Universities in the Philadelphia area were on high alert today after a threat directed at them was posted on 4chan’s /r9k/ board. The anonymous threat (everything is anonymous on 4chan) deliberately called to mind the threat/warning posted on the same message board last week, the day before a gunman shot and killed eight students and one professor at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.
“The first of our kind has struck fear into the hearts of America,” the writer of the new threat declared.
His cries have been heard, even by the president. This is only the beginning. On October 5, 2015 at 1:00 PM CT, a fellow robot will take up arms against a university near Philadelphia. His cries will be heard, his victims will cower in fear, and the strength of the Union will decay a little more. …
Martyr yourself for the cause or support those who have the courage to do so. We have the chance to make the world a better place for betas everywhere.
The deadline passed without incident — as did the deadline for a similar threat directed at schools in Edinburgh. Scotland, posted shortly after the Oregon shootings — but not without shaking a lot of people up.
Now the most malevolent trolls on the /r9k/ board, knowing that they have the attention of the world, are rhapsodizing about the coming “beta rebellion,” gleefully mocking the victims of the Oregon shootings, and posting threats aimed at an assortment of schools around the world, from Texas to the Netherlands.
And so, alongside more traditional /r9k/ topics as “Post your waifu” and “DAILY REMINDER THAT ALL FEMALES ARE DECEIVING SUBHUMAN WHORES,” the board today is filled with simultaneously ridiculous and chilling messages like these:
4chan being what it is, other anons are posting ironic “threats” aimed at, among other places, the moon, Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, and Whoville — the latter a reference to a news reporter who mistook the board’s meme mascot, a frog called Pepe, for the Grinch.
In the wake of a mass shooting that left ten people dead, this is all a good deal less than hilarious. Yes, yes, 4chan apologists, I know that the anons writing the “real threats” are most likely shitposters, like the anons joking about shooting up the moon, in that they most likely have no intention of carrying out their threats.
But at the same time it’s clear they do intend to terrorize real people with their probably fake threats. As they know well, we have to take them seriously, given that a similar threat on the same message board only a few days ago was followed by an actual, real-world massacre.
This isn’t shitposting so much as it is terrorism, a form of terrorism enabled and in some ways encouraged by 4chan’s anonymous nature.
It’s also clear that the “beta uprising” the /r9k/ regulars are joking about — and designing flags for — isn’t altogether a joke to them either.
Aside from the picture of Hitler, there’s not much deliberate irony in this discussion. These are two people discussing the future of a would-be political movement, in the wake of an act of terrorism that may be tied to the message board they are posting on. One thinks the terror caused by the shootings in Oregon will lead people to take their “issues” seriously; the second sees to think that continued violence is the only answer.
I’m not seeing a joke here.
The worst part about this is… well, honestly everything. But the worst worst part is that any shooting threats that are real will get lost in the noise of all these edgelords.
I don’t see how anyone can be on 4chan for any length of time. Just reading quotes from that place makes me feel tired and mildly ill.
(Also I swear to god I am going to throw my laptop into traffic if I see the “word” cuck one more time)
So, when is the SPLC going to decide that misogynistic hate groups are worthy of their time?
How many threats do there need to be, how many people have to die, before they finally cross the magic boundary from “Harmless website” to “Terrorist organisation”?
Or do they have to threaten people who aren’t women first?
(Yeah, I know that the SPLC can’t actually do anything about them, but it’d be nice to have that recognition of “Women’s lives are worth protecting too.”)
I don’t get it. I was bullied at school, my home life was spent walking on eggshells some days, and I had undiagnosed disabilities to deal with on top of all that. Maybe because I’m older and more distanced from it now, but I cannot, under any circumstances, imagine walking into my school with a gun and shooting people who had nothing to do with the bullying or other reasons I was hurting. Some people really do seem to enjoy the idea of “just you wait! You’ll be sorry!” so much that they don’t actually care if the person who cops the brunt of it had anything to do with it or not.
4chan is beyond fucked up, as usual. It’s a den of neo-Nazis, misogynists, and other trash. It truly is the cesspool of the Internet. This is a prime example of why they ought to be on a watch list of some sort.
@ SFHC
I thought they already sort of did
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2012/misogyny-sites
On a lighter note, Attila Vinczer and Paul Elam broke up. It’s as hilarious as you’d expect.
