All Your Flag Are Belong To Us

March 11, 2017 6:42 PM

Shia Labeouf's "He Will Not Divide Us" project (previously) started in Queens, and then moved to Albuquerque, and then had to move again, due to violence and vandalism at each location. Labeouf's third iteration of the project was just a live stream of a flag with the words "He Will Not Divide Us", flying in an undisclosed location. Of course, some people on the internet took that as a challenge: How 4Chan's Worst Trolls Pulled Off the Heist of the Century.
posted by 23skidoo (61 comments total)

I'm sure this is a problematic opinion, but I'm not even mad, I'm just impressed at the levels of fuckery that it takes to do something like this.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 6:50 PM on March 11, 2017 [21 favorites]

I'm mad that these people even exist, and I'm impressed at the lengths they will go to be shitty.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:57 PM on March 11, 2017 [23 favorites]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4chan-does-first-good-thing-pulls-off-the-heist-of-the-century1

Thought better of claiming that 4chan going after an art exhibit that was supposed to be about solidarity and defeating hate counted as a "good thing", did we, Vice?
posted by Sequence at 7:04 PM on March 11, 2017 [20 favorites]

The problem with screaming into the void, is that sometimes the void listens. Sometimes it takes notes.
posted by Leelas at 7:12 PM on March 11, 2017 [21 favorites]

I'm split between horrified and impressed. Those things are not like the other.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:17 PM on March 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

I seriously cannot imagine any other group of people putting so much effort into something so petty. What is the Leftist version of this? What is the Normie version of this?

We live in strange times.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 7:23 PM on March 11, 2017 [12 favorites]

It makes for a much better art project after 4chan pulled this off - I had been irritated by the project in the first place because my vision of art is not something that has One Specific Thing It's About. Art that can only be interpreted in the specific way the artist chooses is, quite frankly, bad art.

If we choose to interpret the internet as an artistic medium, which we of course must, this is much more interesting as a collaborative effort with the trolls included.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 7:23 PM on March 11, 2017 [6 favorites]

I am impressed in the same sense as I am impressed by salmonella spreading in a petri dish or insects devouring a carcass.
posted by Behemoth at 7:24 PM on March 11, 2017 [49 favorites]

"the heist of the century" do they know about the ele—
posted by listen, lady at 7:26 PM on March 11, 2017 [16 favorites]

Ugh. I pretty much reflexively hate Shia Labeouf and his shitty art projects, but if there's one group of people that is by definition worse than him it's nazis.
posted by Artw at 7:35 PM on March 11, 2017 [33 favorites]

I'm mad about immigrants being officially harassed by the state security organs and terrorized by assholes emboldened by them. I'm mad that people of color, regardless of their immigration status, have to live in that much more fear due to the same general atmosphere of permissiveness. I'm mad about an administration appointing people to head agencies who believe those very agencies should not exist. I'm mad that an administration now that does not accept the realities of climate change may push the future habitability of our planet past the point of no return. I'm mad that LGBTQ people are having their rights to basic human dignity unilaterally rescinded. I'm mad that the government is determined to make it next to impossible for women to have autonomy over their own bodies and reproductive decisions. I'm mad that there's a very real chance that I will not be able to buy health insurance next year.

I'm pretty meh about a bunch of internet jerks participating in some rich weirdo's performance art project. I only have so much outrage to give, and it's being taxed right now.
posted by indubitable at 7:36 PM on March 11, 2017 [41 favorites]

I agree good art has to have lots of possible interpretations, but when the audience's interpretations get so bizarre and obsessive, they decide to, say, kill people over them, as with Helter Skelter and Manson, we're no longer in the realm of healthy obsession with and interpretation of art.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:37 PM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

My opinion is that this is not, actually, The Heist of the Century.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:42 PM on March 11, 2017 [25 favorites]

So stalking as an art form, eh? Sure, why not, if trolling people with a clothes iron with nails glued to the underside is, I guess anything's possible...
posted by saulgoodman at 7:42 PM on March 11, 2017

It used to be this tired refrain that, "the fascists have all the best uniforms." That is, the politics and atrocities of fascist movements are despicable, but don't they all just look so stylish and snappy and disciplined!

