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Destroyer of worlds: the 8chan story
Tortoise ^ | June 29, 2019 | Nicky Woolf

Posted on 07/02/2019 12:01:00 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

On 27 April, before he burst into a San Diego synagogue and opened fire, killing one worshipper and injuring three more, the gunman said goodbye to the community that radicalised him. “It’s been real dudes,” he posted on the far-right politics board, /pol/, on the image-posting site 8chan. “I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless.”

The story was familiar. Six weeks earlier, a 28-year-old had killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before starting his attack, he, too, had posted on 8chan’s /pol/ board. “It’s been a long ride,” he had written. He signed off his post: “Meme magic is real.” The first response from an anonymous 8chan user urged him to “get the high score”.

From its effect on the world, 8chan could be ranked as one of the internet’s most dangerous sites. Some have even compared it to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS. The pattern is similar: men – and it is always men – find their way there, and get radicalised into an extreme ideology which drives some of them to violence.

But there is no fundamentalist preacher for the ideology of chan sites. It’s mostly lonely people who find themselves in a febrile information ecosystem without precedent in human history. Chan sites like 8chan are something entirely new: organic communities of anonymous participants that have started to behave almost like a new consciousness, separate and more powerful and dangerous than the sum of its parts.

(Excerpt) Read more at members.tortoisemedia.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Computers/Internet; Conspiracy; Health/Medicine; History; Miscellaneous; Society; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: 4chan; 8chan; banthem; bowlwinder; california; christchurch; disability; fredrickbrennan; islavista; learntocode; massacres; newzealand; programming; qanon; sandiego
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To: Steve Van Doorn; All

Y’all are more daring than me...I didn’t click on the click-bait.
#excerptsaremyfriend
#humblegunnernotpinged


41 posted on 07/03/2019 5:03:04 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Did you know that the C_A is the largest venture capital source in the world?)
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To: Cletus.D.Yokel
#humblegunnernotpinged

#sumbitchshowsupanyway

42 posted on 07/03/2019 6:51:40 AM PDT by humblegunner
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To: humblegunner

Damn!
Now I gotz to get me a new keyboard.
#coffeestingsmucousmembranes


43 posted on 07/03/2019 7:07:11 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Did you know that the C_A is the largest venture capital source in the world?)
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To: Revel

The way 4chan members tracked down Shia Lebeouf’s “he will not divide us” flag in the mountains of Tennessee by coordinating jet contrails with Flight Radar data was pure genius.


44 posted on 07/03/2019 7:32:15 AM PDT by Rebelbase
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