"The Antisocial Network" takes its name from the 2010 biopic "The Social Network," which was about Facebook. As you'll come to learn, 4chan and Facebook are vastly different corners of the internet, yet they converge through the effectiveness of propaganda, the diffusion of collective responsibility, and rage-baiting.
The documentary starts strong, establishing credibility by showcasing figures from the site's early years, as well as some people who were part of Anonymous' hacking group or the spinoff LulzSec. Matt Alt explains the origins of 4chan, noting that it was an English-language version made possible by copying 2chan's source code. The focus on Japanese culture (which branched out to general forms of entertainment) and of course, the /b/ - Random board gave it a strong community and made it a hotspot for memes. He also explains that, like 2chan, 4chan's anonymous user base and lax moderation made it susceptible to extremist messaging.
Later, I'll describe how, starting with the 2016 U. S. presidential election, the documentary gets off track and focuses solely on the political board /pol/, as if it overshadows the rest of the site. But it all came from somewhere, and the documentary begins 4chan's notoriety streak with the Habbo Hotel raids, aka "Pool's Closed."
Of course, the pranks have a dark side. The film pivots to footage of Habbo Hotel users forming a swastika and people at Otakon doing the Nazi salute, and it served as a stark reminder that the userbase was playing on maximum offense at the time.
The documentary then covers other raids done by 4chan users, such as Hal Turner's broadcasts, The Oprah Winfrey Show's web forum, Project Chanology, and Occupy Wall Street. With each successive raid/movement, however there's less of an established link back to 4chan's userbase per-se as there is a delineation towards political activism done by people not from 4chan.
Speaking of, the activism/hacktivism aspect of Anonymous and LulzSec is covered by 420chan's Kirtaner, as well as Jeremy Hammond. Both seem pretty astute in their political views and relay those beliefs in their association with Anonymous.
The frustrations in not being able to effect change quickly enough in Occupy Wall Street, I think, led to a splintering of many in Anonymous' hacktivist set to LulzSec, which is barely even covered in the documentary. Things go from bad to worse as the target of documentary's ire shifts gears again and covers GamerGate.
To its credit, the GamerGate section is relatively brief and accurate. It explains the origins as a "disgruntled ex-boyfriend publish(ing) a blog post about Zoe Quinn having a relationship with a games journalist". Yet much of the misogynistic groundwork and sentiment had been built up years prior by public figures like Anita Sarkeesian (Tropes vs. Women in Video Games), Brianna Wu (who is also featured in the documentary), and clickbait journalism. Despite the tenacious relationship between games developers and gaming publications' ad divisions, the documentary decided to light a match for old times sake and blame the channers for this one too.
Frederick Brennan (who founded 8chan and experienced an influx of users when 4chan banned GamerGate discussions) speaks in the documentary. His libertarian background and believes are all too ripe for the picking, as the documentary's producers exploit his about-face stance on not deplatforming hate speech to drive home an all-too-familiar message. More "freedom" - "rules" = more extremism.
After this inflection point, the documentary's creators start to really play fast and loose with the facts. Namely, they make a preposterous assertion that moot left because of the 2016 U. S. election, easily refutable by the fact Moot announced his retirement on January 21st, 2015 before either party's candidates announced their candidacy.
Then they double down by showcasing Gregg Housh saying: "With moot, I did find it really funny that when we all started to leave and all he was left with was the Nazis... that he quit."
The film then cuts to archive footage of moot at the 2013 Repulika Festival, pre-2016 election, pre-GamerGate, in which he doesn't mention Nazis but rather the challenges of "having an angry mob of 25 million people who disagree with everything you do."
Moderating a site is tough, and 4chan's culture and moderation islargely invisible and impersonal, as was the userbase it governed. Being the "face" of the moderation is not easy, which is why the site uses a system of volunteers known as "janitors" to supplement its moderation staff. Given Fappening and aftermath of GamerGate were closer to moot's departure than the 2016 election, the increasing scrutiny of the site was arguably more a significant factor.
If you listen to part of "moot's final 4chan Q&A" on their YouTube channel (admittedly, the full recording is nearly 8 hours long), moot says he left because he had been considering it for a long time, but wasn't ready to leave the site until he had contingencies in place to keep it running. The Q&A addresses the aftermath of The Fappening (which isn't even mentioned in the documentary, likely because it's not political enough), banning GamerGate/invasions, and other topics.
But because the documentary is so centered on the notion moot left because of "the Nazis," it goes down this rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland.
After Trump is elected, the film focuses on the QAnon posts that seeded on 4ch/8ch's /pol/ boards, then how it spread to mainstream social networks like Twitter and Facebook. He holds these networks into account for the greater financial incentive to sell targeted ads and maintain high engagement by any means necessary, despite higher moderation standards.
Since you know where this is going, it's time for the grand finale of the documentary... the storming of the capitol. January 6.
Almost as if they were answering a Rorschach test, Dale Beran discusses how people had different motivations for being at the Capitol. None of which had to do with imageboard culture. The populist discontent that fueled anti-establishment, anarchist movements like Project Chanology and Occupy Wall Street a decade ago shifted to the far-right towards election denialism. And as argued earlier, the link between posting on imageboards and going to the capitol is strung wire-thin by the documentary's presenters themselves: that people who stormed the capitol were not users of imageboards but traditional social media and motivated by personal beliefs versus a defined political movement.
The documentary then ends with a multitude of depressing events: Kirtaner getting raided by the RCMP for figuring out Trump's Twitter password, Fuxnet regretting their past actions as a member of Anonymous, and an overall negative narration on the potential of internet culture. It basically reads like, "Don't go our way, we're all screwed up." What a bleak way to end an 85-minute documentary (which took two years to make and was originally over two hours long when submitted to SXSW).
I'm not beyond anyone or any concept being given a fair shake. But this wasn't so much a shake as it was a Netflixified documentary that uses a multitude of Videohive graphics to convince you going to an imageboard is a pipeline to radicalization. Don't get hoodwinked, and always lurk moar.
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