On the first of August, 2004, someone asked on
MeTa about changing passwords. That prompted someone else to look for old users with guessable passwords (or reminded them of the past abuse of "demo"). So they logged in as "login" and posted a comment. Someone else replied, from the same account. For a few posts it looked like the usual fun. Then someone decided to start posting anonymous abuse of someone else. At around the same time someone posted an anonymous thread to
AskMe about having no friends. Anonymous posting snowballed. Soon there were offensive images...