Remember Hollyweird actor Shia LaBeouf’s “He Will Not Divide Us” project?
If you missed it at all then there’s cause for celebration. LaBeouf’s project is back, and the internet is celebrating…or at least the Trump supporting part of it is.
The project first began as a camera on the side of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City where anti-Trump “resistance” members could come and drone the phrase “he will not divide us” into the camera as an NPC would. What ended up happening was a bunch of pro-Trumpers coming in and causing all sorts of problems for the project ranging from hilarious to stupid. This caused no end of frustration of LeBeouf who became violent on a few occasions in response.
LeBeouf was forced to take his live streaming camera away from the museum, and as Emily Zanotti of the Daily Wire recounts, aimed it at a flag that bore his slogan at the top of a flagpole. Still, the internet didn’t stop trolling LeBeouf, and set off the greatest game of capture the flag ever seen in human history:
Instead of setting off a wave of warm feelings, LaBeouf unintentionally set off a game of capture-the-flag as internet sleuths on 4Chan and Reddit studied clues — including cloud and weather patterns, flight paths, maps, and even recorded sound — to locate the live-stream camera and capture LaBeouf’s flag.
The Internet went to great lengths.
“When LaBeouf posted pictures of him in a rental cabin, 4chan users matched wood patterns to the precise location of the rental cabin. Then 4chan users were able to determine its more general location using the weather, plane routes, and star patterns,” the Daily Caller reported. “Then someone drove around in a car, honking the car’s horn, and that person was notified if the horn was getting louder or quieter in the live-stream.”
Eventually, they found the flag in Tennessee and replaced it with a red “Make America Great Again” flag in the middle of the night.
Undaunted, LaBeouf moved the flag overseas, contending that “events have shown that America is simply not safe enough for this artwork to exist.” It appeared first to the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, UK (where it lasted all of 24 hours), then to “le lieu unique” in France, then to the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland.
At some point, LaBeouf and his partners in the art installation became so obsessed with outsmarting their trolls that they moved into a remote cabin in Lapland, Finland. No surprise, they found him there, too, by mobilizing local 4chan and 8chan denizens to locate LaBeouf’s cabin in the relatively small — 34,000 square mile — Lapland region.
LeBeouf and his flag disappeared for a while, with the internet seemingly having gotten its final victory. However, it would appear LeBeouf and his flag have returned as a live image is currently being displayed of the now battered “he will not divide us flag” blowing in the wind.
https://t.co/7y83TPB4d1 pic.twitter.com/q1Z6E0hihs
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) October 30, 2018
Judging by the responses, the internet couldn’t be more pleased.
Season 5 lets go bois
— a loser (@arkikukano) October 30, 2018
Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!
— Henry Swanson (@realFrankBell) October 30, 2018
IT’S ON! pic.twitter.com/0119VFN54m
— ArcadianArt ⏳ (@ArcadianArt) October 31, 2018
https://twitter.com/RavenPoe96/status/1057319537299873792
— Skeletron (@_Ouiey_) October 31, 2018
— Jessi (@jessiprincey) October 31, 2018
The internet won’t have to look hard, however. LeBeouf and co. have listed exactly where the flag is this time. According to the art project’s website, the flag has returned to Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, France.
So the question isn’t finding it, the question is now what the internet will do with it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member