The Emma Watson 4Chan Threat Was a Marketing Ploy

A couple days ago, news spread across the web that, after Emma Watson’s UN speech on feminism, the hacker posting on 4Chan threatened to release her nude photos. A website titled Emma You Are Next popped up on the web promising to show that this “feminist bitch is as much of a whore as any woman.” Much outrage was had because a direct threat over a speech about humanity was a huge overreaction which bordered on insane.

Now it’s come to light that this was a marketing ploy by Rantic Marketing. Digging into Apache server logs, internet sleuths discovered that the site in question belonged to Rantic Marketing, a corporation specializing in social media marketing who’ve worked with NASA, EA, Steam, Rockstar, and, most telling, FoxWeekly. Why is that important? Because FoxWeekly was the first outlet to report on the story. Check out the timeline here.

In either case, it doesn’t matter because Rantic has admitted it made the whole thing up. As of now, the Emma You Are Next website leads to Rantic.com which is calling for the shuttering of 4chan. They’ve posted this message.

DEAR BARACK OBAMA,

” We have been hired by celebrity publicists to bring this disgusting issue to attention. The recent 4chan celebrity nude leaks in past 2 months have been an invasion of privacy and is also clear indication that the internet NEEDS to be censored. Every Facebook like, share & Twitter mention will count as a social signature — and will be step closer to shutting down www.4chan.org. ”

Sincerely,
Rantic.com

Update: And now Rantic is a fake company.