WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.520 Okay, so I want you to imagine a room. Right. 00:00:02.680 --> 00:00:07.339 A huge cavernous room. And it's packed. There 00:00:07.339 --> 00:00:09.580 are millions of people in there all screaming 00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:11.460 at the top of their lungs all at the same time. 00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:14.679 Okay, that's a stressful image. It is. And some 00:00:14.679 --> 00:00:15.980 of them, you know, they're holding up these cute 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:18.300 pictures of cats with funny captions. The classics. 00:00:18.579 --> 00:00:21.460 Right. And then standing right next to them are 00:00:21.460 --> 00:00:25.870 people solving these... incredibly complex math 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:29.329 problems, stuff that has stumped university professors 00:00:29.329 --> 00:00:31.829 for decades. And this is all happening in the 00:00:31.829 --> 00:00:33.829 same room. In the same room, shoulder to shoulder. 00:00:34.049 --> 00:00:36.170 But then you look over and right there, there 00:00:36.170 --> 00:00:38.409 are people plotting how to just completely ruin 00:00:38.409 --> 00:00:42.100 a stranger's life. Or, you know, worse. It's 00:00:42.100 --> 00:00:44.320 a terrifying image. And I think the catch, the 00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:46.200 part that makes it truly unnerving, is that the 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:48.039 lights are off. Exactly. The lights are off. 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:50.719 You can't see anyone's face. You have no idea 00:00:50.719 --> 00:00:52.640 if the person next to you is a Nobel Prize winner, 00:00:52.859 --> 00:00:57.679 a bored teenager, or a domestic terrorist. That 00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:00.719 room exists. It's not a physical place, obviously. 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:03.600 It's a website. It's a website that The Guardian 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:07.620 once described as, and I love this quote, lunatic, 00:01:07.739 --> 00:01:12.269 juvenile. Brilliant, ridiculous, and alarming. 00:01:12.489 --> 00:01:14.390 All in the same breath. All in the same breath. 00:01:14.489 --> 00:01:17.010 We are talking, of course, about 4chan. The asshole 00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:20.569 of the internet as it has been so affectionately 00:01:20.569 --> 00:01:23.349 dubbed. By its own community, no less. They wear 00:01:23.349 --> 00:01:25.629 it like a badge of honor. They do. But here's 00:01:25.629 --> 00:01:27.209 the thing that I think a lot of people get wrong. 00:01:27.709 --> 00:01:29.989 They write 4chan off. They think, oh, that's 00:01:29.989 --> 00:01:32.730 just that weird anime site from 2005 or, you 00:01:32.730 --> 00:01:34.629 know, that's where the hackers live. A relic 00:01:34.629 --> 00:01:37.579 of the old internet. But it's not. As of 2022, 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:40.879 this site was pulling in over 22 million unique 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.180 visitors every single month. I mean, that's the 00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:46.480 population of a decent -sized country. It's huge. 00:01:46.700 --> 00:01:48.760 It's not a relic. I think a better metaphor is 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:51.620 an active volcano. Yeah. And what's fascinating 00:01:51.620 --> 00:01:56.540 to me and terrifying is the sheer range of what 00:01:56.540 --> 00:01:58.599 comes out of that volcano. You have the rickroll. 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:02.230 completely harmless, silly fun that your grandma 00:02:02.230 --> 00:02:04.790 knows about. And then from the same source, you 00:02:04.790 --> 00:02:06.829 get the alt -right, you get Gamergate, and you 00:02:06.829 --> 00:02:09.830 get legitimate body count violence. And that 00:02:09.830 --> 00:02:12.289 is the mission for this deep dive. We aren't 00:02:12.289 --> 00:02:15.569 just here to recite a history lesson. We're trying 00:02:15.569 --> 00:02:17.610 to really figure out the mechanics of it. The 00:02:17.610 --> 00:02:19.810 architecture. How does one simple website... 00:02:19.930 --> 00:02:21.930 built by a 15 -year -old kid in his bedroom, 00:02:22.129 --> 00:02:25.050 managed to be the birthplace of lolcats and the 00:02:25.050 --> 00:02:27.330 inspiration for mass shootings. The code itself 00:02:27.330 --> 00:02:29.590 shapes the behavior. It's not an accident. And 00:02:29.590 --> 00:02:32.110 we have to talk about the now, the present day. 00:02:32.830 --> 00:02:34.490 Because if you haven't been paying attention, 00:02:34.789 --> 00:02:38.770 4chan has had a wild, wild 12 months. To say 00:02:38.770 --> 00:02:41.069 the least. I mean, we're talking about the massive 00:02:41.069 --> 00:02:44.750 hack in April 2025 that took the entire site 00:02:44.750 --> 00:02:48.979 dark for weeks. And the current very intense 00:02:48.979 --> 00:02:50.979 legal war they are fighting with the British 00:02:50.979 --> 00:02:53.479 government. This is happening right now. So just 00:02:53.479 --> 00:02:55.319 a quick heads up before we really get into the 00:02:55.319 --> 00:02:57.259 weeds here. Yeah, this is important. We are going 00:02:57.259 --> 00:02:59.240 to be discussing some heavy stuff. I mean, really 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:02.620 heavy. Radicalization, harassment, suicide, violence. 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:06.240 They're all integral parts of the 4chan story. 00:03:06.659 --> 00:03:09.280 We're reporting on this as it happened based 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:11.659 on the source material. It's factual. Right. 00:03:11.759 --> 00:03:14.379 We aren't endorsing any of this. Not for a second. 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:16.780 We're just trying to understand it. OK. So where 00:03:16.780 --> 00:03:19.979 do we start? Let's go back. Way back. October 00:03:19.979 --> 00:03:24.240 1st, 2003. The internet looked completely different. 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:26.740 Oh yeah. No Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube 00:03:26.740 --> 00:03:29.159 as we know it. Mark Zuckerberg was still in a 00:03:29.159 --> 00:03:32.000 dorm room. And in New York City, there was a 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:34.460 15 -year -old named Christopher Poole. Online, 00:03:34.599 --> 00:03:37.300 he was known as Moot. Lowercase meme. Always. 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:40.240 And like a lot of 15 -year -olds in 2003, he 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:42.840 was really, really into anime. But he wasn't 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:44.919 just watching it on Toonami after school. He 00:03:44.919 --> 00:03:48.039 was deep in the forums. Specifically, the Something 00:03:48.039 --> 00:03:51.560 Awful forums. Now, Something Awful is a... Legendary 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:53.960 in its own right, a pillar of old Internet culture. 00:03:54.419 --> 00:03:56.919 But for Poole, it had a problem. What was the 00:03:56.919 --> 00:03:59.240 problem? It was too moderated, too structured. 00:03:59.300 --> 00:04:02.159 And frankly, you had to pay $10 to join. The 00:04:02.159 --> 00:04:04.599 $10 barrier. I remember that. That actually kept 00:04:04.599 --> 00:04:06.439 a lot of people out. It was a quality filter 00:04:06.439 --> 00:04:09.500 in a way. It was. But Poole was looking for something 00:04:09.500 --> 00:04:12.020 else, something wilder. And he was looking east. 00:04:12.340 --> 00:04:15.460 He was fascinated by a Japanese image board called 00:04:15.460 --> 00:04:18.029 Futaba Channel. Which is also known as 2chan. 00:04:18.189 --> 00:04:21.730 Right. 2chan was the template. In Japan, it was 00:04:21.730 --> 00:04:23.889 already massive. It was anonymous. It was chaotic. 00:04:24.250 --> 00:04:26.990 And it was entirely image -based, which was novel 00:04:26.990 --> 00:04:30.250 at the time. Poole wanted to create an English 00:04:30.250 --> 00:04:32.209 -language version of that for his friends to 00:04:32.209 --> 00:04:34.350 talk about anime. I love this part of the story, 00:04:34.430 --> 00:04:36.730 the actual creation. Because I think people imagine 00:04:36.730 --> 00:04:39.509 this sophisticated software engineering project, 00:04:39.629 --> 00:04:42.189 this stroke of genius. It was the absolute opposite 00:04:42.189 --> 00:04:44.180 of that. He didn't write the code from scratch. 00:04:44.439 --> 00:04:47.019 He went to Furtaba Channel. He found their open 00:04:47.019 --> 00:04:49.519 source script. And this is the best part. He 00:04:49.519 --> 00:04:52.860 ran the text through AltaVista Babblefish to 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:55.879 translate it. AltaVista Babblefish? Yeah. That 00:04:55.879 --> 00:04:58.079 just unlocked a core memory for me. That was 00:04:58.079 --> 00:04:59.959 the Google Translate of the Stone Age. It was 00:04:59.959 --> 00:05:01.939 terrible. It barely worked. But it worked just 00:05:01.939 --> 00:05:05.220 enough to get the site running. He rented a server 00:05:05.220 --> 00:05:07.500 using his mother's credit card. Without her knowing, 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:10.519 I assume. Oh, unbeknownst to her, yes. And launched 00:05:10.519 --> 00:05:13.959 4chan .net. So it's literally just a copy -paste 00:05:13.959 --> 00:05:16.339 job. Copy -paste job. By a 15 -year -old. With 00:05:16.339 --> 00:05:18.639 his mom's credit card. And a really clunky old 00:05:18.639 --> 00:05:21.899 translation tool. It's amazing it even worked. 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:24.500 And initially it was just two boards. That's 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:27.759 it. A for anime and B for random. And B, well, 00:05:27.899 --> 00:05:31.459 B became the monster. But before we get into 00:05:31.459 --> 00:05:33.699 the culture, I want to drill down on those mechanics 00:05:33.699 --> 00:05:36.600 you mentioned earlier. Because 4chan does not 00:05:36.600 --> 00:05:38.779 work like Facebook. It doesn't work like Reddit. 00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:41.439 It doesn't work like X or anything else you use 00:05:41.439 --> 00:05:44.800 today. not at all the architecture the very bones 00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:48.079 of the site are defined by two things anonymity 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:51.060 and ephemerality okay let's start with anonymity 00:05:51.060 --> 00:05:54.000 on twitter or instagram your identity is your 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:56.680 currency you want followers you want clout you 00:05:56.680 --> 00:05:59.319 build a brand exactly you are building a personal 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:02.040 brand your past posts haunt you your reputation 00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:05.399 good or bad precedes you on 4chan there is no 00:06:05.399 --> 00:06:07.240 registration you don't sign up you don't have 00:06:07.240 --> 00:06:09.500 a profile picture you just show up you just show 00:06:09.500 --> 00:06:11.839 up and when you post unless you manually type 00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:14.740 in a name which almost nobody does the system 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:17.480 assigns you the name anonymous so everyone is 00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:20.779 the same person yeah or no person at all in a 00:06:20.779 --> 00:06:23.120 sense yeah it creates what people call a hive 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:25.540 mind and think about the psychology of that for 00:06:25.540 --> 00:06:27.680 a second if i post something brilliant i don't 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:29.600 get the credit anonymous gets the credit if i 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:31.519 post something absolutely horrific i don't get 00:06:31.519 --> 00:06:33.800 the blame anonymous gets the blame it completely 00:06:33.800 --> 00:06:36.459 flattens the hierarchy what do you mean by that 00:06:36.459 --> 00:06:39.180 well in normal social setting you know on twitter 00:06:40.009 --> 00:06:42.329 If a famous person says something stupid, people 00:06:42.329 --> 00:06:44.350 still listen because they're famous. Right. And 00:06:44.350 --> 00:06:46.550 if nobody says something incredibly smart, it 00:06:46.550 --> 00:06:49.550 might just get ignored. On 4chan, the only thing 00:06:49.550 --> 00:06:51.589 that matters is the content of the post itself, 00:06:51.889 --> 00:06:54.370 the image and the text. It doesn't matter who 00:06:54.370 --> 00:06:58.050 you are. That sounds almost, I mean, ideally 00:06:58.050 --> 00:07:00.649 that sounds kind of democratic. In theory, yes. 00:07:00.769 --> 00:07:04.009 It's a pure meritocracy of ideas. But the flip 00:07:04.009 --> 00:07:06.050 side of that coin is what psychologists call 00:07:06.050 --> 00:07:09.470 the online disinhibition effect. When you strip 00:07:09.470 --> 00:07:11.250 away identity, when you strip away accountability, 00:07:11.689 --> 00:07:13.889 people stop behaving like they're in a civilization. 00:07:14.209 --> 00:07:17.790 The social contract just dissolves. So you get 00:07:17.790 --> 00:07:20.550 the rawest, most unfiltered version of the human 00:07:20.550 --> 00:07:23.910 id. Precisely. Now add the second pillar to that, 00:07:24.089 --> 00:07:27.639 ephemerality. The site has no memory. This is 00:07:27.639 --> 00:07:30.759 so crucial to understanding it. Christopher Poole 00:07:30.759 --> 00:07:34.300 gave a talk in Vienna back in 2009 where he explained 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:38.160 this perfectly. 4chan does not archive threads. 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:40.339 So there's no scroll back to see what they said 00:07:40.339 --> 00:07:41.779 last year. There's no scroll back to see what 00:07:41.779 --> 00:07:44.920 they said 10 minutes ago. A board like B moves 00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:47.680 at breakneck speed. A new thread is posted. If 00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:49.800 people comment on it, it gets bumped to the top. 00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:53.300 If nobody comments, it slides down. Once it hits 00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:56.040 page 10 or 15, depending on the board's settings, 00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:58.500 it falls off the edge of the world. Deleted. 00:07:58.740 --> 00:08:01.339 Gone forever. So if you post something and nobody 00:08:01.339 --> 00:08:03.959 replies in five minutes... it effectively never 00:08:03.959 --> 00:08:06.819 happened that's it and that creates a very very 00:08:06.819 --> 00:08:09.100 specific evolutionary pressure on the content 00:08:09.100 --> 00:08:11.939 survival of the fittest meme exactly if you want 00:08:11.939 --> 00:08:15.620 an idea or a prank or a meme to survive on 4chan 00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:18.120 you can't just post it once and hope people find 00:08:18.120 --> 00:08:19.839 it in the archives later there are no archives 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:22.800 you have to repost it you have to repost it and 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:24.660 other people have to like it enough to save it 00:08:24.660 --> 00:08:26.779 to their own hard drives and then repost it themselves 00:08:26.779 --> 00:08:29.220 it forces the community to become the filter 00:08:29.579 --> 00:08:32.379 It's natural selection on speed, only the content 00:08:32.379 --> 00:08:34.919 that triggers a strong, immediate reaction, whether 00:08:34.919 --> 00:08:37.679 it's funny, shocking, disgusting or catchy, survives. 