So it’s official: the Emma You Are Next web site, which was threatening to release nude pictures of Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, is a hoax. The site now redirects traffic to the home page of something called Rantic, a mysterious supposed “social media marketing enterprise” with a reputation for hoaxes.
Rantic is now claiming that the real agenda behind its website was a noble one: to expose the evils of leaked celebrity nudes – and, by painting 4channers as the evil hackers behind it all, to get 4chan itself taken down.
And somehow, to do this, they had to threaten to release nude pics of Emma Watson? It’s like fighting death threats against women – by sending death threats to women. The idea that this is a feminist “false flag” — an idea already being floated in Men’s Rightsy circles — is plainly ridiculous. Rantic’s actions are about as unfeminist as its possible to get.
Indeed, it seems pretty clear that Rantic’s new site is as much of a hoax as its last one.
Rantic’s own, er, “explanation” for the Emma Watson site is a masterpiece of concentrated bullshit:
We have been hired by celebrity publicists to bring this disgusting issue to attention. The recent 4chan celebrity nude leaks in past 2 months have been an invasion of privacy and is also clear indication that the internet NEEDS to be censored. Every Facebook like, share & Twitter mention will count as a social signature — and will be step closer to shutting down www.4chan.org.
Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever. How do you protect celebrities from threats by threatening a celebrity? How do you use the Emma You Are Next hoax to get 4chan taken down … when everyone now knows that you, not anyone on 4chan, was behind the hoax?
Add to this a call for censorship that seems calculated to enrage the internet masses, and it’s hard not to conclude that Rantic is still playing the internet like a fiddle. For what aim I don’t know. Maybe, like some Men’s Rightsers we could mention, they figure that bad publicity – scratch that, catastrophic publicity – is better than none.
That’s more or less what Business Insider has concluded. In a piece published this morning, BI’s James Cook writes
Rantic Marketing doesn’t exist. This wasn’t a marketing stunt at all, but a social experiment run by the most notorious gang of pranksters on the internet. …
Rantic Marketing is a fake company run by a gang of prolific internet spammers used to quickly capitalize on internet trends for page views. The group go by a variety of different names. Collectively, they’re known as SocialVEVO … The only known video footage of the group is a rap song about pickles that they used dubious spam techniques to make incredibly popular. The song used to have over 8 million views on YouTube.
As for that supposed plan to shut down 4chan? It’s only served to rally 4chan’s defenders.
In any case, the best way to fight celebrity leaks isn’t to shutter 4chan. It’s to find and prosecute those who’ve hacked celebrity nudes (including photos of several young women who were underage when the photos were taken) – and those who’ve knowingly spread them around the internet.
It may be hard to find the original hackers, but it’s certainly not hard to find those who distributed the nudes. Hint: Look at Reddit. Hundreds of thousands of Redditors were involved in what became known as TheFappening, and Reddit itself apparently profited handsomely from the attention and traffic.
Though the original TheFappening subreddit was belatedly shut down, leaked celebrity nudes are still being distributed openly on Reddit. This is criminal activity. Enforce the laws.
And Rantic, whatever your game is — just. fucking. stop.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be 4chan trying to cover their tracks.
I just… no, I got nothing.
The #1 reason that I think that this is a false-false flag (double false flag? Whatever) is that the “explanation” uses the phrase “the Internet must be censored”.
That’s purely formulated to inflame the freeze peachers.
People who are genuinely concerned about privacy rights (that is, the right of people not to have their private pictures made public) would, at the very least, use different terminology.
If you’re going to go for the title of Master Troll AT LEAST pay attention to how the “other side” speaks, guys.
Pretty sure the only celebrity publicist dumb enough to think this would be a good idea already works for Charlie Sheen. Shit, full of, etc.
Rantic is very obviously made by someone from 4Chan. They pulled this crap with tumblr before. Make fake websites to attack 4Chan , rile them up and give them a justification. Its really transparent and wouldn’t be surprised if they had this ready in sine irc
More about ‘SocialVEVO’: http://www.dailydot.com/business/socialvevo-family-guy-hoax-company/
Essentially, they’re botnet spammers who’ve turned to fake viral marketing to ‘build their brand’. If what they’re doing doesn’t work, they pivot and try and spin a little harder to see if they can connect. If they don’t, they disappear, and wait, and if they ever do, they’re going to make out that their fluke wasn’t a fluke at all, and that they can do the same for YOUR company!
I would assume that this is JudgyBitch doing PR for 4-Chan now, except that the words ‘whores’ and ‘cunts’ haven’t been used in the official ‘Rantic’ statement.
So I guess even this PR failure is still not enough of a failure to be close to her ‘unique’ PR style.
Is there some kind of anti-PR school out there? Between this and anything JB screeches on behalf of AVfM, it proves that some people don’t know how to PR/market their way out of a bag.
First of all, I’m truly glad that it was all a hoax, that her privacy was not violated, and that she won’t be publicaly shamed for being robbed. I’m happy for Watson just as I’m sad for all the other women shamed daily for their stolen pictures.
She made some very valid points in her speech. She’s a very reasonable woman, I like her more everyday.
