The Man Trying to Resurrect 8chan (Starring 8chan's Founder)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everybody. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
the podcast where every week we talk about the worst
people in all of history, and today we have a
very special episode. Today we're talking about the man keeping
eight chan alive, or at least trying to fellow named
Jim Watkins Um And I should probably summarize from my

(00:22):
listeners who have not somehow caught this story, even though
I've covered it pretty heavily. All of twenty nineteen, a
chant was started as a radical free speech bashion on
the Internet and kind of the the the image of
a site called four chan. One of its sections, Pole
became a high of about right Nazism and gradually grew
dedicated to inspiring acts of terrorism. In March of this year,

(00:42):
one of the members of Pole live streamed video of
himself massacring Muslims and mosques in New Zealand. This was
the christ Church massacre. I'm sure everybody heard of that.
Since then, eight chan members carried out two more shootings
in Pawe and El Paso before the site was pulled
off the Internet, and the weeks since there's been one
more shooting in Hall, Germany, which was eight out by
another poster from Pole. The website is currently down, but

(01:04):
it's new owner, in the subject of today's episode, Jim Watkins,
is working tirelessly to bring it back online. But before
we get to Jim, we should probably talk about the
elephant of the room, which is the fact that my
guest today, Frederick Brennan, is the creator of eight chan
in the first place, back in two thousand thirteen. Hello Frederick, Hello,
how are you doing today? I'm doing, you know, as

(01:25):
good as could be, uh expected? Yeah, this is uh,
this is an entry, an odd episode. I'm sure it's
one I I didn't expect to record. Um, but you
and I have started working together a little bit over
the last couple of weeks. We just put out an
article in Belling Cat about the state of California's failure
to bring eight chan back on, and you've you've become
pretty pretty much an activist against the site's resurrection. I

(01:48):
think it'd be fair to say, sure, yeah, that would
be fair. Um. So again, I think a lot of
our listeners, you've done a lot of interviews before, so
I don't want to go too crazy into detail on
on you know, your whole back story, because people can
find plenty of that if they want to. But for
the sake of making this whole episode internally consistent, could
you like kind of walk us through a little bit
of your background up to like what kind of inspired

(02:10):
you to create eight chan in the first place? Right, So,
you know, I was an image board user for a
very long time, starting in UM when I was twelve
years old on four Chuan. So obviously that's a great
place to spend your teenage years there, there's um no

(02:31):
problem with that at all. So obviously, you know, it
kind of warps how you think about, you know, broader
society and yourself and all sorts of things because you
spend all your time in anonymous communication basically, UM, I

(02:51):
you know, had been involved in fortune for those years.
And in two thousand and ten, when four tans owner
removed the board that would later become the poll board,
it used to was originally called and for News, So
he removed that, and he also removed the R nine

(03:14):
k board. It just turned out that those were the
two boards that I at that time at least was
using the most. So and what was our nine kuh
robot nine thousand, I don't know where that name really
comes from. I do know that the original intent of
our nine k was that you couldn't make the same

(03:37):
post twice, meaning if anybody had ever posted something, it
couldn't be posted again. That was the original intention, right
it started me, I suppose, but it quickly just turned
into uh a very sad, very kind of depressing word

(04:00):
to be honest, because because people couldn't really repost memes,
you know, they would mostly just tell stories about their life,
and the images they would post would tend to be
because they wouldn't want to get muted by the automoderator
that will not allow you to post the same thing twice,
So they would tend to post, you know, stories about

(04:21):
their life, stories about things that had happened. And given
that we were all you know, image board users, teenagers
that were most likely socially awkward, you know, the stories
quickly all became depressing. Um. Wizard chan grew out of
R nine K, as did I would say a lot
of the modern cell. Now would you would you explain

(04:45):
what wizard chan is because this is we're getting into
some deep Internet lore um that I am most most
people aren't familiar with. So there's four chan and eight
chan the sites that I would say that most I
guess news conscious Americans would know, right, But there's all
these other smaller chance like the one you just covered

(05:08):
earlier today for Bellancare you know, do googla chant in
Brazilian in Brazilian Portuguese. So there's all these other chance
because especially before, they weren't that hard to set up,
you know, there weren't really that many people trying to
take them down. UM, So any any ciss admin with

(05:32):
a little bit of experience could set up one of
these chans. And that was how wizard chan started. I
didn't start it, as has been reported by a few.
It started I think around two thousand twelve, and the
guy who started it was UM basically kicked out for

(05:52):
being UM. The idea of wizard chan is that all
the posters are going to be male virgins. So the
original creator was kicked out, uh for having a homosexual relationship.
I guess you could say that came to light, so
he had to retire. UM. I took it over and

(06:16):
then I eventually, you know, would have a relationship with
a woman, so I had to give it up. The
next person it went to, I think they UM, I
think they committed suicide, but nobody's really sure. And now
I think it's on its fourth or fifth or it
could even be sixth. Owner I haven't really been keeping
tracks we were talking about is very different, it seems,

(06:39):
or at least in my understanding, from like the in
cell community, because it's not like this um conspiratorial like
I haven't gotten laid because women are evil sort of thing.
It's more like a kind of a support system like I.
I guess what you could Yeah, what you could say
is that these community grew into the modern in cell community.

(07:02):
For sure, are nine K wizard Chan, all of them
grew into what we see today as like the modern
in sales. I suppose, I don't you know, certainly there
were a lot of toxic users when I was wizard
Chan's admin for that short period it I didn't even
make it a year. Um Certainly there were a lot

(07:25):
of toxic users. There were a lot of suicides, at
least four in the time that I was admin, and
you could see the beginning of toxicity beginning to um start.
Because after there were so many suicides, I put up
a suicide hotline from multiple countries, and that started to

(07:49):
become very controversial, and that was one reason that I
was very disliked among the users, because they said, you know,
there's no way that Norman can ever understand us, so
us calling a suicide helpline is the worst advice you
could give. Basically, that was their whole spiel. Yeah, it

(08:09):
was a very dark time. Um, Like I said, you know,
I didn't create it, and I only lasted in its
administration for a year. The skills that I learned, you know,
definitely informed h JAM, you know, the skills with the
image board software, the administration, what to do about, you know,

(08:29):
certain types of attacks that were kind of in their
infancy at that time. UM. Yeah, this is getting us
a little bit off topic, but I'm really fascinated by
the general subject of kind of how the internet went
from where it was when uh I was younger, a
teenager and like where it was when you were a teenager,

(08:50):
to like where what we're dealing with right now. Um,
and I like, definitely you have some pieces of that puzzle.
I think everybody who was extremely on online in the
late nineties fly two thousand halfs just for the sake
of number one. Since you talked about like kind of
your background here, I'll give it a little bit of
my own. I grew up on something awful on those forums,

(09:12):
which kind of gave birth to four chan in a way,
because Moot, the guy who founded four chan. Um, I
think got Piste off at the moderation of something awful
for being too strict right the same story as me. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And Christopher thought that there's something awful mods are too
stricts starts four chan, and I think Christopher pools so

(09:33):
I started, Yeah, there's a lot of that actually later
in this story to um. It's very circular. But you know,
one of the things that always struck me. I got
banned from something awful when I was younger for I
don't know, it's probably fifteen or sixteen, and I said
something racist. I don't even remember what it was, but
they would ban you for that and it costs you
ten dollars when you got banned. And it's one of

(09:56):
those things that something awful forums are still around today,
there's still not a complete toxic pile of like, uh, radicalism. Um,
it really all you need is a little bit of
of like I went back and forth on this myself
as a young man, because I had this period where
I was like a kind of very absolutist on the
free speech issue, and I'm still not super far from that,

(10:19):
but I have come to the conclusion that if you
want these communities to not be toxic, you have to
draw some lines, like you really do you have to say, Okay,
well you can't be a Nazi. We're not going to
have that here. I definitely understand, and you can actually
see a little bit of how um, something awful kind
of informed four Chance because a lot of these rules

(10:41):
against being racist are actually applied to of four Chance boards.
The thing that Christopher Pool changed is that Okay, he
made it so that he created a few boards you know,
be in particular, but then later also the end and
then the pool where you could be a racist. So

(11:02):
it's kind of like he opened the door to that. Yeah,
there's a lot of interesting lessons for the future and
their people take them. But we should continue with the story.
So around two thirteen, uh is when you coded a
chan you want to I mean that that's a story
that involves drugs for one thing, which I know my
audience will like and I always like to hear. So

(11:22):
if if you don't mind. You can give the cliffs
notes of that one. Yeah, so you know, I was
on a drug trip at the time. Um, for me,
it's like I keep repleting one small part of that
drug trip, which you know it later turned out to
define a big part of my life. But you know,

(11:43):
and I think back to that drug part drug trip,
I should say it was just like one small moment
in a bigger experience. But anyway, I was kind of
still really high, but like over the peak, I guess
you could say. And I was on the computer, and
I was screwing around on four Chan, which was normal

(12:03):
for me in you know, I had kind of at
that time forgiven Pool because he put our nine k
and uh he added a new board which was at
the time called Pool. So even though I wasn't very
happy that he didn't add the board back as news

(12:25):
and that it was a pink board now and not
a blue board, I know that that might be basically
it was not safer work versus safer work, right, that's
the only different right. So But anyway, you know, I
decided to just let bygones be bygones. And I was
using four channel a lot at the time, and I
just decided or I just started thinking about, you know,