00:08:38.379 --> 00:08:41.759 Everything else, all the boring stuff is incinerated 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:44.940 immediately. That explains so much about why 00:08:44.940 --> 00:08:47.120 the culture is so extreme. You have to be loud 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:49.379 to be heard before you're deleted. It favors 00:08:49.379 --> 00:08:52.220 high impact, low context content. And that brings 00:08:52.220 --> 00:08:54.179 us to the visual structure. It's an image board. 00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:57.659 You can't just post text to start a thread. You 00:08:57.659 --> 00:09:00.110 have to post a picture. And looking at the list 00:09:00.110 --> 00:09:03.570 of boards now, there are over 75 of them, and 00:09:03.570 --> 00:09:06.149 some are totally normal. O for automobiles, C 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:08.710 for cooking, you know, hobbies. And then there 00:09:08.710 --> 00:09:12.090 is B. The random board. The sources, they paint 00:09:12.090 --> 00:09:14.169 a pretty vivid picture of B. One description 00:09:14.169 --> 00:09:16.250 I read calls it a high school bathroom stall. 00:09:16.509 --> 00:09:18.830 That's a good one. Another says it's the kid 00:09:18.830 --> 00:09:20.950 with a collection of butterfly knives and a locker 00:09:20.950 --> 00:09:22.730 full of porn. Yeah, that's the aesthetic. So 00:09:22.730 --> 00:09:25.440 what are the rules on B? There are almost no 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:28.580 rules. The only hard rule is no illegal content. 00:09:28.759 --> 00:09:30.740 So no child pornography, though that has been 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:33.179 a constant grueling battle for the moderators 00:09:33.179 --> 00:09:35.960 for 20 years. But everything else? Everything 00:09:35.960 --> 00:09:39.639 else goes. Gore, hate speech, pornography, the 00:09:39.639 --> 00:09:42.700 most grotesque humor you can imagine. It is the 00:09:42.700 --> 00:09:45.679 unfiltered subconscious of the Internet for better 00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:49.320 or very often for worse. And yet out of that 00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:52.399 sewer. Yeah. We got some of the most recognizable 00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:55.000 pieces of pop culture of the last two decades. 00:09:55.139 --> 00:09:56.759 Well, this is the paradox. This is the whole 00:09:56.759 --> 00:09:58.860 thing. You cannot separate the genius from the 00:09:58.860 --> 00:10:01.740 slime. They are born from the exact same mechanism. 00:10:02.059 --> 00:10:03.600 So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:05.159 light side for a minute, the creative engine. 00:10:05.419 --> 00:10:07.480 Because if we just sit here and say 4chan is 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:10.759 bad, we miss the entire point of why people go 00:10:10.759 --> 00:10:12.460 there in the first place. People go there because 00:10:12.460 --> 00:10:15.240 it's funny and because it's, against all odds, 00:10:15.379 --> 00:10:18.700 surprisingly clever. Okay, case in point, the 00:10:18.700 --> 00:10:21.509 Rick Roll. Everyone knows it. I think my grandma 00:10:21.509 --> 00:10:23.450 knows what a rickroll is. But I didn't realize 00:10:23.450 --> 00:10:26.049 the specific mechanics of how it started on 4chan. 00:10:26.230 --> 00:10:28.730 It's a perfect example of the admin directly 00:10:28.730 --> 00:10:32.690 influencing the culture in a weird way. So, back 00:10:32.690 --> 00:10:36.809 in 2006, Moot, the founder, was just messing 00:10:36.809 --> 00:10:40.110 with the user. Trolling his own site. Yes. For 00:10:40.110 --> 00:10:41.789 the lults, that's the only reason anyone does 00:10:41.789 --> 00:10:43.950 anything there, he implemented a word filter. 00:10:44.129 --> 00:10:46.750 Anytime someone typed the word egg, the site 00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:49.389 automatically changed it to duck. Okay. Why? 00:10:49.769 --> 00:10:52.789 Just to be annoying. So this created a situation 00:10:52.789 --> 00:10:56.250 where a pre -existing meme, a specific wheel 00:10:56.250 --> 00:10:59.470 -based meme called Duck Roll. A duck roll. Someone 00:10:59.470 --> 00:11:01.929 had a photoshopped a duck onto wooden wheels. 00:11:02.049 --> 00:11:04.070 That's it. That's the whole joke. Right. So people 00:11:04.070 --> 00:11:06.309 would post links with these sensational titles, 00:11:06.450 --> 00:11:08.629 you know, leaked Halo 3 gameplay. And you click 00:11:08.629 --> 00:11:10.529 it and it's just this picture of a duck on wheels. 00:11:10.789 --> 00:11:12.929 You've been duck rolled. It's a classic bait 00:11:12.929 --> 00:11:15.389 and switch. Okay. I'm with you. Then the trailer 00:11:15.389 --> 00:11:17.690 for Grand Theft Auto The Thief comes out. The 00:11:17.690 --> 00:11:20.649 hype is insane. The traffic is so high it crashes 00:11:20.649 --> 00:11:22.990 the Rockstar Games website. Remember that. So 00:11:22.990 --> 00:11:26.700 a 4chan user. On V, the video game board, posts 00:11:26.700 --> 00:11:28.840 a link claiming to be a mirror of the trailer. 00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:31.159 But it didn't link to the trailer. It linked 00:11:31.159 --> 00:11:34.480 to Rick Astley's 1987 music video for Never Gonna 00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:37.139 Give You Up. And because the Rick Roll beat and 00:11:37.139 --> 00:11:39.159 switch mechanic was already established with 00:11:39.159 --> 00:11:41.779 the duck roll. The Rick Roll was born and it 00:11:41.779 --> 00:11:44.860 just exploded. It went from a niche 4chan in 00:11:44.860 --> 00:11:47.240 -joke to being performed live by Rick Astley 00:11:47.240 --> 00:11:50.000 himself at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. 00:11:50.120 --> 00:11:51.919 That's an incredible trajectory. Then you have 00:11:51.919 --> 00:11:54.759 Lowell Katz. Katterday. Every Saturday, users 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:56.559 would just flood the boards with pictures of 00:11:56.559 --> 00:11:58.840 cats. It was a wholesome tradition in a way. 00:11:58.899 --> 00:12:01.320 And it created the visual language of Internet 00:12:01.320 --> 00:12:04.279 memes as we know them. The impact font, the blocky 00:12:04.279 --> 00:12:06.639 white text with the black outline. The misspelled 00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:09.649 captions like, I can has cheeseburger. That didn't 00:12:09.649 --> 00:12:11.610 start on Facebook. It wasn't born on Reddit. 00:12:11.769 --> 00:12:14.509 It started on 4chan. It's just so weird to think 00:12:14.509 --> 00:12:16.710 that the way we communicate online using images 00:12:16.710 --> 00:12:18.909 with text overlays to convey an emotion or a 00:12:18.909 --> 00:12:21.649 joke was basically standardized by a bunch of 00:12:21.649 --> 00:12:24.669 anonymous anime fans. It's the dominant vernacular 00:12:24.669 --> 00:12:27.649 of the modern world. But it's not just, you know, 00:12:27.669 --> 00:12:30.710 silly memes. We absolutely have to talk about 00:12:30.710 --> 00:12:33.129 the Harooey problem. I love this story. I love 00:12:33.129 --> 00:12:35.649 it because it makes all the experts and academics 00:12:35.649 --> 00:12:38.809 look so foolish. So break this down for me. Okay, 00:12:38.850 --> 00:12:41.840 so we're on the Cyboard. Science and math. Which 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:43.860 is already a funny concept to me, an anonymous 00:12:43.860 --> 00:12:46.059 mass board where everyone is just called anonymous. 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:48.480 It's surprisingly rigorous. I mean, there's a 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:50.360 lot of nonsense, but there's also real discussion. 