Frank insists that the relationship between the trolling on 4chan and the trolling on Usenet can be explained as nothing more than an etymological coincidence. The trolling of his day was bitingly clever, with relatively mild pranking. He draws comparisons to comedian Don Novello’s Laszlo Toth letters, in which the entertainer wrote prankish letters to famous businessmen and politicians.
Don Novello would write absurd consumer complaints to starchy corporate customer-relations departments and get ramrod-straight by-the-book letters back that were entirely inappropriate to the original missive.
This sort of trolling isn’t completely without social value in the right context.
It served as an educational tool to newcomers not to be condescending to the regulars. In a larger community where most people are strangers, I doubt it has any social value; when it is done purely to provoke, it has no value at all.
Ted Frank palled around with Dave and Barbara Mikkelsons, who went on to found Snopes, the rumor-debunking site that’s served as a trusted source of obscura for 16 years. The Mikkelsons met on Usenet, developed a relationship based on their shared fascination with urban legends, and eventually married. According to Frank, Dave Mikkelson (“Snopes” on Usenet) was a pro troll, who was known to have called candy companies to complain that their products did nothing to relieve his headaches.
Now, the type of personality that engages in snopes-like trolling is the kind of personality that doesn’t mind going into a room and being told by everyone there that he’s wrong, questions authority, and starts up a snopes.com or a Center for Class Action Fairness, but that’s a different issue.
Today, heinous forms of harassment are lumped in with this clever pranksterism. Usually, trolls on 4chan use a little bit of both. In 2008, Oprah ran a segment on Internet predators. Leading up the show, a /b/tard posted the following message to Oprah’s message board:
We do not forgive. We do not forget. We have OVER 9000 penises and they are all raping children.
Cue disbelieving gasps from the audience. Who knew such evils were lurking in the family computer room? As it turns out, OVER 9000 is an old 4chan meme from the anime Dragon Ball Z, in which a character humorously screams the phrase. The quote was an obvious troll to anyone who spent any time on 4chan, but to Oprah’s producers the quote contained the perfect amount of cold-blooded evil for their fear-mongering segment.
Oprah repeated the quote on her show, attributing the quote to a “known pedophile network” that was both organized and systematic. Meanwhile, Anonymous had itself a hearty lol. There are currently hundreds of videos on YouTube making fun of Oprah for the incident. Tricking a celebrity into acknowledging the existence of Anonymous was funny, but doing it under the pretense of a fake army of over nine thousand organized pedophiles was considered an epic win for the trolls. I often wonder if anyone told poor Oprah afterwards that she’d been had.
Troll Heritage
Perhaps the finest example of a pre-Internet troll is the late comedian and entertainer Andy Kaufman, who made a career out of subversive multilayered publicity stunts so convincing that some fans still doubt the authenticity of his 1984 death from kidney failure. Kaufman would concoct elaborate hoaxes and practical jokes. He once appeared on The Dating Game as a sweating, stuttering foreign man whose awkward delivery confounded the other participants.
In one highly publicized troll, Kaufman sparred with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler. He claimed to have suffered a neck injury and wore a neck brace wherever he went, including a legendary on-air fight with Lawler on the set of Late Night with David Letterman. Not even his close comedian buddies knew for sure if the neck brace was worn genuinely. Kaufman’s feud with Lawler was later revealed to be 100 percent staged.
Kaufman’s jokes were often on his audience. He delighted in messing with people’s heads. He once read The Great Gatsby aloud to an audience expecting standup. At first they laughed, but he refused to stop, even as they booed and left the auditorium.
Check the monologue from I’m From Hollywood, a documentary which included a promotional video Kaufman made to rile up Southern wrestling fans.
I want to talk to you. And I want to help you. Every week I’m going to be coming here, on this station. And I’m going to be giving you little tips about how you can better your lives. And how I can bring you up from the level you’re in right now. And how I can bring you up from the squalor that you’re living in, in the gutter, and the garbage that your lives are.
This is a bar of soap. Now, does it look familiar to any of you? I know that you probably don’t know what this is and probably you don’t have ever seen one of these before. But it is called soap. Matter of fact, if you’re sitting at home now, you can maybe repeat after me and say: “Soap.” Say “soap.” S-O-A-P, soap. Not “sowp.” Not “say-owp.” It’s “soap.” okay?
You people, your hands are so greasy and slimy. I mean, I don’t wanna shake ‘em. You ask me for an autograph, I’ll sign you an autograph. But please, don’t put out your hand and shake it until you can wash your hands. That is what you do: Wet your hands, okay, then wet the soap. Wash the soap, rub it on your hands, rub it around and your hands will get clean.
The video continues with Kaufman condescendingly instructing his audience in basic hygiene, intercut with reaction footage of enraged Southern good ol’ boys claiming, “If I saw ‘im right now I’d kick ‘is ass!” During his wrestling matches, thousands would shriek for Andy’s head on a platter. And the footage shows he’s loving every minute of it.
In the same documentary, comedian Robin Williams declares, “Andy made himself the premise and the entire world was the punchline.”