(12:49):
my experience as being a wizard Chad's admin in the
past at that time, and all these other smaller image
board communities, and I just thought, you know, wouldn't it
be great if, like Reddit, the users of these image
boards could decide the boards and not the admin, right like,

(13:10):
because I felt like the main problem at that time
was the admin of four Chune was unaccountable and he
could just add and remove boards, and a board could
be requested for years by many users and he won't
add it just because he doesn't personally see the appeal
or doesn't like it. So that's kind of why I

(13:33):
decided to start h H. And I figured, you know,
Reddit works, and it works for Reddit, so why couldn't
it work for uh eight chan, I suppose. So it
was essentially like this desire to like hybridize Reddit in
eight chan and make a place where the users would
have even more control over the structure of the community

(13:55):
and what was said there and the right and and
and one really weird part of this story is that
like there's there's like, you know, eight chan, which was
very different than what we now what we know in
especially you know, yeah, yeah, where basically, yeah, basically, nothing

(14:20):
is really set in stone until gamer Gate. You know,
there's really no community. And a few months after I
started eight chan and nobody was using it, I just figured,
you know, this kind of failed, but it's still it's
still a cool technical demo. So I'll leave it online.
I'll put it on my resume, air portfolio or whatever,

(14:41):
and that'll be it. You know, I was kind of
very surprised by, uh, gamer gate type thing. I didn't
I wasn't really expecting it. Yeah, And so gamer Gate,
for our listeners that don't know, was, uh, it's one
side would say it was about ethics and video game journalism.

(15:03):
The other side would say it was a harassment campaign
against primarily female video game journalists. Um, it was this
big social movement on the Internet that was fairly reactionary
and kind of fed into and was manipulated by guys
like Steve Bannon, guys like Milianopolis, and kind of metastasized
into large chunks of what we started calling the alt

(15:25):
right in two thousand sixteen. I think that that's kind
of a succinct way of describing gamer Gate, and um,
you know, gamer Gate it's one of its big organizing places.
Initially was on four Chan, and when the harassment of
some of these women journalists got too serious, they were
kicked off of four Chan and migrated to eight chan.
And that's really what grew it into like started the

(15:47):
process of it attracting enough people to really grow into
a large site. Right. And that's exactly or almost exactly
where Jim Watkins comes into the picture, because yeah, that
is exactly where and this is where we should get
into the actual written article that I had. And I'm
before you start, it's like, I'm not trying to minimize

(16:10):
my own involvement. You know, my deciding to allow han
to be a place where anybody could post anything that
was legal was not smart. You know. I was very
young and naive, you could say that, but I it
wasn't smart. It was probably wrong, you know, it was

(16:31):
wrong to start h han when I had basically no experience,
instead of looking to what had happened in the past. Right. Um,
But I really feel that the reason it's more about
Jim Watkins is because he was an older man who
had been doing this for many, many years, and he

(16:54):
kind of just for me, was somebody that represented it's
all okay because Jim says it's okay, or it's all
okay to do this because Jim is even taking legal liability,
you know what I mean. So I want to there's
a couple of things I want to get into so
that will make a little more sense. Is Number one,

(17:15):
how how old are you when you start this site?
So you're you're you're I mean, you're a kid. I
think we can all agree nineteen year olds, they're legally adults,
but you're a kid at nineteen. Um, it's a very
that's a very young person. Uh. This site explodes in
two thousand and fourteen. It gets expensive to run, it
gets to be a gigantic time sync to keep online.

(17:38):
And Jim Watkins a millionaire with a business network overseas.
And we'll get into Jim in a little bit here
and explain where he comes from. But this millionaire business
owner comes in and says, I'll buy the site and
I'll keep it online, and I will give you a
job if you keep it running in our the face
of this company. That's essentially the deal, Yes, essentially, And

(18:00):
you know, had he not showed up, it would have
probably totally disintegrated. There's one other thing I want to ask,
because you mentioned it is sort of like this decision
to allow anything as long as it's legal on eight chan. Um,
was there a moment where you were first sort of
confronted by you know, the Nazi ship and and had

(18:20):
to kind of was that a debate you had with
yourself or was it kind of present enough for in
the beginning that when you decided to kind of let
the community continue, you were deciding to accept that as
part of it. You know. The weird thing is four
chan itself kind of evolved, I guess you could say
on this, and I felt that because four chune was

(18:42):
a much more popular site. I really felt at the
time that I couldn't disallow anything that four channel allowed
because I wouldn't be able to correct users that way.
I don't know if I was right about that, but
that's how I felt. And four chune at the time,
like I said, they delete did the and board for
news and then they brought it back as politically incorrect,

(19:06):
And I I believe that small cues like that to
users really matter. Like they could have called it poll
for politics that would have been just as acceptable, right,
But Pool decided to call it politically incorrect. So it
seemed to me at the time like he wanted to
attract all of the real far right Nazi people to

(19:32):
that board, and the theory is that it would be
like a containment board, like he will contain them in
this politics board, this politically incorrect board. So you know,
it was it wasn't really a debate for me because
I would just argue it to myself and others as well,

(19:53):
how can you say that h n can't have a
poll board when four chun does. You know, Yeah, it's
shitty and it's very much all about practicality, but that
that would be how I would explain it to you
at the time. Yeah, And it's you know, I understand
there's probably gonna be people listening to this, UM who
don't think that I'm grilling you enough on the moral

(20:14):
questions on this, And I want to say here, that's
partly because I've been watching what you've been doing over
the last three or four months, UM, and how much
effort you've put into keeping this site offline. And it's
partly because when I was eighteen nineteen years old, I
held a lot of political beliefs and beliefs about the
nature of you know, free speech and stuff like that

(20:34):
that I do not currently hold. And I said things
that I regret now and that I wouldn't say now.
And I think most people have something like that. We
just didn't know how to code image boards and have
an idea to make one. Um. So it's one of
those things where I think it is important for you
to like take stock of your your part and all
this and and and regret making the site. Um. But

(20:57):
I also think it'd be unreasonable for someone who expect
you to wear a hair, especially since you were out
of the picture by the time people started getting shot. Yeah,
far out of the picture. Yeah yeah, So um we
should we should, We should get into Jim Watkins's story
well before we get into gym story. It's actually a
time for a really awkward ad pivot, uh now, Frederick.

(21:17):
Sometimes when I do one of these ad pivots, I
will let my my guests suggest a random product that
they just think people should buy. Do you have any
random products you would like people to buy or you'd
like concepts were you know, concepts are products you know. Um,
I have really been enjoying recently Bluetooth speakers. There's so

(21:40):
much more fun than um those little headphone things that
always fall out of your ears and hurt your ears,
at least for me may because my ear canals are
not the right shape. So I have been putting them everywhere. Um,
it's becoming a bit of a problem. Oh I have
one in my Yeah, I have a few in my
a few in my m condo where I live, a

(22:00):
few in my car. You know. Uh, I've even been
thinking of like putting them like in the bathroom and
just playing constant. You know, I don't know. Elevator music.
I don't know. Yeah, that's my product. I I feel
the same way. I love sitting outside having a campfire
with a Bluetooth speaker listening to rap music. It's a

(22:22):
great way to spend a Thursday night. Um, so buy
Bluetooth speakers, fill your house with them, and fill your
house with these other products that actually paid our show something.
We're back all right, So uh we've gotten through kind
of the background here. Um, and uh, the situation that

(22:46):
we've moved up to is like you've you've built this website.
It's big, it's increasingly influential, and it's increasingly expensive and
a gigantic pain, and he has to keep online. There's
clearly a ticking clock on how long a chan can
last if you alone continue to on it. And into
this situation steps a man named Jim now James Arthur
Watkins was born in Dayton, Washington on November twenty, nineteen

(23:09):
sixty four. He was raised on a family farm out
in Muktio or Mukidio, Washington. People are gonna yell at
me from getting this wrong Muktio Washington. Uh so out
in the country. He's a he's a farm boy. His
mother worked for Boeing and his father worked for the
local phone company. Now, growing up in the sixties and seventies,
James didn't have a history with computers, obviously because it

(23:31):
was the sixties and seventies and very few people did.
Um And he joined the U. S. Army when he
was eighteen in nineteen eighty two. He was eventually provoted
to the rank of sergeant first class, and he spent
most of his time in the service working as an
attack helicopter mechanic and later as a military recruiter. So
he's he's a pretty long career in the army. Actually,

(23:53):
um Amy would give James his first experience with computers
late in his service. In the nineteen nineties, they sent
Jim who a tech focused school in Virginia where he
got a crash course in the gadgets that would later
dominate the world and his life. Now. I can't speak
to Jim's overall technical competence, but it seems clear that
he at least immediately understood how influential the Internet was

(24:14):
quickly going to come to be um recognized that, Yeah,
that's what he wanted, that's the business he wanted to
be in. I can speak to it. He's not necessarily
great with computers. He understands networking very well though, and
he understands like all of the domain registrar. He understands
basically a lot of the stuff that keeps him from

(24:36):
being deep platforms. Like he's really good with networking. But
he's definitely not a programmer, no, And I think he's
more a guy who underlike gains kind of a basic
technical understanding of what the Internet is at a stage
when the Internet is still pretty young, and I think
he realizes that it's going to be huge, and that

(24:56):
there's going to be a funck load of money and
in figuring out to use right um. And he was
one of the first people to really capitalize on a
very specific part of the Internet, pornography. UH. In the
mid nineteen nineties, while he was still in the military,
he launched a website called Asian Bikini Bar, which he
would later describe as one of the largest video streaming

(25:17):
adult websites in the world. So that's very classy, um,
but legal. I've never heard any allegations that it involved
anything underage or anything like that. Um so oh no.
But but one thing you should be aware of and
that all your listeners should be aware of. One thing
that Jim was very clever about very early in his

(25:38):
career is he realized that the Internet, one of the
main ways that you can make money with it is
by taking advantage of different jurisdictions. So you can do
something legal in one jurisdiction that's illegal in another, and
market it to the jurisdiction where it's illegal. So that's
the main way that these businesses made money. Yeah, they

(25:58):
were in Japanese and but hosted from the United States,
So basically they were porn websites in the United States
that didn't have to follow Japan's censors censorship laws around pornography. Yeah,
that was exactly what I was about to get into
because Japan's no no, no, no, no, You're doing great.

