The Birth of a Lie — 4chan’s role in Simu Liu’s ties to “Men’s Rights Activism” and Reddit’s incel community
Disclaimer: due to the nature of this article there are several references to anti-Asian slurs, anti-Black slurs, and sexual assault — included for context only.
Roughly four days ago, Shang-Chi star Simu Liu’s Reddit account was unearthed and his private post history was laid bare for the entire internet to dissect. At this point in time, it’s fair to say whilst many of the allegations levied against Liu were fake, some were true — albeit taken massively out of context. Yet, the sudden, somewhat artificially-inflated nature of the information that leaked did seem specifically manufactured to be taken out of context.
Within the space of 24 hours, Simu Liu had been targeted for every possible grievance imaginable; racism, ableism, sexism, pedophile sympathizing, and ties to the involuntary celibate “movement”. The allegations seemed unending, and it seemed obvious to me that someone, or more likely a group of people, had targeted Simu Liu in a bid to whip the collective internet into a frenzy. And, of course — it worked.
Within hours of a post by @NebsGoodTakes appearing on Twitter, multiple sites ran with the story and the misinformation immediately spread. Infamous MRA forum Incels.is were proud to accept Simu Liu into their ranks, in a post titled “Main actor from Shang Chi: Ten Rings exposed as ricecel” talking about the aforementioned Twitter post. Several posts on Reddit discussed the allegations, including the /r/aznidentity subreddit to which Simu Liu was supposedly linked. Sites like TMZ, Daily Dot, and CBR reported on the story as it unfolded, and as a result Simu Liu himself took to Twitter to address it.
For the sake of transparency, I should also note that I entered the discourse on Twitter to add context to some of the Reddit leaks. Katie Bee also discussed the allegations on her Twitter — posts which were later liked by Simu Liu. Although my post was intended to clear up some of the misconceptions around Simu Liu’s Reddit account, it proved difficult to ascertain where certain allegations had originated given the lack of any context to back up them up.
However, one specific allegation out of the multitudes of issues levied against Liu caught my eye. A commenter by the name of MoeLester (charming guy, I’m sure) replied to my post with a link to an article written on “Lulz.com” entitled “Reddit crowdfunds AM/WF porno to trigger 4chan — and it’s working” — an article written by “nippedinthebud”. The author of the article shares the same name as Simu Liu’s now deleted Reddit account, and the article itself makes mention of a crowdsourced, Asian-led pornographic film orchestrated by members of the /r/aznidentity subreddit — the same subreddit that Liu was reportedly linked to.
Several Twitter accounts linked back to the article in question, with no apparent source to where it originated nor how it was unearthed. Following the sudden appearance of Simu Liu’s long since deleted Reddit account, this article unceremoniously appearing amongst the discussion seemed suspect. Who exactly inspired this leak of information to the internet, and how did they find it?
Using the archive.is snapshot tool, we can put together a timeline of changes to the article in question. From here, it’s pretty easy to find out that the writer of the article wasn’t originally “nippedinthebud” — but in fact, the very first snapshot of the page on the 22nd of February 2018 lists the writer as “Editor”. And then, at one brief point on the 11th of April 2019, the article was updated to list the writer in question as “swack”. Sometime between April 2019 and the 9th of September 2021, this reference to Swack was deleted entirely and the article remained author-less. That is until the 17th of September this year, at which point the contributor for the article suddenly changed to “nippedinthebud” — which begs the question, who the hell is Swack?
All references to “Swack” have since been removed from the Lulz site. I did attempt to contact Lulz.com for any further clarification on the matter, but they opted not to reply to any of the messages I sent their way. Regardless, whilst Swack’s author page on Lulz wasn’t archived, his now deleted Twitter page was. Due to the snapshot nature of archive.is, there isn’t too much to gleam from Swack’s Twitter given the limited information available. However, two important things of note stand out.
Firstly, Swack retweeted a comment from @AlbertHurr888 (a now banned account) on Twitter regarding the aforementioned article he posted on Lulz. The comment references the0clean0slate, the ringleader of /r/aznidentity’s crowdfunded porno and the man interviewed in the article written by Swack. The comment in question was also made on the 22nd of February 2018, the same date the article was published. This is very similar to another comment Swack himself made on his Reddit profile. The Reddit comment, in which he name drops a Twitch streamer in relation to the film orchestrated by /r/aznidentity, also has a link to the same article.
