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Month: May 2021

‘It Came From Something Awful’ Suffers From Factual Errors

Posted in Creative Commons, Journalism, and Occupy Wall Street

I don’t write about books often, and usually I stick to good ones, but I feel this needs to be said: “It Came From Something Awful” is a book that, at minimum, needed more fact-checking before publication.

Though the book came out in 2019, author Dale Beran is back in the spotlight because of the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Beran is seen as one of the experts on 4chan, and 4chan is seen as a key origin point of What Just Happened ™.

When I dug into the book, I found out this argument represents the first third of it at most, and my problems with the latter chapters make me call the whole thing into question.