(26:18):
Um yeah, I think it might surprise people because like
Japan's reputation in America there involves a lot of like lascivious,
nous pornography and what because that's what gets across the
Internet to US, but especially back in the nineties, they
had really strict laws. Um so yeah, exactly like you said, Jim,
sites were hosted in the US, but they were in
Japanese and the goal was allowing Japanese people to access

(26:40):
and share pornography without getting censored. So uh, there's actually
a fun quote from Jim's current business partner, a guy
named Tom right l am I pronouncing it right? Yes, Yeah,
I've met this guy multiple times. Yeah, and we'll be
talking about him a number of times in the article. Um,
but this is a quote from him talking to Splinter News.
In two thousand sixteen, they figured out a loophole in

(27:01):
Japanese censorship rules. Adult material in Japan has to be censored,
but Japanese people could access content that resides outside of Japan. Bingo.
The work we did in the following years was really
just marketing uncensored Japanese content to users in Japan. So
I this is a story that I think Jim and
the people around him like to tell a lot. It's
clearly something he's proud of, like figuring out this loophole
and building a business around. Yes. Yeah, they really feel

(27:23):
like this makes them sound very clever, and they love
they love telling it to everybody who will listen, especially
libertarian minded people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing speaking as
a recovering libertarian, there's nothing libertarians like more than a
story of getting one over on a government. Um. I'm
not all the way over that, but I'm not sure

(27:45):
it's entirely a bad thing. Um, but in this case,
always we'll call it a neutral thing. Uh Now. Um,
Watkins ran his first porn side. Like I said, Well,
he was still employed as an army recruiter, which makes
him one of the least shady army recruiters in the
history of the service. Um he told them that was
a joke from my army friends there. Um he told

(28:08):
the joke the army that he was starting an online business,
although he didn't tell them that the business was a
porn site, but this doesn't seem to have created any difficulties.
The actual first thing that caused him a problem with
his business was the website's name Asian Bikini Babes, because
you know, you had to pay to be a member
of the site, and as Jim noted in two thousand
and fifteen, that did not go over well with people's wives.

(28:28):
So this was basically showing up on people's credit card
statements as an Asian bikini website, and people spouses were like,
what are you doing spending money on this ship? So
Jim changed his company name to something that would look
more innocuous on credit card statements. In T Technology, the
acronym stands for nothing. It's just the blandest and safest
name j could think of. Yeah, so, um man, it's good.

(28:52):
It's a good name for a porn website to have.
Nobody's gonna think anything now. Int Technology initially made most
of its money selling advertising on an expanding network of websites.
Jim added more and more adult sites to the network,
helping countless horny Japanese people access pornography that would have
been illegal at a certain point. INTI technology expanded into
web hosting two in nine seven, either one or two

(29:14):
years before Jim left the Army, depending on which interview
you read. They're not all completely consistent, so I can't
say for sure he's either ninety eight or ninety nine
that he quit, though, But in nine seven Jim Watkins
met Tom Rydell uh Now. At the time, Rydell was
an art student living in Pittsburgh. Here's how he recalled
their meeting. One day in the summer of nineteen nine seven,

(29:35):
my roommates ran in and told me they met the
King of porn in the park walking his poodle. Watkins
apparently headed off with these teenage boys uh and told
them he was looking for artists to make banner ads
for him. And I think Rightel's about nineteen years old
too when this happens. Wow, can you imagine that Jim
Watkins going to an art school looking for Hello, fellow kids,

(29:58):
would you like to make some bad our ads for me? Like? What?
I you know? I actually, I think there might be
some logic in the through line of him working with
eighteen nineteen year old kids who have a talent that
he needs, but they're also young enough that they don't
know what they're worth for one thing, like they're notulaically exactly.
He's a man who spent sixteen years in the military

(30:21):
at this point, he's certainly more capable of negotiating. And
isn't isn't being an army recruiter all about manipulating? Yes,
lying the children boys? Yeah, So I feel like there's
a repeating pattern here. Um. He definitely is one of
the people who's been most successful at building a business

(30:41):
from lying to teenagers. Um, he's he's great at that.
So he he gives right El and his friends some
freelance work, and then right El says, quote after that,
I started working full time, and the next summer I
drove with him and his family across country to Seattle,
where we set up an office. So right Del and Jim,
you know, expand INTI technology and and you know, start

(31:02):
hosting more sites in a wider variety of sites. Uh.
And in nineties eight or ninety nine, Jim quits the
army after about sixteen years. He was at that point
less than a presidential term away from a government pension. Um.
But he quits before getting the pension because he decides
it's a better call to dive head first into his
internet businesses um, and that would this would prove to

(31:22):
have been a pretty wise call. I suspect he made
more money in those years than he would have gotten
from his pension. Um. Yeah, Jim got in on the
ground floor of the online porn business uh, and he
made a huge amount of money uh doing that at
a time when it was still very easy. There was
this kind of sweet spot in between about nineteen ninety
seven and like two thousand one or two um, before

(31:47):
like the dot com bubbles started to crack um where
you could really make This is also the same time
John McAfee made his fortune. Um. There's a number of
kind of similar libertarian guys who sees this six seven
year window in the Internet and make fucking bank and
Jim is one of them. Now. In two thousand, Jim's

(32:07):
hosting company picked up a very significant client, to Channel.
This site had been created in nineteen nine by hero
Yuki Nishimura. It was a text only discussion board that
wound up becoming a central part of early Japanese internet culture,
and it's still very popular today. Yeah. To Channel is
mostly commonly abbreviated as two C h UH. And it

(32:27):
quickly grew to become one of the largest sites in
the Internet. By two thousand and eight, it was bringing
in five million page views a month. Now, if we
view gigantic, barely regulated web boards as a monarchical line,
to Channel was the progenitor of the dynasty. It inspired
the creation of an image board, which is basically the
same as a forum, but the discussion focuses around posted
images named in its honor, named to chan. I think

(32:50):
people can probably figure out where we're going from here.
In two thousand three, fifteen year old American named Christopher
Pool got tired of the moding policies and something awful
and creates four chan, which is pad and off of
to chan um So to chan made or to channel
made great money, and by two thousand eight, Nishimura was
bringing in around a million dollars a year in profits.

(33:10):
Uh he told Wired at the time, the only person
who gets money from two channel is me. Well, I
guess I pay for the servers and off Coast There's
servers were owned by Jim Watkins. Now, by the end,
Watkins charged a lot. You can see that in the
in the court filings. Yeah, he made a very good
amount of money off of too channel UM, and by
the early two thousands he really needed Nishimura's money because

(33:33):
the dot com bubble had truly popped UH and internet
porn had gone from the wild West to a very
crowded market. Int technology was still profitable, but the money
wasn't rolling in as heavily as it had years before.
This seems to have impacted Jim's decision to move to
the Philippines, which is a much cheaper place to live
UH and to operate a business UM. His main impetus

(33:53):
for this seems to have been the fact that he'd
vacationed there before, so in that two thousand six article
by Splinter, Jim claimed he'd moved to the Philippines in
two thousand four, but a Washington Post article from two
thousand nineteen disputes this timeline. They point to a printed
notice in the Mandila Times about Jim's pending naturalization as
a Filipino citizen. Jim was required to pay for this

(34:13):
as part of the naturalization process, and in the notice,
Jim says he moved to the Philippines on October two,
two thousand one. He married a Filipino woman less than
twenty days later. Now their child was born a couple
of months after that, so it's not as shady as
it sounds. I did not know. So it's interesting because,
like you hear, okay, he moved to the Philippines, he

(34:34):
marries a woman eighteen days later. That sounds like, okay,
he just found someone to marthy the green card. But
they had a kid like three months after that. So
clearly the relationship must have existed for I don't know
where it started. I don't know if you visited the
Philippines before, but it clearly started before he moved to
the Philippines because biology. Um, yeah, so that's that's all interesting,

(34:59):
and it's it's a again that's very interesting because as well,
obviously get too later. I'm opposing his petition, So you're
telling me some things I didn't know. Yeah, well, and
even this timeline is not certain. In an interview, Watkins
told The Washington Post that he first started migrating his
life over to the Philippines in two thousand one, but
he didn't really commit to moving there until two thousand four,

