The Antisocial Network: Memes To Mayhem (2024)

A group of lonely teenagers formed an online community and bonded over their isolation, but their collective beliefs warped reality.

Millennials love to wax poetic about the “simpler times” of the early internet in the 2000s, back when memes were harmless internet jokes and no one running for president had a Twitter account. But Netflix’s new documentary The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem—which began streaming today—will make you realize that the early days of the internet were not as innocent as we remember. Through interviews with former coders, hackers, and trolls, The Antisocial Network traces the origins of the dangerous alt-right mass delusion known as “QAnon” back to the first iteration of the so-called “edgy” online posting board, 4chan. And though some of the connections drawn in the film feel tenuous, the overall picture is nevertheless terrifying.