Bin Laden Files

2017eventclassic

Bin Laden Files refers to the 470,000 documents the CIA released on November 1, 2017, seized from Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound during the 2011 raid. The trove went viral when internet users combed past the al-Qaeda planning material and found Final Fantasy VII, Charlie Bit My Finger, an episode of Mr. Bean, and 28 crocheting tutorials on the compound's computer.

conspiracy memes2017 memesabsurdist humor memestwitter memesaccidental fame memes

Overview

Bin Laden Files refers to the 470,000 declassified documents the CIA published on November 1, 2017, recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan during the May 2011 raid that killed him1. Researchers went in expecting al-Qaeda planning material and bin Laden's personal journal. What Twitter latched onto instead was the compound computer's stash of Final Fantasy VII, an episode of Mr. Bean, a downloaded copy of the viral Charlie Bit My Finger video, episodes of Tom and Jerry, an IMAX version of Mysteries of Egypt, and 28 crocheting tutorials including one for an iPod sock1.

The joke stuck because it flattened the world's most wanted terrorist into a normal person with a cluttered hard drive. Headlines pivoted within hours of the release, with Wired1, Al Jazeera4, TIME, and The Guardian3 cataloguing the pop culture finds alongside the political ones. Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, which got early access to the trove, told Wired he suspected the frivolous files were mostly for bin Laden's family rather than the man himself1.

The CIA also flagged what it was withholding, which somehow made the story funnier. The agency said the copyrighted material it did not release included the family films Cars, Chicken Little, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, plus the documentaries Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted2.

How It Spread

Political outlets ran the substantive angle. CNN led with the journal, the Hamza bin Laden images, and the Iran material2. Wired's November 1 story went the other direction, opening with the observation that any laptop tends to house old photos, memes, home videos, pirated software, and porn, and treating the compound's computer as one more version of that1. That framing set the tone for the meme.

Twitter drove the individual discoveries. User @KenXyro flagged a copy of the first episode of the hentai series Bible Black on the compound's machine5. Journalist Ashley Feinberg, then at Gizmodo, surfaced files showing someone at the compound had been keeping up with Illuminati conspiracy theories5. Each fresh find got its own thread, and coverage from Al Jazeera, TIME, and The Guardian rolled through the week5. Wired specifically flagged that it was impossible to know how much of the trivial content was of interest to bin Laden versus other residents at the compound1.

Beyond the pop culture jokes, the journal itself produced real news. The Guardian reported that an entry in a plain school notebook described bin Laden traveling to 'the west' at age 13 for unspecified medical treatment and returning the following year to spend 10 weeks studying in Britain, reportedly on an English course at Oxford3. He wrote about visiting Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon every Sunday and came away unimpressed, calling the British 'a morally loose society'3. Al Jazeera dug into his commentary on the Arab Spring, noting that bin Laden hoped Libya's rebels would beat Muammar Gaddafi and worried Yemen was moving too fast toward revolution, writing that Yemen needed 'at least six months more to raise the awareness of the public'4.

How to Use This Meme

Bin Laden Files is more a running reference than a strict template. The common shorthand is to point at something absurdly mundane found among the files, Final Fantasy VII, Mr. Bean, crocheting tutorials, and use it as a punchline about the gap between a person's public image and their actual hard drive1. The bit still gets pulled out whenever a similar cache surfaces, usually in the form of 'imagine what's on my compound computer' style jokes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bin Laden Files

2017eventclassic

Bin Laden Files refers to the 470,000 documents the CIA released on November 1, 2017, seized from Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound during the 2011 raid. The trove went viral when internet users combed past the al-Qaeda planning material and found Final Fantasy VII, Charlie Bit My Finger, an episode of Mr. Bean, and 28 crocheting tutorials on the compound's computer.

conspiracy memes 2017 memes absurdist humor memes twitter memes accidental fame memes

Overview

Bin Laden Files refers to the 470,000 declassified documents the CIA published on November 1, 2017, recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan during the May 2011 raid that killed him1. Researchers went in expecting al-Qaeda planning material and bin Laden's personal journal. What Twitter latched onto instead was the compound computer's stash of Final Fantasy VII, an episode of Mr. Bean, a downloaded copy of the viral Charlie Bit My Finger video, episodes of Tom and Jerry, an IMAX version of Mysteries of Egypt, and 28 crocheting tutorials including one for an iPod sock1.

The joke stuck because it flattened the world's most wanted terrorist into a normal person with a cluttered hard drive. Headlines pivoted within hours of the release, with Wired1, Al Jazeera4, TIME, and The Guardian3 cataloguing the pop culture finds alongside the political ones. Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, which got early access to the trove, told Wired he suspected the frivolous files were mostly for bin Laden's family rather than the man himself1.

The CIA also flagged what it was withholding, which somehow made the story funnier. The agency said the copyrighted material it did not release included the family films Cars, Chicken Little, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, plus the documentaries Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted2.

How It Spread

Political outlets ran the substantive angle. CNN led with the journal, the Hamza bin Laden images, and the Iran material2. Wired's November 1 story went the other direction, opening with the observation that any laptop tends to house old photos, memes, home videos, pirated software, and porn, and treating the compound's computer as one more version of that1. That framing set the tone for the meme.

Twitter drove the individual discoveries. User @KenXyro flagged a copy of the first episode of the hentai series Bible Black on the compound's machine5. Journalist Ashley Feinberg, then at Gizmodo, surfaced files showing someone at the compound had been keeping up with Illuminati conspiracy theories5. Each fresh find got its own thread, and coverage from Al Jazeera, TIME, and The Guardian rolled through the week5. Wired specifically flagged that it was impossible to know how much of the trivial content was of interest to bin Laden versus other residents at the compound1.

Beyond the pop culture jokes, the journal itself produced real news. The Guardian reported that an entry in a plain school notebook described bin Laden traveling to 'the west' at age 13 for unspecified medical treatment and returning the following year to spend 10 weeks studying in Britain, reportedly on an English course at Oxford3. He wrote about visiting Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon every Sunday and came away unimpressed, calling the British 'a morally loose society'3. Al Jazeera dug into his commentary on the Arab Spring, noting that bin Laden hoped Libya's rebels would beat Muammar Gaddafi and worried Yemen was moving too fast toward revolution, writing that Yemen needed 'at least six months more to raise the awareness of the public'4.

How to Use This Meme

Bin Laden Files is more a running reference than a strict template. The common shorthand is to point at something absurdly mundane found among the files, Final Fantasy VII, Mr. Bean, crocheting tutorials, and use it as a punchline about the gap between a person's public image and their actual hard drive1. The bit still gets pulled out whenever a similar cache surfaces, usually in the form of 'imagine what's on my compound computer' style jokes.

Frequently Asked Questions