A Rede Antissocial: Dos Memes ao Caos

The internet's influence on culture, politics and media is ubiquitous. But who influences the internet? This documentary answers that question - or starts to - by focusing on the rise of 4chan, the anonymous imageboard website that served as a surrogate online community for grassroots activists and agitators on both the left and right. This documentary exposes (perhaps unintentionally) the harrowing fact that the 4chan community was full of the most wretched, hateful and inadequate people you're ever likely to encounter. If you met any of this documentary's interviewees in person you would dismiss them as pathetic crackpots or worse and you would promptly ignore them. But ensconced in the anonymity of a signal-boosting online echo chamber they were able to exercise a grossly outsized influence on the 2010s. The internet (supposedly a means of democratizing discourse by giving a globe-spanning voice to virtually anyone) has actually given the loudest and most prominent voices to cabals of unaccountable weirdos who spend all their time on the internet.

"The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem" is a documentary tracing the evolution from 2 chan, a Japanese anime website, to 4 chan to Anonymous to 8 chan to nihilism to Q Anon. It also shows how the business model of stirring up anger and fear spread to the mainstream social media. It interviews key people in the creation and development of this phenomenon. And it shows how even they get horrified with what they have unleashed. I knew some of this but the documentary connects the dots. It also shows how this has bled into the real world. But this isn't anti-technology. Behind this is people, some well-meaning but naive, some immature, some hateful, and some cynically using all the others.

Finally someone took the time to address this more or less properly.

So... Is it perfect? No.

But at least it tries to tackle the absurdity of the times we live in.

Going much further than other documentaries or books in unveiling some of the people that spawned the whole toxic internet trend - albeit leaving aside the vast influence of a certain current belligerent super power - it gives a simple, but credible, history lesson on why we are in the current political situation.

And no, I'm absolutely not talking just about the USA.

What happened there is ground zero for other 'experiences' that are starting to materialize in other countries (they even mention what happened in early 2000's with 2Chan) and that continue to occur in our age of misinformation.

The simple fact that some people are so desperate (and plainly stupid) as to be able to believe these pranksters should be enough to make us stop and meditate about what being online really means.

Just one more thing: this is a documentary and my rating is not based on the formal quality of the film.

This is a presentation of part of an important story.

A story that should be dissected and investigated much, much further. That said, as first efforts go this is a 5 in terms of usefulness and overall importance.

It's an interesting history lesson for someone like me, who was a bit of a technophobe until probably about 2010.

It charts the early years of the internet and perhaps the infancy of social media, I honestly had no idea that memes about so early on.

Amazing to see how politics plays such a big in the story, I nicely had very little idea, so there is a lot here to learn.

I didn't know a huge deal about Anonymous, so learning was a real eye opener, you can work out whether you think they were a force for change, for good, or for something else.

On the downside, it's too much, don't watch it if you have a headache, it'll make it ten times worse, it's relentless images, it's too much to take in.

I'm someone that feels quite strongly about changing anonymity rules online, maybe before anything happens, people need to realise and understand the origins, this would be a good place to start.

8/10.

Informative and enlightening documentation!

For people like me, who have only been able to delve deeper into the world of the Internet after a long period of family responsibilities, documentaries of this kind are helpful in understanding what has actually happened over the past two decades. The effects of the developments described in the film are visible to everyone in everyday and professional life. I didn't really like the excessive rush of images, but I admit that it fits the protagonists and their actions quite well.

The global streaming service NETFLIX certainly does educational work with such films. We should also remember the documentary about the CYBERBUNKER in the small German town of Traben-Trabach.

The question remains what to do now with the knowledge gained. The troll armies around the world remain active and have long been taking care of the next generation.