(35:22):
and he didn't finish moving there until two thousand seven. Yeah,
Like there's some things in that petition that are not true. Yeah,
he claims to be able to speak Filipino. He doesn't.
He sure does, and that's one. He definitely does not
speak Filipino at all. And you do, that's the local thing. Yes,
I do, guy, Yeah, I speak it much better than

(35:42):
he does. I lived here much shorter time. So that's
one of the things that we're going to be opposing
in February. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Yeah,
and it's interesting to me too that that Tom Raidel,
Jim's business partner, told the Washington Post that the court
noticed Jim had paid for was incorrect. Did not say
why or give more detail. Um oh, he really told

(36:04):
the Post that it's incorrect. Yes, Now, in any case,
Jim moved from the US to the Philippines and the
early aughts, and by all accounts lived there quite contentedly
up to the present day. He started a pig farm,
which does not appear to be profitable, but he also
created a lot of other businesses. We don't know how
many he owns or what they all do, but the
Post has a good breakdown of his the little empire

(36:27):
he built, and I'm gonna quote a couple of paragraphs
from their right up. Those include smattering of Manila based
companies focused on computer services in real world property over
the years, including a now closed organic food restaurant, and
in two thousand and five, a business called Race Queen,
probably named for the scantily clad models who pose along
the tracks of Japanese car races. Located in a dilapidated
Manila office tower, Race Queen calls itself a software development

(36:48):
and outsourcing company. According to a torn sign taped to
the door. It has also been listed as an employer
on work basis for four employees of h. Jannon Watkins's
other message boards, including Brennan Philippines Immigration record show. That
would be you obviously, that would be me. Yes, and
that's true, and the reason that it's called Race Queen, Inc.
Is also accurate. Yeah, okay, good. I'm always a fan

(37:11):
of UM. You know, you get a very professional publication
by the Post where they really do a pretty good
job in their normal articles of boiling out personal bias
and opinion and how much you can say and how
much shade you can throw just by adding the word
torn to a sentence, yes, yes, exactly. They can't just
say due to a sign. Yeah yeah, no, no, no,

(37:32):
and the dilapidated office build Yeah, definitely, definitely, they do
throw shade. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Yeah, it would
be hard not to be so. The naturalization court notice
said Watkins and his wife had bought several properties across
the country, including a condo in central Manilla and farms
outside the city where he said he raised pigs. Philippine
business records revealed glimpses of a peculiar assortment of businesses
and Watkins's orbit the company Emerald Pedestal, which is misspelled,

(37:56):
which lists ownership in Manila condo units and calls Watkins
chairman of the or. He did that on purpose, by
the way, to try to avoid certain um suits. That's
what he told me at least. Yeah, like I know
a lot of the shell companies. He told me the
Emerald Pedestal is named wrong on purpose. I don't remember
exactly why, but I think he thought that it would

(38:19):
make it harder to sue him. John McAfee and this
guy would really get along with each other. Um, I
suspect they would be good friends. So yeah, for most
of the mid aughts, H Jim's businesses hummed along without
having any discernible impact on the broader culture. He made
money for himself and his family, and he didn't get

(38:40):
into the spotlight in any way that I've ever found
evidence of. Things started to change in two thousand thirteen,
because that's the year that you've created eight chan, and
it's also the year that to channel had a massive
data breach that exposed thirty people's credit card data. Now,
this down its own is bad, but since much of
two channels claim to fame was its anonimit, it was

(39:00):
seen as a particularly huge funk up the data breach.
Interviewed with the site's ability to make money now, Tom
Raidell claims that this is why in two thousand fourteen,
Inti Technology took possession of too Channel. The website remains
huge and a significant source of profit to this day.
Now Two Channels creator Nishimura disputes legitimacy of Anti Technology

(39:20):
taking possession of his website. He says, they basically stole it,
and I think the court cases ongoing. Um, yes it
is and yeah. In an email interview with splinter News,
Nishimura claimed, of Watkins, all his businesses have failed, even
his hosting service was not good. Yeah, I have made
similar claims. You know, it's a big it's a big

(39:41):
it's a big problem when everything that you're well known
for you're alleged to have stolen or acquired via shady means.
I mean, people do get elected to high office with
that kind of a resume too, So it kind of
depends on how good you aren't spinning and two do fifteen,
Christopher Pool sold four chan to Nisha Mura. Um So,

(40:05):
I just think that's really interesting. Like Nisha Mura creates
the site that inspires the site that four chan is
based off of, and then Nishimura winds up buying four
chan like fifteen years later. It's just a fun series
of events. Now, the year before that purchase, Jim Watkins
bought eight chan from Frederick Brennan, making him I guess
the lord of fifty of the chance something like that.

(40:28):
Um sure, yeah, uh so he has to channel and
he has eight chan at this point. Um so, Frederick,
would you walk us through a little bit sort of
how he reached out to you and kind of what
you you know, what the deal was and what you
had to do in order to take this, because it's
why you're the Philippines now, so Chan it had basically

(40:50):
no uh way to make money. You know, deep platform
NG was being used against it all the way back
in uh uh not even as like hardcore as what's
going on right now. But we got kicked off of
all the payment processors very quickly. I was able to
find servers who would host us, but I could not

(41:13):
afford that, you know what I mean, without any money
coming in. And there was no one who would want
to advertise on h N even even before it was
known for what it's known for now. You know, people
just don't like to have their ads on sites that
hosts Nazis, I know, big shock, right, but and you know,

(41:33):
it's even hard to find people who want to put
their ads, like real big corporations on porn sites, so
porn and Nazis, you basically can't find anybody. So I,
you know, knew that h HN's days were numbered, and
I made this pretty clear. I suppose on the official

(41:54):
h and Twitter and through other means, you know, posting
on the board, and I started to get uh offers
basically from people who wanted to acquire a Chan because
it had been in the news and it had already
this big community, you know, as far as chance go,
and there was at the time a real sense that

(42:15):
it could take over for four chaan like that it
could unseat four Chan as the main chance. That didn't
end up happening. But that's what some people thought, including
maybe myself in my more uh confident moments. But I
started looking at these offers and I really could only
narrow it down to two, and one of them was

(42:36):
from a company that had no experience in this at all.
And I really felt like, with enough pressure, if I
transferred the servers there, they would crack and then that
would be it, you know what I mean. So I
decided to take Jim's offer. He very much used the
fact that he owned two Channel as a way to
convince me, you know, like that he is the originator

(42:59):
of all the chans and he can help. And I
didn't really totally understand it when I agreed. The extent
to which here Yuki hated him and the extent to
which he most likely stole to Channel, and the agreement
is basically, he'll move you to the Philippines, he'll pay

(43:21):
you a salary and uh and fund everything. Right Basically,
that's correct, he did not buy h en like itself. Yea.
What he did was I transferred the data to his
servers and then he moved me to the Philippines and
paid me to be its admin. Basically, so he took

(43:43):
all of the liability by transferring the data to his
data center. And eventually in two thousand fifteen January, only
a few months later, he took over in um at
the end of September, I believe, and then in January
of the fall one year he took the domain. Also
like there was a problem with the domain registrar, like

(44:07):
what they're experiencing right now with two Cows, where two
Cows doesn't want to register the their domain because it
is very bad press. So Jim had his own domain registrar,
or at least that's how he explained it to me.
He's actually just a two Cows reseller. He doesn't own
his own like registry with the with the I can

(44:30):
but anyway that that doesn't really matter. So at the
time that was seen as very bulletproof. So Han, you know,
he basically said, look, use my domain temporarily, wink wink,
and then we'll transfer it back to your domain after UM.
After you know, you get your domain back. Well, I

(44:52):
got my domain back H and dot c O, but
we just kept it on the H dot net because
basically he had no incentive to transfer it back. So
it's kind of a shady way that he got ownership
if you really think about it. Um. Yeah, And there's
no contract or anything, it's just domain. Yeah. He doesn't

(45:13):
like contracts, and he doesn't. It strikes me the situation.
You know, I I hope you're not getting too personal here,
but you have some pretty significant healthcare needs. Um. And
part of this deal is he's putting you up in
a condo that he owns, and he's paying and also
paying for a nurse and paying for a nurse, and
there's no contract, which means he could take all of

(45:35):
this away from you and leave you homeless whenever wants. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
It's a very unsettling position to be. I can see
how you would take it and how it would sound
incredibly enticings like I get to move to just like
this wonderful foreign country and like live in a condo
and like get paid to do this for free. It
was enticing in October, November and December. And then you know,

(45:58):
when it came time to do go with this domain problem,
I had no leverage I could use to keep the domain.
So because he got total ownership. Yeah, that's that's in
an unsettling and like a really easily abusable position um
from his point. And I mean there were lots of
other easily abused things about my healthcare condition, like he

(46:23):
you know, there's a Q grifter named Neon Revolt, and
I guess he somehow got these photos of me in
a in a bar with Jim Watkins and other associates,
but they're not in the picture. And you know, you
can cut this if you want. But on that night,
it I was not really in control of what was happening.