Well, at least this round of fascism has finally put that nonsense to rest.
posted by byanyothername at 7:48 PM on March 11, 2017 [10 favorites]

Imagine if we could harness this much displaced energy to disrupt the power structures that exist right now, for good. It would be a really powerful thing, but I guess people would miss out on some lulz.
posted by xingcat at 7:50 PM on March 11, 2017 [10 favorites]

As a collective piece (which is the nature of the piece) it becomes a far better representation of the zeitgeist with the addition of the 4chan trolls, despite what the artist intended. Art isn't inherently (morally) good or bad, it is an entirely interpretive and subjective process.

"This is a Thing, but a Thing ONLY for people I agree with" was the inherent problem with the democratic party this election.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 7:53 PM on March 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think there's probably a middleground between "good art can mean any random crazy thing you might think and that's always good" and "art has multiple reasonable interpretations" that's gone missing recently.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:00 PM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Contrails? Really? You've been trolled. If the whole thing isn't a Shia-troll, then the 4chan guys are denizens of the interwebs and would've traced the ip address of the web cam, that get's it to a few miles radius if not more precise. Even if the feed was relayed through proxies, proxies can be traversed (see recent CIA example).
posted by sammyo at 8:04 PM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

The people who were doing this were not doing this in good fun on both sides. This involves two sets of people who are attempting to send very specific messages, and one of those groups of people are racists, misogynists, and fascists, who have recently used these same investigatory skills to attempt to ruin the lives of, for example, women who had the audacity to talk about video games. I don't really care about the art project itself. I care a lot about condoning obsessive behavior from hate groups.
posted by Sequence at 8:05 PM on March 11, 2017 [49 favorites]

This community theater mash-up of Hackers, Videodrome, and Children of Men is just terrible.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:09 PM on March 11, 2017 [16 favorites]

Yes saulgoodman, I'm sure the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

I'm against Trump and against hatred, but in my mind there is no doubt that 4chan has improved Shia's little vanity piece, which was milquetoast at best at inception. You can be against something and still admit that it has improved something on artistic merit.

It was a bad piece in the beginning - a webcam and some people expressing their feelings. Great, I can get that on chatroulette. View it from a wider angle - Shia is a washed up celeb and 4chan is an horde of racist/etc./etc. asses.

This is was not a good art piece to begin with, and it got better by the addition of outsider views. You may not like the views, but it made the piece better.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 8:12 PM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I hate 4chan for their damn "President troll" far more than I could for this.

That said, it's increasingly hard to hide anything in the panopticon even if you're not broadcasting it yourself.
posted by corb at 8:16 PM on March 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

I used to be on crew for a big week long arts festival in the desert and lots of very dangerous capture the flag went on before the event. But in the end you always had to give the flag back because if you kept it, you were just a shitty thief.
posted by Catblack at 8:16 PM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

But they don't even know this guy. Why do they care about him or his crappy art so much they stalk him over it? He's just some dude they don't know whose job involves acting like other people in public. Why is it his fault they hate him and his art so much. When I don't like other people's art, I ignore it, I don't go out and invent whole new methodologies of location analysis for finding them so I can harass them. Am I doing it wrong? Do you assume it's not felt as harassment by Shia himself, so there's no one harmed here? Because whether you like him or not, he's a human being and probably has human feelings.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:25 PM on March 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

If I were him, I'd realize that as an artist in this extremely volatile period, that this is an addition to the piece, not a destruction. There is now more publicity about this than when he first announced the damn thing.

'HE WILL NEVER DIVIDE US'

Launch 4 livestreams.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 8:36 PM on March 11, 2017

Just because you don't like art doesn't make it conscionable for these shitbags to steal it.
posted by Megafly at 8:50 PM on March 11, 2017 [6 favorites]

What I've learned about not having outrage is that sometimes not having outrage leads to even bigger problems. Like, when Gamergate happened, a lot of people just said it was an isolated phenomenon. Same thing with the Hugo awards.

