More than two decades ago, a group of young, predominantly male internet users started congregating on an online forum called 4chan, where they circulated memes, co-ordinated pranks and orchestrated disinformation campaigns. A subset of them formed a loose collective that called itself Anonymous.
But what began as “fun and high jinks” kicked off what Canadian hacker Aubrey Cottle characterizes as “a chain reaction that resulted in the alt-right online culture wars and … essentially blossomed into the rise of Trump.”
Quite the stretch