The viral posters that compared Obama to the Joker and to Hitler feel tame compared to the latest nasty meme to hit the Internet: insinuating that Glenn Beck raped and killed a young girl in 1990. And the meme may not go away anytime soon: preliminary evidence suggests that Anonymous, the powerful, collective behind such massive, coordinated stunts as attacking the Church of Scientology and flooding YouTube with porn, may be behind it. Update #3, 4:30pm: "Glenn Beck murder" and "Glenn Beck rapist" are now top suggestions when you do a Google search for Glenn Beck. (more...)

When AT&T blocked 4chan on Sunday, every blogger who knew what was what could see the dark clouds looming on the horizon. "AT&T Reportedly Blocks 4chan. This Is Going To Get Ugly" was TechCrunch's headline. "AT&T Has Managed To Piss Off the Wrong Bunch of Web-Nerds" was Gawker's. "AT&T did the Internet equivalent yesterday of poking a beehive with a stick: the company blocked parts of 4chan," Pete Cashmore began a post. Net neutrality was as respectable a journalistic hook as any, but a key part of the equation was: 4chan is scary. When AT&T restored service, and when they claimed that they had only suspended it to stop a DDoS attack (moot, the founder of 4chan, said "this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part"), the whole Internet breathed a collective sigh of relief. A crisis had been averted. (more...)