I don't mean this as a slippery slope. It's easier to step in when the neighborhood bully is still pulling wings off of butterflies and hasn't yet started barbecuing people.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:59 PM on March 11, 2017 [27 favorites]

What is the Normie version of this?

Assuming he's not CIA, the career of Brown Moses.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:04 PM on March 11, 2017

Just because you don't like art doesn't make it conscionable for these shitbags to steal it.

I do like art - and this is art, happening. This is how it happens now. This is something that is still happening.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 9:46 PM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

But they don't even know this guy. Why do they care about him or his crappy art so much they stalk him over it? He's just some dude they don't know whose job involves acting like other people in public.

In fairness, Shia Labeouf is an actual cannibal.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:13 PM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Let's deport the trolls. They aren't adding anything to the human experiment. I'm sort of meh on their right to free speech. Maybe that makes me a bad person.
posted by freecellwizard at 10:28 PM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Imagine if we could harness this much displaced energy to disrupt the power structures that exist right now, for good. It would be a really powerful thing, but I guess people would miss out on some lulz.

Anonymous was born out of the chans. Those malleable little fuckers would have followed anyone who gave them validation.

However, as we all know, when you wrestle with pigs you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Turns out, not wrestling with pigs allowing them to build a pig army to take over the reins of power and become the ruiners of all that is good in this world kinda sucks too.
posted by fullerine at 11:28 PM on March 11, 2017 [6 favorites]

I'm not necessarily doubting that this happened as described, but is the only source for this self-reporting from 4chan?
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:45 PM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do you assume it's not felt as harassment by Shia himself, so there's no one harmed here? Because whether you like him or not, he's a human being and probably has human feelings.

Do you assume the HWNDU is not felt as harassment by /pol/ (and millions of Trump supporters), so there's no one harmed here? Because whether you like them or not, they're human beings and probably have human feelings.

Gerrymandering the borders between what is a human being and what is not may well be at the root of a lot of problems in the world today.
posted by merlynkline at 12:39 AM on March 12, 2017

Imagine if we could harness this much displaced energy to disrupt the power structures that exist right now, for good. It would be a really powerful thing, but I guess people would miss out on some lulz.

The problem with smashing existing power structures is that, as we've learned from 20th century history, fascism and authoritarianism can build something to replace it much, much quicker than anyone who intends to make the world a better place for everyone can.

It's not even necessary to smash the existing power structures. Even in this neoliberal capitalist environment, there's no real call for libraries to be reinventing their business model. Libraries are basically socialist and very few Americans have noticed.
posted by Merus at 12:41 AM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

merlynkline, for my money, I feel that 4chan's human feelings fall into the "it's always okay to punch a Nazi in the face" category.
posted by sldownard at 3:19 AM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

I do like art - and this is art, happening. This is how it happens now. This is something that is still happening.

Exactly. It's actually pretty funny. They captured the flag.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:20 AM on March 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

"This is a Thing, but a Thing ONLY for people I agree with" was the inherent problem with the democratic party this election.

Ohhhhhhhhhh
posted by listen, lady at 5:30 AM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not sure precisely what your point about libraries and business models was, but I am quoting this FMFT:

The problem with smashing existing power structures is that, as we've learned from 20th century history, fascism and authoritarianism can build something to replace it much, much quicker than anyone who intends to make the world a better place for everyone can.

If you're the slightest bit inclined toward horizontalist, nonhierarchical, anarchist or consensus-oriented politics, and you're not already familiar with it, you owe it to yourself to read Joreen's foundational 1970-72 article "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." I think of the dynamic she identifies as an unpatched zero-day vulnerability in political formations that insist on conflating structure with coercive power.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:32 AM on March 12, 2017 [10 favorites]

I'm not necessarily doubting that this happened as described, but is the only source for this self-reporting from 4chan?

They've got a photo of the flag with a date on it. Presumably you could verify from the Livestream that it's no longer in place. Given that, I'm not sure why self-reporting would be problematic.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:43 AM on March 12, 2017

Let's deport the trolls. They aren't adding anything to the human experiment. I'm sort of meh on their right to free speech.