Secondly, on his now archived Twitter page, Swack listed two websites in his biography — Lulz.com, and HookTube.com. HookTube was a website used to circumnavigate YouTube in different ways, although according to a post made by Swack on Twitter the site is now effectively defunct due to “legal issues”. HookTube also features a “From our blog” section at the bottom of their page, which redirects to — you guessed it — Lulz.com. In short, this means it’s more than fair to assume Swack owned both sites. He was listed as an Editor in Chief on Lulz before his profile was removed, and he openly talks about his ownership of HookTube in several archived tweets.
So what’s the relevance of HookTube? Well, if you run HookTube.com through archive.is, the snapshot from 23 May 2017 lists the website as being owned by a “Will JZ” and also lists a twitter username @wjz — a deleted account… which can also be accessed through archive.is.
The account @wjz joined twitter in 2008, before being suspended sometime between August and December of 2017. Swack joined Twitter in 2014, but didn’t start to properly use the account until late November in 2017 (besides one tweet saying “wololo.wav” in 2015). Considering both accounts ties to HookTube and the link between @wjz’s suspension and Swack’s uptake in posting, it’s fair to assume Will JZ and Swack are the same person and Will simply moved over to his Swack account.
One snapshot of @wjz’s page on the 8th of August 2017 shows several posts on 4chan message boards, specifically that of /pol/ — a 4chan board short for “politically incorrect”, which has been frequently criticized for its links to “racist, white supremacist, antisemitic, misogynistic, and transphobic content”.
Now unfortunately, any further information pertaining to Swack’s identity is non-existent and any references to a Will JZ are impossible to find elsewhere. We can however take an educated guess as to the type of person Swack might be. If you were to apply to write for Lulz or any of their listed “partners”, such as Ganker, Femoid, or Wauf!, you’ll be directed to apply using the email address “contact@iqfy.com”.
Iqfy.com is a real nothing of a website. The domain seems to have been registered sometime around 2016, but beyond that the website only seems to exist as a page for any internet sleuths to be redirected to should they want to investigate Lulz.com or any of their partner sites further. Whilst iqfy.com doesn’t directly mention Lulz, or any of the other websites, it does ask users to forward any queries about the site to the same email address — “contact@iqfy.com”.
Whois.net DomainTools also sheds some light on further links between the six sites. HookTube, Lulz, Ganker, Femoid and Wauf! all hold very similar domain profile listings. For instance, all sites share the same registar - Namecheap. This in itself could just be coincidental, as Namecheap are a relatively trusted and popular hosting service.
However, all six sites are also have the same registrant, “Withheld for Privacy Purposes”. This isn’t because information has been redacted from the site or censored in any way, that is actually the exact name of the registrant — withheldforprivacy.com, who list their offices in Kalkofnsvegur 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland. The address in question is real, but the “office space” rented out in this location is fake. That is, unless of course the hundreds (if not thousands) of scamming websites found to be “operating” out of this address all work in the same office.
Withheld for Privacy and the address they’re registered at were both created under the guise of helping anyone who wants to retain their anonymity but also be a registrant of a website. In actual reality, the service allows scammers to create websites without any fear of having their details traced back to them in case someone were to use a tool such as whois.domaintools.com to look them up. Withheld for Privacy and their Kalkofnsvegur 2 address have been associated with dozens of scam websites, including fake clones of popular sites like CoinBase, PlayAsia, and Microsoft. A more comprehensive list of the scam websites registered under Withheld for Privacy’s address can be found here.
It’s no stretch of the imagination to assume from here that the owner of all six sites is the same person. Given the link between IQFY, Ganker, Femoid, Wauf! and Lulz, the link between HookTube and Lulz, and the near identical domain listings on whois.net, the sites in question must be solely owned by Swack — whoever Swack is.
From here the question isn’t why Swack faked this connection between /r/aznidentity and Simu Liu, but rather how did they generate so much buzz surrounding the controversy and where did it first originate?
Well, the latter is easy. It first appeared on 4chan’s /pol/ board. The earliest reference to the Lulz.com post appeared on a 4chan post on the 17th of this month, entitled “Asian incel who spammed porn on 4chan was Marvel actor Simu Liu — exposed”. The post in question references a Slate article about the incel subreddit /r/aznidentity, in which Yale undergraduate Eileen Huang was attacked by members of the community for an opinion piece she published back in 2020. Although the 4chan post makes mention of Simu Liu and the Slate article, the piece on Slate never mentions Simu Liu in any capacity.
Not only was the inciting post on the 4chan board dated on the 17th, but the archive.is backup shows that the username in question for the article was changed on the 17th — implying that the anonymous user on the /pol/ board also changed the Lulz article to feature Simu Liu’s Reddit username just before posting their “evidence”.
