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.
P.s.
Waifu is definitely not a 4 Chan word.
@Vanir
I hate 4chan. But it is a message board. There are a lot of different subdivisions and a lot of people use it for different things. While I don’t use it myself I know a lot of people who do and in this case you really are saying punish everyone for the worst.
It’s the same as saying arrest everyone who uses reddit because of the bad subs. They leak all over the place but it’s still not the fault of every user that some are more horrible then others.
waifu is the japanese pronunciation of “wife”. It usually mean they take an anime character, fantasize her to be a lot more obedient than the already carpet-like worst offender, and declare she is way better than any pesky human who, you know, have more personality than a blow up doll.
(also, no, being member of a terrorist group isn’t ground for bail-less imprisonment in any democratic country, almost by definition)
@Vanir
Treating all 4chan users as terrorists because of what gets posted on some of the boards is ridiculous.
Oh oops almost forgot. I’m going to try to explain why the us doesn’t treat online threats as a real threat. But I don’t know which states this all a plies to and I’m too sleepy to check.
50 states leads to a lot of different interpretations of law.
OK so not long ago a case of death threats over Facebook was going on its way to the Supreme Court. However it was u sure if it would make it there (idk if it’s still on the wah or not) because in the state involved a threat is only defined as such if the person making it ment it to be one. Now while this case you can easily argue that it is so, the problem arose because the judge told the jury to consider weather any reasonable person would of taken it as a threat.
Basically the law in many states follows the rule that it doesn’t matter how you took what was said but only how it was originally ment.
It has to do with the concept of mens rea in the legal system, you have to have a guilty mind to be found guilty.
This places the burden of proof for threats on the prosecutor, and sadly on the victim themselfs. But it is ment to keep words from being used against you out of context.
So online threats are not normally prossicuted because while the person reciving them really feels threatened, it is hard to prove that the person making them ment them. Since we have years of troll culture built up saying that it is meaningless this hits a wall, since many people are idiot kids who really don’t mean it.
This also makes it hard to separate real threats from troll culture. And troll culture itself isn’t illegal, although it is really horrivle, most people who engage in it don’t truly mean to hurt anyone.
Teenage edge lords and such stupid but not illegal, more along the lines of they need to be smacked by their parents and have their Internet privlages revoked.
If someone was threatening on a chan board to do the same thing for the glory of Allah and had a bunch of well wishers chime in with “God is Great” it’d be shut down yesterday!
Lonely, middle class white suburban kids? Nah-no way they can be terrorists!
I am glad that it is being termed terrorism and not viewed as a series of random acts. I wish the media would also view it as such.
https://www.rt.com/usa/269506-american-terroist-attacks-study/
The above link is a study of who actually commits the most acts of terrorism in the USA
EJ:
You can read about the origin of the term here:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/waifu
The reason I bring this up is that the anime character who popularised the term is a paedophile. Yep, channers saw a guy who admits that he became a teacher because of his attraction to schoolgirls, and who hangs around outside the girls’ changing rooms to see them in their gym shorts, and they thought “that’s who I want to sound like”.
Thanks Robjec, Ohlmann, Moggie. That’s creepy as balls. That’s so dehumanised and alienated that William Gibson or Ryu Murakami could write a novel about it. I am genuinely terrified of these people.
@Moggie – wait, so the term came from the scumbag teacher in Azu Manga Daioh? I didn’t know that. I just know that that character reduces my enjoyment of what should be a show about school friends 1000% or more.
Shooting threat for a university in New Zealand tomorrow http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Shooting-threat-at-Otago-University/tabid/615/articleID/101883/Default.aspx
I commented on the Attila/Paulie breakup in an earlier thread but nobody really noticed. :p
Yeah, there’s a difference between punishing threats instead of shrugging your shoulders and saying “meh, trolls” and rounding up everyone who posts there. I get that people are angry, but that is really undemocratic.
Johanna, agreed. Back in my anime phase, I quite enjoyed that show. It actually made me a little nostalgic for school. I thought it captured school friendship quite well, and was often laugh-out-loud funny, as well as surprisingly touching at times. So Kimura, and the fact that he’s played for laughs, was a major downer. I suppose at least all the other characters recognise that he’s a disgusting creep.
@ej
I would say it’s safe to assume most people done associate it with azumanga daioh. I know I don’t and I’ve watched it
It’s generally just the term for an animal girl you find atractivem husbando is for guys.
So I don’t really think it’s creepy. (Well OK I do but because people take it too far, not.the term itself. Also it’s not one I use :p ) Why do you think so?
@Anon (comment page 1)
How? Please indicate the comment(s) you have a problem with, rather than dismissing the entire conversation.
In the UK we once had an attempt at denying terrorists “the oxygen of publicity” in pre Internet days.
It ended up with the somewhat ridiculous situation of voice over actors repeating the words of people on the prescribed list. The whole thing was treated as a joke and subsequently abandoned.
The tension between stopping incitement and reporting the facts is demonstrated by this very site. What is the legal difference between 4chan hosting the comments and David copying them here?
That’s why it’s so difficult to legislate in this area.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the UK such postings would probably fall foul of our terrorism laws, but there’s the proviso that people can only be prosecuted if they’ve been given notice and a chance to retract/clarify their comments.
See here for one take on the old provisions
https://youtu.be/w6UhXivPyw4
NZ too? Keep it up, 4chan! The more countries’ law enforcement you piss off, the greater the chance that one of them will come after you.
Romantically fixating on the idea of a person without them being aware of it, without their input or consent, and without any knowledge of how they’d react to it, is intrinsically hella creepy in my book. The fact that the person doesn’t exist at all is even creepier.
By definition, this person cannot have any reciprocal feelings for you, because they would be unaware of your feelings even if they existed, which they do not. This means that someone fixating in such a fashion cannot possibly receive any real signals back which indicate that their attentions are welcomed; anything they see which they believe to be affection is simply a fantasy, reading too much into someone else’s behaviour.
This is far too close to “her words said no but her eyes said yes” territory for me to be comfortable with it.
It wasn’t only in Scotland it also reached the province of Quebec. There’s been a false alarm of a shooter in Edouard-Montpetit a higher learning school in Longueuil. http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/mobile/lockdown-in-longueuil-police-say-no-danger-1.2591953
One time a guy I barely knew told me he loved me. I was really weirded out by it and wondered what kind of fantasies he had in his head about who I was.