00:12:50.519 --> 00:12:53.960 So in 2011, an anonymous user posts a question 00:12:53.960 --> 00:12:56.019 about an anime. Of course it's about an anime. 00:12:56.220 --> 00:12:59.440 The show is called The Melancholy of Harui Suzumiya. 00:12:59.899 --> 00:13:02.860 Now, this show has a really weird release structure. 00:13:03.100 --> 00:13:04.860 The episodes were aired out of chronological 00:13:04.860 --> 00:13:07.519 order. Classic confusing anime stuff. Right. 00:13:07.600 --> 00:13:10.750 And the user wanted to know. What is the shortest 00:13:10.750 --> 00:13:13.590 possible list of episodes you would need to watch 00:13:13.590 --> 00:13:16.389 to see every single possible permutation of the 00:13:16.389 --> 00:13:18.289 order? Okay, my brain just broke. What does that 00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:20.809 mean? It means if you have, say, three episodes, 00:13:21.049 --> 00:13:23.129 you want a single string of episode numbers where 00:13:23.129 --> 00:13:26.350 you can find the sequence 1, 2, 3, but also 1, 00:13:26.429 --> 00:13:29.529 3, 2, and 2, 1, 3, and so on for all six possibilities 00:13:29.529 --> 00:13:31.950 in the shortest way possible. Mathematically, 00:13:32.110 --> 00:13:34.570 this is a known problem called a super permutation. 00:13:34.929 --> 00:13:38.190 It's in a field called combinatorics. And it 00:13:38.190 --> 00:13:40.629 is incredibly difficult to calculate once you 00:13:40.629 --> 00:13:42.809 get past a certain number of items. It sounds 00:13:42.809 --> 00:13:45.289 hard. It had been an unsolved problem in mathematics 00:13:45.289 --> 00:13:48.590 for about 25 years. Mathematicians had... lower 00:13:48.590 --> 00:13:51.269 bounds and upper bounds for the solution, but 00:13:51.269 --> 00:13:54.190 no exact efficient formula. And a 4chan user 00:13:54.190 --> 00:13:57.289 just cracked it to watch their cartoon. Pretty 00:13:57.289 --> 00:14:00.029 much. An anonymous poster, who was likely just 00:14:00.029 --> 00:14:02.809 trying to optimize their anime watching, posted 00:14:02.809 --> 00:14:05.389 a solution. They wrote out a proof. A simple, 00:14:05.509 --> 00:14:07.710 elegant proof. Did they know what they were doing? 00:14:07.809 --> 00:14:09.830 Did they know they were solving a huge math problem? 00:14:10.049 --> 00:14:12.129 It's completely unclear. They treated it like 00:14:12.129 --> 00:14:14.470 a casual puzzle. Just, here, I figured this out. 00:14:14.750 --> 00:14:17.610 And the most amazing part is it took professional 00:14:17.610 --> 00:14:20.129 mathematicians seven years to find this post. 00:14:20.309 --> 00:14:23.370 Seven years. It wasn't until 2018 that a mathematician 00:14:23.370 --> 00:14:26.429 stumbled on it, verified it, and realized that 00:14:26.429 --> 00:14:29.029 this anonymous weeb had significantly advanced 00:14:29.029 --> 00:14:31.970 the field of combinatorics. That is incredible. 00:14:32.070 --> 00:14:34.529 It completely validates the hive mind theory. 00:14:34.710 --> 00:14:38.049 If you put a million anonymous monkeys at typewriters, 00:14:38.190 --> 00:14:40.789 eventually one of them solves a super permutation. 00:14:41.070 --> 00:14:44.440 It's crowdsourced intellect in its purest. form. 00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:47.100 And we see it on the music board, Moo, too. Moo 00:14:47.100 --> 00:14:49.340 is notorious for being pretentious, right? Like 00:14:49.340 --> 00:14:52.700 the snobbiest music fans on the planet. Incredibly. 00:14:53.139 --> 00:14:56.480 But they are also powerful tastemakers. They 00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:59.200 championed bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and 00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:02.139 Death Grips way, way before the mainstream critics 00:15:02.139 --> 00:15:04.240 at Pitchfork caught on. So they're ahead of the 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:06.159 curve. And sometimes they might even be part 00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:08.820 of the creative process. There's a very persistent 00:15:08.820 --> 00:15:11.559 rumor that the pop star lord was a Moo lurker. 00:15:11.700 --> 00:15:14.340 Really? How did that start? Well, in late 2012, 00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:17.240 a user posted a recording of the song Royals 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:19.700 on Moo, just asking for feedback. This was months 00:15:19.700 --> 00:15:22.120 before it was officially released. No way. And 00:15:22.120 --> 00:15:24.940 the users, in typical Moo fashion, just ripped 00:15:24.940 --> 00:15:27.720 it apart. They critiqued it brutally. Later, 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:30.419 when Lorde got famous, people went back and looked 00:15:30.419 --> 00:15:33.340 at the timestamp in the file. It seems legitimate. 00:15:33.679 --> 00:15:36.019 So she used 4chan as an anonymous focus group. 00:15:36.399 --> 00:15:38.500 It's possible she's denied it, but the evidence 00:15:38.500 --> 00:15:41.279 is compelling. Another time, a user on Mo posted 00:15:41.279 --> 00:15:43.940 about a dream they had where Kanye West released 00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:46.980 a sequel to The Life of Pablo. They described 00:15:46.980 --> 00:15:49.460 the album in detail. The board then collectively 00:15:49.460 --> 00:15:51.779 decided to make that album. They made the album 00:15:51.779 --> 00:15:53.700 from the dream. They did. It's called The Death 00:15:53.700 --> 00:15:56.779 of Pablo. It's a massive remix album created 00:15:56.779 --> 00:15:59.980 by dozens of anonymous users, all based on one 00:15:59.980 --> 00:16:02.679 guy's dream. That's a collaborative art on a 00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:05.220 level that's hard to comprehend. It is. But this 00:16:05.220 --> 00:16:08.419 creative energy, this ability to organize, it 00:16:08.419 --> 00:16:11.080 can be directed elsewhere. To activism. Project 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:13.419 Trinology. This feels like the moment where the 00:16:13.419 --> 00:16:15.700 pranksters realized they had actual real world 00:16:15.700 --> 00:16:18.580 power. This is the turning point. 2008. The site 00:16:18.580 --> 00:16:20.980 is five years old. It's established its culture. 00:16:21.259 --> 00:16:23.750 So set the scene for us. A video leaks online. 00:16:24.230 --> 00:16:27.169 It's an internal Scientology video that was never 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.990 meant for public viewing, and it features Tom 00:16:29.990 --> 00:16:32.389 Cruise. He's talking about the church in this 00:16:32.389 --> 00:16:35.870 very intense, almost manic way. Oh, I remember 00:16:35.870 --> 00:16:38.509 this video. Being a Scientologist, when you drive 00:16:38.509 --> 00:16:40.850 past an accident, you know you're the only one 00:16:40.850 --> 00:16:43.740 that can help. That one. That's the one. The 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:45.899 Church of Scientology went into absolute panic 00:16:45.899 --> 00:16:48.220 mode. They tried to scrub the video from the 00:16:48.220 --> 00:16:50.580 internet. They sent cease and desist letters. 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:53.240 They threatened lawsuits against anyone hosting 00:16:53.240 --> 00:16:55.659 it. And 4chan took that personally. They saw 00:16:55.659 --> 00:16:58.299 it as an act of censorship. And if there's one 00:16:58.299 --> 00:17:01.639 thing that the 4chan hive mind hates, it's people 00:17:01.639 --> 00:17:04.660 telling them what they can and can't see. A thread 00:17:04.660 --> 00:17:07.240 started on B. Someone said, essentially, we need 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:09.569 to destroy these guys. But usually that just 00:17:09.569 --> 00:17:12.170 means, you know, online pranks. And it started 00:17:12.170 --> 00:17:15.069 that way. Ordering thousands of unpaid pizzas 00:17:15.069 --> 00:17:17.349 to Scientology centers. Right. Sending them all 00:17:17.349 --> 00:17:19.849 -black faxes to drain their ink cartridges. Just 00:17:19.849 --> 00:17:22.269 classic low -level harassment. Not for the lots. 00:17:22.529 --> 00:17:26.170 But then it escalated. A video was uploaded to 00:17:26.170 --> 00:17:28.769 YouTube by a user calling themselves Anonymous. 