You are Donald Trump and I claim my five pounds!
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:46 AM on March 12, 2017

Is there any way we can convince 4chan to find and publish Trump's tax returns?

Otherwise, he really should livestream 4 flags, and then a day later, four more. And so on, keep the idiots busy.
posted by From Bklyn at 6:39 AM on March 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I hate to assist either side in this particular issue, but for rev 2. of this:

Team Shia should not use a physical flag. Use CGI with jet contrails pulled from the flight plan db-- perhaps with a location that hops every reasonable interlude-- I dunno-- every 20 minutes? With a reasonable budget, this strikes me as a 'can do, two weeks' type of thing with Shia-scale moneys.

Right now, Team /pol was sort of impressive, in a 'thousand monkeys | thousand typewriters' kind of way.

I can't say I'm watching the next match with anything other than bemused, detached interest. Kabuki commentary on kabuki politics in the garden of beasts, etc.
posted by mrdaneri at 8:29 AM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is there any way we can convince 4chan to find and publish Trump's tax returns?

This is the thing. They could use that kind of power for good--there was a point where you'd at least see channers going after the Church of Scientology and that's an organization I won't defend for a second. But that's not what they're in for, at this point. /pol/ is overtly misogynist, racist, antisemitic, transphobic. The Nazi thing isn't a joke anymore. The only way they'd go after Trump is if he literally changed all of his policies overnight. This isn't an accident, who they're targeting. It is intentional, and it is designed to make all of us who're in marginalized groups feel less safe, because they could go after us anytime they wanted. It is designed to make people who are outspoken in their support of marginalized groups feel less safe.

Because we ARE less safe, because they exist and people would rather just snicker about it than take these threats seriously.
posted by Sequence at 8:41 AM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

"It is where the id of the internet went to die—it is an ocean of p̶i̶s̶s̶ pissjugs."

You were so close, Mack! I sentence you to four more hours of programming featuring Bill O'Reilly until you get the facts about this "hacker named 4Chan" right. Say three naked bananas and four hail Pepe's as your penance.
posted by Mr. Fig at 9:10 AM on March 12, 2017

They could use that kind of power for good--there was a point where you'd at least see channers going after the Church of Scientology and that's an organization I won't defend for a second.

The enemy of an enemy is not your friend.

Attacking the Church of Scientology isn't necessarily "using power for good," any more than an arsonist burning down the Westboro Baptist Church uses power for good. 4chan is a mobilized mob, and I don't think that there's anything worth redeeming in that.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:28 AM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I also have ambiguous opinions about the politics of this. But I'm curious about the tech. Is there a writeup of the technical work that did this? Bonus points if it doesn't also include casual misogyny and CP links for the lulz. The embedded video is short on details.

It's easy to figure out which direction the camera is pointing from the sun. You can get rough latitude from stars if the horizon is in the frame; it's not very hard at all. But the images online shows no horizon and I can't decide how hard it'd be without that info, I guess you could infer something from the foreshortening of the flag pole? The contrails part seems much less likely to me, but maybe once you've narrowed it down to a latitude that search gets easier. The video shows them also comparing weather conditions.
posted by Nelson at 9:54 AM on March 12, 2017

Do you assume the HWNDU is not felt as harassment by /pol/ (and millions of Trump supporters)...

If a statement of support and togetherness offends your political sensibilities maybe stop and think what the fuck you're doing.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:11 AM on March 12, 2017 [8 favorites]

Attacking the Church of Scientology isn't necessarily "using power for good," any more than an arsonist burning down the Westboro Baptist Church uses power for good.

I'm not intending to argue the details here, so I don't think we actually disagree, here. Just that originally, there was some public image that the channers were attacking Bad People and that there was some kind of virtue in that. But they weren't. They were just trying to be disruptive, and they were going after "weirdos", not "people who were trying to destroy lives". They obviously don't have a problem with the latter, because now they've slid full-on into being not just an unruly mob but actively trying to terrorize people on the basis of their being something other than cis white men.
posted by Sequence at 10:43 AM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

So we're OK with organised mobs deciding what kind of art is degenerate now?