(46:47):
They put me in a wheelchair that I can't even
push because it was first of all too big for me.
Second of all, I don't have the strength to really
push a wheelchair anyway. I have to use an electric one.
And the place that they brought me to had so
many like bumps in the road. Now, maybe a twenty
year old would enjoy going to a bar, you know,

(47:11):
for a few hours, but they kept me there for
like five six hours and took lots of photos that
I might have preferred not be taken. And you know
you can cut this, of course, but there was even
a part of that which you know, Neon Revolt basically published,

(47:32):
you know, without my side, that uh I could could
not even go to the bathroom because they wouldn't take me.
Like it quickly became distressing. Yeah, and that's just so
people have some context. The Q and on movement moved
colt whatever you want to call it, moved to eight chan. Um, sorry,

(47:53):
I'm really I'm really doing an out of order. Yeah, yeah,
well we we can. I mean that this all happens
in q and on moves to h chan and is
hosted there. Um. And you were, you know, not running
the site at that point. But since in more recent months,
since you've become one of the major stumbling blocks to
h Chan getting back online Q and on people, including

(48:16):
this guy Nean Revolt, have targeted you very heavily, and
he's essentially doing It's the same thing as when when
there's a case where like a prominent person sexually assaults
a young woman and there's a picture of her like
laughing next to him, um at like a bar or
something that will wind up getting plaster like look that
she's smiling. She yes, that's exactly what they're doing. Exactly

(48:36):
what they're doing. Yeah, you know they're saying, oh, he's smiling,
but they're not thinking that. Obviously. I was basically being
taken captive by three very drunk men, and if I
upset them, who knows what they might do to me.
So if they asked me to smile for a picture,
I'll smile, you know what I mean, But that that

(48:57):
shouldn't be seen as like evidence of happy and it's
or evidence of wanting to be there obviously, you know,
these days due to that, how that experience kind of
scarred me. I don't go anywhere without like an electric
chair and a phone with the sam that, you know, like,
I've taken precautions just due to how difficult that was.

(49:21):
You know. I don't go anywhere here without um, like
somebody who's on my payroll who can, uh like be
my advocate. Basically, Now, Frederick, this is maybe, in the
history of the show, the worst time to do an
ad pivot um that there's ever been. But it's that time.

(49:47):
I'm so sorry. Yes, that's no problem at all, no problem,
no problem, And I'm sorry if I brought up stuff
that's like, you know, not that I'm grateful to you
for sharing, like this is important context to the kind
of guy he is. Um right, that's what this is

(50:09):
supposed to be about, is the kind of guy he is. Yeah. Um,
you know what's not important context? Uh? These ads? Alright,
we're back um now, uh Frederick, Uh, let's we we

(50:30):
jumped ahead a little bit. I want to I want
to go back to uh two thousand sixteen. Um. Now
that's the year that the Splinter News article we've quoted
uh from a few times with Jim was published. That's
the first article that interviews him that I found. And
the reason this article was written was because two sixteen
was kind of the height of what I would call

(50:51):
eight chance success at culture jamming. The community there first
exploded as a result of gamer Gate UM, and as
I talked about a little bit earlier, the movie with
gamer Gate kind of metastasized into big chunks of the
online alt right UM and in the two thousand sixteen election,
they graduated from like focusing their activism on a pretty
niche area of interest gaming to trying to impact the

(51:15):
broader American political and cultural scene, and by this point,
especially on eight Chan, especially a Chance poll Board, there
was a very distinct, like heavy Nazi influence, Like so
it wasn't you know gamer Gate. There was some very
far right and uncomfortable and even some like kind of Nazish,
anti Semitic stuff that you would see running there. Um.
But two, that's sixteen. A Chance poll Board is like

(51:39):
a fully Nazi gathering place online, and they start trying
to meme Donald Trump into office, but also more to
the point, trying to meme UM, trying to push some
of their fringe beliefs kind of closer to the American
mainstream by creating memes and then seating them into the
rest of the Internet to try to make them go

(51:59):
via role and their great success during this period. Their
biggest success was getting candidate Donald Trump to retweet an
image mac or they made of Hillary Clinton with a
star of David next to her head that includes the
words most corrupt candidate ever. Um. That's like the probably
the biggest hit that they had during that year. Um.
But there were a lot of other memes that they

(52:20):
succeeded in, like getting other prominent political and cultural figures
to retweet um. And this you know, drew attention down
on a chan and a number of journalists, including myself um,
wrote their first articles about the site in that period
of time. UM, and we all got harassed for doing it.
I think the board's most responsible were Pole and baff

(52:41):
ament Um, which was a board kind of dedicated directly
to like doxing people. So this is what sort of
first draws mainstream Ish media attention. You know, it's not
the Washington Post yet, but Splinter is covering it and stuff. Um,
and they talk to John Watkins, Jim Watkins, jesus. Now,

(53:04):
all this drew a lot of press attention, as I said,
And the author of that Splinter news article, Ethan Chiel,
had was pretty heavily harassed when he first started writing
about the site. So when he talked to Jim Watkins,
and this is the again, the earliest interview with Jim,
he asked Jim about all the death threats and whatnot
that originated on eight chan, and Watkins responded, as long
as they're not making imminent threats of harm against someone,

(53:25):
their speech has protected political speech, no different than Trump
or Clinton or Mr Smith or anyone else. Now, Jim
also addressed allegations that because of the racism on his site.
He might be racist himself, he said, I obviously am
not a white supremacist. I go for days without seeing
another white face. I put up with racial problems similar
to that of colored people in the nineteen sixties, the
black people of the nineteen seventies, the African Americans of

(53:48):
the nineteen eighties, the people of color of the nineteen nineties.
I am not sure what the politically correct term in
the twenty first century is. I have lived here in
this same place longer than anywhere else in my adult life.
I love my home. As I always used to talk
collect this, Yeah, he compares himself to the civil rights Yes,
you know, he would talk like this also in private.
He would tell me that it is that white people

(54:11):
in the Philippines have no rights, and it's worse to
be a white person in the Philippines than to be
black in the US. Like he would say that constantly.
So the fact that he said this to the press
is just you know, uh he he. I guess he
just has no filter. That's why he doesn't like to
talk to the president more. It's astonishing, It's it's really astonishing. Um.

(54:33):
And this this won't be the last time he does
something like this, but it's quite a take. Like now,
Watkins describes himself as overall a very boring person. He
claimed that he had bought eight chan because he wanted
to protect it. He said he'd seen all these other
sites at a big potential and then they go away. Now.
When Ethan from Splinter asked him about the issues he'd

(54:55):
had since buying the website in two thousand and fourteen,
like what his biggest issue was, he answer was very clear.
Social justice warriors quote they called them s JW's. They
told me by email. They try to embarrass you into
turning off the channel. It's like, oh, there's a horrible
post here, will great report the post and will delete it.
Then they send it to I CAN and the FBI
and all these people, and it's like, come on, so

(55:19):
Jim Watkins, Yeah, um. Now, he claimed that people complaining
about death threats and violent racism on h chan, we're
creating those posts themselves on the forum. Yep. The people
like Ron always say that they always it's always about them.
It's always a conspiracy theory. When I got my death
threats that were posted on h chan after my second

(55:40):
article on them, Well, I was after my first article,
but after it was in a documentary on them. Um.
When I got those death threats, everyone on eight Chan,
when they saw me commenting on them, commented that I
must have created the death threats and posted them on there.
It's just, you know, it's a convenient thing to do.
They especially always say that about women. Oh, she just
just looking for attention. They it's a common line that

(56:03):
they take. And the fact that Jim Watkins, the admin
is taking it, you know, doesn't surprise me. Yeah. It
might help set the tone a little bit though, although
you know, hard to say who's learning from who there. Uh,
they're learning from each other, that's the Yeah, that's probably yeah,
self reinforcing cycle. Yeah. Now when that article was published, Uh,

(56:27):
you and Jim were still working together. Um. And in fact,
up until that point when people had questions about h
H and you've generally been like the media point man
to answering that. Um. And I'm kind of curious as
to win sort of those defenses. You started to believe
in them less, if that makes sense as a question. Sure,
so right, you're absolutely right. After two thousand and sixteen,

(56:50):
I was still in Jim's company. I was working at
two Channel, which is how I know now what an
important part of it it is for his business money wise,
like it's where all his money comes from even today.
So that's that. That's kind of how I know that
because he put me basically, when I wanted to quit
from h Jenney put me onto Channel. But yes, I

(57:14):
was still one of the only ones that would talk
to media because I just felt like I didn't have
anything really to hide at the time. You know. Uh.
I would usually ask them while I was still at
the company, like should I answer this request? What should
I say? And you know, they would kind of help,
like sculpt you know, my answers. But I did really

(57:38):
start to believe a lot of the I guess you
can say rationalizations less you know. One of the rationalizations
I had was that it's all just the American Constitution
and the founding fathers knew that we all have to
discuss things and the best ideas will fall out and
the answer to wrong speed which is more speech, and

(58:01):
you know, that kind of rationalization view of looking at
the world. Well, it became hard for me to say
that to reporters because I knew as a chance admin
that I had never seen a single good idea fall
out of a chance discourse like that just doesn't happen.
Everybody's talking, everybody's making their own you know, political statement,

(58:26):
but there's no resolution. Nobody's ever you know, the Nazis
never said, oh, you know what, we're convinced socialism is
the answer. We're closing our board. That doesn't happen, you know,
Because so that was the first time I really started
to doubt. But you know, as long as nobody was

