The Great Meme War Has Begun

North Korea.

Healthcare.

Saudi Arabia is not on the travel ban but is receiving weapons.

An NYC police officer shot.

A 'drug-fueled gay orgy' in the Vatican (I'm not making that up).

Volvo planning to go 100% electric.

There are so many things in the news that we can talk about right now. And yet, on one of the largest, (if not the largest) news networks in the United States (if not the world), there's one common theme to which we keep returning, one repetitive news horse that has not only been beaten to death, but has been shipped off to the factory, turned into glue, bottled, delivered to stores, sniffed, applied to fingers and then peeled off like a layer of skin to gross out your friends, eaten, and used to fasten macaroni to cardboard by preschoolers:CNN will just not shut up about Trump's Twitter account. At a time when trust in the mainstream media is rivaling a controversial president's approval ratings, CNN has decided that the best course of action has been to hunt down a private citizen and pressure him into apologizing under duress of releasing his personal information.

Avert your gaze, if you're sensitive to violent images.

I want to draw special attention to this. CNN saw a gif of Donald Trump (Stop saying 45! Say his goddamn name, he's not Voldemort!) in his WWE (or as it was known then, WWF) days attacking owner Vince McMahon, but with the CNN logo photoshopped over his face. For the heinous crime that they witnessed, CNN tracked down this person, made contact with him, and seemingly discussed releasing the personal information they found. After the foul demon of a person that made this horrible atrocity apologized, they agreed to keep that information private...

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

... oh. Assuming said user doesn't make fun of them again? Assuming he never says anything bad again (admittedly, I've seen screenshots that prove the guy was no angel, but if you see someone post in /r/ImGoingToHellForThis, what do you expect)? Of all the things going on in the world right now, CNN decides to say "It's the Fourth of July, hold my beer" and track down a random internet shit-poster and threaten to dox him.

Anyone who's a decent person on the internet knows that there's one rule: You don't dox people. Openly advocating for it usually results in a deluge of people condemning it. It's why famous internet dickbag Wil Wheaton was roundly lambasted for suggesting we should use our real names when we game. It's why formerly respectable game journalist-turned twitchy delusional coke-fiend Adam Sessler was met with a sense of betrayal when he suggested he'd like to "put [people's address] out there."

This is the weirdest timeline.

I think CNN is still overestimating their influence. Even during an uptick in ratings, they're not even breaking 8 million viewers. Compare that to someone like Philip DeFranco, a popular YouTuber with a daily news and discussion show, who has over 5 millions subscribers and hits twice CNN's ratings regularly with his daily videos. Speaking of Philly D...

Is that normal? Is @CNN essentially threatening to dox him, or am I reading that wrong? pic.twitter.com/7LMMqo1fK5

— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) July 5, 2017

Now I'm no Twitter expert, but to me that looks like something close to 52,000 like/heart/thingies. Which is approximately 50,000 more than CNN got, and I had to go looking because they've spent the last 24 hours tweeting the same news stories over and over in what I can only speculate to be an effort to bury their original tweet. Either that, or they need a new social media manager. (Hey, CNN, I'm still looking for a job. Call me!).

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the concept of privilege and power dynamics here:

• HanAssholeSolo, the thought criminal in question, is some complete rando shit-poster.
• CNN is one of the world's largest news networks. 

CNN wouldn't even have to make a clear threat. All they would have to do would be to make an attempt to contact a regular private citizen to have the result of that person making a mess of their pants. There has never been a more obvious imbalance of power dynamic here, and all I can hear from the people usually advocating against power imbalances is crickets. Literally, #CNNDidNothingWrong.

...oh. Awwwkward.

Things are about to get really ugly, people. This is a warning. Not a threat, CNN, just so we're clear. I, a private citizen and complete rando shit-poster myself at times, am not threatening you. I have no power in the dynamic between us. But I've seen the 4chan threads; /pol/ is gathering personal information on anyone they can find at CNN; Twitter has been flooded with enough gifs of Trump and the CNN logo photoshopped into various forms of comedic violence to drown an army of your scary white supremacist smug frog faces.

It's ironic that, last week, I wrote about a war nobody remembered, when a war nobody will notice is starting now. The echoes of it will be felt, as confused normies will share stories from CNN about how racist nazis are attacking them and a lot of people will have a laugh when their more edgy Facebook friends share funny gifs, but if you keep your ear to the ground and know where to look, there's going to be glorious carnage.

Keep your heads down and stay in your foxholes, my dudes. It's going to be a complete bug-hunt from here on out.

EDIT: I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm linking to Buzzfeed, who has proven that CNN outed the wrong guy. It's a completely different gif/video altogether.  Good catch, Buzzfeed.

EDIT EDIT: A Mexican channer has taken credit for the original content, providing proof.