Textual Cacophony explores the behaviors and routines of communication within anonymous internet culture in Japan. Focusing on the video sharing website Niconico, social media aggregation sites, and the notorious 2channel message board, Daniel Johnson uncovers these sites' complex cultures of writing that obscure meaning through playful and opaque forms of deviant script and overwhelming waves of text. Those practices conflate language with images, meaning with play, and confound individual representation with aggregate forms of social identity. Johnson argues that online media cultures in...

Textual Cacophony explores the behaviors and routines of communication within anonymous internet culture in Japan. Focusing on the video sharing website Niconico, social media aggregation sites, and the notorious 2channel message board, Daniel Johnson uncovers these sites' complex cultures of writing that obscure meaning through playful and opaque forms of deviant script and overwhelming waves of text. Those practices conflate language with images, meaning with play, and confound individual representation with aggregate forms of social identity. Johnson argues that online media cultures in...