4chan's Operation GemPolish - How Tumblr Took Another Troll Hook, Line, and Sinker

Yes we're aware this isn't pony. But it IS cartoon, 4chan, and tumblr, so fuck it.


At the dawn of Tumblr in 2007, there was peace.  Peace, achieved through overwhelming obscurity.
That peace lasted until 2010, when the users, drunk on their 3 years of hugbox wine, got too big for their britches and decided to kick the hornets nest that was 4chan (4chan at this time was in the midst of some of their most notorious raids).

4chan awoke from their slumber and punished tumblr so severely (rendering it briefly inoperable, and flooding every feed with violent pornography). They left them for dead and carried on. It was thought they would never make the same mistake again.

Then, in July of 2014, they made the same mistake again, reheating a long dormant conflict between the social justice fanatics, and the free-speech free-for-all that is 4chan once again, resulting in major tears from the tumblrs.

Well here we are in Summer 2015 and /b/ has decided to go on a fishing trip, using their new favorite bait: Steven Universe.

They started to run out of hooks.
The plan was simple: prove once again (but never for-all, where's the fun in that?) the hypocrisy that plagues the microblogging site's userbase. Accomplish this, by doing something that the site has always done, and wait for the rage to get so bad that the administrators outright delete the account without it actually breaking any laws.

And they succeeded.

How? They made an account dedicated to doing only one thing: changing the races of Steven Universe characters from artwork, and posting them on an account, complete with attribution of the source materials. They claimed to be a transgender individual who liked Steven Universe who liked to make fanart.

Then they waited.


In mere days, every "Steven Universe" tag on Tumblr was flooded with images of characters that have had their colors changed, and tens of thousands of angry posts decrying "racism" "bigotry" "whitewashing" and every other buzzword imaginable.


What's more, is that the users were almost completely unaware that the "offending" account was just bait, that they swallowed: hook, line, sinker, reel, pole, and boat. In droves, hundreds and thousands of requests to delete and block the account came, despite there being little to no commentary about the artwork itself.


Given that many of the characters of the show are a different species, from a different planet, who have no discernible race or gender as they would apply to humans, it is common practice to assign characters races arbitrarily when creating alternative artwork of them - a practice that tumblr
embraces.


Or, it does until YOU color them differently.



4chan, however, didn't really care for any of the political motivations behind the art, or any of the socioeconomic connotations of character races, they were just "in it for the lulz". They expected Tumblr to apply their own biases and flip their collective shits at whatever they threw at them - and they did not disappoint. 


So, the Steven Universe fans began to endlessly re-blog the bait with all of their outrage, until they themselves were responsible for flooding every major relevant tag and feed with the racially altered images.


Ultimately, the "raiders" achieved their ultimate goal; which was to offend so many people by doing nothing but changing color on cartoon characters, that they were put out of commission by Tumblr itself, which outright deleted the http://steven-universe-edits.tumblr.com/ account.  


Operation Gem Polish was a complete success for the trolls. They have since moved on to lulzier pastures. Tumblr, however continues to smolder, largely unaware of the lengths to which they were just taken for a ride.

And that kids is the story of another battle in the ongoing Internet pissing match that is 4chumblr.


Think they'll ever understand the concepts of irony or hypocrisy?

Comments (32)

  1. No horse related faggot.

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  2. Replies
    1. Fuck off, autist.

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    2. Oh god. hilarious.

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    3. SCOOBIE POOPIE!

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    4. You must be desperate if you're coming here for attention. Or are you still salty about Animated James?

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    5. Hey, remember when you got yourself and all your friend booted out of the Hilton at EFNW because of how much of a fucking faggot you are? Good times. (^:

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    6. Kek, what's pika doing here? I hate this place even more now.

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    7. @Anon 7: What did he do?

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    8. @01:12

      Fucking loooooooooool, thank you for that

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    9. BTW: All of the above users: SAME FAG.

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    10. >BTW: All of the above users: SAME FAG.

      You're underestimating how many people despise you Pika Faggot, just ask the mods, they can view our IP.

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    11. Not mine, I have seven proxies.

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  3. ya got'a love 4chan and the funny ass things it likes to do to dumb motherfucking sjws makes me laugh every single time

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  4. the only downside is that it is tumblr, and they have no concept of "self-awareness"

    they'll keep on being hypocrites because they're too retarded to know otherwise

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  5. Glorious. Absolutely glorious.

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  6. I think it's cool HN is covering anti-SJW drama, because those assholes have been taking a dump on brony fandom since the beginning of times. They've claimed some of our best artists with promises of tolerance and shit. And now look at how tolerable they are. I think Black Panthers were more tolerable of whites than these retards (even though most of them actually are white).

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  7. If common belief now is that it's horrible and racist to "whitewash" black characters by changing their race in fanart, then I for one would like to begin a campaign to stop the horrible and racist practice of "blackfacing" characters by changing their race in movie adaptations. Look at what these bigots did to once-beautiful characters like Nick Fury, Heimdall, Johnny Storm, and Deadshot!

    All bullshit aside, I don't actually care when a character's race in changed either way if there's a reason for it (I actually think getting Samuel L. Jackson to play Nick Fury was a stroke of genius, even if the other examples I listed actually were examples of genuine bullshit). But if you do disapprove of the practice of altering a character's race because you think that race is integral to a character's identity and appeal, you can't then add additional qualifiers. Either race-lifts are bad or they're not. They can't be bad in only one direction but acceptable in the other. If you think they are, then you're discriminating against one of those races, making you a racist.

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    Replies
    1. To be fair, race changing is okay if you're casting Sam Jackson. Coolness transcends race.

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    2. anon 10:38

      don't forget Michael Clarke Duncan who plays the kingpin in daredevil

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  8. >free-speech free-for-all that is 4chan

    4chan was never about free speech.

    rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313?page=2
    "Anon, recalls the group "yelling and screaming about the fact he shouldn't be censoring content on that site," he says. Today, Poole remains steadfast. When I ask him if there's free speech on 4chan, he doesn't flinch. "No," he says. "Not in the absolute sense. There never has been, ever."

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    Replies
    1. >thinking 4chan gives a shit about what mootles wants
      I seriously hope you guys don't do this.

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    2. You mean follow the rules and don't get banned? It was always like that. Just because everyone constantly says "nigger" and "faggot" on 4chan doesn't mean aren't any rules.

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  9. Trolls trolling trolls. Nothing of substance was gained.

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    Replies
    1. Cute. You actually think tumblrinas are smart enough to be trolls.

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  10. But HN didn't.......... this is not horse related.

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  11. You know what would be a great idea? Take black characters and turn them white, but in the very same post, take white characters and turn them black. If they call you "racist", accuse them of hating the white-to-black characters. If they deny it, say they're lying and keep calling them the real racist. They're so lacking in any sense that they'll believe anything if you keep repeating it.

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  12. nah....l went to 4crap,to see if they got something good to watch and at the end it was boring me to a degree that my brain cells got all rotten,the same thing happened in other web sites like facebook,tumblr and twitter whit there stupid obsseion of selfies, food pictures, stupid animu gifs and all that senile crap

    for the moment i'm done with the internet

    for now

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  13. Just wanted to point out that the 2014 raid was due to /pol/ (pretending to be tumblr) fucking with /b/, not actually tumblr. But everyone fell for it.

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  14. Hi. This is Stoniverse. I outed /b/ and told them that all of tumblr knew their secret. We were the winners. The witch is dead.

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  15. Ah, I remember this. Thanks to Operation Gem Polish it started getting me into art again and I have become a better artist

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