I despise the idea of it, but the Internet needs to be regulated. It’s unfortunate, but we have no choice anymore.
Thanks to criminals and trolls for ruining the web!
Just when I think I’ve seen the stupidest stupid shit that the internet has to offer, something even stupider happens. I’d at least like some down time between being disappointed in stupid “gamers” trying ruin video games and women being run off of the internet by assholes. That’s it, I’m spending the rest of the week watching pug videos and being disappointing in humanity.
hellkell: I think this is the widening gyre of internet assholery.
Based on the link Merus posted, and the link greyskye posted about 4chan attacking Rantic over their GTA V for PC cancellation hoax, a narrative starts to emerge.
Rantic posts hoax sites based on controversy to drive internet traffic. They obviously don’t care about ethics or collateral damage. When doing the same with GTA V cancellation rumors, 4chan figured it out, and used their DDOS cannons on Rantic. Now Rantic is using the recent Gamergate/Fappening controversy to kill two birds with one stone: traffic wrangling, and 4chan.
Cue the gullible MRA hordes writing ‘typical feminist message’.
Rantic’s ‘any twitter mention will be counted as a social signature’ is particularly bullshitty.
Rantic, do you think you could make it any more obvious that you’re not interested in actual social justice? Not that this makes any difference to the manosphere, who will hold up Rantic as an example of a radical feminist organization no matter what evidence there is to the contrary… Sheesh, how can one little viral marketing group do so much damage?
The good thing that came out of this is that Emma Watson isn’t actually facing any privacy violations. I’m just worried that this whole stunt has put the misogynists on the mission to punish her anyway.
A bit OT, but has anyone else had this extremely fake-sounding story about “vagina cookies” and a horrible feminist mom show up in their social media feeds: http://www.snopes.com/info/news/cookies.asp
A little tidbit, Apparently 4chan has done this before. They have used ‘Rantic Records’ and ‘Rantic Media’ which is an anagram for incite drama. I think they believe they are some part of an elite psyops or something LOL
http://www.craveonline.com.au/gaming/articles/751071-grand-theft-auto-v-pc-cancellation-rumor-debunked
http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/marketing-firm-rantic-hacked-over-gta-v-pc-cancellation-rumors/
For guys who think they are masters of propaganda and psychological warfare they aren’t very good at covering their tracks.
“Rantic.com is “Rantic Records”. For about ten years all it did was 302 forward to https://myspace.com/ranticrecords/
Last month it got hacked by 4chan because of the previously mentioned GTA V tease.
And then suddenly, when 4chan looks awful, it becomes the source of the awful.”
http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/2hasry/is_rantic_actually_trying_to_censor_4chan_and_are/
Hi, grumpycatisagirl! Yep kind of smells like straw feminist to me. I mean, I guess there could be someone out there who thinks genital decorated cookies are a good learning moment for children, but this just sounds too urban legendary. My BS detector says “woop”. Also, would a real in-your face let’s celebrate our vaginas feminist call a teacher “Miss” instead or “Ms” in the subsequent emails/texts?
@grumpycatisagirl
I had not seen that, but I read the article looking like this confused owl.
http://cheezburger.com/381273344
That just doesn’t seem right. The comment about things being “hypoallergenic” really struck me as odd. Not only is that weird adjective to apply to food, but my mom is a teacher and they can’t have homemade treats in classrooms any more. They have to be store-bought to ensure that students with allergies aren’t exposed to anything that could cause a reaction. The whole story just sounds off. It definitely sounds like someone has been building strawmen again.
grumpyoldnurse – well spotted with the Miss Ms faux pas. Basically this ‘feminist’ sounds like what an MRA believes a radfem is. Contrary to their opinion feminists generally are not completely delusional, and know what is appropriate or not for a child’s class.
As for Emma – yes, glad that she has dodged the misogynist bullet this time.
Wheels within wheels. Why do I get the feeling that all this spinning will lead precisely nowhere?
The cookie story sounds, at the least, wildly exaggerated. First seen on Reddit doesn’t help its credibility. Neither does foaf.
Is this “Rantic” company getting paid to do this? Or is this brain-dead stunt a promotional activity designed to garner them new business?
Either way, the only thing I can think is that the company is made up of high school sophomores with zero understanding of how the real world works. And that their client list is probably going to shrink.
To me this looks like “reverse trolling,” or false flag trolling intended to generate sympathy for the points you’re nominally criticizing. 4chan practically invented reverse trolling, and in recent years they’ve damn near perfected it — such as by posing as women on Twitter and posting outrageous hyperbole about the eeevils of all men. (Remember #EndFathersDay?)
Was 4chan behind this? I don’t know. But I’d bet a tidy sum that misogynists of some stripe were. The Rantic “admission” includes far too many dogwhistles and scare phrases.
I read an interesting essay about men’s rights at http://theliberdade.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/what-are-mens-rights/. Interesting that he said that strength is a male principle. It makes it seem that females who have strength are not “real females”. You can reply to the essay at the website above.
Yup. And fake non-white people, too. But that all backfired on them. Apparently, these “clever” trolls are still not smart enough to fool the real McCoys.