An Austrian Perspective on Lolcows

Chris Chan has inspired one of the largest bodies of user-generated material ever assembled around a single internet personality. Documentary series spanning dozens of hours, extensive archives, community-maintained timelines, forum discussions, and countless reaction videos have been created to document his life and activities. Yet Chris Chan did not create most of this online substance; other people did.

Public animosity toward Chris Chan stems from his eternal search for a girlfriend and his history of immature conduct, online outbursts, and an inability to accept criticism. While his controversial statements drew significant ire, the 2021 criminal case involving his mother triggered the most widespread condemnation.

The same can be said of DarkSydePhil. While DSP built his reputation through gaming content, a vast secondary ecosystem eventually emerged around him. Commentary channels, reaction videos, documentaries, compilations, archivists, investigative projects, and online communities now generate millions of views discussing DSP rather than consuming his original material directly.

Public dislike of DSP stems from a long history of controversies, including a perceived lack of accountability, conflicts with others, and accusations of excessive monetization/e-begging. His reactions to criticism have fueled the “lolcow” phenomenon, where his demeanor provides entertainment rather than his actual gameplay.

TheQuartering serves as another key example of this dynamic. Jeremy Hambly has cultivated a massive audience through daily videos on politics and culture, but his activities have simultaneously fueled a robust secondary industry of detractors and critics.

Most observers explain these phenomena through psychology or sociology. They focus on trolling, internet culture, parasocial relationships, or online harassment. While explanations contain elements of truth, they miss an important economic reality: lolcows are centers of production.

The act of provoking a lolcow to get content is called “milking.” The people turning these reactions into professional media products are simply commentators, clip-chimps, or archivers; many prominent commentators explicitly avoid “a-logging” because getting personally involved destroys their objective, analytical value. “A-logging” (derived from an early Chris Chan detractor named Anthony Logatto) specifically means hating a lolcow so intensely that you try to out-do their bad behavior, often by making unhinged threats or taking things way too far.

The term “lolcow” emerged from internet slang and refers to a person who can be “milked for laughs.” Like a cash cow produces revenue, a lolcow produces entertainment, often unintentionally. Unlike comedians or entertainers, lolcows generally do not seek to be laughed at. Instead, they become the object of fascination because of their actions, public mistakes, emotional reactions, or inability to recognize how others perceive them.

What makes the phenomenon economically interesting is that a successful lolcow often generates far more media than he produces himself. Once enough focus accumulates around a particular individual, entrepreneurs begin transforming that interest into new media outputs for viewers.

The Austrian School begins with a simple insight: people act. Individuals pursue goals, make choices, and use available means to improve their situations. From these countless decisions emerge industries, institutions, and social orders that no single person planned or controlled. The lolcow economy is one example of such a spontaneous order.

At first, a creator produces videos, streams, comics, or commentary for an audience. Consumers watch because they value the offering being provided. Over time, however, something unusual may occur. The watchers gradually become less interested in the creator’s intended commodity and more interested in the creator himself.

Chris Chan was originally known for Sonichu. DSP was originally known for gameplay videos. Yet for many observers, the media itself eventually became secondary. The creator’s reactions, decisions, contradictions, and public controversies became the primary attraction.

This transformation illustrates one of the most important principles of Austrian economics: value is subjective. A creator may believe he is producing gaming information, political commentary, or artwork. Viewers are under no obligation to agree. They assign value according to their own preferences. Once consumers begin valuing the creator’s performance more than his intended creation, the economic character of the activity changes.

The existence of multi-hour video channels demonstrates that the lolcow has become an input in a larger production process. By serving as a capital good (a resource used to produce other goods) or a source of entrepreneurial opportunity, the lolcow generates raw substance that some people transform into documentaries, analyses, and compilations. In this ecosystem, many detractors and trolls function as businessmen themselves, actively seeking out reactions or specific actions to utilize the lolcow as a tool of production for their own material. Audiences then evaluate these derivative creations just as they would any other good in the sector, often valuing the transformation more than the original source.

A viewer might watch a six-hour documentary about Chris Chan without ever reading Sonichu, or follow commentary discussing DSP without watching his streams. In both cases, the lolcow occupies a specific position within a broader structure of production, where the final user values the output derived from the subject rather than the subject directly, a focal point around which activity organizes itself.

No one can predict in advance which internet personality will become a lolcow. Thousands of creators upload things every day, yet only a small number generate enough scrutiny to sustain an entire ecosystem of secondary production. Most controversies disappear quickly. Others develop into years-long sources of media.

This uncertainty creates opportunities for business judgment. Content creators invest time and resources into projects, organizing labor and knowledge to satisfy a demand they discover where others see only entertainment.

The history of Chris Chan illustrates this process particularly well. What began as a relatively obscure lolcow gradually evolved into one of the most documented individuals in internet history. Few observers could have predicted such an outcome in the early years. The eventual emergence of archives, documentaries, timelines, and research projects was not planned. It developed through countless entrepreneurial decisions made under conditions of uncertainty.

The lolcow trade also illustrates Hayek’s insight regarding dispersed knowledge. No single participant possesses complete knowledge of the phenomenon or directs its development. Archivists preserve information, commentators interpret events, other content makers organize narratives, and viewers determine which things deserve notice. Each individual acts on limited knowledge and pursues his own objectives. Yet from these decentralized actions emerges a remarkably-organized ecosystem of production. The extensive archives, timelines, documentaries, and networks surrounding figures such as Chris Chan were not designed by any central planner. Rather, they emerged spontaneously through the coordination of countless individuals responding to perceived opportunities and audience demand.

The lolcow economy is a spontaneous order. No central authority decides how much commentary should be produced or which controversies deserve notice; these decisions emerge through countless acts of judgment and the guidance of profits and losses. It also highlights an uncomfortable reality about viewer sovereignty: Austrian economists generally argue that production follows audience demand, and entrepreneurs succeed by satisfying the preferences of consumers, whatever those preferences may be.

The phenomenon demonstrates that this principle applies even when the commodity is morally questionable. Many watchers demand information, drama, controversy, and public humiliation. Business people respond by supplying material. The market process itself remains neutral. It does not distinguish between noble and ignoble ends.

This does not mean every activity within the arena around lolcows is ethically defensible. Doxxing, swatting, harassment, and threats violate natural rights regardless of their popularity. Yet much of the surrounding ecosystem operates through voluntary consumption. Millions of viewers choose to watch. Thousands of creators choose to produce online material. The resulting trade emerges not because anyone designed it, but because enough individuals subjectively value the offering being provided. And after all, lolcows are not compelled to place substance online; they remain free to exit the process at any time. Furthermore, the notice provided by trolls and detractors may itself constitute a perceived benefit, creating incentives for continued participation despite the negative nature of much of that scrutiny.

The lolcow phenomenon therefore presents an uncomfortable question: If consumers genuinely desire an output built around observation, documentation, and ridicule, should economists explain the phenomenon or condemn it? Austrian economics provides a straightforward answer: the economist’s task is first to understand how the process emerges before passing judgment upon it.

Ironically, the most economically successful participants in the lolcow economy are often not the lolcows themselves. The commentary channels who create substance frequently appear to capture a larger share of the value generated by the ecosystem. The source of interest and the beneficiaries of focus are not necessarily the same people.

The internet did not eliminate economic laws, it merely changed the form in which they appear. Human action, entrepreneurship, subjective value, and spontaneous order remain as relevant online as they are in traditional industries.

Ultimately, the sector around lolcows reveals that in digital arenas, scrutiny itself becomes an economically valuable resource. What appears to be mere internet drama is actually a decentralized trade process.