Packs of the anonymous online pranksters who populate the messy corners of message board 4chan have perpetrated plenty of real world actions that range from hilarious to possibly justified to outright bullying, like demanding that Justin Bieber play North Korea or stopping cat torturers to ordering endless boxes of pizzas to the home of a moderator of a competing website. (4chan’s supposedly more worldly descendants, Anonymous, have helped fight Scientology, corporations, and most famously, tyrannical governments.)
4chan’s latest prank: poking fun at internet daters – whom they ridicule, according to one Internet meme, as being “forever alone” – by setting up fake online dating profiles, inviting men in New York City to rendezvous at a specific corner in Times Square at a certain time, and watching a crowd of eager lonelyhearts congregate for nothing. Nothing except having their photos taken by webcam and by a few photographers on the scene – as if the indignity of getting their hearts twisted by a pack of sadistic guys who also can’t get dates wasn’t sick and cruel enough.
Videos by VICE
if you feel like looking at that sort of Internet meanness come to life, Viceland has some photos of the “involuntary flashmob,” and Know Your Meme’s Don Caldwell (formerly a Motherboard editor), has an interview with one of the double jilted.
