Shia LaBeouf. In all honesty, with all the viral moments surrounding this man, I could center my entire passion blog about him. However, even though some of these include Shia screaming “Just do it” in motivational speeches, and appearing in a song centered around him being a cannibalistic man who stalks other people in the woods, my favorite Shia internet situation has to be this, 6 (So far) video series, where Shia attempts to place a “He Will Not Divide Us” flag somewhere on planet Earth, and other people try to find it, and steal it, just to mess with him.
The situation surrounding the video series is such: Donald Trump had just been elected President, and in an effort to push back, Shia bought a plot of land in New York City, planted a camera there, and planned to chant “He will not divide us.” until Trump was out of office. Now, although this sounds sort of unnecessary, and a little gratuitous, Shia attracted a fair amount of support. Unfortunately though, because its Shia Labeouf, he also attracted the attention of the infamous 4Chan trolls.
In case you didn’t already know, 4Chan trolls can be ruthless, especially when their beliefs were at stake. Not to mention, Shia’s protests had attracted a certain extreme from the left as well, including those who casually called Trump supporters Nazis and a black man who said that the milk marketing industry was racist (I can’t explain his reasoning). So, because Shia is infamously unhinged, and because all the chanting was being streamed live, and because there were some “Emotional” people there, the 4Chan trolls began sending people to Shia’s protests to mess with him. It worked. After 4 days of trolling, Shia assaulted someone at his own protest and was arrested.
But the nonsense doesn’t end there. For a series of 5 more videos, Shia attempted to restart his protest, and each time he was foiled by the actually very impressive 4Chan trolls. Switching from physical protests, to a flag being filmed at various locations, from a museum, to London, to a remote location where all that could be seen from the camera was the flag and the sky, Shia tried it all. 4Chan was just smarter. They infiltrated the museum, attempted to steal the flag, and even managed to do so successfully after determining its exact location in the wilderness by using a map of the stars that you could see behind the flag.
Yes, its that impressive. I’ll just link the first video of the series, mostly because its always best to start with the original, but if the rest of the series interests you, absolutely check it out.