So now The Fappening – in which various celebrities had their iCloud accounts hacked and their private naked photos spread across the internet – has taken on an altogether more sinister turn. Thousands of images and videos of teenagers sent on Snapchat have been leaked via a third party app. It’s been dubbed ‘The Snappening’, and given that 50% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 17, some of those pictures could be classed as child pornography. So when did the internet get so dark?
When Jennifer Lawrence, one of the most prominent victims of The Fappening spoke out about her experience, she was unequivocal in her criticism of those who leaked and viewed the photos. ‘It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting,’ she told Vanity Fair. ‘The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That’s why these websites are responsible… I can’t imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside.’ General consensus is that Lawrence is right, but who actually is responsible?
The website from which the hack sprung is, of course, 4Chan, an image-based online bulletin board founded in 2003, which has long played the role of ghost to the internet’s machine. As a guiding hand steering web culture, the site has spawned harmless memes from LOLcats to Rickrolling. But it’s also a Pandora’s Box that has given the internet a larger and ever-growing collection of things that are far more troubling than some sassy cats and a ginger Scot possessed by Luther Vandross.
Recently, 4Chan has run a number of news agendas, not just the nude photo leak, but also the ongoing Gamergate movement, which has torn remorselessly into the lives of several women working in the computer games industry; not to mention ebola-chan, an anime representation of ebola. These things appear, as if from nowhere, and ooze out into the world like pus from a wound. And there’s every indicator that 4Chan users were behind this newest leak of teenagers’ private Snapchat pictures.
Anonymity is at the heart of the site. Users don’t have to register or give any personal details. Those who try and establish a personal identity are called ‘tripfags’ and get hated on. Across the 4Chan’s multiple message boards, threads are deleted after only a few days. Like a porn-addicted boyfriend wiping his browsing history, 4Chan can always re-boot and move on. Christopher Poole, who founded 4Chan as a place to discuss and post pictures of manga and anime in 2003 when he was 15, puts great stock in the fact that 4Chan users can ‘say what they can’t say in real life with friends and work colleagues – things that they know are wrong but they still want to say’.
Anonymous 4chan moderators remove personal information, incitements to ‘raid’ other sites and child pornography, but other than that the site’s policy appears to be that it should be a self-policing state. Poole himself hasn’t spoken publicly since 2013, when he reiterated his belief in a hands-off approach to moderation, but some are now saying that for all the criticism being levied at 4chan users, no one is pointing the finger directly at the founder. Instead the tech industry seem intent on lauding him: Buzzfeed CEO signed him up as an advisor, saying he had the best understanding of how to create community online.
The problem is that while Poole might like to think the internet is just a fun game where we can all breezily vent hateful bile for a few hours a week before returning to our lives as enlightened, productive citizens, the simple truth is that the Internet is a part of this mysterious ‘real life’ he speaks of. What is said and done there will find its way out into the world of the walking and talking, something that is becoming more and more true every day.
Threads are deleted after only a few days. Like a porn-addicted boyfriend wiping his browsing history, 4chan can always re-boot and move on
This can have a positive as well as a negative effect. The hacking collective Anonymous started on 4Chan and they are – depending on your view – either ‘freedom fighters’ or ‘cyber terrorists’. Whatever your stance, Anonymous’ reach has gone far beyond the confines of the internet, striking at the heart of the Church of Scientology, various government agencies across the world, the Westboro’ Baptist Church and big corporations like Sony and Visa. An affiliated member incorrectly named the police officer responsible for the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, but the group have, as detailed here, been fighting for ‘justice’ for Brown’s family.
The way 4Chan spills out into the real world has often been particularly nasty, though. In a high-profile case of cyberbullying, 4Chan members sent death threats and calls to an 11-year old girl named Jessi Slaughter, who’d had the temerity to attack 4Chan in a series of YouTube videos. Slaughter went on to try to kill herself more than once. The 'bikini bridge' trend, which 'encouraged women to lose enough weight to create a gap between the bones of their hip and pelvis', was a fake which came from 4Chan. But of course it didn’t just live on the message board, it was picked up by communities of people with eating disorders elsewhere online, with predictably negative consequences.
