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anonymous is not the INTERNET POLICE: CARE SQUAD, it's a group of people doing whatever the fuck they want, generally vandalizing and destroying things for lulz. anyone who says otherwise is fucking retarded.

stfu. Anon is whatever Anon says it is. some people might find this useful. archiving for great justice.

[edit] Anonymous and social change

A recent Fox News coverage presented Anonymous as an organized hacker group of cyber terrorists. Anonymous is said to ‘treat life as a video game’ who ‘attack innocent people as an internet hate machine’. According to Fox News, ‘they do it for the LULZ’. However, Fox News has also said that Mass Effect, a video game, contains full frontal nudity and hardcore pornography which gamers can control, and that said game was marketed at children – both are completely false statements. Furthermore, Fox News seems to hold an incredibly conservative perspective. With Fox’ rampant attack on new media and cultural manifestations which seem to diverge from the standard, we have to wonder if Anonymous really is a terrorist group out to destroy civilization. To find out the truth, Anonymous should be analyzed from an objective point of view. This paper will be divided into the following sections:

a) Who are ‘the Anonymous’? b) Recent activities c) Conclusions

Who are ‘teh Anonymous’?

The ‘organized cyber-crime / cyber terrorist organization’ Anonymous has been accused of doing things like blowing up yellow vans and cyber stalking people, but, who are they, really? Research done on ‘Anonymous’ shows that ‘they’ are not an organized entity, but distinct, separate individuals. These individuals mostly ‘operate’ online. Each Anonymous person, or ‘Anon’, as they seem to call themselves, has individual goals. Sometimes, the goals of two or more ‘Anons’ will overlap, and they will engage in collaborative efforts to achieve their goals. What, then, is Anonymous’ goal? It depends on the individual.

To say that all ‘Anons’ are sick, degenerate human beings is like saying that all scientologists are narrow-minded neo-Nazis. In religious groups, there are people who truly want to help others, and there are people who follow the ‘conform or die’ creed. Similarly, in politics there are some who would fight for what America stands for, while others would tarnish her ideal by passing laws in congress that censor free speech. So it is with Anonymous. Some ‘Anons’ are truly sick people who take pranks to a distasteful level, even going as far as making phone threats to people. This constitutes the minority of the ‘Anons’, and quite often it is the same few ‘Anons’ making diverse prank calls all over the continent. Other ‘Anons’ are bored teens who go into anonymous BBS boards tell jokes and post obscure / obscene pictures. Other ‘Anons’ are working-class people with nothing better to do than go into ‘Anon’ boards and discuss political and religious ideologies. Some of the topics of interests for ‘Anons’ include, but are not limited to, Japanese animation, video games, technology, film, tradition, papercraft, photography, news, the paranormal, politics, and pornography. All of these have their own heavily visited ‘boards’ in most ‘Anonymous’ sites.

As an addition to these sections, Anonymous sites have a section called ebaum's, where ‘Anons’ post their obscure / obscene prank materials. Certainly, Anonymous’ creed may seem scary:

We are legion We do not forgive We do not forget Expect Us

However, given that only a few ‘Anonymous’ are pranksters and the majority are normal people, there is nothing to fear. Normal people are anonymous. The nameless worker in a factory, earning $5.15 an hour making shoes is Anonymous. The housewife who takes her children to work is anonymous. That fast food employee who served your food yesterday is anonymous. All those nameless people who are actively contributing to the capitalist system by earning a misery and spending more than they earn, nameless people struggling to survive, being taken advantage of, nameless people who walk around New York City, briefcase in hand, nameless people who will not be remembered when they die, the computer programmer, the school teacher, the university student, the schoolboy, all those people are anonymous. No one knows, or cares, who they are, and thus, their efforts to change things, protests against the war, for example, go unheeded. As individuals, they are powerless, as groups, they can do anything, for Anonymous is everyone. Anonymous is the uncontrolled masses arguing for their rights and freedoms.

At least, that’s what many ‘Anons’ would say. However, are they really this noble conglomerate of people fighting for human rights? Their latest activities as a ‘group’ seem to suggest it is so; but to what extent it is questionable.

Latest Activities

On a superficial glance, Anonymous’ activities as of late have been nothing more than illegal acts against organized institutions, namely the Church of Scientology. However, the Revolutionary War was an illegal act against an organized institution. To look at Anonymous’ ‘attack on Scientology’ we need to go into what the people, meaning Anonymous, believe.

‘Anons’ claim that the church of Scientology is an organization that seeks totalitarian control over people. They claim that Tom Cruise’s actions against Psychiatrists prove that they don’t want to make things better, that they have their own agenda. Anonymous say that Scientology’s repeated attacks on several internet pages since 1995 demonstrate that they want to control information for their own purposes in order to subdue masses to take their money.

Anonymous has several videos making statements against Scientology. Here are some quotes to some of their videos:

“Anonymous is not a group of super hackers, Anonymous is a collective of individuals united by an awareness that someone must do the right thing.”

“We have no leaders, no single entity leading us. Only the collective outcry of single individuals.”

“We want you to know of previous members of Scientology who were forced to have abortions to continue in the service of the church. We want you to know about Scientology’s efforts to infiltrate the government.”

“Scientology is a corporate entity that has driven many people and families to ruin for its own financial gain. It is an entity with no regard for the lives of its believers. It is an entity that has denied medical service to its members and hidden the details of the resulting unnecessary deaths for the sake of their own secrecy. It is an entity that has used violence, tricked, sued, and lied to scare critics into silence and suppress any form of dissent. For these actions, we are at war with the institution. Our sole target is the church as an economic entity. We are not attacking the beliefs or ideals of Scientology, but we will not allow these ideas to be used to exploit believers.”

“We fight for great justice.”

“We are the collective masses of the internet.”

Anonymous’ fight against commerce is based on the following ideal:

“Anonymous has been writing stories and poems for over 9000 years (for example Beowulf). These stories are then ripped off by companies like Disney who tweak them slightly, turn them into movies or songs and then claim copyright over them. These companies then DMCA Anonymous whenever he republishes his own work online.”

Conclusions

In a world were martial law, individual repression and persecution, and violations to rights protected by the constitution are legally trampled by the government, the only way to truly protest without being chastised is to remain anonymous. Eventually, Anonymous could become an ideal entity united by the people, created by the people for the people (as congress should have been, but it’s not) that fights for individual rights of free speech and other basic rights. The concept of a truly organized Anonymous with a common online meeting place where things are debated and acted on (as the possible February 10th Scientology protest) seems truly appealing. A meeting place where masses join to seriously discuss and organize without fear of persecution is something that every country should have. It may even be possible that the Scientology war will be a foundation for such an entity. However, as long as Anonymous does things brashly and uses a rhetoric of “we do not forgive we are against everything non-anonymous we will slit your throat and raep ur mom we do it for the lulz” they (he / she / it) will not truly be able to unleash the real power of the masses, and will remain nothing more than anonymous (small ‘a).