.” “Doing it for the lulz,” Manivannan suggests, “mirrors the Joker ethos: it too seeks to transcend conventional rules of engagement, interrogate restrictive order, create social disjuncture, and above all take pleasure in provocation.”
Keywords: Joker ethos, Lulz, Schadenfreude, Trickster
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