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An online meme group is at the center of uproar over leaked military secrets

SAN FRANCISCO - An online community of a few thousand subscribers that followed a YouTube celebrity named wow_mao had for years occupied a small, very male-centric corner of the internet. It was hosted on Discord, a social media app, where young people who were fans of wow_mao swapped humorous digital images and told edgy, sometimes tasteless, jokes.

Over the weekend, wow_mao's niche community became a focus of international attention after it was learned that a volunteer moderator in his Discord group had posted images of leaked documents detailing secret Pentagon intelligence.

It was all a bit much for wow_mao, who said in an interview on Tuesday that he was a 20-year-old college student who lives in Britain. In a YouTube video a day earlier, he said he was an "internet micro-celebrity, and I'd like to keep it that way."

https://www.startribune.com/an-online-meme-group-is-at-the-center-of-uproar-over-leaked-military-secrets/600266313/

 

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