The Emma Watson nude photos threat was a hoax but it was still a threat | Jessica Valenti

Emma Watson is disappointed in you people. Photograph: DVT/Star Max/GC Images

When we thought 4chan had threatened to leak nude pictures of Emma Watson as retaliation for her United Nations speech on feminism last week, it was outrage-on-internet-business as usual. After all, women being verbally attacked and sexually threatened for speaking up is nothing new. Finding out that it was all part of a hoax, however, means He-for-She-gate is a full-blown meta-misogynist clusterfuck.

Rantic Media (also known as Social VEVO), the supposed marketering bros behind the threat – hoax or no, it was still a threat – swears that the goal was to bring attention to the sexism of 4chan and the recent celebrity photo leaks. But sexually threatening an outspoken woman to shine a light on how outspoken women are sexually threatened – well, that’s idiotic at best. The Emma Watson hoax was a cravenly opportunistic move to gin up attention using a real issue, a real woman and real fear that women and marginalized groups across the internet face constantly. That’s not marketing or consciousness-raising: it’s harassment.

And what was this intended to prove (other than, perhaps, some nebulous point about the media’s gullibility)? We all already know that 4chan is a cesspool. Using their tactics is like throwing a bag of garbage into the dump: you’re just adding to the stink.

The Rantic “firm” of men didn’t actually believe that women would be grateful, or that they were doing anything to further the conversation about misogyny online, nor about social media threats or celebrity privacy. The supposed hoaxers just wanted their 15 minutes, their 140 characters. The only thing Emma Watson’s harassers achieved was to remind women that our bodies and the sexual fear with which we’ve been instilled since childhood are usable as a joke. As a way to drum up traffic.

The takeaway from their “funny” hoax is supposed to be Everyone loves a sex scandal! – but that’s only true if you’re not the one being attacked, or you’ll never be the one being attacked.

Sexual harassment and online threats against women aren’t something to joke about or try out in service of some imagined greater good: believe me, no good came of this.

The one maybe-bright spot in this week-long Watson scandal is that clearly vitriolic sexism is finally seen as an outrage, and it might finally provoke action. Though, if the threat had been directed at a woman other than the squeaky-clean young, white, former-Hermione, I’m not sure that would have inevitably been the case.

But to the men who decided Watson’s sense of safety was worth throwing to the internet wolves so long as it meant making a splash: Why not try to reclaim that part of your humanity about which Watson spoke so eloquently in her UN speech? Instead of using women’s bodies and fear and sexuality to make money, get attention and feel like men, consider becoming a more “true and complete version” of yourself. And if that completed guy is still an asshole, do us all a favor and back away from the computer. Permanently.

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Feminists rally round Emma Watson after nude photos threats online

Supporters have rallied round the actor Emma Watson after a threat emerged online to release nude photos of her in response to a speech about gender equality she made at the United Nations over the weekend.

Watson, the newly appointed UN Women’s goodwill ambassador, spoke on Saturday about her journey to call herself a feminist in a speech to launch the HeForShe campaign, a solidarity movement that seeks to have men and women work together for gender equality.

“I want men to take up this mantle,” Watson said. “So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too – reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves.”

In response, users on the anarchic message board 4chan, where leaked celebrity photographs first appeared last month, posted a link to “emmayouarenext.com” with a picture of Watson and a countdown, which ends just after midnight ET on Friday night. A caption at the bottom of the screen says “never forget, the biggest to come so far”. Users also posted fake reports of Watson’s death on Twitter.

The weight of that threat is in question for a number of reasons, including that none of the other recent leaks have been trailed in this style. “If anyone from 4chan had the skill to do this,” one anonymous poster said, “there’d be no threats, only nudes.”

On 4chan, it is near impossible to tell what is real and what is “trolling” – misdirection and mischief. The Watson threat bears all the hallmarks of the latter, and the general consensus among commenters is that this is a prank. “Spoiler: it’s not true,” one anonymous 4chan poster said.

Either way, feminists are railing against the threat against Watson. “Emma Watson, like so many other women online, is being silenced and kept in her place with misogyny as a weapon,” said PolicyMic senior editor Elizabeth Plank.

“So go ahead and add this response to Watson’s argument for why we need feminism,” wrote Maya Dusenbery, executive director of Feministing. “Misogynists do have a tendency of proving your point for you – they can be helpful like that.”

Watson, surely aware of the threat, is still posting support for the campaign on Twitter.

Her speech, and the HeForShe campaign, have received support from celebrities including comedian Simon Pegg, author Neil Gaiman and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is working on a film project asking people to define what feminism means to them.

Commenters on Reddit concurred that the threat of a leak is likely a hoax. “This is a masterwork of trolling,” said a user with the handle JS945. A popular theory is that this is an elaborate version of a classic internet prank known as “Rickrolling,” in which people are tricked into clicking a link that leads to a video of ‘80s star Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

“Mark my words. Rickroll,” said one Redditor whose username was Forceblade. “The biggest Rickroll in internet history” another agreed.

A few 4chan users had a different theory: that this was an elaborate “false flag” by the government to turn public opinion against internet freedom. “These leaks are definitely false flags targeting 4chan,” said one user. “Guys, guys, guys. Listen guys,” said another. “What if the hacker was NSA? What if the NSA did this to sway the public for censoring the internet? You think they would do something like that?”

“All I can say Emma, is: fuck them,” wrote Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in a letter to Emma Watson posted in the New Statesman. “It makes me furious that these men, these boys, are attempting to grind you down, in the same way that similar men have tirelessly attempted to grind down the emergence of our gender as a viable political threat for generations now.”

• This article was updated on 24 September to make it clear that the original threat against Watson did not originate on 4chan. While users there shared the link to the threat, its source is currently unclear.

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