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.
That’s amazing news Auntie Alias, thank you.
@EJ
First off, I’m not a gamergater.
Second, the people saying “LETS LOCK EM UP NO TRIAL NO BAIL PUT EM AWAY FOREVER” are the ones I’m referring to, not the people rationally saying that there should be a way to track down the 4channers, which I do agree with.
@Aunt Alias
Yesssssss!!!!! I just hope he was like “but it was satire, I didn’t mean it!”
@EJ
No worries, anybody who had a childhood crush on Eowyn is a-okay in my book. 😉
@everything else
For all my annoyance (lolunderstatement), I don’t agree with limiting freedom or arresting without proof/on a guilt-by-association basis. I mean, America does need to step up its game on hate speech laws and stop coddling white terrorists, but not at the expense of everybody else. When I wonder aloud why 4Chan and Reddit haven’t been shut down, I mean by their server hosts or domain registrars, not the government.
Dismantling the First Amendment, in particular, is a terrible idea. If you think it’d be used to shut down 4Chan and Reddit but not, for example, shoot every single #BlackLivesMatter protester, you’re fooling yourself.
Argh, WP smilies.
Uh, yeah, nothing wrong with having crushes. Sometimes it’s best that they stay in your head though.
—
Umm. I’m torn. It’s good that 4channers can’t always expect to get away with their shit, but something about arresting 14 year olds just never feels great to me. I don’t know.
@Moocow
He claims it was a dare. Uh huh.
@dhag85
Fourteen is old enough to know right from wrong and pay consequences for bad actions. If he’s convicted, a juvenile sentence will be lighter than an adult’s. I just hope the rest of the little shits are paying attention.
@Josh
I think you mean “person”; not ‘people’. I only found one in this thread…
…and it’s a pretty obvious this is a troll who’s trying to get us to agree with these ridiculously drastic measures that nobody agrees with (and who was even called out by Argenti)
To say
Is very presumptuous because nobody agreed with “C.S. Strowbridge”. Trolls are not “people here”. The “people here” are pretty much of the opinion that:
– 4chan should be shut down (or at the very least have stricter policies/moderation that don’t allow this kind of terrorism (because that’s exactly what this is)
– those posting threats should face consequences for their actions and we are pleased to hear that this is the case.
– Having the hots for a fictional character is cool as long as you don’t become overly possessive. (Getting to play as Yuna was half of why FFX-2 is my video game guilty pleasure)
@Alan It’s probably a good idea to have minor offenses that people can be charged with if something doesn’t rise to the level of a credible threat but that’s still really troubling. That’s a downside to having an absolutist “freeze peaches” policy in which nobody really knows the point at which something stops being protected speech.
Josh, there’s apparently an idiot who does, but other than that, no, the rest of us appear to believe that someone ought to be innocent until proven guilty.
Further, unlike MRAs and GG, we’re not really interested in forcibly silencing people’s speech when we disagree with it. Most of us think the site should be shut down because it’s consistently host to things that are not protected speech.
Auntie Alias, I honestly don’t think a 14 year old should be run through the system. You know the rape statistics in juvenile facilities? It wouldn’t do shit for the kid except either kill him or drive him insane. And no, I don’t think a kid that age really does know right from wrong.
He needs therapy. It sounds like his parents are doing a shit job at instilling empathy, understanding, and engagement with his community.
That said, watching 4channers get the stick is pretty hilarious.
dhag85:
I know nothing about the law in… wherever that arrest was made, but would you be ok with this if he’s subsequently released without charge? Making terroristic threats is [i]serious business[/i], and letting him soil himself from fear in a police cell before being released with a warning doesn’t seem too harsh to me.
scribbles:
Oh Christ, here we go again…
Dhag,
It’s fine with me. As long as they try him as a juvenile. I am against trying minors as adults.
@Moggie
I honestly don’t know the answer to this. There obviously needs to be consequences. But do I trust the police enough to feel ok handing over a kid to them? Nope.
Maggie, I’m not saying he’s crazy. I’m saying he needs someone to correct his little ass. If you think our justice system is going to do that, you’re pretty naive.
The kid is a member of a community that literally espouses fascism. Take a look at /pol/ (or don’t). It takes some serious deprogramming to undo that kind of hateful stupidity.
@scribble
I must have looked at it wrong before, I guess I thought there were more people agreeing with them than there really are. I tend to call out hypocrisy in places like this more than I would on say, AVFM, because people here could actually be reasoned with.
@Josh
By “looked at it wrong” did you mean “didn’t look at all”? Because that’s the only way this makes any sense.
No, I didn’t pay much attention to the names of the people. So I though that Vanir guy was a few different people, combined with whoever said “fuck the first amendment”.
So I got stupid and shot my mouth off without bothering to check so I could feel morally superior. That’s about the best way I can sum it up.
Fair enough. If people here were genuinely calling for gulags it would be pretty hilarious though. I think (most of) the left has learned its lesson, at least. The far right, apparently, has not, or maybe cannot.
I imagine trying to call out hypocrisy on AVFM is simultaneously reaching for low-hanging fruit and next to impossible. What kills me is that there are worthwhile men’s movements that actually work in concert with feminism, womanism, etc. but MRAs tend to disregard those. I’m not sure why. I think they genuinely do not trust academia. They’re to gender like what freemen on the land is to politics.
Lizard people. Lizard people everywhere.
@Josh
Fair enough, I guess. Your first post is indistinguishable from our usual troll posts, so expect some backlash.
Calling out hypocrisy on AVfM is impossible. They instaban for even minor disagreement by other MRAs.
@Josh:
Apologies for calling you a gator. As dhag85 says, your first post in the thread looked like a piece of (poor) trolling, so I leapt to conclusions. I shouldn’t have done that.
I’ve twice now needed to apologise for things in this thread. I think I should just switch to listening mode for now.