Chuckle chuckle those channers and their unrestricted ability to stalk, harass, chase and victimise anyone they don't like anywhere, and the fucking king they elected for the lulz.
posted by prismatic7 at 3:24 PM on March 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

But I'm curious about the tech. Is there a writeup of the technical work that did this?

I was pretty impressed at first, but upon digging a little deeper, I discovered that their big breakthrough was a starstruck waitress at a Tennessee diner who posted a picture of herself with Shia on twitter, which allowed them to narrow down the location to a specific area of the state. She did about 85% of their work for them. So keep that fact in mind before you fall for the "YEAHHHH BOYEEE! WEAPONIZED AUTISM FOR THE WIN!" hype.
posted by the hot hot side of randy at 4:22 PM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

Chan/Anonymous hype almost always turns out to be bullshit.
posted by Artw at 4:38 PM on March 12, 2017

Another trick they used was driving around said area honking the horn repeatedly and then cross-checking the time and location they honked the horn with the time that the sound was heard on the live stream. An ingenious tactic, to be sure, but not quite on the same level as the celestial navigation and contrail tracking stories you may have heard and which may or may not have been true.
posted by the hot hot side of randy at 4:56 PM on March 12, 2017

I think it's a mistake to treat 4chan or any other online community as monoliths across space and time, so much as an assemblage of different individuals and groups. The prevailing characterization right now is that it's the home and haven to /pol/, and all that entails. But I don't think that was always the case, even when it was Project Chanology and attacking Scientology. The tendency to troll and to hack and create mischief has always been there, it is true, but I don't think it was always motivated by malice. For one thing, I don't know if the actual hacker types that were behind Anonymous from that time period are still around, certainly they could have moved on, or were gutted by law enforcement. Not to mention the past (/b/) and present (/pol/) newsmakers aren't even the same board on 4chan.

I'm not a channer, but I do think that it's important to get history right, and I think there was times that various hacktivist factions or individuals on the site did engage in worthy causes with worthy intentions, such as in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian elections, during Occupy Wall Street or in the Arab Spring. Take a glance at the Wikipedia article and you'll see a variety of different activities, including attacking right-wing white supremacist/racist groups. I don't think the same people who took down Hal Turner or doxxed Klan members are the same people who turned the alt-right into a viral meme, let alone cared about GamerGate enough to be involved in it.

Obviously, having a better past doesn't nullify from having a bad present, but the important thing is to recognize that it's more complex than "they've always been hateful trolls, just they used to target more deserving groups." Like any other community, the composition and culture of a website changes over time, just faster because it's online.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:12 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

Meh. Fuck giving the child pornography board that gave the world Gamergate and the Alt Right a free pass. Channers should be assumed to be Nazis and scum until proven otherwise and probably not even then.
posted by Artw at 6:01 PM on March 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Also, Shia Lebeouf is Jewish, so there's that.
posted by divabat at 6:28 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

Think how great a world we could be living in if these people devoted that much effort and time to making the world a better place, rather than irritating a rich well-meaning actor.
posted by lucien_reeve at 3:51 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do you assume the HWNDU is not felt as harassment by /pol/ (and millions of Trump supporters), so there's no one harmed here?

Yes?

There's a guy in my medium-sized left coast city who likes to drive through downtown flying "HOLOCAUST = HOAX" next to the "TRUMP" flag on his pickup. Every time I see him I want to key his truck but I don't because I would be beaten, arrested and then sued for damages. I've never felt so much anger and fear towards an actual human being in my community (as opposed to say Donald Trump), and if millions of Trump supporters actually have that same visceral reaction to "He Will Not Divide Us" then the divide might already be insurmountable. Although I suspect that most Trump voters don't really give a shit about a flag flying on a webcam.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:13 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

These people live their lives in a constant state of irrational rage, nothing we do can raise or lower the level of it.
posted by Artw at 9:37 AM on March 13, 2017

Well, apparently they have a Transportation board named /n/, and they've created a promising improvement plan for Amtrak. Transportation?
posted by Apocryphon at 4:01 PM on March 13, 2017