00:17:28.849 --> 00:17:32.470 It had a robotic text -to -speech voice. A graphic 00:17:32.470 --> 00:17:35.650 of static. And the message was... We are anonymous. 00:17:35.769 --> 00:17:38.390 We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. 00:17:38.589 --> 00:17:41.990 Expect us. Chills. I mean, that's iconic now. 00:17:42.130 --> 00:17:45.289 It went massively viral. And then something completely 00:17:45.289 --> 00:17:47.789 unprecedented happened. They organized a real 00:17:47.789 --> 00:17:50.130 world protest. Getting people to leave their 00:17:50.130 --> 00:17:52.829 computers and go outside. For 4chan users, that 00:17:52.829 --> 00:17:55.769 seems impossible. On February 10th, 2008, thousands 00:17:55.769 --> 00:17:57.990 of people gathered outside Scientology centers 00:17:57.990 --> 00:18:00.769 in cities all over the world. London, New York, 00:18:00.849 --> 00:18:03.710 Sydney, LA. But they had a problem. They are 00:18:03.710 --> 00:18:06.150 anonymous. They needed to stay anonymous in real 00:18:06.150 --> 00:18:08.250 life. So they wore the masks. They wore the Guy 00:18:08.250 --> 00:18:11.650 Fawkes mask from the movie V for Vendetta. And 00:18:11.650 --> 00:18:13.549 the reason wasn't even that deep. It was simply 00:18:13.549 --> 00:18:16.230 the only mask that was available in bulk at costume 00:18:16.230 --> 00:18:18.549 stores at the time. So practicality created a 00:18:18.549 --> 00:18:21.089 global symbol. It did. And suddenly you had this 00:18:21.089 --> 00:18:23.710 visual army. It proved that the hive mind could 00:18:23.710 --> 00:18:26.009 manifest in physical reality. It could put bodies 00:18:26.009 --> 00:18:28.450 on the street. That feels like the absolute peak 00:18:28.450 --> 00:18:30.210 of the light side. Or at least the gray side. 00:18:30.349 --> 00:18:32.309 They were fighting a controversial organization. 00:18:32.829 --> 00:18:35.950 They felt like digital vigilantes. They were 00:18:35.950 --> 00:18:38.650 the underdogs. It was a David and Goliath story. 00:18:38.950 --> 00:18:42.589 But power is addictive. And the tools they sharpened 00:18:42.589 --> 00:18:44.630 during projectionology doxing, swarm harassment, 00:18:45.029 --> 00:18:47.769 media manipulation, those tools didn't go away 00:18:47.769 --> 00:18:50.150 when the protests stopped. No. They were just 00:18:50.150 --> 00:18:52.309 waiting for a new target. And this is where we 00:18:52.309 --> 00:18:54.210 have to pivot. We have to, you know, kill the 00:18:54.210 --> 00:18:56.509 laughter for a minute. Because the story of 4chan 00:18:56.509 --> 00:18:59.430 is not just about funny cats and fighting Scientology. 00:18:59.650 --> 00:19:01.950 No. It gets dark. And I don't mean edgy internet 00:19:01.950 --> 00:19:05.289 dark. I mean life -ruining, life -ending dark. 00:19:05.529 --> 00:19:07.970 The shift. It really seems to happen around 2014. 00:19:08.430 --> 00:19:10.849 That was a watershed year. That's the year. Everything 00:19:10.849 --> 00:19:14.130 changed. The lulls stopped being just for laughs. 00:19:14.450 --> 00:19:17.430 They became weaponized. The cruelty became the 00:19:17.430 --> 00:19:19.769 point. And we have to start with Gamergate. This 00:19:19.769 --> 00:19:22.309 was the cultural pivot point, not just for 4chan, 00:19:22.450 --> 00:19:25.450 but for the entire internet. It started, believe 00:19:25.450 --> 00:19:28.329 it or not, with a very personal, messy blar post 00:19:28.329 --> 00:19:31.210 by an ex -boyfriend of an independent game developer 00:19:31.210 --> 00:19:35.170 named Zoe Quinn. A breakup post. Yeah, a long, 00:19:35.170 --> 00:19:38.720 rambling breakup post. On any other site... In 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:40.640 any other community, it would have been ignored. 00:19:40.759 --> 00:19:44.000 But on 4chan? On 4chan, specifically the video 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.960 game board V and the robot board R9K, it became 00:19:47.960 --> 00:19:50.039 a lightning rod. It wasn't just about a breakup 00:19:50.039 --> 00:19:54.039 anymore. It morphed almost instantly into a sprawling 00:19:54.039 --> 00:19:56.799 conspiracy theory about ethics in video game 00:19:56.799 --> 00:19:59.140 journalism. But that was just a cover story. 00:19:59.180 --> 00:20:01.299 It's a very thin veil for what it really was. 00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:04.480 A massive coordinated harassment campaign against 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:07.519 women in the gaming industry. Zoe Quinn, Brianna 00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:10.460 Wu, Anita Sarkeesian. And when we say harassment, 00:20:10.579 --> 00:20:12.500 we aren't talking about mean comments on Twitter. 00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:14.900 No, we are talking about industrial scale abuse. 00:20:15.559 --> 00:20:17.839 Doxing, releasing home addresses, phone numbers, 00:20:17.980 --> 00:20:21.259 family information, nonstop death threats, rape 00:20:21.259 --> 00:20:23.819 threats, bomb threats called into events where 00:20:23.819 --> 00:20:25.779 they were scheduled to speak, people having to 00:20:25.779 --> 00:20:27.700 flee their homes and go into hiding for months. 00:20:27.799 --> 00:20:30.299 It was a swarm attack and it was organized largely 00:20:30.299 --> 00:20:32.960 on 4chan. And Moot, the founder, Christopher 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:35.660 Poole, he actually stepped in. He did. And this 00:20:35.660 --> 00:20:37.960 shocked the user base to its core. He banned 00:20:37.960 --> 00:20:41.420 all discussion of Gamergate on 4chan. He said 00:20:41.420 --> 00:20:43.839 it violated the site's rules on personal attacks 00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:46.160 and witch hunts. That must have caused a revolt. 00:20:46.420 --> 00:20:48.559 Banning something on the No Rules site. It was 00:20:48.559 --> 00:20:51.619 a civil war. Thousands of users left in a rage. 00:20:51.940 --> 00:20:55.099 They claimed 4chan had been compromised by social 00:20:55.099 --> 00:20:57.680 justice warriors. They migrated to a new site, 00:20:57.799 --> 00:21:00.579 8chan, which was created to be even more lawless 00:21:00.579 --> 00:21:03.579 and unmoderated. And 8chan became its own horror 00:21:03.579 --> 00:21:06.799 story. It did. But the damage to 4chan's culture 00:21:06.799 --> 00:21:09.440 was done. The users who stayed were angrier, 00:21:09.559 --> 00:21:12.359 more radicalized. The fang trolls had been replaced 00:21:12.359 --> 00:21:15.160 by ideologues. And this feeds directly into the 00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:17.599 rise of the alt -right. We see the board poll 00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:20.519 politically incorrect, becoming a major, major 00:21:20.519 --> 00:21:23.359 force in global politics. Poll is arguably the 00:21:23.359 --> 00:21:25.319 most dangerous place on the internet. It actually 00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:27.960 started as a board called New for News, but it 00:21:27.960 --> 00:21:30.460 was deleted because it got too racist. They deleted 00:21:30.460 --> 00:21:32.220 it for being too racist. And then they brought 00:21:32.220 --> 00:21:34.529 it back. They brought it back as poll and it 00:21:34.529 --> 00:21:38.170 just got worse. It shifted from what was originally 00:21:38.170 --> 00:21:41.150 kind of a left libertarian anti -government vibe 00:21:41.150 --> 00:21:44.569 in the early days to being the central hub for 00:21:44.569 --> 00:21:48.150 alt -right and neo -Nazi sentiment online. Explain 00:21:48.150 --> 00:21:50.069 the irony part because you hear that a lot as 00:21:50.069 --> 00:21:52.269 a defense. Oh, we're not actually racist. It's 00:21:52.269 --> 00:21:54.630 just a joke. We're just being ironic. It's a 00:21:54.630 --> 00:21:57.369 phenomenon called irony poisoning. It works like 00:21:57.369 --> 00:22:01.140 this. You start by posting a racist meme because 00:22:01.140 --> 00:22:04.599 it's shocking and taboo. It's edgy. You laugh 00:22:04.599 --> 00:22:06.539 at the reaction you get. You tell yourself, I'm 00:22:06.539 --> 00:22:08.720 not a racist. I'm just trolling. But you keep 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:10.599 doing it. You keep doing it. You're surrounded 00:22:10.599 --> 00:22:13.039 by other people doing it. And eventually the 00:22:13.039 --> 00:22:15.160 people who aren't joking show up, the actual 00:22:15.160 --> 00:22:18.240 sincere white supremacists. And they think they 00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:20.099 found their people. The lines start to blur. 00:22:20.279 --> 00:22:22.640 And suddenly you aren't posting the swastika 00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:24.799 as a joke anymore. You're starting to believe 00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:26.779 the things you're saying ironically. Exactly. 