PNs make a creepy simulation of my real-life self as an avatar in Second Life, then stalk me with it.
Few people get a bead on Anonymous.
It's not because they are elusive but because it's hard for those bothering to think about it to get past the scrim of their own vanity. Not preconceptions, vanity.
It's usually covered by geeky young tech writers who seem to have flying-penis envy for the channers when they see them in action.
Or you get wannabee geeks in more mainstream magazines or news sites (Forbes) that want to seem edgy and cool and seem to have a grudging admiration for the script kiddies.
The there's the griefer-professors who come along with the goons for the ride, whose entire scholarship is embedded in this cynical madness without any pretense at objectivity.
So while this Voice of America writer still tends toward the second category -- the youthful male who seems a little overawed by the bad-assed geekitude of Anonymous/Lulzsec, he still says something very important, almost accidently, in a piece titled An Anonymous Year.
For just about every significant news story this year, some part of Anonymous’ digital shadow hung large.
Let's say that again, ok?
For just about every significant news story this year, some part of Anonymous’ digital shadow hung large.
Doug outlines some of it, and everybody knows it -- WikiLeaks and PayPal, Gawker.com, Sony, Stratfor.
I should have realized when documenting Anon/4chan/w-hat/b-tards/Woodbury (yeah, they're all kinda different factions, whatever) in Second Life for all those years that they were metastasizing faster than we knew to real life. Scientology...the Save Darfur installation...Anshe Chung's press conference...the Edwards campaign...lots and lots of things, including even just Robin Harper's going-away party, not to mention my weekly discussions at the Sutherland Dam.
So Doug Bernard gets it right about Anonymous being behind every major upheaval -- first The Wrong Hands/JLU, then Stratfor, eh? -- and he should have mentioned Occupy Wall Street! -- but then he says this, the mistake everyone makes, after describing how his own computer was hacked and he got email messages from them:
But truth be told, I don’t fully understand you. Nor, I think, does anyone, really. For any given attack, there’s no sure way of knowing if Anonymous was behind it, or just some free-lancers looking for a little Internet mayhem. And then again, who’s to say what Anonymous even is? There’s no board, no director, no organizing structure. Just hundreds, or thousands, of web lurkers stirring up the digital pot. Anonymous is like fog: you can see it, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t grab it.
Would you ever write, "I couldn't tell whether it was the Crips or the Bloods, or just initiates or new recruits to the Crips or the Bloods."
At one of the meetings organized about WikiLeaks by Persondal Democracy Forum last year at NYU, one of the speakers refused to concede that there was something "new" about Anonymous, or something "emergent" or "innovative" as they'd say now. He said they were called vandals in previous centuries, and that's what they are.
What's to understand here? It's a franchise, as I keep saying. The McDonald's don't make sweet-potato fries. They make those other fries with the beef by-products that they make. Of course, any inner-city youth can be hired to dunk those fries in the Fry-Max and flip those burgers, but there's only one recipe, rigidly followed. He might be fired and another put in his place -- it's not like the burgers will be different. But only that individual kid made that individual milkshare to hand to you.
So to speak of some "McDonald's swarm" like unfathomable fog is silly. There's the McDonald's franchise and the recipes. There are the individual kids. You must make your own decision to go to McDonald's and flip that particular burger.
The person that hacked Doug Bernard's computer is an individual -- only one person at a time can do a thing like reach in and write an email using your email, something all too easy to do. It might take bunches to do something like DDoS you, but only one person says "let's get 'em" and waits to see if anybody else objects. Maybe *one* might, and then that one individual is no "hacker hive" but an individual. And that one making the decision and the command isn't a "hacker hive" but an individual. With morals, or absence of them.
Of course there's an organizing structure and rigid -- brutal -- principles of organization. "Because none of us is as cruel as all of us." How does something like that come into being? By relentless humiliation and bullying and exclusion, mocking through layers of ritual.
There only *one* who sits down and writes the nasty, self-satisfied gloating note to the victim. Just one. And usually, that person victory-dances somewhere, on the IRC or Facebook and that's how they get caught. They go to jail.
Found these old pictures! Imagine, you're in a virtual world with a different avatar, not resembling yourself in real life. And someone stalks you with an avatar made of your real self that they've gotten somewhere from pictures they've obtained.
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