4chan: How To Blow The Internet

And troll reality.

You probably have heard of this website. I usually go to 4Chan instead of Quora because mostly the answers are more immediate and open, at least from my point of view. This website doesn’t require much private information, so we can log in without revealing much about our identity, which is great since we live in a digital era where we mostly have to give our information.

So basically, we can say or post whatever we want without people knowing us. It’s actually a good website to earn more information without people fearing that someone may appear to their front door, it’s quite similar to Tumblr but more diverse.

But sometimes, it turned out that that website led to other foolish things that people would do because of their anonymous feature. This website is a discussion platform about pop cultures, books, and many other entertainments. However, some things just keep leading to another.

Here are 3 strangest events that happened that came from 4chan and brought to reality.

1) The iPrank

Remember the news when people were ‘charging’ their iPhone in the microwave back in 2014? That actually happened. All because someone from 4chan recreated the iPhone advertisement and managed to convince some people that the phone’s updated IOS enables them to do some impossible things with those features.

This picture was posted in 4chan a few years ago, it’s not clear who originally posted it, but the source was first there.

The advertisement made a believable campaign using sophisticated algorithms that proofs that the iPhone can fully charge in the Microwave for 2 minutes. People actually did this.

Twitter was full of people posting that their iPhone was destroyed after following what the fake campaign says. You would think that this was a small thing, but no. Many people did this to the point that the big news picked it up. Even Apple and the police had to interfere to ensure Apple users aren’t repeating this incident. This was how the prank got too far.

4chan users are very creative and skillful when it comes to creating art, and that was how they were able to convince people to do even the strangest things.

This isn’t the first time 4chan made Apple advertisement for fun and led to disasters. The other campaigns they made also looks very believable, they used iPhone’s marketing format that we usually see in their advertisements to make it look official.

The other campaigns were:

1. iOS 7 enables waterproof (2013): People actually drowned their iPhones. Why they did this is another question that needs to be raised.
2. iPhone is bendable (2014): Although the users noticed this, 4chan convinced them otherwise that it is a new feature from the iPhone and that they were encouraged to do bend it until it completely folds. True story: users actually did this.

These were the events that actually happened. Apple wasn’t the only target.

2) #Agile2013 Disaster

Agile was a big business conference where professionals people come together for networking. It was a huge conference, obviously, they must take it seriously. However, it didn’t last long to look professional for a day.

Agile had this Twitter Wall where they display people who tweeted with the #Agile2013. Whoever wrote it with that particular hashtag, that tweet will be in display on that Twitter Wall.

People were loving it. They posted their moments on Twitter and showing how amazing it was. That is….until one 4chan user in that conference had something else in mind.

This person wrote on 4chan and requested other users to post anything stupid with the #Agile2013. That way, their posts can be on display at the Twitter Wall. Apparently, some users picked it up and decided to give it a try.

And they did it.

One person after another posted memes, trolls, jokes, and many other things that didn’t relate to the conference at all. The Agile staff began to notice these trolls tweets and knew that they had to do something. As the Twitter Wall feeds were flooded with trolls and it was uncontrollable, they had to close it.

3) Bald For Bieber

In 2012, someone on 4chan made a piece of fake news that Justin Bieber has cancer. Some users were creating fake posts from official accounts and claimed that it is true, and that was how #BaldForBieber was born. They even faked a tweet from his official account that he was thankful that his fans are giving him supports.

This didn’t take long for other fans to start doing what the fake tweet said. Fans were actually going bald for Bieber, not realizing that it is another troll from 4chan.

A few days later, the news picked it up and posted that Justin Bieber isn’t sick. His bodyguard confirmed that he is fine. How the fans react to this, I haven’t figured it out. But the public has already expressed that people should’ve fact check before doing something like this. It’s a cruel prank, but then again, it’s 4chan.

Thoughts:

So many other websites and platforms can do the same thing that 4chan did. Tumblr is a good example, but I find that that site is more to art than memes. One thing for sure is that 4chan is a powerful website.

There are two things that 4chan taught me:

1. Be careful of hoaxes.
2. Never underestimate trolls.

I still use that website sometimes, it’s quite a humoristic site when you need to read something funny. But please do be careful on the internet as well.