Malevolent Cooperation: the Case of ‘Weaponized Autism’
Regarding social issues that involve cooperation, oftentimes the discussion is focused on how to improve cooperation. But what about the cases in which it is desirable to prevent cooperation that serves to achieve some malevolent goal? Such is the case of “weaponized autism”. The term originates from the notorious image posting board 4chan, to describe individuals and groups who are highly motivated and resourceful to reach a goal through online collective action.
Here, “autism” is used a little out of context to imply, rather than a medical condition, of an individual’s characteristics of being engaged in repetitive, hyper-focused behaviors; more like what’s seen in the cases of Asperger’s syndrome, which remains in the autism spectrum. “Weaponized” obviously implies those traits utilized to reach some end goal.
There have been unfavorable and (but sometimes hilarious) stories thanks to weaponized autism (WA). A prototype WA story was when they were (mostly people from 4chan, than it spread to Reddit and some other platforms) obsessed with President Trump— probably because he too has some troll-like qualities to him. So, Trump has been opposed by CNN, as they were serving news at his expense, and Trump was accusing them of making fake news and so on. So the WA supporters of Trump were doing all they can to degrade CNN, they made memes about CNN and Trump, mocking CNN harshly and praising Trump, ruining comment sections under CNN news etc. One of the memes (in video format) was shared by Trump himself (4chan people called him “God-emperor Trump”, by the way), and it became a big deal. CNN was apparently offended and tracked the meme all the way back to its originator, and they said they won’t reveal the originator’s identity but keep the right to do so depending on his/her future behavior (it was revealed that the meme was first posted on Reddit). This was regarded as a very tasteless move by many (even Trump opposers), that is a massive media network threatening an individual. Chaos ensued. 4chan waged full-on war against CNN, and utilized the power of weaponized autism to the limit. They made more and worse memes, cyber-attacked CNN and revealed personal information of many CNN employees just for instance.
On 4chan, one user wrote: “Right now, Reddit and r/TheDonald are our allies. We may not like them but we don’t have to. We are fighting a common enemy … everyone should be producing as many anti-CNN memes as possible.”
It is remarkable how motivating the desire to make life miserable for certain individuals or groups can be.
The intriguing question is what makes these people work together so vigorously and efficiently? They have a common purpose, a common enemy, and apparently loads of free time. The irony is that the kind of person who is a weaponized autist is very unlikely to be a cooperative agent offline. There must be something about being online and your identity being decentralized that makes you just focus on the interests of the group you belong to, maybe the only group you feel you belong to, assuming that weaponized autists do suffer some social difficulties. It seems like those people do not operate on positive incentives, but negative incentives, like causing harm and annoyance to others, which brings them some sort of joy and satisfaction. The most basic answer, it appears, as to why they do what they do is because they can.
Weaponized autism is an interesting case; showing that however difficult it is to enhance cooperation, it is probably more difficult to deter people from cooperation if they are really committed to it and their motivations and incentives are not clear and controllable. How to prevent that kind of cooperation is a thought-provoking question, and there are not too many good, common-sense answers. I don’t know the solution either but just wanted to bring the issue up, as it seems like a bit understated.
