It Came from Something Awful is a political book about the alt-right's origins from Dale Beran, co-author of A Lesson Is Learned, that was published by All Points Books in 2019. While it has an enticing open, the rest of the book has glaring issues and I would not recommend it.¹⁾

Upon first glance, the book explains how counterculture on the internet produced a new era of political polarization in the United States that created the alt-right and culminated in the Unite the Right rally. However, it gives us a flawed account of internet history, then shoehorns in all of these key figures or grifters to make the 'thesis' work, giving this faux enlightenment.

The first few chapters provide a history lesson on counterculture in the United States, a fair understanding of why Hillary Clinton lost, and how the term 'hacker' evolved. Now, the third chapter, our main focus, starts by glossing over 'otaku-zoku' (オタク族), 'hikikomori', 'bean sprout generation' (もやし世代), and 'idol' culture in a critique of consumerism, then he tries to shock you with the 'Otaku Murderer' moral panic.

Following this, we get a snapshot of what little people knew of Japanese bulletin boards at the time,²⁾ where the author thought Amezou meant 'First Channel', then he confuses Mona and Giko. After that, we get an interview with renowned domestic abuser, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka,³⁾ then Beran partially lies about being a Something Awful user and brings up threads that “Shii” probably mentioned.⁴⁾

The fourth chapter gives us a very 'sensationalized' history of early 4chan, mentioning the Something Awful crackdown that happens a year or so after, then he fucks up by mentioning the Brony fandom, claiming Generation 4 of My Little Pony somehow started before 2010.⁵⁾ He then goes on this tangent about 'nerd stock characters', but reducing Serial Experiments Lain to a 'young schoolgirl' feels disingenuous.⁶⁾

For the fifth chapter, we start to get the 'romanticized' view of 4chan in the late 2000s from a /b/ perspective. However, he awkwardly tries to jam weev in, then claims the GNAA caused⁷⁾ 4chan's two-month shutdown⁸⁾ but miscites an attack on Megatokyo,⁹⁾ and never mentions Encyclopedia Dramatica's founder once. He then rattles off old /b/ events¹⁰⁾ and claims 'gets' were a metric.

The sixth chapter briefly goes over Project Chanology, where he pretended to be a reporter. The seventh chapter goes over political activism, the Wikichan book,¹¹⁾ how Barack Obama disappointed, then goes into WikiLeaks with Assange and Manning. The eight chapter would then suggest Operation Payback retroactively exposed Palantir's part in the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

As for the ninth and tenth chapters, it attempts to cover /r9k/ and /pol/ respectively, cramming in Fredrick Brennan, Wizardchan, Pepe the Frog, the 2014 Isla Vista killings, incels, then he tries to explain, to paraphrase, why 'hierarchy-minded, nostalgic losers' are drawn into fascism. The eleventh chapter goes over GamerGate, how 4chan and 8chan came out, and how political grifters jumped in.

We are then shown how these pieces all fall together: the twelfth chapter shows how Donald Trump became 'relatable', the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters names key figures that helped facilitate the alt-right, the fifteenth and sixteenth chapter shine a light on Tumblr, identity politics, and how one can turn 'out-of-touch', then the seventeenth chapter highlights patterns that make the two camps distinct, yet similar.

The rest of the book recaps the late 2010s: the eighteenth chapter mentions all of these key political grifters while touching on conspiracies (e.g. Pizzagate, QAnon), the nineteenth chapter describes how people reacted to Donald Trump's first term and the Unite the Right rally, and the final chapter mostly tries to wrap everything up, mentions meeting “Shii”,¹²⁾ and circles back to counterculture.

In the third chapter, Beran claims he had a Something Awful account “either in 1999 or 2000”, but neglects to mention that he only stuck to threads about his webcomic A Lesson Is Learned,¹³⁾ plus an older article had Beran claim he discovered them in 2005.¹⁴⁾ When a Something Awful thread was made, Beran creates a new account to say that he was misremembering and his article from 2017 was poorly researched.¹⁵⁾

• The final chapter about 2018 does briefly mention a “Marxist /leftypol/” on 8chan.
• As a side note, a viral YouTube video by “MLYP” had initially recommended the book,¹⁶⁾ but later omits this recommendation when the video was redone after the Epstein reveal.

• Raspberry Heaven

• It Came From Something Awful on Macmillan Publishers