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Capture the Flag | He Will Not Divide Us

Internet HistorianRecommended by 1 HN commenter across 1 month, 2019–2022
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commentary · general · 2019–2022 on HN

Internet Historian's comedic retelling of how internet users located and captured the flag from Shia LaBeouf's He Will Not Divide Us installation, framed with Metal Gear Solid parodies. It covers the trolling campaign and the geolocation of the flag.

HN refers to it as a humorous account of how online communities pinpointed the flag's location, used as an example of crowd-sourced geolocation.

Internet culture & memesSatire & parody#hewillnotdivideus#4chan#geolocation#internethistory

5 comments from Hacker News

@sigwinch282020-03 · in “Finding McAfee: a case study on geoprofiling and imagery analysis”

Yes, The Internet Historian on YouTube has made a series of videos about this: "HWNDU" (He Will Not Divide Us). It started with a flag outside in a public place [0], followed by being moved to a flagpole in the middle of nowhere (the one you're thinking of) [1]. The flag was then moved into a museum in Liverpool [2], and finally it was moved indoors with a camera pointing at a plain white painted wall [3]. Beware: lots of memes and occasionally offensive language. [0]: link [1]: ▶ this video [2]: link [3]: link

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@_dain_2022-12 · in “Finding the B-21's hanger location from the stars in it's press image”

This trick happened for real with the HWNDU stunt back in 2017. 4channers found the flag based on the stars in the livestream, along with matching aircraft contrails to flight radar maps. ▶ this video

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@verdverm2022-07 · in “Ask HN: Is it possible to get a location using a camera looking at Moon/Sun?”

Reddit geolocated a flag based off a camera feed. They used the sun and contrails to locate it iirc ▶ this video I think describes this event

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@laurent922021-09 · in “Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids”

Internet Historian is humorously documenting that it is possible to pinpoint the worldwide location of a flag with only the blue sky behind, or inside a hut lost in lapland, or inside a flat without outside light, or even a stone buried somewhere in the world (South of Spain). ▶ this video I understand it would be possible with a photo to guess which side a rock faces, thanks to the sun/shadows, and then find all the rocks pointing this way in a country using satellite image, and filtering those which are not currently at war etc.

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@davesmith19832019-07 · in “Talk: An open-source commenting platform focused on better conversation”

4chan has got a lot of stuff done. Consider the HWNDU saga: ▶ this video Obviously this is trolling, but it damn impressive they found it. They've done quite a lot of other stuff including finding ISIS targets and getting them killed, using nothing bit a sheet of paper and an innocuous message to make the media look silly, they've even caught animal abusers. Plenty of people stick their nose up to them but they are probably one of the more effective online communities. It just depends whether you happen to like what they are effective at.

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