Quick thread about 4chan and their years-long campaign to tie the LGBTQ community to pedophilia:
Last year, I wrote a story about how 4chan trolls were posing as gay men on Twitter to try to frame the LGBTQ community as trying to normalize pedophilia.
nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…
Far-right sites ran headlines like “Resistance Member Says Pedophilia Is Sexual Orientation, Claims Bigotry” based on a fake Twitter account created by a chan troll.
This is a homophobic trope, an extension of ages-old homophobic slippery slope arguments against LGBT people.
There were real gay men who had their identity stolen for this disinformation campaign. They were deeply kind guys who run a blog highlighting safe places for LGBTQ people to travel.
This is not even close to the first time 4chan trolls have tried to do this. Trolls have created fake posters adding “P” to the end of “LGBT” posters in Oregon. Trolls took to Tumblr to create fake pedophile acceptance flags.
them.us/story/behind-t…
Now, there are rumors all over the far-right internet that a mysterious “they” is trying to normalize pedophilia. They say Cuties, a Netflix movie meant to criticize the hypersexualization of children, is in support of it.
Those trolls will show up here.
The far-right content mill for this narrative took off this weekend. While regular people were at the park, there was a vacuum for real information.
It was filled by old-fashioned fake news sites, who published and deleted wholly made up stuff like this:
archive.is/hsl71
One of the top goals of the worst people on the internet for the last few years is to try to tie the LGBTQ community to pedophilia for political purposes.
So when these people say “they” are trying to normalize pedophilia, it’s worth asking them:
Who is “they” here?
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.