Is there anyway for the FBI to track 4chan users if they get a warrant? I know the posts are all anonymous but it’s not like the dark web in that it’s pretty much impossible to get an IP address, is it?
It’s time for a few of these trolls posting death threats for the lulz to go to prison for making terror threats. I don’t care what their intent is, they both rile up the people who may actually carry out a mass shooting and muddy the waters by making it more difficult to determine whether or not to investigate a threat and treat it as credible. If nothing else, they should have to pay restitution for the increase security costs that are incurred when these posts go up.
It’s really time for us to stop having the attitude that the internet isn’t real life and nothing on it should be taken seriously. If you’re caught phoning in a bomb threat you’ll go to jail. Internet threats should not be treated differently.
@Miss Andry
I imagine after this they are – if they weren’t previously. This is getting more buzz in the media.
What’s bizarre to me is that these guys don’t seem to realize how they look. People aren’t going to decide, “hey, let’s give these guys whatever they want” or “let’s shake in terror” – they’re gonna want them smashed and smashed hard. They look awful to the entire world, and they’re not helping themselves.
Familiar behavior, isn’t it?
Sadly, this is one of those events I think will be used to justify more control of the internet.
@Jenny: You took the words right out of my mouth.
Do these “beta uprisers” think they’re the only people in the history of civilization, to suffer frustration and rejection?
They seem to be as self-centered as they accuse women of being.
@Alan
A partial list posted three and a half years ago – long before #GamerGate and the rash of MRA-linked killing sprees – with nothing but a lot of wriggling about “But websites can’t be hate groups!” and the implication that “Tracking misogyny is too haaard!” since then… It was great to see at the time, but they went nowhere with it, and it doesn’t count anymore.
*angry GLaDOS noises*
This is so “lovely.” Hopefully if any of these fools actually try something like this, they’ll end up accidentally killing or wounding themselves before they’re able to carry out their plans and murder innocent people
What should we do? Them being on the SPLC hate watch isn’t enough we need the authorities in this. These terrorists need to go to jail. I don’t want anyone else to die.
I’d like to feel reassured that there won’t be any UK shootings, because it’s so much harder to acquire weapons here, and there isn’t quite the same death-cult MRA culture… or at least that’s what I thought until a couple of months ago, when this fucker was arrested.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/newcastle-teenager-charged-with-possessing-five-pipe-bombs-and-a-gun-9843034.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33718094
As far as we know, he wasn’t a Manospherian, but he was into Breivik, and other mass shooters, as well as describing his revenge fantasy as a form of “civil disobedience”. Sounds like the guys in the above post.
These shitlords are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such. 4chan should have been shut down years ago, but it makes me wonder what these… kids? (how old are these shits anyway?) are like in the real world, and what kind of messed up people they are, and how far away they live from me and my loved ones.
Anon Here If you cant see the Irony you are right gtfo of /r9k/ and /b/ but why kill a site for a few bad apples. Do you really think anyone serious would post on 4chan now when a shooting just happened? Some of them might be retarded no one are that stupid.
The sites don’t meet the SPLC’s definition of a “hate group” because they don’t do stuff like organizing physical meetings in a specific geographical location.
These people are doing a much better job of destroying themselves than any of us ever could. Though I wonder how awful it would be for them if their board was erased/gun runs are banable offenses. Would they start believing their own site is against them? Would they be so inclined to cannibalize their own site?
The recent change of head from Moot to Nishimura, owner of 2chan may cause some things to change.
Now onto the real subject of deaths, should this continue to persist in a pattern, I would be interested to see if the media is willing to make out these social outcasts as isolated instances or consider them a homegrown terrorist group? As most of these people are hyper conservative in nature and the radicalization of the right I have my doubts on the subject. Mainly it would be to use the site as the sole source of the problem and avoid any other reasons to how the potential shooters would be able to enact their terrorism.
Though best case scenario the new admin sends ip all the time, law and culture are cultivated that shun such actions, guns being harder to obtain for the crazies and the /r9k/ either dissolves under threat of knowing that their actions now have consequences or they further radicalize to the point where no one can claim they are not a terrorist group.
Then again Bundy Ranch.
