From the rise of QAnon to the January 6th riots, The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem explains how a group of bored teenagers built an online community out of their shared loneliness but accidentally shattered consensus reality in the process.
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00:00 Do we even know who is this 4chan person or website?
00:05 15 years ago, we were just dumbass kids having a good time sharing jokes and memes on the internet.
00:12 Their name comes from their secret website.
00:15 4chan.
00:16 It was things that you would not see anywhere else online except for there.
00:20 There was definitely a lot of stuff that was super edgy.
00:25 Being totally anonymous gave young people the opportunity to vent their thoughts and opinions without being judged for it.
00:33 You just wanted another hit. Viral imagery blasting in your eyeballs.
00:38 You didn't want the party to stop.
00:40 We started something and never intended it for it to end up this way.
00:45 It did start to shift to people actually like trolling in real life.
00:50 If something drew the ire of anonymous, it suffered.
00:55 Hello, leaders of Scientology. Anonymous has decided that your organization should be destroyed.
01:01 It's special!
01:03 What drives user base numbers and revenue is anger.
01:09 So Facebook or Twitter is making more money as users are getting angrier.
01:14 As the internet gets 4chanified, it's easier than ever to make really dark, disgusting or screwed up things.
01:22 And they can let it spawn in that environment until it spreads everywhere.
01:28 We've all participated in undermining reality, but we never wanted things to turn into a living cartoon.
01:36 Spread the information. That's what QAnon asks us to do.
01:40 It's never happened in the history of the world.
01:45 And it's all happening because of the internet.
01:47 [MUSIC]