The term I would use is: 4chan users engaged in Live Action Role Playing. They were trying to spook you, and they did, apparently. The most they could muster from the entire world is < 200. I remember when the media tried telling us about how "Anonymous" were "hackers on steroids" who treated things like a "real life video game".[1] Yes, there are some creeps out there. But they are not a serious threat. [1]: [this video]
Example of sensationalist media coverage of internet hackers
Add to this a lot of overacting, and video clips repeating 20 times, and you'll have a half an hour program mostly about nothing. One can easily see that YouTube (as a platform) became just a shitty television when the host unironically flips through stacks of papers exactly the same way it was done in the classic: [this video]
Classic overwrought TV news segment compared to modern YouTube
Is it 2004 again? What's next, a news report with scary music showing how hackers from 4chan are exploding vans all around the nation using GPT-4?[1]. [1] [this video]
> Also it is still so surreal to me to see prestigious publications like the New Yorker talking about 4chan. Needs moar yellow van: [this video] (2007)
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.