What happens when a group of internet trolls decide to take terrorism head on?
May 31st, 2016: an ISIS training camp is bombed by warplanes just a day after these same rebels
released a training video on YouTube.
Those responsible for the intel?
4chan.
4chan is an anonymous internet forum where users can post comments & share images.
Similar to Reddit, the site hosts sub-forums dedicated to more specific niches like photography,
sports, and travel to name a few.
But unlike Reddit, users do not have to choose a specific username or create an account...it’s
all completely anonymous.
On top of that, threads on 4chan message boards expire after some time, making the space ever-changing
& dynamic.
Given the site’s privacy & transient features, it’s become the wild wild west of the online
world in which anything goes.
One particular sub-forum we’re diving further into today is /sg/ or Syria General.
/sg/ describes itself (and its users) as the politically incorrect “General that follows
the Syrian war against terrorism, as well as all the conflicts taking place all around
the world.”
Enter Ivan Sidorenko.
Ivan Sidorenko--or @IvanSidorenko1 as he’s known on Twitter--is a Russian war correspondent,
which innately sides him with the Russians & other allies to Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad and his government.
Their opposition, on the other hand, consists of several rebel factions backed by foreign
governments, militias, and even terrorists!
It’s important to note that Ivan Sidorenko is considered Russia’s most reliable pro-Assad
source for information; providing the most up-to-date news & videos from Syria as well
as information on their troops’ progress on the ground.
One day, a couple of 4chan /sg/ users posted two videos of ISIS training camps belonging
to Islamist group Jaysh al-Izza with the caption “Can /sg/ find it?”
Other 4chan users saw this as a call-to-arms and swiftly took to the web, scouring through
Google Earth & armed with “Northern Hama” as their original clue to work off of.
One user then suspected the town of Al-lataminah as the potential location of the training
grounds & quickly sent it off to the other users.
After honing in on one remote part of town, they highlighted all the significant landmarks
appearing in the background of the video and verified it on Google Earth as they appear
from a bird’s eye view!
They even found schematics of the electric towers in the video to provide measurements
& dimensions of said towers, then used these dimensions to triangulate an approximate distance
from the towers to the training camp.
While all this was going on, other users spotted & highlighted five roofing beams from an unfinished
building nearby.
They then verified those same beams on Google Earth in the same vicinity as the electrical
towers we mentioned earlier.
In a flurry of exhilaration, they pinged the exact coordinates back to Ivan Sidorenko,
who--thanks to his work as a war correspondent--is a friend of Russia’s Minister of Defense,
who in turn has the power to call in airstrikes.
The next day, on May the 31st, 2016, history was made.
The terrorist training camp was successfully bombed by Russia.
In another impressive, yet more humoristic feat, 4chan users--this time of the /pol/
sub-forum, which stands for “politically incorrect”--set their sites on actor Shia
LaBeouf, who was most well-known for his roles in the movie Transformers and the TV series
Even Stevens.
Joe Rogan exuberantly described what went down during a 2017 podcast, saying “What
the 4chan guys did was fucking amazing!”
On January 17th, 2017--the same day as Donald Trump’s inauguration--Shia LaBeouf launched
an outdoor exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.
With the words “he will not divide us” painted on the wall sitting above a camera
pointed outwards, it was intended to livestream those standing in front of it while chanting
the mantra “he will not divide us” as means to protest Trump’s presidency.
It was open to the public & originally set to stream 24 hours a day seven days a week
for the duration of Trump’s term in office.
The installation attracted its intended audience of anti-Trump protesters and unitentionally
attracted Trump supporters, the latter of whom adorned KEKistan flags & Pepe the frog
t-shirts.
This led to heated confrontations outside the museum and even LaBeouf’s arrest on
stream exactly one week after its opening.
Concerned about the public’s safety, the museum decided to shut down the exhibit, leaving
Shia temporarily exhibitless & plotting his next location for the flag.
It was eventually relocated to an undisclosed location where a “he will not divide us”
flag was raised on a flagpole with a camera pointing up at it showing only the flag & the
sky, so as not to give any clues on land...yet even that wasn’t enough to protect his project!
Just like at the New York exhibit, the camera was intended to livestream the flag 24/7 for
the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
It went live on March the 8th, 2017.
Discovering a Tweet from Shia made from a Tennessee diner soon after the flag was set
in place, 4chan users commissioned a Tennessee local to drive around blaring his car horn.
They then marked the exact time the horn was audible on the livestream--coordinated with
the driver’s exact location at that time--to successfully narrow down the flag’s general
vicinity to Greeneville, Tennessee.
In a swift move of calculated genius, the users took this clue one step further by using
a combination of flight patterns of planes spotted flying behind the flag, and mapped
stars visible during the stream’s overnight session.
They used this knowledge to triangulate the pole’s exact coordinates, and on March 9th,
2017--less than 37 hours after the flag was raised--Shia’s beloved “he will not divide
us” flag was taken down and replaced with both a “Make America Great Again” hat
and a Pepe the frog shirt.
It didn’t stop there though.
The flag was subsequently moved to a variety of locations internationally since LaBeouf
claimed the US was unsafe for the artwork to exist.
From Tennessee it was moved to England and France, both locations of which were uncovered
by 4chan.
LaBeouf even resorted to showing the exhibit online, but 4chan users ultimately subjected
his site to a DDoS attack, causing the site to crash.
Thanks for watching!
Would you rather be targeted by 4chan or have to live in quarantine for five years?
Let us know in the comments section below.