When the media narrative was that the killings were motivated by misogyny, nobody called it a possible hate crime. When the narrative switched to the killings being motivated by hatred of Christians, then they started talking possible hate crime.
Why, when violence against women and now even violence that targets all genders but is motivated by misogyny is so commonplace is it not deemed a hate crime? You never, ever these crimes spoken of that way. I don’t want to play oppression Olympic, but it really seems like it’s treated as less important when it’s women.
@ altofronto
It’s pretty easy to get guns here in the UK.
The difference between here and the US is that there aren’t that many guns already lying around, so attacks would require a bit of planning and resolve rather than just being spontaneous with what’s already available.
The police and GCHQ also have greater powers and resources to monitor online activity. In fact GCHQ has so much over capacity that most of its work is doing stuff for the other 5 eyes nations on an outsourced basis. It’s our Humint side that needs more funding.
WWTH — I’m sure with all their supercomputers NSA could backtrace through ToR, problem is that that just isn’t worth the resources to figure out who every asshole is, and in theory NSA is still only allowed to wiretap US citizens if they’re terrorism suspects. But that’s quickly sliding into the land of who the fuck knows what rights they’re violating this week, on a purely practical level, if they’re using ToR it’s whole point is to make bracktracing difficult, great for getting around the Great Wall of China f’ex, not great for tracking assholes who may or may not pose a real threat. So yeah, I can’t see it happening without the threat being carried out. To use your (valid) comparison, if nothing blows up, no one is gonna track down security cameras near the pay phone the bomb threat came from, if something does blow up, every shop anywhere near that pay phone is gonna have cops all over their cameras and receipts.
Jenny — if it helps explain it any, ditto the bullying and eggshells and such… except I did think about it and do have access to guns. But even as a suicidal teen I couldn’t get past the fact that it wouldn’t make things any better, and making my bullies suffer wasn’t worth the cost. Which is why I think being an entitled little shit is a major factor, those of us who grasp that even entitled little shits are still people are less inclined to decide they have to suffer with us — yeah, they should treat us with basic human dignity, but killing them won’t teach them anything, and that’s assuming every single person you kill is a bully, a risk people with basic empathy won’t take. But then you get the people who think everyone has to be nice to them (if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything isn’t an option by them), or date/fuck them, or whatever thing that actually, no, you aren’t entitled to by the mere fact you’re a sentient being, and then anyone is a target.
FTR, that’s anecdotes and personal experience, so I’m totally willing to be proven wrong, suspected wrong, have anecdotes that contradict mine, etc. In short, I can explain ToR, but explaining the why behind mass shootings is guess work not science.
4chan has a ban system, which means they have a method of blocking IP’s, which means they track IP’s. If the US government subpoenaed their records because of these terrorist threats these guys would learn very quickly that they aren’t actually anonymous.
You can use Tor to access 4chan, so that would mask your IP address even though 4chan isn’t a Tor service.
@OoglyBoggles
I actually think this has a chance to make national consciousness as A) It’s highly objectionable, B) It’s sensationalist, C) It’s an outgroup (“Internet losers”) easily tageted.
Sadly, I think C will play a big role in it.
I’d guess that the NSA has some way to break Tor, but its use would be limited specifically to international terrorism and spying. So it couldn’t be used to prosecute domestic terrorists who are US citizens or legal residents.
@WWTH – Is it also because women are the biggest “minority” group? Like, by sheer numbers, people refuse to believe that it’s possible to hold a grudge against 51% of the population, so it somehow doesn’t count as a hate crime when women are explicitly the intended victims?
@Alan – It’s nowhere near as easy to get guns in the UK as it is in the US, though. As I’m sure you well know.
You can apply for hunting or gamekeeping license, but most of the guns you can get legitimately in the UK are single-shot rifles and the like – requiring a lot of re-loading and allowing time for anyone within range to run for cover.
If you wanted to obtain anything as deadly as a semi-automatic, you’d have to look on the Dark Web, and you’d have trouble getting it transported without arousing suspicion.
. In the US, you can buy an assault rifle in Walmart. We’re still statistically a lot safer in the UK. At least, mass shootings are not a daily occurrence here.
I’d like to know whether GCHQ has picked up on 4chan yet. At least one of those above threats was on UK soil, so I’d damn well hope they’d be breaking some fucker’s door down with an arrest warrant soon.