(58:49):
really getting hurt, you know, it was kind of hard
for me to just go back on everything I've ever said, right,
But of course after I saw how little they did
after Christchurch and then after Poway, you know, it just
started to build on me that I had to say
something as somebody who is basically an authority on a

(59:13):
chan and you know, yeah, I just couldn't allow Jim
Watkins to get away with it, like to get away
with doing nothing while terrorists used his website, so especially
you know, after he did nothing after the first two attacks,
you know. So yeah, now, um, when the years from

(59:38):
about six nineteen, it's kind of when h chan really
reached a significant size. Around one point seven million visitors
a month. I'm guessing that would be its height, but
you would know better than I would, right, that would
certainly be a yeah. And the site was hard to monetize.
Jim tried a number of tactics. He had a sun
Craft of cryptocurrency, which you just could buy and then

(01:00:00):
pay to elevate their threads on the site um and
traditionally vaguely anti Semitic fashion. He called it the King
of the Shekel program, which, if you don't know why
using the word shekel is vaguely anti semitic, hang out
with some Nazis on the internet for a day. You'll
hear the word a thousand times along with yeah, oh boy,
yeah um now. Jim also launched books dot Audio, a

(01:00:23):
book narration company that used Jim and a number of
his friends and family members as narrators. In two dozen seventeen,
he launched the I haven't had the heart to listen
to any of the books he narrates, because he does
a number of them. I can't imagine he's good at it.
Just listening to his voice is not yeah, it's it
seems like an odd business for him to be in.

(01:00:46):
In two seventeen, he launched The gold Water, a bad
news website with the slogan band biased and Honest. Jim
Watkins showed up in some of the videos under the
pseudonym Jim Cherney. Uh. And here's the welcome message he
hosted when he launched the site, Welcome to the Goldwater,
where we provide an informative view on today's alternative news headlines.

(01:01:09):
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visit the Goldwater dot com for in depth articles. His
voice is very um uh. It's an interesting tactic, like

(01:01:31):
he's introducing this new side of his kind of like
you would a classic sort of media company. Like he's
not trying to be like hip or or or use
internet lingo or like like aim it at the kind
of people who use eight chan. But he's clearly he
wants The Goldwater to be like a news site that

(01:01:51):
they use. And it's just it's odd to me that
he would think that, Like, yeah, and that's mentioned The
Goldwater was full of fake news. Yeah, yeah, including an
article that said the planet New Bireu would destroy the
Earth in two thousand seventeen. Now did it did it not. No,
as far as I know. You know, I'm still on

(01:02:11):
the planet Earth and I didn't hear about the planet
ne Bireu destroying it two years ago. We're gonna have
our fact checkers look into that, um before before we
go to press. Please get the New York Times fact
check on this. I really need now. Um. Yeah, so
Jim wanted it to be like the news gathering place
for eight chan users, which is part of why I
think his presentation is so odd. Um. Now, the websites

(01:02:33):
chief journalist at coup was getting two of its reporters
press credentials for the two thousand eighteen Singapore summit between
President Trump and Kim Jong un, which is evidence of
how easy it is to get press credentials sometimes. Um.
They spent most of the trip failing to get their
camera to function properly because they're not not not good

(01:02:54):
at it now. Yes, and they also wasted a lot
of money doing a bungee jong. I don't know if
you saw that, Oh my god, what, Yes, one of
the main things they did on Yeah, you can see
Tom Ridell doing a bungee jump. I don't know if
he deleted it, but they do a bungee jump off
of building in the city, just as part of their
coverage You're just for ships. Um. They posted it right

(01:03:17):
around that time, and it was on the trip, but
that was the only really actually cool thing that came
out of it. So um. Throughout this period two do
seventeen eighteen, Jim posted regular videos in his eighth Chan
blog where he would do yoga He's way into yoga,
read selections from books, and brag about his collection of

(01:03:38):
expensive pens. He also really likes expensive pens. Now, for
the next couple of years, eh chan continued to radicalize itself,
and Paul went from mostly ironic Nazi posting and far
right ship posting to un ironic neo Nazi. Extermination is rhetoric.
I can't pick a point for you when that hit
critical mass, but we all know what happened in March
two thousand nineteen, the christ Rich massacre. Now by this

(01:04:02):
point you've been away from eight chan for a couple
of years, and you've been out of anti technology for
what a year or so? Um, a few months, okay,
a few months you recently quit. Yes, the christ of
shooting happened in March, and I had only like totally disassociated,
and I think November two, Okay, so, yeah, you've been

(01:04:27):
out for three or four months and the christ Church
shooting happens. Do you remember when you heard about it
for the first time? Uh? Um, I'm pretty sure that. Yeah,
I'm I don't really remember. I kind of remember, like
I read something about it on my phone and then

(01:04:48):
my wife told me that I'm messenger somebody had sent
her the video. It was really going around. Um, But
I the h Chan connection didn't really become clear to
me until I started reading like more articles about it. Okay,
I wound up kind of getting onto that. I mean, obviously,

(01:05:10):
I wrote an article about it a couple of hours
after it happened, so I was I was pretty aware
of that, um, kind of right away, and it was
one of those things watching the rest of the world
react to it. There were a number of reactions. I'm
glad that I think most of the media, I think, hopefully,
in part due to the article I wrote, avoided kind

(01:05:31):
of falling into some of the traps that the guy
had put in his manifesto and avoided some of the
more kind of sensational ship that that might have otherwise
surrounded it. There were some bad reactions, obviously, like the
Daily Mail posted the entire unedited manifesto on their website.
That was a poor choice. But in terms of tone

(01:05:53):
deaf responses to a massacre, I think the video Jim
Watkins published three days after this footing has to take
the cake. Have you seen this, Frederick? I have, yes.
I actually recently republished it. He deleted it didn't. Um, yeah,
it's on YouTube still, so we've both seen this, Frederick.
I'm gonna play the first minute of it for our

(01:06:13):
listeners so they can get an idea of the kind
of tactics. Jim Watkins is taking condolences to the victims
of the New Zealand shootings. So many pious folks lost
because of psychotic rage. It is a sad thing that
the mentally infirmed can have access to guns. It is
just impossible to tell who will snap until they do.

(01:06:37):
Going postal is such a sad thing in America. Back
mark Richard Hilburn went postal. This otherwise normal man became
so angry that he shot two of his fellow post
office employees, his mother, and even his dog. After that,

(01:06:58):
the post Office took at should put environmental analysts on
the scene to help make the workplace a better place,
so that folks would not become so frustrated with rage
that they would commit acts of mayhem and murder. At
no time after this terrible tragedy did the United States
Postal Service consider censoring the mail in order to stop

(01:07:21):
announcements of terrorists or violent threats. People have been free
to say such things always. However, threats of imminent violence
are not protected speech. They are criminal in nature. There
is a certain dualism to this, whereas you're free to
utter reprehensible and violent speech, yet you are responsible for

(01:07:46):
the consequences of what you say. And now we're back, okay,
so um, yeah, it's pretty remarkable. The goal of blaming
illegal aliens for a christ Church shooting because of illegally
immigrated Australian and New Zealand is pretty fucking remarkable. Absolutely,

(01:08:07):
it's ridiculous. You know, there is no way to be
more pro Trump than that statement. Yeah, Like, it's so
pro Trump that maybe even Donald Trump would be afraid
to say it. Yeah, that's going. Like even his response
to the shooting was better than Jim's. Yes, yes, now,
Watkins was pretty consistent with most of his press responses

(01:08:30):
in the wake of the massacre, he talked about how
he deplored violence. He insisted h chan removed all illegal content,
and he made commitments vague commitments about getting better at
policing the site for literal crimes. But while he said
all this, he also adopted the slogan embrace infamy and
and blasted on the landing page of ah chan Um.
So he it's it's clear he um. There seems to

(01:08:54):
be an aspect of this that he might have enjoyed
um now when the Washington certainly did. Yeah, him insight
into that. I just knowing him and knowing you know
that one of the main reasons he continued to operate
a chans attention because as we've discussed, there's no money reason.

