“The party’s here!” Thus Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi introduced herself to her new housemates, and to MTV fans across the nation and around the world, on the first episode of the network’s wildly popular and highly controversial show, Jersey Shore. Immediately thereafter, Polizzi began the process of catapulting herself to reality show infamy. Since the 2009 debut of the show, she has appeared on a variety of television programs, from Dancing with the Stars to Wrestlemania to Supernatural, and she has been caricatured on South Park and Saturday Night Live. Her name has also been invoked on American Idol, True Blood, and even in a White House Correspondents’ Dinner address by President Obama.
Fame has not come without its consequences, though, even for the pint-sized darling of the Jersey Shore. In an age when fans and detractors enjoy immediate and direct access to celebrities over social media networks, Polizzi has frequently been the subject of open ridicule on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Despite the fact that she has shed her “party girl” image and is now a healthy mother of two, a successful businesswoman, and the head of her own burgeoning fashion and beauty empire, she is regularly attacked by users who critique everything from her appearance to her intelligence to her parenting methods. Polizzi is only one of many celebrities who have been similarly targeted on social media. In my paper, I will examine the potential connections between such attacks and the widespread cyberbullying of American youth, interrogating the ways in which celebrity cyberbullying is both symptomatic of, and a contributing factor in, the ongoing culture of malicious verbal assaults carried out by individuals hiding behind internet pseudo-anonymity and the imagined protection of a seemingly-impersonal medium.
About the presenterMiriam Hahn Thomas
Miriam Hahn Thomas earned her Ph.D. in Theatre from Bowling Green State University in 2014, where her doctoral work focused on representations of Native Americans in the theatre of the 1960s American Counterculture. She has since taught courses in theatre at Kennesaw State University, Bowling Green State University, and Ball State University. She currently serves as Arts Administrator, Production Manager, and Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC.