On Tuesday, contributors to 4chan's /pol message board frantically scrambled to clear their anonymous names over accusations that they were behind a countdown clock that promised to reveal stolen nude photos of Emma Watson in retaliation for a speech Watson gave to the UN about feminism. That night, we found out they were in fact innocent. It was all a hoax designed to take down 4chan.
After Watson delivered a wonderful, amazing speech about the importance of feminism this weekend, emmayouarenext.com appeared, promising to leak the actress's nude photos in retaliation for her outspokenness. Shortly thereafter, some members of the /b/ messageboard started talking about it. While some of the talk was shitty in tone (shocks of shocks), nobody took credit for the impending leaks.
Didn't matter. Monday night, news sites the world over had latched onto the narrative that 4chan was going to leak Watson's nudes like they leaked the stolen nude photos of other celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Aubrey Plaza. By Tuesday, the story picked up steam, even inspiring round-ups of the ways that feminists had rallied around Watson in her time of need.
Not only was the countdown's link to 4chan completely false, the the countdown itself was a hoax. Hopeful fappers waiting anxiously for the leaks of Emma's nudes were at midnight redirected to rantic.com, a site that exists with the sole intention of shutting down 4chan. There's a letter to Barack Obama on the home page and everything, just in case the President had been carefully monitoring the internet for stolen Hermoine nudes between ordering strikes against ISIS. The letter reads,
Dear President Obama: We have been hired by celebrity publicists to bring this disgusting issue to attention. The recent 4chan celebrity nude leaks in the past 2 months have been an invasion of privacy and is also clear indication that the internet NEEDS to be censored. Every Facebook like, share & Twitter mention will count as a social signature — and will be one step closer to shutting down www.4chan.org.
Not sure how this is going to work, but. Okay.
So, at the end of the day, it turns out that 4chan was framed by a person pretending to threaten to do what 4chan has in the past followed through on threatening to do. The wolf who cried boy.
Image via AP