If Andy Kaufman is a spiritual ancestor of /b/’s penchant for outlandish stunts, then alternative rock stalwart Steve Albini plays godfather to the site’s more subdued smartass. I mean, the guy had a band called Rapeman, which provoked picket lines and news crews crowding the band’s small indie rock gigs.
In an interview with Adam Dolgins, author of Rock Names, Albini clarifies that he discovered an obscure Japanese comic book featuring a hero called Rapeman, who rapes women who’ve wronged his clients. Albini writes songs about serial killers, wife beaters, and gruesome executions. His first band, Big Black, had an EP named after Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who shot himself in the mouth on live TV. Very /b/.
What interests me the most about Steve Albini’s dark brand of trolling is that he’s operating within the realm of rock and roll, which is supposed to shock and offend . . . parents. Albini takes it a step further. He wants to mess with feminist studies students and went straight for the throats of liberal progressives and the alt-rock elite, calling universally revered bands tedious, for example. Very /b/.
Now, imagine a world full of millions of would-be Andy Kaufmans and Steve Albinis loosely working together. Only these trolls are all faceless, with no reputations to protect and nothing on the line. That’s the environment in which I’m about to expose my identity.
Here goes nothing.
Are You There /b/? It’s Me, Cole
My publisher recently posted a page about my book with a cover mockup on the site, so I’m able to give 4chan a teaser. I type out a simple message.
Oh hai /b/,
What do we think of this?
I type out the CAPTCHA (an authentication process instituted by moot to limit SPAM that made /b/ practically unreadable for a while in 2010) and exhale. Click.
Nothing.
I hit refresh. One response:
That it’s a book
Refresh again.
Awww shit!
seems legit
who the fuck cares? Somebody wrote a book about 4chan. This isn’t a secret underground organization.
Of course, it’ll be distributed threw BitTorrent right?
Oh fuck me. I hate this little cunt.
I make a follow-up post, unlikely to be believed. “I’m writing a book about you. What do you think about that?”
We think you’re asking for more trouble than it’s worth. Seriously.
Rule 1 and 2. you will die soon
OP, kindly an hero [that is, kill yourself] immediately. As if anyone gives a fuck other than cancerous summerfags [also called noobs] like you
I’d love to help you out with the book in any way, writing it or just online distibution/marketing, or design. Willing to get some help?
OP, are you ready for the potential shitstorm aimed at you?
Cool story, bro.
The thread continues with various empty threats, insults, and a few surprisingly sincere optimists who tell me they can’t wait to read the book. One person Photoshops a pirate mustache onto my face and posts it. Another writes:
Don’t publish your book, you faggot. You probably suck at writing and are trying to scrounge money together because you know you’ll never have an actual job because you majored in journalism. Your days are numbered, Cole.
The thread continues, devolving into a loose argument about whether 4chan is worth writing a book about. Soon, someone posts an inappropriately graffitied photo of me, yanked from my personal blog. Time will tell if the /b/tards actually try to find out where I live or target me in any way. Probably not, but I’m not going to go any further out of my way to invite harassment.
Calvinball
I have used the word game to describe the experience of /b/, and more broadly, 4chan and the Anonymous movement. I believe people are drawn to /b/ because it’s a ludic playground, where the rules are perpetually being redefined.
Play can be defined as any activity that is done for personal enjoyment. In its barest definition, a game is structured play. (Unstructured play being something like daydreaming, blowing bubbles, or frolicking in a field.) A game must have an achievable goal, with walls erected between the player and the goal that make it a challenge to reach. These walls are rules that define the game. One could say that 4chan is a game in which the rules are in a constant state of flux.
It reminds me of Calvinball, from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. In the first Calvinball-related strip, creator Bill Watterson defined the only permanent rule of Calvinball: You can’t play it the same way twice. So Calvin and his imaginary tiger pal Hobbes are constantly reinventing the game, bickering over the rules every step of the way. The strip lampooned the childhood tendency for groups of kids to make up their rules as they went along, when tempers, politicking, cheating, and boredom make strict rules difficult to uphold.
There are very specific games happening within each individual thread of 4chan, and one can observe 4chan as an ongoing global metagame like Calvinball. Sometimes the goal is to piss people off. Sometimes it’s to make some specific person’s life miserable . . . or wonderful. Other times the object of the game is to confuse outsiders or wreck others’ idea of what the game is about.
Mine is a generation raised by video games, which teach children to test the boundaries of their rule sets, mess with their environments, and memorize entire tiny universes until they’re able to spot and exploit holes and glitches. Computer hackers identify with this impulse to a large degree. For them, systems are made to be mastered, broken, and messed with. When playing a game the way it’s supposed to be played gets boring, they seek out cheat codes and other ways of essentially “breaking” the game. It’s one thing to beat or win a game, but can you say you’ve truly mastered a game until you’ve broken it?
This kind of metagaming is not limited to video games. Think of all the various ways people find to enjoy professional football, for instance. They place bets on teams, they play fantasy football, they engage in playful taunting with the fans of opposing teams. The football happening on the field is just a small part of the game experience.
