The NBA All Star votes are in and 4chan’s Operation White Man Can Jump has failed.
The operation was launched on Dec. 1, and urged the community to vote only lighter-skinned players as starters in the 2013 NBA All-Star Game. The suggested players included Lakers point guard Steve Nash, Nets forward Kris Humphries, and Timberwolves forward Kevin Love.
“Lets bring America back to the 60s and vote for an all white NBA all star game,” stated the original 4chan thread, posted to the site’s sports section, /sp/. “Keep votes the same as this, this way we ensure maximum votes. Also some guys are popular to begin with so that will help. The time is now.”
But the results are due to be announced at 7:30pm ET Thursday, and 4chan’s players of choice are nowhere to be seen at the top of the polls.
Based on the most recent vote totals released by the NBA, New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, Los Angeles Lakers forward Kobe Bryant, and Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant—all African-Americans—are among the players projected as starters for this year’s game on Feb. 17.
Unlike in most 4chan pranks, perpetrators of Operation White Man Can Jump—a reference to the 1992 film about street ball hustlers Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes—did not use scripts to manipulate polling. Instead, they just planned to create fake accounts on the NBA’s polling site to cast repeated votes.
All votes this year were cast online or through text message. Votes from ordinary fans and basketball professionals were given equal weight, an NBA representative told the Daily Dot. The NBA also confirmed that it didn’t notice any voting discrepancies in the All-Star poll, which makes a surprise victory for 4chan’s “Cream Team” unlikely.
Operation White Man Can Jump is the second 4chan caper to be foiled Thursday. An effort by the imageboard’s notorious “random: forum, /b/, to have rapper and social media sweetheart Lil B perform at the 55th annual Grammy Awards was foiled when Lil B was removed from the poll Thursday. At last count, he was in second place in his voting region.
In November, Time magazine’s Person of the Year poll was gamed to have North Korean leader Kim Jong-un take the top spot. Kim netted 5.9 million votes thanks to a Java script created by Internet Relay Chat (IRC) user _js5. That same script also helped _js5 and a group of IRC users manipulate the public poll to spell “KJUGASCHAMBERS” using the first letter of each candidate’s name. Kim ultimately lost the cover to President Barack Obama, but was crowned the people’s choice winner.
These three pranks were eclipsed by one of the most sinister on the site to date. The hoax #cutforbieber was launched on Jan. 7 to encourage young Justin Bieber fans to tweet photos of their bloodied arms in response to a leaked picture of Bieber smoking marijuana. The mission: “see if we can get some little girls to cut themselves.”
Photo via NBA/Facebook
