“Fuck off to the tampon bible”: Misrecognition and researcher intimacy in an online mapping of ‘lad culture’

Digital forms of networked misogyny have received much attention of late, both in public and academic discussions of changing gender relations. However, less work has paid attention to how lad culture emerges online, or how the researcher experiences the affective fabrics therein. In this article, we explore our engagement with platforms hosted by the companies UniLad and The Lad Bible. We define our experience of this field as intimate because (a) we downloaded them onto our personal mobile devices and social media accounts and (b) of how they are experienced as proximal, “sticky” and deeply affective. We approach digital lad culture through a methodology of misrecognition, drawing on the work of Sarah Ahmed, Jessica Benjamin, and Nancy Fraser. We show how accounts of the researcher’s own experiences through a methodology of misrecognition are crucial, providing new ways of researching, and, in turn, new ways of challenging, the digital proliferation of misogyny and sexism.