Breakcore: Identity and Interaction on Peer-to-Peer

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix
Chapter One: Introduction....................................................................... 1
1.1 Overview ............................................................................................... 1
1.2 Doing internet research.......................................................................... 7
1.3 Bedroom producers.............................................................................. 18
1.4 The rationalisation/democratisation debate 1: rationalisation.............. 20
1.5 The rationalisation/democratisation debate 2: democratisation........... 24
1.6 Cryptonormative subtexts to the debate............................................... 26
1.7 White (male) “bedroom”; black (male) “street” .................................. 29
Chapter Two: Points of Departure: bringing p2p activity into focus.... 33
2.1 “Darknet”: the unfinished history of p2p............................................. 33
2.2 “share your files”: the file-sharing imperative..................................... 42
2.3 The gift and the leech: reciprocity in the embedded economy ............ 48
2.4 Contingency and cross-platform variation .......................................... 54
Chapter Three: Populating The Frame................................................. 57
3.1 The inscribed mp3: “properties” and “tagging”................................... 57
3.2 Stylistic signification and the body...................................................... 82
3.3 Personæ ............................................................................................... 87
Chapter Four: “Speech”/Play and Interaction Ritual.......................... 95
4.1 “Inert” violence and desensitisation: the myth of normless cyberspace .............. 95
4.2 “Making sense” of textual interaction ................................................. 99
4.3 “Making sense”, ethnomethodology and interpretation.................... 106
4.4 “Making sense”: from interactional lag to verbal games.................. 110
4.5 “kewl room to learn insults in”: adversariality and ritual insult exchange ......... 114
4.6 “yr mum”: the semantic tension of ritual insult exchange................. 118
Chapter Five: “only if you’re a real nigga”......................................... 131
5.1 Verbicide and shibboleth ambiguity .................................................. 131
5.2 “some wandering prick”: trolling, subcultural authenticity, and the limits to “joking” racism 143
5.3 Order, contest and meaning ............................................................... 152
Chapter Six: “we all suck equally much”: “Doing” Masculinity ...... 157
6.1 “who wants to fight me?”: adversative interactional style................. 157
6.2 “i dont get it”: repelling incomers, abortive sequences, and the limits of the adversative  165
6.3 “Garfinkeling” Garfinkel................................................................... 174
Chapter Seven: Ghey............................................................................. 181
7.1 Gay/ghey and the performance of masculinity .................................. 181
7.2 Ghey and the supersession/sublation of gay ...................................... 193
7.3 Fratriarchy and abjection ................................................................... 205
7.4 Bedroom producer masculinity.......................................................... 212
7.5 “ghey family” .................................................................................... 217
Chapter Eight: Junglist......................................................................... 221
8.1 “Dancing about Architecture” ........................................................... 221
8.2 “Amen, Brother”................................................................................ 230
8.3 “Amen Babylon”: music in “speech” ................................................ 237
8.4 “Fuck Toronto Jungle”: the problematics of the ragga jungle revival 247
Chapter Nine: “a antique style some nerds did”................................. 255
9.1 “War is in the Dance”: breakcore aesthetics and subcultural legitimacy  255
9.2 “its no proper edicate to use amens in breakcore”............................. 263
9.3 “the low fidelity question and all that” .............................................. 270
Chapter Ten: “Safeway Brand Breakcore” ........................................ 281
10.1 The sample base, “culture jamming” and piggyback branding........ 281
10.2 “Lame amens and pop mash” .......................................................... 289
10.3 The Master’s Tools? ........................................................................ 293
10.4 Parachutes, mushrooms, and theory ................................................ 298
10.5 Hanging backstage with the boys .................................................... 301
10.6 Bedroom producerness beyond rationalisation/democratisation ..... 315
10.7 \m/ 318
Bibliography............................................................................................ 329
Discography............................................................................................. 361
Index  377