4chan began as a copy of 2chan, a Japanese site that started as an anonymous bulletin board teeming with Otaku (おたく) – adults uninterested in the traditional and who, immersed in the world of the internet, could assume a different persona.
4chan was a raw and unrestricted platform where just about anything could be posted anonymously. It’s this platform where memes were born – a kind of graphic joke that someone created, tweaked, and then it went viral. All of this, it should be noted, happened without any form of censorship and literally mocking everything and anything.
This was the dawn of modern social media today.
About the Documentary
“The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem ” takes us through how, from this website, collective anonymous identities (Anonymous) were confirmed, and these identities morphed into the drivers of chaos and the instigators of social upheavals such as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and also behind countless dark jokes that led to deaths, blackmail, and all the dangers that, unfortunately, we read about on the internet that terrify the older folks.
From these memes, from these anonymous jokes, 8chans emerged and the documentary delves into the QAnon movement and how, in a way that is quite hard to comprehend, this movement made its way to the Capitol, culminating in the infamous Washington riots.
“The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem ” tells this story from the perspective of its creators, unveiling their true faces and the pseudonyms they used when they created 4chan.
“The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem ” is an excellent documentary: it’s loaded with images, heaps of information, and also features the creators of the movement who are friendly, open, and narrate the events themselves. A documentary that essentially writes itself, but is done so efficiently and accurately, without passing judgment or taking sides despite the controversy of the subject matter.
Due to its relevance and the scope of its coverage, it’s nearly a must-watch for anyone who truly wants to understand what’s going on in the world beyond the regular newspapers which focus mainly on political figures.
It highlights the real happenings and how such an influential movement was created and how, behind the scenes, events naturally unfold far beyond what we are officially told.
Which is very little.
Its worth extends beyond just being a documentary.
