As news broke Tuesday that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics organizing committee would scrap its official logo after weeks of plagiarism allegations surrounding the designer Kenjiro Sano, users of the popular 2channel gossip website posted a flurry of messages congratulating themselves.
"This is the victory of the nera (2channel users)!!!" wrote one anonymous user. "Kudos to everyone who looked for works Sano cheated on," wrote another. "The Fifth Estate is at your fingertips," wrote someone else.
The emblem scandal that saw the 43-year-old award-winning designer pilloried on the Internet has once again demonstrated the power of individuals, who, with the time and the right search tools and technology, can launch collaborative investigative efforts against anyone with digitally traceable records — be it tweets, work samples or academic papers.