00:22:26.779 --> 00:22:29.000 And this is how Pohl became the primary distribution 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:30.960 center for things like the Great Replacement 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:33.880 Theory, the conspiracy that white populations 00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:35.759 are being systematically replaced by immigrants. 00:22:36.039 --> 00:22:38.539 And this wasn't just theory being discussed in 00:22:38.539 --> 00:22:40.700 a dark corner of the Internet. It led to real 00:22:40.700 --> 00:22:43.160 world action. We have to look at the timeline 00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:46.569 of violence. It's a literal body count. The hoaxes 00:22:46.569 --> 00:22:50.170 came first. In 2006, a grocery clerk caused a 00:22:50.170 --> 00:22:52.829 panic by threatening dirty bombs at seven NFL 00:22:52.829 --> 00:22:56.309 stadiums. It was a 4chan post. It was. Then there 00:22:56.309 --> 00:22:58.710 was the Steve Jobs heart attack hoax that caused 00:22:58.710 --> 00:23:01.450 Apple stock to dip. Bomb threats at high schools. 00:23:01.829 --> 00:23:05.420 But then it turned from hoaxes to... to murder. 00:23:05.619 --> 00:23:08.119 Let's talk about the Port Orchard murder in 2014. 00:23:08.579 --> 00:23:10.319 This is one of the most disturbing things I've 00:23:10.319 --> 00:23:12.500 ever had to research for one of these deep dives. 00:23:12.599 --> 00:23:15.799 It's horrific. So a user posts on Bee. The post 00:23:15.799 --> 00:23:18.319 says, check the news for Port Orchard, Washington 00:23:18.319 --> 00:23:21.559 in a few hours. He then posts photos, photos 00:23:21.559 --> 00:23:23.940 of a nude woman's body with what look like red 00:23:23.940 --> 00:23:27.069 marks around her neck. He posted the body. On 00:23:27.069 --> 00:23:29.470 the forum. Yes. And the users initially thought 00:23:29.470 --> 00:23:31.750 it was fake. It's B. They assume everything is 00:23:31.750 --> 00:23:33.269 fake. They were joking about it, making light 00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:35.170 of it. Of course they were. Then the user posted 00:23:35.170 --> 00:23:38.009 more photos. And he wrote, and this is a direct 00:23:38.009 --> 00:23:41.390 quote, turns out it's way harder to strangle 00:23:41.390 --> 00:23:43.170 someone to death than it looks on the movies. 00:23:43.349 --> 00:23:45.849 My God. While the users on Key were debating 00:23:45.849 --> 00:23:47.930 whether this was real or some elaborate prank, 00:23:48.210 --> 00:23:50.569 the police in Washington were discovering the 00:23:50.569 --> 00:23:53.009 body of a 30 -year -old woman named Amber Coplin. 00:23:53.529 --> 00:23:56.150 Her killer, David Kalak, had posted her crime 00:23:56.150 --> 00:23:58.569 scene photos to 4chan before the police had even 00:23:58.569 --> 00:24:00.470 arrived on the scene. He turned the audience 00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:02.869 into accomplices, or at least witnesses after 00:24:02.869 --> 00:24:06.910 the fact. It treats murder as content. It gamifies 00:24:06.910 --> 00:24:09.349 real life tragedy. And that's the through line 00:24:09.349 --> 00:24:11.670 to the mass shootings. The Buffalo shooting in 00:24:11.670 --> 00:24:14.869 2022. Peyton Goodrum. He drove to a supermarket 00:24:14.869 --> 00:24:16.930 in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo 00:24:16.930 --> 00:24:20.009 and killed 10 people. He livestreamed it. And 00:24:20.009 --> 00:24:22.170 in his manifesto, which he uploaded online, he 00:24:22.170 --> 00:24:25.009 explicitly traced his radicalization back to 00:24:25.009 --> 00:24:27.069 Pohl. He named the board. He named the board. 00:24:27.190 --> 00:24:29.869 He said he started browsing 4chan in May of 2020 00:24:29.869 --> 00:24:32.369 out of pandemic boredom. He went from looking 00:24:32.369 --> 00:24:34.910 at memes on the main page to the infographics 00:24:34.910 --> 00:24:37.490 on Pohl about the Great Replacement Theory. Two 00:24:37.490 --> 00:24:39.910 years later, he was a mass murderer. That is 00:24:39.910 --> 00:24:42.849 the radicalization funnel in action. Yeah. And 00:24:42.849 --> 00:24:44.930 that's it for the memes. You stay for the community 00:24:44.930 --> 00:24:47.690 and you end up poisoned by the ideology. And 00:24:47.690 --> 00:24:49.470 we see the same pattern with the incel movement 00:24:49.470 --> 00:24:52.869 on R9K. The Toronto van attacker, Alec Manassian, 00:24:53.049 --> 00:24:56.190 who killed 10 people in 2018, posted on Facebook 00:24:56.190 --> 00:24:58.650 right before his attack, the incel rebellion 00:24:58.650 --> 00:25:01.869 has already begun. He praised Elliot Rodger. 00:25:02.009 --> 00:25:04.829 He referenced a beta uprising, which was a meme 00:25:04.829 --> 00:25:07.450 that originated on 4chan. The site provides the 00:25:07.450 --> 00:25:09.640 vocabulary and the community. for these lonely, 00:25:09.779 --> 00:25:13.059 angry men to turn their pain outwards into violence. 00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:16.299 It's an echo chamber for the absolute worst impulses. 00:25:16.359 --> 00:25:18.599 It's heavy. It is incredibly heavy. And this 00:25:18.599 --> 00:25:21.240 legacy of violence and chaos, it brings us to 00:25:21.240 --> 00:25:23.539 the present day because 4chan is not just there 00:25:23.539 --> 00:25:26.539 as a historical artifact. It is currently fighting 00:25:26.539 --> 00:25:29.509 for its very existence. Right. Section 4. The 00:25:29.509 --> 00:25:31.430 modern era. This is the stuff that hasn't made 00:25:31.430 --> 00:25:33.349 the history books yet because it's all happening 00:25:33.349 --> 00:25:35.130 right now. First off, Christopher Poole's gone. 00:25:35.250 --> 00:25:37.569 He's been gone for a while. He got out in 2015. 