Smiley is one of this fall’s latest horror flicks that premiered on Oct. 12. The film is about a teenage girl who comes across an urban legend of a smiley-faced serial killer on the website 4chan.org. Somehow she is able to summon him through the website and starts to believe that she is his next victim. 4chan is an actual website that provides an image-based bulletin board where users can anonymously post anything they want on the various discussion boards. And I mean anything. Most of the groups are pretty clean and interest-based, with topics such as Origami and Anime, but in the Random group also known as /b/, it can get x rated. From free porn exchanges, to racial and sexually abusive jokes, it’s no surprise this section is known as the armpit of the Internet. But what happens when one of these jokes goes too far? Is there such a thing as crossing the line on the Internet? The director of Smiley, Michael Gallagher, believes so.
Gallagher started to receive death threats a couple weeks ago after going to Los Angeles and New York where he did press screenings for his film. In an interview with Variety, Gallagher reported some of the threats he was receiving on the 4chan board. One user wrote, “DIRECTOR AND WRITER OF THIS FILM MUST DIE!” Another, “We are considering killing his dog and reporting him for animal cruelty.” Gallagher, whose YouTube comedy channel boasts over 340 million views, says that he is used to negative comments. “I like to think that I’m impervious to this stuff, but when I have my family and my girlfriend and people who are working on the movie worried about this, it’s different.” According to Variety, after users began to post Gallagher’s personal information on the 4chan website such as his address and phone number, as well as the Facebook pages of his girlfriend and other family members, he decided to go to authorities for help. The Los Angeles police didn’t prove to be much help when they just advised him to change his number and his accounts. Gallagher has now been in contact with the FBI who is starting to look into the case.
Certainly, I believe in freedom of speech. One of the reasons 4chan is so popular, is because it offers just that: a self-monitored website where anonymous users have the ability to write some of the most controversial things. However, when those thoughts are brought past the Internet and start to intertwine with the personal lives of others, I believe some sort of authority should step in. The death threats over the phone may just be a part of the dark humor of the 4channers, but still they are something that need to be looked into for the safety of Gallagher and his family. Charles Toledo, a senior at UT studying history, often logs onto 4chan as a quick homework break. When he heard about the threats towards Gallagher he didn’t seem surprised, “When you have a website that is so widely used and not filtered it is inevitable that nutcases are going to occasionally pop out.” When asked about Gallagher’s personal information being put on the website he commented, “I fully believe in freedom of speech as our constitutional right, but in a case where someone’s safety is in question I believe their private information should be taken down.”
Not everyone believes Gallagher is the innocent victim in this story. In fact, some believe he is playing up the threats in order to boost publicity for the low budget film. Cole Styker, author of “Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web” received threats from 4channers as well when he published his book that focused on Anonymous, one of the most powerful hacking groups on the web that originated from the 4chan website. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Styker revealed that he thought Gallagher might have been “playing it up,” but still thought it was something that needed to be looked into saying, “You have to take it seriously, even though 99.9 percent of them are just people goofing off.”
The Internet invites users to post their honest opinions. Often times it’s brutally honest. It comes down to what we categorize as a serious and possibly dangerous threat or as something empty with no real harm. However, the fact that the 4channers began to send Gallagher attacks through his personal email and phone is dangerous and definitely a sign that the matter should be investigated by authorities.
Vanessa Righeimer can be reached at vanessa.righeimer@spartans.ut.edu