Is a term that arose in around 2016-17 as a synonym of what is known now as OSINT, or open source intelligence, as deployed by 4chan during that period. It's basically the art of using minute details in the backgrounds of images and piecing together clues to find things out, usually things that people might not want you to find out. The joke is that because all 4chan users are basement dwelling manchildren with no life and a disturbing liking for animé, they are all autists. And because they are using qualities associated with autism for nefarious ends, it's weaponised.
The term in particular was used to describe 4chan's systematic dismantling of Shia LaBoeuf's work, and sanity, in that period. Now. It all began when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and, as I pointed out at that time, it caused a lot of people to act out in embarrassing and funny ways. One of these worthies was Shia LaBoeuf, Disney alumnus and former cast member in the second worst Indiana Jones film. He teamed up with some modern artists to create a modern art installation called He Will Not Divide Us which was out the back of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The idea was that it was a blank white wall with "He Will Not Divide Us" on it and a permanently livestreaming camera below it. People could go and express to the camera their resistance and their determination not to allow Orange Man to divide them, whatever that means. This was to stay in place for all for Donald Trump's four years as president. Yes, I know. It's very pretentious, isn't it. What's artistic about a blank wall with a slogan on it and a webcam? Yes, gentle reader, the Emperor was indeed naked.
Needless to say, the people of 4chan thought this was ripe for some lulz. They started to go off to the webcam and shout memes and deliberately contentious turns of phrase into it. Once Shia himself was in residence and being all chummy with his compatriots and people participating when one of the trolls shouted "Hitler did nothing wrong" into the camera. This caused him to swing at the troll, and more trolls turned up to do this and eventually the whole art installation had to be moved elsewhere kept behind a velvet rope with a bouncer and vetting people to check they were not likely to be trolls, which sabotaged the whole purpose of the installation. But this didn't deter the trolls who did just the same as before, and Shia was, regrettably, divided.
So he came up with a foolproof plan. Instead the phrase "He will not divide us" was put on a flag and a camera livestreaming that flag would be placed for the whole of Trump's four years as president. The flag would be hoisted up and the camera pointed skywards from the ground towards it, so nobody could know where it was and attempt to sabotage it. It would stand proud as a clarion call to resist the depredations of the Orange Man and his hideous minions, surely!
"Nah, fuck that," said 4chan, and began scrutinising the livestream for clues as to the flag's location. They started by noticing the stars that were visible on clear nights and from that, and the proper motion of the stars, were able to determine the orientation and latitude of the flagpole. They then noted the dawn and dusk each day on the livestream and from that could work out the time zone it was in and calculate roughly where in that time zone it was. This narrowed it down significantly to the state of Tennessee. From there, by using flight tracking websites to guess which planes went over and when, and jet contrails, the trolls were able to narrow it down further to an area around the town of Greeneville in that state. Then field trolls went and systematically drove around that area honking their horns so that other trolls listening in on the livestream could determine if the noises were audible. After just 38 hours from when the flag first went up, viewers were treated to the ominous sight of the flag being lowered, and a MAGA hat and a Pepe the Frog t-shirt going back up at around 2.00 am local time.
Shia was more divided than ever.
There then followed a statement about how America was allegedly "not safe" for this type of artwork any more, and it was moved offshore to the roof of a museum in Liverpool behind locked doors. It lasted about a day before a Scouser attempted to steal it a troll blagged his way onto the roof to lower the flag while pretending to look for the toilet and was only foiled by lack of anything to cut the zip ties it was held up with. The next day a troll strapped a road flare to a drone and attempted to set it on fire. All the while this was going on Shia attempted another art project where he livestreamed himself sitting in a cabin in the woods in Finland, to a museum alone, and of course, Finnish trolls attempted to provoke him by wearing frog masks or going and shouting meme phrases at him, which caused him to flip out in increasingly deranged ways. The flag was then relocated, sans livestream, to various other places. Deprived of an audience, the trolls declared victory, and Shia was so divided it hurt.
4chan commemmorated by posting on the /pol/ board a badge of Pepe the Frog but with octopus tentacles slithering all over the globe with the line, "nothing is beyond our reach." They began describing their campaign as "weaponised autism" and it stuck. From then on, it became clear that if you do something particularly spicy or silly online, someone will eventually find out where and how.
Weaponised autism has reared its head since. During the Ukraininan War of 2022-present, Ukrainian suicide drone operators were able to drop grenades onto Russian positions solely from footage shared by Russian troops of squads chatting amongst themselves. And during Yevgeny Prigozhin's abortive coup attempt of 2023, it was used to locate the man and his Wagner Group mercenaries' movements within Russia. Even the BBC used these techniques to verify such things.
Weaponised autism is therefore here to stay. All I'm going to say here is that if you want to do something spicy or provocative online, or stage an item of fake news, best put some false leads into your video or stream. And even then it might not work entirely.
(IRON NODER 2023 #15)