00:25:37.750 --> 00:25:40.170 He posted a final message and stepped down citing 00:25:40.170 --> 00:25:42.890 stress. I can't imagine the stress of running 00:25:42.890 --> 00:25:45.849 that site for over a decade. He sold it. He sold 00:25:45.849 --> 00:25:49.029 it to Hiroyuki Nishimura. The founder of 2chan. 00:25:49.269 --> 00:25:52.049 The founder of 2chan. The Japanese guy whose 00:25:52.049 --> 00:25:54.150 code he copied in the first place. You can't 00:25:54.150 --> 00:25:56.410 make this stuff up. Talk about full circle. But 00:25:56.410 --> 00:25:59.130 Nishimura basically inherited a sinking ship 00:25:59.130 --> 00:26:02.390 financially. Advertisers won't touch 4chan with 00:26:02.390 --> 00:26:05.130 a 10 -foot pole. At one point, he posted a now 00:26:05.130 --> 00:26:08.109 famous thread titled Winter is Coming, where 00:26:08.109 --> 00:26:11.450 he basically begged users to buy 4chan Pass subscriptions 00:26:11.450 --> 00:26:13.769 because they couldn't pay the server bills. So 00:26:13.769 --> 00:26:15.809 it's always been on the verge of collapse. And 00:26:15.809 --> 00:26:19.970 then came the hack. April 14th, 2025. just last 00:26:19.970 --> 00:26:23.029 year this was massive just catastrophic for them 00:26:23.029 --> 00:26:25.430 imagine you're a user you log on to the site 00:26:25.430 --> 00:26:28.069 you expect the usual chaos instead the site is 00:26:28.069 --> 00:26:30.529 dead and there's a message claiming responsibility 00:26:30.529 --> 00:26:32.950 from a group associated with a rival site called 00:26:32.950 --> 00:26:37.690 soyjack .party soyjack .party i can't believe 00:26:37.690 --> 00:26:39.210 i'm saying these words out loud on a serious 00:26:39.210 --> 00:26:41.490 deep dive what is that it's a rival image board 00:26:41.490 --> 00:26:44.569 a splinter group of former 4chan users they hated 00:26:44.569 --> 00:26:46.789 the current moderation on 4chan they thought 00:26:46.789 --> 00:26:48.750 it was too soft if you can believe that they 00:26:48.750 --> 00:26:50.750 thought 4chan was too soft, so they nipped it. 00:26:50.849 --> 00:26:52.890 They didn't just take it offline, they gutted 00:26:52.890 --> 00:26:56.170 it. They leaked the entire source code. They 00:26:56.170 --> 00:26:59.410 leaked the email addresses of the volunteer moderators 00:26:59.410 --> 00:27:01.829 and anyone who had ever paid for a 4chan pass. 00:27:02.349 --> 00:27:04.809 And worst of all, they even restored deleted 00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:07.609 threads and boards. They broke the ephemerality, 00:27:07.769 --> 00:27:10.509 that no memory feature. They broke it. They broke 00:27:10.509 --> 00:27:14.609 the one sacred rule. For nearly two weeks, 4chan 00:27:14.609 --> 00:27:17.750 was dark. The final post that anyone could see 00:27:17.750 --> 00:27:19.809 before the plug was pulled was a completely random 00:27:19.809 --> 00:27:22.069 quote from a Minecraft movie which had just come 00:27:22.069 --> 00:27:24.130 out. What was the quote? Chicken jockey. Chicken 00:27:24.130 --> 00:27:26.589 jockey. That was the epitaph of 4chan for two 00:27:26.589 --> 00:27:28.690 weeks. It was. And it showed that the site is 00:27:28.690 --> 00:27:31.470 held together by duct tape and string. But the 00:27:31.470 --> 00:27:33.509 bigger threat to their existence isn't hackers. 00:27:33.809 --> 00:27:36.730 It's the government. Specifically, the UK government. 00:27:36.809 --> 00:27:39.869 This is the legal battle. With cum. Right. So 00:27:39.869 --> 00:27:42.490 the UK passed a sweeping new law called the Online 00:27:42.490 --> 00:27:46.079 Safety Act 2023. And basically it says that if 00:27:46.079 --> 00:27:47.859 you operate a website that's accessible in the 00:27:47.859 --> 00:27:50.539 UK, you have a duty of care. You have to protect 00:27:50.539 --> 00:27:53.259 children from harmful content. You have to implement 00:27:53.259 --> 00:27:55.839 age verification. You have to remove illegal 00:27:55.839 --> 00:27:59.140 speech quickly. These sound like reasonable requirements 00:27:59.140 --> 00:28:02.099 for a normal business. They are impossible existential 00:28:02.099 --> 00:28:05.740 requirements for a site like Fortune. In June 00:28:05.740 --> 00:28:10.119 2025. Ofcom, the UK regulator, opened an investigation. 00:28:10.519 --> 00:28:13.180 They sent a formal request for information to 00:28:13.180 --> 00:28:16.539 4chan's owners. And how did 4chan respond? They 00:28:16.539 --> 00:28:18.619 didn't. They just completely ghosted them. That 00:28:18.619 --> 00:28:21.460 is a bold strategy. Ofcom got angry. They threatened 00:28:21.460 --> 00:28:24.920 massive fines. Finally, 4chan's legal team responded. 00:28:25.220 --> 00:28:29.299 And the letter they sent, it was pure 4chan attitude 00:28:29.299 --> 00:28:31.799 distilled into a legal document. Do you have 00:28:31.799 --> 00:28:34.799 the quote? I do. Their lawyer wrote that 4chan 00:28:34.799 --> 00:28:37.680 will not pay any penalty. and stated that American 00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:39.779 businesses do not surrender their First Amendment 00:28:39.779 --> 00:28:41.940 rights to, and this is the key part, foreign 00:28:41.940 --> 00:28:44.819 bureaucrats. Wow. Foreign bureaucrats. They really 00:28:44.819 --> 00:28:46.720 said that. They basically told the UK government 00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:48.940 to pound sand. Their argument is that because 00:28:48.940 --> 00:28:51.940 they are a US company, UK law stops at the border. 00:28:52.079 --> 00:28:54.380 The internet is global, but their legal obligations 00:28:54.380 --> 00:28:56.759 are American. But didn't they take it a step 00:28:56.759 --> 00:28:58.980 further than just sending a letter? They did. 00:28:59.059 --> 00:29:01.440 This is the wild part. On August 27th, 2025. 00:29:02.079 --> 00:29:04.140 4chan, along with another controversial site, 00:29:04.579 --> 00:29:07.920 Kiwi Farms filed a lawsuit against Ofcom in a 00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:09.980 U .S. federal court. They sued the regulator 00:29:09.980 --> 00:29:11.799 that was investigating them. They are asking 00:29:11.799 --> 00:29:14.660 a U .S. judge to declare that Ofcom has no jurisdiction 00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:18.180 over them. This is a huge, huge deal. It's a 00:29:18.180 --> 00:29:20.759 test case for the entire future of the Internet. 00:29:21.000 --> 00:29:24.579 Can a country like the U .K. or France or Germany 00:29:24.579 --> 00:29:28.000 enforce their content laws on a U .S.-based platform? 00:29:28.180 --> 00:29:31.619 If 4chan loses this case, what happens? They 00:29:31.619 --> 00:29:33.519 might have to just block access from the entire 00:29:33.519 --> 00:29:36.319 UK. Or shut down completely, because if they 00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:38.720 have to start verifying IDs to comply with age 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:41.500 -gating rules, the anonymity, the core principle 00:29:41.500 --> 00:29:44.099 of the site, is dead. It's a genuine battle for 00:29:44.099 --> 00:29:46.160 the soul of the open web. It is. The Wild West 00:29:46.160 --> 00:29:48.890 versus the modern regulated state. Before we 00:29:48.890 --> 00:29:50.529 wrap up with those big philosophical questions, 00:29:50.650 --> 00:29:52.190 I want to briefly touch on some of the specific 00:29:52.190 --> 00:29:54.170 neighborhoods of 4chan we might have missed. 00:29:54.349 --> 00:29:56.769 Because the site isn't a monolith. It's a collection 00:29:56.769 --> 00:29:59.670 of very different, very weird subcultures. Right. 00:29:59.789 --> 00:30:02.470 We have to mention R9K again, the robot board. 00:30:02.710 --> 00:30:04.910 What is the specific mechanic there that makes 00:30:04.910 --> 00:30:08.369 it different? It runs a script called Robot 9000. 00:30:08.869 --> 00:30:12.509 And the script has one rule. If you post a comment. 00:30:12.890 --> 00:30:15.589 that has heavily repeated text or is identical 00:30:15.589 --> 00:30:18.069 to a previous post, the script automatically 00:30:18.069 --> 00:30:21.339 bans you for a short time. So it forces originality. 00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:23.119 You have to say something new every time you 00:30:23.119 --> 00:30:25.339 post. That was the goal. It was a social experiment. 00:30:25.519 --> 00:30:27.940 It was supposed to force creativity, to stop 00:30:27.940 --> 00:30:30.779 people from just spamming the same memes over 00:30:30.779 --> 00:30:32.920 and over. And what happened instead? Instead, 00:30:33.099 --> 00:30:35.299 it created a culture of people sharing their 00:30:35.299 --> 00:30:37.900 most intense personal misery. Because that was 00:30:37.900 --> 00:30:40.440 the only thing unique they had to offer. It became 00:30:40.440 --> 00:30:42.880 the depression engine of the internet. A place 00:30:42.880 --> 00:30:45.140 for green text stories about social failure. 00:30:45.359 --> 00:30:48.119 And that, in turn, fueled the incel movement. 