READ MORE: Why The Snappening Is So Much Worse Than 'Digital Chlamydia'
This freedom to conjure and abuse is at its unwholesome worst on the now infamous 'Random' board. If 4Chan is the Wild West, then the Random board is the wildest part of the Wild West. Not even cactii grow here. As I write this, the first topic on the board is kicked off with the question, ‘Has anyone ever stuck their dick in a girl’s butt before, any tips?’ The thread degenerates from there into a stream of porn. Every now and then, a genuine piece of advice appears, usually something pertaining to the quantity of lube that needs to be used. Some of the users show consideration for the feelings of the women they might have anal sex with, but many see it as a competition, ‘How can I get her to do exactly what I want?’
On the ‘Random’ board, trolling, grotesque imagery and racism, which are all technically banned elsewhere on 4Chan, are allowed. Across the site, if you want to read the word ‘faggot’ again and again, you can. If you are interested in the violent fantasies that possess troubled young Western men tied to their laptops, you have only to look. And if you want to know when someone out there in the world has spilled his ‘sauce’ (semen) well, now you don’t have to be ignorant anymore.
READ MORE: Jennifer Lawrence Says Nude Photo Leak Was ‘A Sex Crime’
Elsewhere, the ‘Politically Incorrect’ board’s first thread is introduced thusly, ‘Let's talk about National Socialism and appreciate the Third Reich.’ In the past, 4Chan successfully got a swastika trending on Google. The Politically Incorrect board rivals the Random board in terms of malevolent chaos, a pack mentality and male vindictiveness. Even the sisters of male users are referred to as ‘sluts’. 4Chan can seem like a digital representation of a JG Ballard novel, in which society breaks down and feeds on itself. There’s also a sort of Revenge Of The Nerds meets Animal Farm thing going on: the nerds control the game but they’ve become like the alpha jocks that once bullied them. They are the pigs that became indistinguishable from men.
The ‘Politically Incorrect’ board rivals the ‘Random’ board in terms of malevolent chaos, a pack mentality and male vindictiveness
Though a climate of anonymity and permission (after all, calling a board Politically Incorrect is like a red rag to a Jeremy Clarkson-shaped bull) allow for a wide range of horror, the site is not devoid of hope. When people are given freedom and anonymity, they don’t always use it to vent their least palatable opinions. Mark Zuckerberg has said that having two identities – an online one and an offline one ‘is an example of a lack of integrity’, but then he’s trying to use people’s personal information to make money, so he would say that.
Across 4Chan there are examples of people using its anonymity to ask difficult, personal questions in a more positive way, ranging from, ‘How can I come out to my family?’ to, ‘How do I stop wanting to harm people?’ There is a whole board dedicated to ‘Advice’. Questions are sometimes met with trolling and sometimes met with sensitivity. Amidst the gloom, there are enduring and striking examples of human compassion and creativity.
In a sense, this is just the time-honoured dynamics of a schoolyard being played out online. The site’s users are – of course – 70% young men according to their own stats and the overall impression is that of teenage boys at school, getting into packs, bullying others, driving themselves into a Lord Of The Flies-type frenzy and occasionally being sweet and considerate to each other. The anonymity means you can’t tell who is and who isn’t a 15-year boy, but the chances are that all that porn and bullying you’re looking at is being provided by… a 15-year old boy.
On the LGBT board, a hairdresser tells a long story about a girl who wants to cut her hair very short. She’s a tomboy and the hairdresser reaches a number of enlightened conclusions about transgender people through the time he spends with her. It’s rough and unpolished, but the story is one that begins at suspicion and moves towards tolerance. On the anime/manga board, a rich array of Madonna/whore complexes are on display in a discussion about ‘waifus’, a term for the woman you want to be your wife. There are, though, moments of honesty. ‘To be fair, I’d feel pretty sorry for whoever I fell in love with,’ says one user.
But even though there are fragments of hope across 4Chan, the lack of any kind of regulation has created an often nasty and deeply entitled culture. When some of the leaked celebrity photos were removed from the Internet, there were users on 4Chan reacting as if they’d had their birthday presents taken away from them by Gestapo officers. In the end, this might be 4Chan’s legacy: to have created an environment in which teenage boys can’t tell the difference between the private photos of women they don’t know and an XBox.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.