How The Lolcow Phenomenon Shows The Worst Side Of Humanity

Lolcows are a kind of internet celebrity that gets relentlessly bullied until they eventually snap. The phenomenon has been around for a long time and has proven time and again how awful and harmful it is. It shows the worst side of humanity – a side that takes amusement in the suffering of vulnerable individuals.

What Is A Lolcow?

Lolcow is an internet slang term for a person who is repeatedly mocked or trolled online. These individuals often have quite a big following, only dedicated to exploiting and bullying them. They have eccentric and/or gullible attitudes that invite mockery for internet communities such as 4chan, Encyclopedia Dramatica or KiwiFarms. Viewers find these people funny or cringeworthy.

The term is a combination of "LOL" and "cow", meaning someone that can be milked for laughs and entertainment. Lolcows typically consistently react to or provoke ridicule without learning from it and often without even realizing that they are the butt of the joke rather than receiving genuine support.

Lolcows are not a new phenomenon of the internet. One of the earliest online mentions of "lolcow" can be found in an Urban Dictionary from April 15, 2007.

Who Are Lolcows?

Examples of lolcows include Wings of Redemption, Boogie2988, ChrisChan, Daniel Larson, World of T-Shirts, Cyraxx, Tophiachu, Nova online and many more.

They typically are vulnerable individuals with mental or developmental disabilities or other mental illnesses – people who are already struggling and a target in society.

Due to these factors, lolcows lack the social awareness to realize how they appear online and the general awareness to not engage with trolls or maybe leave the internet early enough. They often lack the coping skills to handle life in general, much less thousands of people messing with them.

Some, like this essay, think that these individuals are picked precisely because they are disabled. With non-vulnerable people, trolls usually just call them a few names and move on – those with mental disabilities and impairments though, are easy to provoke, give reactions and are less likely to adequately defend themselves, so they become longterm victims.

The phenomenon of picking on and ridiculing disabled and "different" people is not new. In history, people visited "freak shows" for entertainment – now they only have to visit the internet. For centuries, disability has been constructed through ideas of monstrosity or freakishness, marking it as a form of bodily and cognitive “otherness.” Lolcows, in turn, are framed as media figures who can be ridiculed, demeaned, provoked, trolled, or stereotyped at any time and from anywhere. The often disabled lolcows get openly dehumanized.

The Effects

The trolls actively pressure the lolcow into more impulsive and erratic behaviour. They exploit preexisting tendencies to provoke the individual and encourage them to engage in selfdestructive antics, egging them on to self harming behaviour, indulge in addiction or reek havoc in public. False encouragement and constant dares trap these individuals in a harmful cycle. The lolcow seeks validation they believe is genuine, while the audience drives them to increasingly extreme behavior for laughs.

The people participating in trolling and harassing lolcows have a lack of empathy and compassion. These people just find the torment funny but don't look further into the consequences of their actions to another real human being. It is kind of a game to them, they actually dedicate their time to it. The reaction of the lolcow is the prize.

World of T-Shirts and Christine Chandler are examples of where all this can lead. The creators go down harmful paths and engage in abusive behavior towards themselves or others. The constant harassment can lead to mental health crises like Daniel Larson's, addiction like World of T-shirts', arrests and sometimes even worse outcomes. It takes a giant psychological toll on the victims. The mental health struggles of the lolcows get amplified tenfold leading to depression, anxiety, psychotic breakdowns and more. And the more they react and break down, the more they get bullied, it's a vicious cycle. The trolls ruin the lives of already struggling people.

This video breaks the effects of lolcow harassment down further.

Why Do People Do That?

"They Could Just Leave"

Where there is social media, there are lolcows. People seem to enjoy to see these creators struggle and mocked. Trolls often try to relativize their behaviour by seeking the responsibility in the lolcow themselves. "Why are they still on YouTube if it is so bad, they could just go and it would stop" seems to be a common defense. They think it is fair game as long as the lolcow stays online.

But many disabled creators find online content creation to be one of few accessible avenues to support themselves and moreover, it can be almost impossible for lolcows to find another job with all this stuff about them on the internet. The more viewers they have, the more money they get with not only clicks but also gifts. But the gifting economy of these creators is built on harassment and humiliation. Furthermore, plattforms also profit from clicks and engagement and push these creators to even wider audiences. Viewer engagement is the core principle behind lolcow-content. A morbid dynamic develops, wherein the lolcows are financially dependant on their trolls.

But let's be real – even without these factors, just because someone posts on the internet, it is not automatically fine to bully them.

"They Are Bad People"

Another defense the trolls use is the behaviour of the lolcows themselves. A lot of them engage in awful behaviour and are rightfully criticisable for that. The trolls say that because the individual did something bad or horrible, it justifies them harassing and ridiculing them – they deserve it. They seem to think that they are bringing them to justice and serving the greater good. Also, the more people engage in this behaviour, the more okay it seems, because other people do it as well.

But, as this creator puts it, even if a lolcow did something truly awful and deserves to be brought to justice, who are you to enforce this kind of justice? Only because someone did a bad thing does not mean it is okay to make their life hell. They think harassment is just fine if they believe that the person they're harassing is bad. These trolls have a warped moral calculus.

The lolcow movement feeds on a psychological phenomenon where ridiculing another person gives people a sense of empowerment and boosts their self esteem – because there are people "worse" and "worse off" than them. They get a twisted sense of self-satisfaction out of it. Moreover if you are part of a group making fun of a single individual, you get a sense of belonging. It is just like a group of popular kids bullying of the "weird" special-needs kid in school, making it believe it is part of the group only to make fun of it behind it's back. But you are part of the group.

A Twisted Tragedy

Watching someone else's life derail is kind af like a car crash – you can't look away. But any adult human being with a functioning moral compass would look at a situation like this and think it is messed up. If you participate in something like this and think it's funny it says a lot about you, more than about the lolcows themselves.

The "lolcows" are vulnerable people without a support system. They need good friends and professional help instead of the internet to fill that hole. Most of these "lolcows" need intervention and not harassment, humiliation, provocation and enabling. Some of them have done offensive or odd things but bullying and ridiculing should not be the way of dealing with these vulnerable individuals – especially not for entertainment purposes. Lolcow culture is not even entertaining anymore, it is cruel.