00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:50.259 A completely failed... Social experiment. And 00:30:50.259 --> 00:30:52.599 it astrophically failed. Then on the other end 00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:55.180 of the spectrum, there's MLP, My Little Pony. 00:30:55.259 --> 00:30:57.680 Okay, why does a My Little Pony board exist on 00:30:57.680 --> 00:31:00.680 4chan? Because the bronies, the community of 00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:03.920 adult male fans of the show, were spamming every 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.000 other board so hard back in 2011 that everyone 00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:09.339 else revolted. It was a containment strategy. 00:31:10.099 --> 00:31:13.539 Moot created MLP as a quarantine zone, a ghetto. 00:31:14.059 --> 00:31:15.579 Go play with your ponies over there and leave 00:31:15.579 --> 00:31:17.339 the rest of us alone. And it developed its own 00:31:17.339 --> 00:31:20.319 entire subculture. A massive one. Sometimes they 00:31:20.319 --> 00:31:22.279 would have organized raids against pole and vice 00:31:22.279 --> 00:31:24.680 versa. Fights between the neo -Nazis and the 00:31:24.680 --> 00:31:26.819 My Little Pony fans. You cannot make this stuff 00:31:26.819 --> 00:31:29.400 up. And what about sock? the social board this 00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:32.039 is the weirdest most unexpected anomaly of the 00:31:32.039 --> 00:31:35.319 last couple of years in late 2023 or early 2024 00:31:35.319 --> 00:31:38.599 an anonymous user on sock which is supposed to 00:31:38.599 --> 00:31:42.059 be for meetups built and released a 4chan dating 00:31:42.059 --> 00:31:45.359 app a dating app yeah for 4chan users that sounds 00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:47.400 like a disaster waiting to happen it's called 00:31:47.400 --> 00:31:50.240 dupe and for a brief window it was trending higher 00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:52.400 than e -harmony on the app store it was filled 00:31:52.400 --> 00:31:55.240 with trolls and horrible people obviously but 00:31:55.240 --> 00:31:57.299 it was also filled with genuinely lonely people 00:31:57.299 --> 00:31:59.400 trying to find some kind of connection in this 00:31:59.400 --> 00:32:02.599 digital wasteland. It proves that even in the 00:32:02.599 --> 00:32:05.759 most toxic environment imaginable, people are 00:32:05.759 --> 00:32:08.599 still desperate not to be alone. Exactly. It's 00:32:08.599 --> 00:32:11.240 a very human impulse. There is one last thing 00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:13.160 we have to acknowledge before we synthesize all 00:32:13.160 --> 00:32:16.480 this. The language. We can't do a deep dive without 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:19.500 mentioning how 4chan pollutes the global vocabulary. 00:32:19.940 --> 00:32:22.279 It's a laboratory for hate speech, a factory 00:32:22.279 --> 00:32:24.759 for slurs. We mentioned the term Pajit in the 00:32:24.759 --> 00:32:26.599 outline. This is a slur against Indian people. 00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:29.200 A vicious one. And it started on 4chan around 00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:33.279 2015. They created cartoons, memes, stereotypes, 00:32:33.640 --> 00:32:37.180 a whole racist ecosystem around this word. And 00:32:37.180 --> 00:32:39.539 now. Now you see it everywhere. You see that 00:32:39.539 --> 00:32:41.779 word on X. You see it in YouTube comments. You 00:32:41.779 --> 00:32:44.470 probably hear it in schoolyards. 4chan. generates 00:32:44.470 --> 00:32:46.750 derogatory language that then spreads to the 00:32:46.750 --> 00:32:49.410 rest of the internet like a virus. It manufactures 00:32:49.410 --> 00:32:51.029 the weapon and the rest of the internet picks 00:32:51.029 --> 00:32:52.950 it up and fires it. That's the perfect analogy. 00:32:53.349 --> 00:32:55.250 So here we are. At the end of it all, we've covered 00:32:55.250 --> 00:32:57.589 the funny cats. We've covered the anonymous math 00:32:57.589 --> 00:33:00.450 geniuses. We've covered the murderers. We've 00:33:00.450 --> 00:33:02.390 covered the government lawsuits. It's a lot to 00:33:02.390 --> 00:33:04.829 process. It's a dizzying spectrum. How do we 00:33:04.829 --> 00:33:07.170 synthesize this? Because my brain wants to put 00:33:07.170 --> 00:33:09.130 it in a neat box. I want to say 4chan is evil. 00:33:09.170 --> 00:33:11.759 Shut it down. But then I think about the Harui 00:33:11.759 --> 00:33:13.940 problem. I think about the freedom of information 00:33:13.940 --> 00:33:16.880 during Project Chinology. It is the ultimate 00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:20.519 paradox of free speech online. 4chan is the Wild 00:33:20.519 --> 00:33:23.539 West. And the Wild West was romantic. It was 00:33:23.539 --> 00:33:26.400 free. It was open. Anything was possible, but 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:30.339 was also violent and lawless and unbelievably 00:33:30.339 --> 00:33:32.779 cruel. And you can't have the freedom without 00:33:32.779 --> 00:33:35.859 the danger. Not with this architecture. The anonymity 00:33:35.859 --> 00:33:38.039 and the ephemerality are the same tools that 00:33:38.039 --> 00:33:40.799 allow for both incredible creativity and incredible 00:33:40.799 --> 00:33:43.380 evil. If you give people a mask, some will use 00:33:43.380 --> 00:33:45.700 it to tell truth to power and some will use it 00:33:45.700 --> 00:33:48.200 to hurt people for fun. 4chan proves that humans 00:33:48.200 --> 00:33:50.420 are capable of both, often in the same thread, 00:33:50.599 --> 00:33:53.440 just seconds apart. And this lawsuit with Ofcom, 00:33:53.559 --> 00:33:55.779 that's really the core question, isn't it? It's 00:33:55.779 --> 00:33:57.759 asking, is the Wild West even allowed to exist 00:33:57.759 --> 00:34:01.740 in 2026? Precisely. The modern world and modern 00:34:01.740 --> 00:34:04.599 governments want safety. They want curated spaces. 00:34:04.980 --> 00:34:07.980 We want to know who is speaking. We want accountability. 00:34:08.099 --> 00:34:11.559 We want to ban the hate speech. But if you sanitize 00:34:11.559 --> 00:34:14.159 the entire internet, if you force everyone to 00:34:14.159 --> 00:34:16.519 use their real ID, if you moderate every single 00:34:16.519 --> 00:34:19.980 comment, you might lose the chaotic primordial 00:34:19.980 --> 00:34:22.380 souk that created the culture we now take for 00:34:22.380 --> 00:34:24.260 granted. And you might lose the pressure valve. 00:34:24.539 --> 00:34:26.800 That's the scary thought, isn't it? If 4chan 00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:30.650 disappears tomorrow... Where do those 22 million 00:34:30.650 --> 00:34:33.030 people go? Do they just stop being angry or creative 00:34:33.030 --> 00:34:36.070 or weird? No. Or do they go somewhere darker, 00:34:36.230 --> 00:34:38.150 somewhere harder to track, and somewhere even 00:34:38.150 --> 00:34:40.510 more radical? So the final provocative thought 00:34:40.510 --> 00:34:43.369 for you, the listener, is this. In a world of 00:34:43.369 --> 00:34:45.730 increasing digital surveillance and carefully 00:34:45.730 --> 00:34:48.909 curated online identities is a space like 4chan 00:34:48.909 --> 00:34:51.190 a dangerous relic that needs to be destroyed? 00:34:51.920 --> 00:34:54.639 Or is it a necessary ugly pressure valve for 00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:56.900 the weirdest and worst parts of humanity? If 00:34:56.900 --> 00:34:58.860 you close the sewer, the pipes might just burst 00:34:58.860 --> 00:35:01.119 in your own basement. A grim image to end on. 00:35:01.159 --> 00:35:03.940 But a necessary one. This is the reality of the 00:35:03.940 --> 00:35:06.199 deep web. It's not pretty, but we have to be 00:35:06.199 --> 00:35:08.960 willing to look at it. Indeed. Thank you for 00:35:08.960 --> 00:35:11.000 listening. This has been The Deep Dive. Stay 00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:11.679 safe out there.