(01:09:16):
It doesn't make any significant money, you know. The only
other reason would be that, like I guess Q and
on is really true and there really is a military
you know, uh operative posting on eight Chans. So that's
why Jim is doing it. He's a patriot. But in
all seriousness, there's no reason to run h chan um

(01:09:39):
like monetary patriotic whatever. It's just it's just a drain
on every one who has ever come into contact with it,
even its users. It's a drain on them. Certainly it's
a drain on me. It's definitely drained Jim's resources. But
he seems to like the attention he gets from it

(01:10:01):
more than like he's paying more than should be expected. Yeah,
he's paying for the attention basis exactly exactly, like it
is costing him money to operate this site. And right,
because if you think about it, it costed a hundred
thousand pasos, which is like two grand, three grand to
publish that naturalization petition and that's all out the window now,

(01:10:25):
you know. It's like, and that's not the only way
that money has been wasted. Think of all the he
claimed on the Goldwater that he spent fifty six thou
dollars from the time of the shooting to the time
of UM two September just trying to get eight gen
back online. Geez. Yeah, So this is it's he's clearly

(01:10:51):
getting something out of it that's worth at least fifty
six dollars. And yeah, there's a quote he gave about
that the Washington Post when they got to interview and
asked him about Embrace infamy. Putting that on h chan. Um,
and this is what he said in response. The newspapers say,
we're infamous, so we have embraced infamy. It's cute and
it's appropriate. Weird to talk about Definitely weird to talk

(01:11:14):
about your site being cute when people are asking you
about all the massacres. Yeah, exactly, Like is it really
cute for the victims of the shootings to see that
Jim is embracing the infamy that the deaths of their
loved ones brought him. I don't think that's cute. Yeah,
I think I assume you know. I'm not an old

(01:11:36):
man yet, but I am. I am starting to experience
what it's like when you watch popular culture and stuff
pass you by and you don't understand things anymore and
you feel less relevant. Uh. And I'm sure that's even
more of an issue when you're fifty sixty years old.
I think most people combat that in healthier ways than

(01:11:57):
paying to operate a chan like, Yeah, that might be yeah,
a bad late life crisis there. Um, certainly, and um,
it's definitely not cute at all. No, No, I wouldn't
say so. So. Unfortunately, for a whole lot of people,
the massacres continued. The Pawe Synagogue shooting happened two months

(01:12:18):
after christ Church, the Ol Passo shooting occurred shortly after that,
and by the late summer twenty nineteen, more than seventy
people were dead as a result of shootings that started
out as eight chan posts. The site was finally dropped
by most of its supporting companies like cloud Flare, who
provided DIDs protection UH in the wake of the El
Paso shooting, and Jim was called before Congress to speak
about his wayward I don't know steps on um he

(01:12:41):
did more or less. He did most of his interviews
with mainstream news sources during this period, and he tried
to tell the line that he was just standing up
for free speech and that allowing hate speech was part
of that. But as the Post reported, eight chan did
a lot more than just passively allow hate speech. Quote.
While Watkins has contended there was well he could do
to rein in the anonymous user base, h chan often

(01:13:03):
has appeared to encourage this hateful chatter on its site.
Its official rules, for instance, included special formatting codes. Three
parentheses were used in anti Semitic messages to point to
someone's presumed Jewish background to call them in parentheses out
as the rules stated, while a single less than symbol
was used to turn text pink, highlighting what the message
board called faggot posting. Um. And on a related note,

(01:13:26):
here's something Jim said in his prepared statement to Congress.
By the way, his son Ronald added both of those
those were not part of h chan originally. So yeah,
those were Ronald's additions. Um. And, keeping the existence of
faggot posting in mind, I want to read something Jim
said in his prepared statement to Congress. Our company has

(01:13:46):
built and maintained a digital form that is the place
where opposing viewpoints and those of minorities such as the
l g B t Q may express themselves free from
the fear of their life. Oh man, uh, he really
knows how to lay it on thick. He sure does.
He's he's he sure does now. His interview with the

(01:14:06):
Post came after his four hour testimony in front of Congress.
He told them that the ultimate fate of eight Chan
was the biggest test for freedom of speech since maybe
nineteen sixty nine. And I had really recommend reading that
post interview in full if you're interested in this because
it's got a lot of great moments, particularly this paragraph.
He appeared to grow upset minutes into the call, responding
to one question by saying funk off, which he later

(01:14:28):
claimed he had intended for his Uber driver. After being
asked whether an eight chan advertising program this year called
King of the Shuckle was anti Semitic, Watkins hung up
through his longtime business partner Tom Right. L. Watkins declined
to answer later calls, so that's that's how the interview ended.
He then mailed a postcard to Drew Harwell, who wrote

(01:14:49):
the article that said funk off on it. That is
such a boomer like ship post. Fucking scard, Yes on
a literal post, okay. Jim. Now, in the immediate wake
of eight chinsty platforming, which happened after the El Paso shooting,

(01:15:10):
he posted a video wherein he promised sorry for the inconvenience.
Common sense will prevailed. Jim started to make bold and
bizarre claims next, like that his son Ron Watkins was
building a protective network to defend eight chan from cyber
attacks and replace cloud Flare. This network, he said, would
be composed of vigilante hackers. As a press time it
does not seem to exist. Yeah, that is his weirdest

(01:15:35):
grift that he's doing right now is trying to convince
them that he's somehow building a cloud Flare on like
a shoestring budget. Cloud Flare's network is worth like millions
of dollars literally, Like, the infrastructure that is cloud Flare
is millions and millions of dollars. You cannot just replace

(01:15:56):
that with vigilante hackers and some you know, smart software, yes,
some kids laptops like part of Like, there's a reason
cloud Flare is basically irreplaceable for eight chan and it's
because it costs, yeah, millions of dollars to build something
that can protect websites that effectively. Yeah, it takes more

(01:16:17):
equipment than a bunch of dudes laptops exactly. Yeah. Now,
Watkins hired Benjamin Barr to prepare him for his talk
to Congress. Barr was formerly the lead architect of undercover
operations at Project Veritas James O'Keefe's operation. I just always
like it when different subjects of different episodes behind the
bastards in our mangle. It's always exciting. Yeah you didn't

(01:16:41):
know that. Yeah, sorry, you're teaching me something, and he
just keeps scanting more and more girls. Yeah. Now, Jim's
most ambitious plan in the wake of a chanty platforming
was to launch a communications satellite into space, which you
believe would be able to beam eight Chan around the planet. Now,
this seems to have been Ron Watkins, his son's idea,

(01:17:02):
and Ron said, quote not an expert on space law,
but seems like such a setup would have absolutely no
jurisdiction and be uncensorable. I remember when that was going around,
and I thought he might have even just been saying
it to troll the media, but his father might have
believed it. Yeah, it's kind of impossible to say, yeah,

(01:17:26):
because there was a recent live stream where Jim kind
of has a little moment where he starts to say,
you know, unless Ron's been lying to me, and it
seems like he's worried about Ron lying to him like
quite a lot. So I'm sure this space plan was
part of that. Now as of right now, ah Chan

(01:17:48):
is offline. The earlier this year, really just like a
couple of weeks ago, they started trying to rebrand as
eight Kun and relaunch, and they probably get up for
a hot minute, like a day or so spread out
between a couple of days of going back up and down.
It's currently unavailable, um and is at this point still

(01:18:09):
be platformed. No way to know if that's going to
continue to be uh the case, but right now I
hope it is. Yeah, I hope it is too. Um.
I'm sure Jim will try if he can afford to
and find a way to bring it back up. But
the latest news that just came out a day or
two before this episode was recorded is that you and

(01:18:31):
Jim are going to have you a little bit of
a legal throwdown. Yes, it does seem like it. Yeah,
so's he's not suing you? What is the because it's
happening in the Philippines and it's this, Yeah, I'm not sure.
The legal system here is different than in the United
States obviously, so I was actually confused when I got
the subpoena also because usually in the United States you

(01:18:54):
don't get served unless you're sued, you know what I mean. So,
and it was marked as you know, so I wasn't
like even sure what I was looking at. A lot
of you know, a lot of the Q grifters who
are like, oh, this is so great, He's getting sued criminally. Uh,
you know, even Ron Watkins posted, like retweeted a few
guys that were talking about how I was that we're

(01:19:18):
basically tweeting about how like the state had convicted me
in the Philippines or had indicted me. Well, it turns
out that all that happened was that Jim Watkins wrote
a letter to the um. Basically, he wrote a complaint
to the city prosecutor. And it's just a request from

(01:19:40):
the city prosecutor to prosecute me. It's something anyone can
do basically, like I could write a letter requesting the
prosecutor indict Jim on on a crime. So obviously I'm
taking it seriously. But it's not. It's not as if
the Filipino authority have decided to like throw me in prison.

(01:20:02):
That's not what happened here. Yeah, Jim Watkins role. And
the crazy thing about this is it is a libel allegation.
The king of anonymous libel is threatening me with a
libel lawsuit. And not only that, he's using a criminal
libel statue to try to intimidate me basically, and he's

(01:20:27):
threatening me with twelve years in jail, as is his son.
You know, for cybercrime, criminal libel. That's what is in
the complaint. Obviously, I've wayered up. Um, we are going
to write you a response to the prosecutor. Uh hopefully
it won't even get past you know, like hopefully the

(01:20:49):
prosecutor will just look at our response, look at Jim's
like very feeble complaint. Like half of the complaint is
just Jim is upset that I said he might be
going denial, and he disputes that he's going snial. So
uh yeah. But because it's like not even a criminal

(01:21:10):
case yet, I can't depose anyone, you know, like if
it would be an actual case, all it is is
the city prosecutor is going to decide whether or not
to indict me. And you know, my attorney says we
have a very good chance of it not getting that far,
like the city prosecutor most likely will throw it out. Well,

(01:21:31):
and that's where we are right now. And that's all
I know about Jim Watkins. Um, now, Frederick, is there
anything else you want to you want to say about
the man or or or talk about him, any other
particular anecdotes you think are useful for for people understanding
the guy. I know, I know, obviously you knew him
for years. So yeah, what what I would say about

(01:21:56):
what I would say to that in terms of just
particular anecdotes, is Jim, if he's claiming he's not a racist,
I would I would very much wonder about that, because
I have two anecdotes, but I'll just give you one.
One time here in the Philippines, Jim Watkins had opened

(01:22:18):
up a new business and opened up a new office
for it, and he was planning on transferring most of
his local software developers. He has a little team of
Filipino developers to that office. So he was building up
this office. He installed like four air conditioners, and he
was just in the office seeing how the work was going.

