Online transgressions: Imageboards and cultural practices of anonymous citizenship

Anonymous online groups such as imageboards are places where young people come together to create peculiar subcultures which may spread far and wide, contributing to imagining society and culture anew. But such spaces also act as seedbeds for fringe ideologies, harassment and even violence. Building on a mixed-methods study of Ylilauta together with ethnographic participant observation, this chapter sheds light on how cultural practices such as transgressive and hateful speech may act to build bonds within a subcultural community, but also draw strict boundaries to outside enemies. Online spaces such as this one may simultaneously produce a large group with its distinct style, while containing several fleeting ad hoc subgroups, as participation in them is open, porous and amorphous. We pay special attention to how so-called affordances such as technologically and culturally enforced anonymity should be understood to work in terms of building of commonality online.