Toxic: Critiquing an Infectious Error

The internet, we are told, is ‘toxic’ – an “implacable engine of addiction, loneliness, false hopes, cruelty, psychosis, indebtedness, squandered life, the corrosion of memory, and social disintegration.” This negative and widespread, and curiously biological, term for describing digital cultures and sociality is one that demands external intervention. Certainly, the internet has emerged as a discursive space in which misogyny, racism, and other forms of bigotry, are allowed to flourish; and it continues to offer users access to a range of content and services aimed more at eliciting ceaseless engagement than any positive mental or physical wellbeing outcomes. However, characterisations of such problematic digital phenomena – and often the internet as a whole - as ‘toxic’ serve a number of equally problematic social and political ends.

Drawing on key critical research, etymologies of the term’s broader and longstanding use in public discourse, and a series of illustrative cases, in this chapter we interrogate uses of the term ‘toxic’ to describe the internet’s allegedly antisocial tendencies, even its very nature as a technology now fully embedded into every aspect of society. We explore what the metaphor is, and does, in debates over the role of the internet in our lives.