It's Just a Meme: The Aesthetics of Cruelty

Notes:

• Alessandro's journey from studying law to discovering criminology and pursuing a career in research.
• His experience conducting ethnographic research into black-market ticket selling and online deviance.
• Traditional neutralization theory and how individuals justify behaviour they recognise as wrong.
• The development of the aesthetics of cruelty as an extension of existing criminological theory.
• The role of shock, humour and provocation in sharing hateful memes.
• How the target of offensive content can be irrelevant or interchangeable within certain online communities.
• The shared appreciation of shocking material as a basis for social interaction and belonging.
• The importance of context in understanding offensive humour and online behaviour.
• How memes can escape their original communities and reach unintended audiences.
• The increasing accessibility of extreme content on mainstream social media platforms.
• The potential normalization of offensive content through repeated exposure.
• The status associated with receiving platform bans for sharing particularly offensive material.
• The potential exploitation of these communities by individuals promoting extremist ideologies.
• The challenges of automated content moderation and the commercial incentives of social media platforms.
• The discussion of social media restrictions for younger users.

About our Guest

Alessandro Moretti

 https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/persons/alessandro-moretti/

Papers or resources mentioned in this episode:

• Moretti, A., & Demant, J. (2026). Neutralization without drift: The aesthetics of cruelty in hateful meme sharing. The British Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf092
• Hayward, K., Moretti, A., Mizrahi-Werner, J., & Demant, J. (2026). “That is just fucked up, I think I’ll be leaving now”: Coded language, hateful humor, and plausible deniability in dark memes on Facebook. Deviant Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2026.2688360
• Demant, J. J., & Moretti, A. (2024). Intrusiveness and the public-private divide in netnography: A situated, structured approach for ethical research in the context of closed, group-based, or hidden social media behavior. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 23. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241257937
• Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089195

Other

• Moretti, A. (2023). The rise and rise of illegal ticket touting: An ethnography of deviant entrepreneurship. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003168553
• L'Hoiry, X., Moretti, A., & Antonopoulos, G. A. (2024). Identifying sex trafficking in adult services websites: An exploratory study with a British police force. Trends in Organized Crime, 27, 34–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-021-09414-1