(01:22:40):
You know, it was freshly painted, the chandeliers were installed, Yes,
he did install chandeliers. Um. And he noticed that he
only had three air conditioner remotes, but he was expecting four.
So he went around the room and he's getting himself
more and more agitated. Where's the air con remote? Why

(01:23:04):
can't I find it? And he's like, you know, opening
every drawer and um like that. And then when he
you know, can't find it, he addresses the room and
there's a bunch of local Filipinos there. I'm there, Tom
Raydel is there. There's a bunch of witnesses to this.

(01:23:25):
And he, in this uh speech he gives, says, I
understand why the Spanish used to cut off the arms
of Filipinos. I wouldn't do it myself, but I understand
it because you guys just don't follow directions. And I
understand why the Spanish used to cut off your arms

(01:23:48):
to teach you a lesson. And he just went on
and on and he's ranting and raving about how he
is basically wants to be a conquistador. You know, I
don't know how any other way to put yeah. I mean,
my wife was a witness to that. And after that event,

(01:24:09):
many people ask me why he stays here if he
hates the Philippines so much. I had to answer that
question from a lot of his employees because it was
so confusing, and it hurt morale in the office a lot,
because people started to think, do do I think that way?
You know what I mean, like, yeah, definitely. It's no

(01:24:30):
way to have a good morale among office workers if
everybody is wondering whether or not the boss thinks that
they're racially inferior. I mean, what else am I supposed
to say? Um? Another another thing I would say is
if you're just giving me time to say whatever right now?

(01:24:50):
In terms of the d platforming battle that I've been
working on for months now, you know, trying to keep
han offline because I believe that Jim Watkins is an
especially bad image board admin. I believe that your Yuki
at four chan does a much better job with a
much better community, and that it's possible to have a

(01:25:13):
site like four chan or like h chan that doesn't
inspire the violence that h N has, and that Jim
failed in his duty after christ Church to change things
to stop for the violence. That's basically my argument. And
you know, go ahead, yeah, I I what do you think?

(01:25:33):
What do you think could have been changed about ah chan? Like,
do you think once the christ Church master Year happened
there was anything that could have been changed like that
would have actually made a chan itself less toxic or
was it kind of passed a point of no return
at that state? Well, definitely the toxicity level would be
something that I don't necessarily know if it could have

(01:25:56):
been changed. And I'm not saying that h Chan is
a its site, or that it should be online, not
at all. But I am saying that there are things
that Jim could have done to make it so that
terrorists would not want to use his website, and he
didn't do any of those things after christ Church Um.
For example, he could have closed the poll board momentarily.

(01:26:17):
Four chan has a history of closing boards that bring
big problems to the site and that threat and its
long term you know existence. So he could have closed
the poll board for even a week, just as like
a form of mass punishment, you know, against the community
for inspiring that kind of attack. He could have made

(01:26:38):
it clear that incitements to violence are not allowed. He
could have told his because he had Filipino employees that
were moderating a Chan, he could have told them that
they need to start deleting anybody that says they want
to kill or shoot or go on a spree, or
that they think that one should happen, you know, any

(01:27:00):
thing that's overtly violent. I don't know that Chan ever
could have been like a healthy site where normal people
go to express their you know, feelings. I don't know
that that's possible, but he's certainly, certainly four Chan shows
that you can have a community that's very far right

(01:27:22):
without terrorist attacks. Constantly, there's a lot of unhealthiness in
various parts of four channel, but there's a reason it
didn't spawn what we're dealing basically, Yeah, because the four
chun administrators and moderators take a very hard line on this,
and the few attacks that have happened on Fortune, you know,

(01:27:43):
there have has either been mass punishment or they've done
a very good job at scrubbing the manifesto or anything
like that. You know, mostly what happens on Fortune is
just like boyfriend will kill his girlfriend and post a
picture of the body. That's disgusting, but it's not you know, people,

(01:28:03):
and you know, it's also the kind of thing when
it's a community of literally millions of people, some of
them will be murderers. It's like that happens on Reddit too,
And it's like yeah, yeah, four chan is ten times
the size of h Chan, even at a chance peak,
So that means there is ten times the crazies, and
yet they kept them under control. Yeah. It's it's very

(01:28:26):
clear um that it doesn't really take a lot to
stop things, Like obviously it takes a lot to stop
a community from being toxic. But there's there's a line
between toxic and creates an international terrorist movement. And yes,
exactly work to stop the international terrorist movement, right, um,

(01:28:48):
And just as an image board admin for years, I
know that there were many things they could have done
that they didn't do, and they admit as much in
their congressional testimony. So yeah, they do. They do. They
talk about how they're like they're taking more steps and stuff,
which like after the third shooting, like maybe there's no
more steps to take guy. Um. Yeah, and did you

(01:29:11):
hear that before h And went down or eight in
the final time, it was being hosted by a Russian criminal. Yeah,
a Russian criminal two hours north of North Korea. Yes,
maybe they'll make it to North Korea next time. Maybe maybe,
who knows? Yeah, Um, it's it's pretty wild. Um. I

(01:29:34):
I wonder kind of closing this out, Frederick, do you
think you'd ever create another online community? Would you ever
want to deal with that again? You know, I don't
think so. I recognize from my experience with h And
that it's tough to run an online community. It's a
lot harder than anyone would think. There are so many

(01:29:56):
crazies out there that can turn things bad, and I
just don't really have an interest in doing that anymore.
I would like as much as possible to live a
quiet life without a JAN. You know, I don't understand
why jam is still trying to put it Jan back online,

(01:30:17):
and I'm going to keep pressuring, you know, whoever he
works with, just by telling them the truth about him
and his company and what happened on h JAN and
why you shouldn't allow it to come back. One of
the things that I think is interesting and we don't
have to include this, Frederick if it's a little bit
too personal, but um, you uh found religion, and it

(01:30:40):
seems like more than kind of at least based from
the other interviews I've read, the thing about your faith
that was really kind of transformative to your life was
less the anything written in the book and more the
community of human beings that you found and interact with
a daily basis. Now would that be accurate? Sure? Yeah.

(01:31:01):
I mean obviously that things in the book are very valuable,
but having a community is as valuable. Sure was this?
Was there not a time in your life before this
where you had a community of people in real life
that you, you were spending time around like you are now.
Unfortunately no, only my co workers. You know, people like that,

(01:31:24):
and obviously they are not a good influence on anyone. Yeah,
I think that's I I as someone who spent a
lot of time growing up on internet communities as well, UM,
you know, I see value in them. I'm not going
to say like there's nothing good about online communities. Wonderful
things have been spawned by online communities are no doubt,

(01:31:46):
but I do think, um, there's no there. I think
when I when I look at the people who fell
too far down the rabbit hole and wound up in
very dark places, Um, I do think how how would
it have been different? And if they had found a
group of people in real life who weren't toxic and
we're supportive that they could like, I think that would

(01:32:09):
I think that pulls almost anybody out of that kind
of spiral. I really do. Um. Yeah, do you mind
before we close if I just um say how people
can help with our d platform and efforts sort of? Absolutely? Okay, good,
So right now two Cows is the main one that
I'm trying to deal with. They put a coon dot

(01:32:32):
net into client hold. Basically it means that they're not
allowing the d n s to resolve, but they haven't
released a statement as to why, and Anti Technology is
still a reseller of Two Cows as far as I know,
So I would really like a statement from Two Cows
just why why did they decide to do this, And

(01:32:55):
I hope it's for the right reasons, And I hope
that they will also not allow Anti Technology to be
a Two Cows reseller. That they will because basically Anti
Technology broke there, broke their agreement because they blocked a
dot net Jim moved e c h dot net over

(01:33:17):
to rob monsters epic, and then they registered eight coon
dot net on Two Cows again via their Anti Technology
reseller account, So that should be a no go. And
you know, I would just encourage people to tell Two
Cows that we are all very curious why they put
it in client hold, and we would like a statement

(01:33:38):
just that basically they should number one not give the
domain to Jim Watkins. They should not give him the
domain so that he can keep running or at least
trying to run his h Chan replacement. H Chan is
not what the world needs right now. It spawned a
multiple terrorist attacks as this episode and we talked about

(01:34:01):
so Yeah, basically I would encourage people to email two
Cows and just tell them, you know, don't give Jim
back his a coon dot net domain. Uh, and don't
let him be an anti technology reseller. Why do you
want to work with these people? And yeah, you know,
if you want to look up Two Cows, you can

(01:34:23):
find obviously their website if you google their name, but
you can also find them on Twitter at at two Cows. Um,
I'm sure, uh if you if you have feelings to
share with them, Um, I think that would be helpful.
And of course my Twitter, I'm always keeping track of
the latest developments. Who's hosting h so that's at h
W Underscore b e A T Underscore t h A

(01:34:46):
T h W beat that and uh, I am on
Twitter at I right? Okay, you can find this website
or the website for this podcast Behind the Bastards dot com.
You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at
Bastards pod and you and buy shirts if you're naked
in need to be covered very quickly at t public
Behind the Pastords. Uh, Frederick, anything else before we roll

(01:35:09):
out into the sunset? No, thank you? Very much for
having me on, Thanks for being on, man H

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