"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, its 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, which serves a stark reminder that nothing is sacred and the userbase is playing on maximum offense.
The documentary then covers other raids done by 4chan users, such as Hal Turner's broadcasts, The Oprah Winfrey Show's web forum, Operation Scientology, and Occupy Wall Street. With each successive raid/movement, however there's less of a causal link 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 Operation 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. It explains the origins as a "disgruntled ex-boyfriend publish(ing) a blog post about Zoe Quinn having a relationship with a games journalist". But 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 is all too ripe for the picking, as the documentary's producers, as they exploit his about-face stance on deplatforming 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."
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.
Moderating a site is tough, but the culture of the site was its moderation machine was largely 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 these two events were closer to moot's departure than the 2016 election, the successive scrutiny of the site because of Fappening and aftermath of GamerGate were were arguably more relevant factors.
But because the documentary is so centered on the notion moot left because of "the Nazis," it goes down the 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 spread to mainstream social networks where there is greater financial incentive to sell targeted ads and maintain high engagement on their platforms.
Dale Beran discusses how people at the January 6th protests, who may never have touched 4chan or 8chan, explain their reasons for being there - reasons that often had nothing to do with those sites but were more related to high-profile sites like Facebook and Twitter.
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.
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