You Just Lost The Game
In April 2009, Time magazine held its annual TIME 100 poll, part of which was dedicated to the most influential people on the planet. Candidates included the likes of Tina Fey, Hu Jintao, Gamal Mubarak, and other luminaries of art, science, business, government, and philanthropy. Time opened up the list to online voting, and the 4chan hivemind set to work putting moot at the top of the list. When they accomplished that, they decided it wasn’t fun enough. They eventually gamed the whole list, ensuring that the top twenty names would spell out a coded message to fellow /b/tards that they had indeed accomplished an epic win.
It all started when 4chan discovered that moot had been included as one of the many candidates in the TIME 100 poll. 4chan hackers (and this is low-level hacking to be sure) found that they could game the poll with a series of custom autovoter URLs associated with each candidate. The /b/tards spammed the URLs far and wide, including a limit for each, so the candidates would appear in the proper order. Time spotted the shenanigans, reset the poll, and changed the URL protocol in order to authenticate votes.
Now the challenge was really on. The hackers set up an IRC channel to discuss the hack, eventually figuring out how to bypass the authentication process (Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is an early form of real-time chat favored by Anonymous because it’s easy to hide one’s IP address). Some autovoters were created that could vote one hundred times per minute. Others created apps that would cycle through IP addresses so the Time site wouldn’t be able to detect that the spam votes were coming from a single computer. Eventually the hackers were able to craft scripts that would easily manipulate the poll’s order. Their final list began:
1. moot
2. Anwar Ibrahim
3. Rick Warren
4. Baitulla Mehsud
5. Larry Brilliant
And so on, with the first letter of each name spelling out MARBLECAKEALSOTHEGAME.
Marblecake is a probably fictional scatological sex act defined (if you are prepared to brave it) at urbandictionary.com. But what about The Game? This is a popular 4chan meme that presages the site. The point is to make the victim think of something or notice something very specific, with the moment of realization delivering a sense of having been had. The object of the game is to avoid thinking about The Game.
According to http://www.losethegame.net, The Game was invented in 1977 by members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (CUSFS) as a variant of the White Bear Game, in which participants try to think of anything other than a white bear, which the human mind makes difficult in a mental phenomenon called ironic processing.
So it becomes a competition to make people recognize The Game in clever ways. On /b/, people will craft sprawling posts culminating in the anticlimax, “Oh, btw, you just lost the game.” They write “You Lost The Game” on currency and spray paint it on walls.
I first lost The Game when someone on /b/ urged me, “Check the TV Guide for 6:00pm on Thursday you won’t believe it!” I played along, and sure enough the broadcast description for that slot was a mere two words: The Game, a 1997 thriller starring Michael Douglas.
4chan’s gaming of the TIME 100 poll has gone down in history as one of the most epic Game-related wins, since they were able to make millions of people cognizant of The Game. Furthermore, they arguably established Anonymous as the true winner of the TIME 100 most influential poll.
Chapter 4
* * *
Tracing 4chan Ancestry
LIKE EVERY OTHER web community, 4chan didn’t simply materialize fully formed out of the ether. In order to understand the motivations and interests of 4chan users, it’s helpful to know where 4chan came from. The history of the web isn’t so much a story about technology as it is a story about people, and how the ways they interact with one another change when new technology allows them to try new things.
Phone Phreaks: Pre-Internet Hackers
One might argue that the roots of 4chan go all the way back to the ’50s, when a bunch of kids figured out how to get free long-distance phone calls by whistling a specific pitch into the receiver. These kids called themselves phone phreaks. Many of the phreaks were blind, with increased sensitivity t
o sound that enabled them to quickly learn the right pitch to mimic the phone companies’ control tones. Many were also social misfits, drawn together from across the US by their shared interest in technology, and more importantly, in breaking the technology.
In the late 1960s, one phreaker, John Draper—known by the nickname “Captain Crunch” after he discovered that a plastic toy whistle distributed in boxes of Captain Crunch cereal perfectly produced the right tone to hack into the phone network—helped to spread the hobby, which eventually permeated the MIT tech community, where the practice of hacking into communication systems continued, along with the rise of . . .
The Wild West: Usenet & BBSes
A lot of 4chan users laud their platform for hearkening back to the early days of the Internet. “Back then it was like the Wild West. There weren’t these structures in place to make sure that people stayed in line,” one anon told me. Another said, “And forget about the thirty-page terms of service documents.” If you stepped out of line, either you got banned or your transgression became the new law of the land.
Dating the birth of the Internet depends on your criteria. It’s difficult to pinpoint where a bunch of nerds playing around with modems stopped and “the Internet” began. Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) started appearing in the late ’70s. These were mostly local communities, since dialing into a BBS outside of your local calling area would have brought hefty long distance charges. I’ve talked to a few dozen people about those early days, from community managers to hackers to system operators, and they all agree on two things: the Internet in that era was expensive and slow.
EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS Page 8