| Summary: | This study is based on my 4 year-long digital ethnography on animal
cruelty on the internet. Animal cruelty is social crime that has a long
history across the globe. Notably, today’s animal cruelty is widely and
popularly shared and consumed through social media, online communities,
and social messenger apps, which has developed almost as a ‘new play
culture’ on the web. I situate the growing popularity and demands for animal
cruelty content on the internet, as evidenced in the increasing cases of
torturing stray cats, within the contexts of online sensationalism and hate
discourse/culture in South Korea. I consider online animal cruelty as a new
internet vernacular culture, stemming from online misogyny in South
Korea. I argue that the online animal cruelty culture is a networked complicity,
originating in the hate culture and fragile masculinity today, which has
risen as backlash against increasing visibility of feminism and discussion around
gender equity in the Korean society. The networked complicity further expands
across the online space and becomes popularized, encouraging anonymous
others’ participation for fun, based on online anonymity and networkedness,
while its criminality is overshadowed and dismissed. I conclude the paper
by emphasizing an urgent need for the government, industry, media, and academics to take actions to stop the increasingly violent online hate/
torture culture.
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