Could the 4chan poster in question be Swack? Again, this is impossible to prove with any certainty due to the anonymous nature of 4chan — but I think it’s more than fair to make an educated guess. The links between Will JZ/Swack and the /pol/ board go back as far as four years, combined with Swack’s ownership of the original Lulz.com post, and the timeframe between which the 4chan post appeared and the date the Lulz.com article was edited, all point toward Swack being the one made the original 4chan post.
The why is, sadly, not exactly earth shattering. As far as 4chan is concerned, whilst several comments tied to Swack’s 4chan post speak about how Disney “paid 1 million” to scrub Simu Liu’s internet history from the internet, the underlying theme to every 4chan comment is the same — racism. It’s not exactly light reading, but you can find a few examples of the anti-Asian rhetoric perpetuated on 4chan in these screenshots. What is interesting to note in these comments is the purported “war” between 4chan and /r/aznidentity, a focus of the original Lulz.com written by Swack. This is more assumption that fact, but my theory is that Swack was hoping to inspire another internet “war” between 4chan and /r/aznidentity, whilst simultaneously making a link to Simu Liu — all just to generate clicks for his article, and therefore more money for his site.
So — whilst the nature of Simu Liu’s post history on Reddit is up to you to form an opinion on, his supposed ties to the incel community are all but debunked given the context of his Reddit posts and the clearly fake nature of the article Lulz.com has falsely attributed to Simu Liu. That is, everything except Edward Hong’s post on Simu Liu.
Whilst the atricle attributed to Simu Liu was edited and circulated on the 17th, this wasn’t the earliest mention of his ties to incels — that in fact originated with Edward Hong, better known as @CinnabonMonster on Twitter. In a series of tweets that were made on the 16th, voice actor Edward Hong spoke about his former ties to Men’s Rights Activists, and how one of the “ringleaders” of this group he was a part of was in fact Simu Liu.
He later said that “for those asking for receipts, you won’t find any”, and that “all Reddit board and Twitter conversations have been scrubbed clean with specific MRA involvement”. His tweet was later bolstered by Roslyn Talusan, who shared private messages between herself and Simu Liu, as well as accounts of other allegations brought against him.
It’s also important to note that whilst Edward Hong’s post on the 16th was the first time he’d directly accused Simu Liu of anything, he has made comments tying Simu Liu to Mens Rights Activists as early as the 6th of this month and also mentioned having “major issues” with Liu in a Twitter post back in June.
Hong, unlike Swack, is a real person with an online identity. He’s had several roles in TV, with the most recent being the critically lauded Netflix show Squid Game. In theory, Hong would have no reason to fake these allegations against Simu Liu. In fact, you could argue it wouldn’t exactly be conducive for his career as an actor to falsely slander an actor attached to a hot new Disney project. Getting sued into financial ruin by Disney’s lawyers and then blacklisted from Hollywood isn’t a risk anyone would be willing to take just for a sliver of internet clout.
I did attempt to reach out to Edward for comment, but understandably he wasn’t keen to get into contact. Following his initial tweet, Edward clarified that he’d just “learned Reddit threads are never deleted and just archived” — implying that the evidence he purports to be true stemmed from Simu Liu’s now unearthed post history. No such blatant links to /r/aznidentity, nor any other incel subreddits, were found on Simu Liu’s Reddit page (outside of the comments made on one specific post referencing Kim’s Convenience). Unfortunately, without asking Edward directly, we can’t ascertain the exact truth behind his statement so nothing can be proved either way.
Now, I want to make something very clear — this piece is not intended to be any kind of takedown of Edward Hong. Whether or not Edward wants to come forward with further information or added context is entirely his decision, and it’s not up to me to decide whether or not there’s any truth to his allegations when no specific information can in any way be fact checked. For all we know, what Edward says may be true — and it’s not my place to call him a liar when it’s impossible to prove either way. Until then, it would seem the discourse has met a stalemate and the ball is still very much in Edward’s court.
What I will say is, regardless of Edward’s future comments on the matter, it’s very clear a hidden element was at work behind the scenes, fanning the flames. In the case of 4chan, these were racially motivated attacks designed to take down one of the highest profile Chinese actors currently working in Hollywood — simply for crime of being born Asian.
It is important to hold influential figures and those working in Hollywood to higher standards than the rest of us, but we must be ever conscious of both the context evidence is presented in, and the spin certain darker entities are attempting to put on information in the age of the internet. As Swack has proved, one small change or edit to a fact can result in an entirely new angle for evidence to be presented in. Thankfully, in this specific scenario, it was easy to disprove — but a lot of people on the world wide web are a lot smarter than Swack, and equally willing to do whatever it takes to perpetuate the lie they want us to believe as fact.
