The World’s Most Popular 3D Printed Gun Was Designed by an Ambitious Terrorist
4chan is a ephemeral site (posts are regularly deleted) and supposedly anonymous (the default name for anyone posting is simply “Anonymous”). However, the site inserts a unique string of letters and numbers attached to each person in any given thread—as a way to keep track of who is who in a conversation, while still maintaining the appearance of anonymity.
This means, using the 4chan archive site 4plebs.orgI was able to track down other comments from @thereal_JacobK in the thread, revealing previously unknown details about his life, including his frustrations with living in Germany, his desire to move to the United States, and his love for the Second Amendment. But perhaps most notably, he describes himself as a Single—a term used by misogynistic online communities who identify themselves as “involuntary celibates.”
Revealing the personality behind the gun
The way Jacob D writes, anonymously, in that 4chan thread is also revealing. He only capitalizes the letter “I” at the beginning of a sentence—never afterwards. And he always inserts a space before an exclamation point or question mark, which is atypical for Germans.
Analyzing these writing habits is the scope of forensic linguisticsfamous for its use in the capture of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. These stylistic features meant that I could follow many of his comments in other chat threads—with his repeated use of the same image sometimes providing additional clues to the topics he was on.
Eventually, I discovered threads where Jacob D had uploaded photos of himself, including one where he showed his face. Partly using a facial recognition platform, I was then able to discover old photos of him. SoundCloud And Lounger Surfing personal profile—in the latter, he said he planned to travel to the United States, “a country that has fascinated me since I was a teenager,” before he joined the German army.
And in both of these profiles, he revealed his real name: Jakob Duygu.
Finally, I was able to Follow hundreds of posts that are supposedly anonymous that Duygu has been posting on 4chan and other message boards for years. The FGC-9 designer wrote about his life in Germany, his time in the Bundeswehr (German armed forces), and his loneliness and despair as an incel. They show him as a complex, erratic, obsessive, and tragic person. And they also reveal some radical ideas.
The difference between these comments and the comments he made publicly in interviews (using the pseudonym JStark1809) is striking. In interviews, he spoke about the need to protect freedom of speech and human rights. He cited the examples of the genocide of European Jews during the Holocaust or the Uyghurs in China as arguments for why people need guns and why he created the FGC-9.
But when you look at his anonymous comments, a different picture emerges. Far from being a human rights advocate, his rhetoric is often xenophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic. And this isn’t limited to 4chan, which has a particularly nasty, hateful culture where things probably shouldn’t be taken at face value.
