Culture in online anonymous interaction: Negotiating imageboard group style on Ylilauta

Abstract

We suggest that the theory of group styles, based on the pragmatist idea of people creatively using cultural tools for meaning-making, can be a fruitful way forward to study the cultures of anonymous online communities such as imageboards. We argue that users creatively build these ‘glocal’ cultures on affordances but also globally disseminated cultural toolkits of, in this case, imageboards. We present such an empirical analysis of Ylilauta, a Finnish-language imageboard with important similarities but also differences to previously studied English-language imageboards such as 4chan. Users of Ylilauta construct strong social boundaries, bonds and speech norms, unofficial rules of conduct and belonging in the anonymous online culture. They resist commercialization of their culture and try to preserve its perceived originality.