“I reject your reality and I substitute my own!”

– From the film The Dungeonmaster (1984) and *not* Adam Savage

There’s a fairly popular video and text meme which starts with a reminder that it costs nothing to be kind and another voice chimes in asking how much it costs to be an asshole, expressing an interest in paying that fee. It’s funny, sure, but it also gets to a specific aspect of internet culture that makes any location, any forum, any channel of communication a toxic hellhole — troll behavior. Not even troll behavior for a good cause, as in to rile up someone for social, cultural, or communal change, we’re talking doing something troll-like just to do it. The issue is that these individuals are either ignorant to or apathetic about the repercussions regarding the choices they make online. In the latest documentary from filmmakers Giorgio Angelini (Owned: A Tale of Two Americas) and Arthur Jones (Feels Good Man) comes The Antisocial Network (on Netflix with the added subtitle Memes to Mayhem), an introspective look at the ways in which 4chan shifted from an otaku community into shitposters, racists, and conspiracy theorists which would ultimately impact modern American politics as it exists today.

A scene from the documentary THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK. Photo Credit: Netflix. Photo Courtesy of SXSW.

If this feels like hyperbole intended to elicit a response, you’d be right, but that doesn’t make it any less correct. Angelini and Jones lay out a timeline from the birth of 4chan by Christopher Poole, first known by his handle “moot,” through the January 6^th insurrection at the Washington, D.C., Capitol building. Along the way, the filmmakers sit down with several individuals, some whom provide full names, some whom only provide their online handles, who talk about their time in the early days of the internet, how they connected with 4chan, the creation of 8chan, and the events prior to the insurrection. These conversations reveal two sides of a corner of the internet wherein better angels were won out by those who enjoyed the power anonymity provided, wielding it without concern for real world consequences. Amid the myriad of examples, the smartest thing that the filmmakers do is showcase the community as it was when it first started, including 4chan’s origins as an off-shoot of a Japanese forum 2chan. By doing this, not only is the viewing audience afforded a learning opportunity, but it helps plants seeds for what comes later.

Without getting into the weeds of what is learned, it’s important to note that 2chan transformed from a safe haven for Japanese youth filled with malaise into a right-wing, heavily political and violence-inciting spawn point. In the documentary, at least two incidents are linked to 2chan’s influence, which helps to draw a correlation as to what can happen when unfettered, unmoderated shitposting (defined as online material used purposefully “to post off-topic, false, or offensive contributions to an online forum with the intent to derail the discussion or provoke other participants”) is allowed to roam free between Japan and the United States. In the parlance of the day, if I had a nickel for every time, I’d have two, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice … though, in this case, the filmmakers lay out how incidents keep happening whether through 2chan, 4chan, or 8chan (the offshoot created by Fredrick Brennan (a featured subject in the doc)) which are directly connected to the birth of Q and QAnon. Though the documentary is well-paced, speeding through a great deal of events and individuals, it does allow for introspection (both for the subjects and the audience) so that there’s a sense not of judgement or alarm but of urgency to recognize that the world today is built off of choices influenced by the many and those many by have been too immature to see, in the moment, the larger scale impact of their choices.

A scene from the documentary THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK. Photo Credit: Netflix. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.

At no point does Angelini and Jones point a finger at the netizens who utilize any of the chans as the individual specifically responsible for the insurrection, but they do highlight key moments in the rise of each organization, how they embraced the delights of power garnered by online personas and actions and powered by youthful invincibility. This is significant because the lesson that should *not* be taken is that social media and the internet are bad. There are many factors that lead to any one major event and rarely are they ever precipitated by a single thing that happened within the minutes or days leading to it. For instance, in recent Dan Partland documentary God & Country (2024), Partland speaks to a variety of legal and religious scholars, as well as politically-minded individuals, in order to take audiences back to the 1970s to illustrate how Christian Nationalism has slowly influenced and taken control of the Republican Party, leading to the nomination of Donald Trump for the 2016 election and his subsequent win and presidency. The current MAGA movement was born out of several sects of the Republican Party (including the Tea Party), but the roots stem from Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. So, no, the “always online” crowd aren’t responsible for the insurrection, yet, the evidence does present how the idea that reality doesn’t always bend to personal perspective but can be reformed and reshaped into something more personally pleasing online is. For instance, in the early days of 4chan, a running meme would be to use the shorthand “CP” to mean “child porn” or “child pornography.” This didn’t mean that something actually involved such a heinous and disgusting form of online content, but it was used to shitpost and something that was used throughout the site in order to screw with people. Later, as QAnon grew, “CP” was transformed to mean “cheese pizza” and gave us PizzaGate. With the testimony from the subjects, each with their own sense of well-intention, the use of detailed evidence, and dazzling techno-centric animatics, The Antisocial Network goes beyond compelling and serves as a warning for what happens when too much access and not enough media literacy is available to the masses.

This is where The Antisocial Network becomes the most impactful amid all the discoveries laid before us. The wrong lesson would be to enhance moderation or restrict access to information, when what should be done is increase education and provide support to those who need it. It shouldn’t be a contentious topic to want to reduce and remove child pornography or those who seek it, but the direction that the arm of that particular mission is politically-charged and aimed at innocent people. What started as a couple of people taking swipes at a few white supremacists snowballed into an attack on a private business, protests against Hollywood drinking the blood of children, and placing laws on who can read what to children, well-intentioned protection measures that are fueled by fear, not reason, and continually fed by faceless masses just looking for a few good lulz. But while those folks are laughing behind their monitors, the impact has led to death and destruction — all of which could’ve been avoided if the ease by which those in need are manipulated through the false sense of being seen or heard had the means to discern truth from bullshit designed to elicit strong emotional responses. The need to reject reality when it grows too painful and replace it with one that comforts you, even if it means creating beasts you feel you can fight rather than dealing with the ones you can’t, is a very human response to pain and trauma.

Co-director Giorgio Angelini. Photo Credit: Rich Roll. Photo Courtesy of SXSW.

Co-director Arthur Jones. Photo Credit: Jim Newberry. Photo Courtesy of SXSW.

What Angelini and Jones lay out for us clearly proclaims this and should instill within those who recognize the issues present in modern usage of social media a sense of empathy and a desire for both outreach and reform, not to throw locks on things as history teaches us (as does this doc) that trying to lock something away only sends it off to feed and grow elsewhere. Of course, this seems like a naive view, born of someone who wasn’t there when the first modems were sounded, when AOL discs ran aplenty, when A/S/L didn’t roll off the tongue, and forbidden things could be found as far as the digital frontier could reach — but I was and that’s why this matters. The things that these filmmakers uncover demonstrate that all we think we know about what’s going on online is far less than we think, so education and connection (touching grass, as it were) is the best prophylactic for digital diseases from infecting the real world.

Screening during SXSW 2024.
Available on Netflix April 5^th, 2024.

For more information, head to the official SXSW The Antisocial Network webpage.

Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.

Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming

Tags: Arthur Jones, film festival, Giorgio Angelini, Netflix, Netflix Original, politics, Section Perspective Films, streaming, SXSW, SXSW 2024, The Antisocial Network, The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem