4 ms·

There's a lot of misunderstanding of what Anonymous is. adrianwaj is Anonymous if you so chose. You could release a Word Document with "Aaron Barr" in the aut

by parfe 16y ago

There's a lot of misunderstanding of what Anonymous is. adrianwaj is Anonymous if you so chose. You could release a Word Document with "Aaron Barr" in the author field declaring a war on Egg McMuffins and sign it Anonymous. You probably would get no traction and be ignored... Or a week later you might read about a bunch of 16 year olds throwing Egg McMuffins to the Elephant at the Bronx Zoo wearing woody wood pecker masks while singing Christina Aguilera's version of the national anthem. There is no "Anonymous" in the sense of a coherent group. There are only specific acts that received enough interest to garner outside attention. When you say "If they tried" you are missing the point. You could try.

adrianwaj 16y ago
Sort of like Jihad? Except here only for otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against freedom vs otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against Islam? The argument lies whether the acts are actually unsavory, otherwise unsavory, if the perception of being a threat is correct and whether that threat is valid enough to justify a response. So when if ever does Jihadism/Anonymous go to far? So Anonymous is really just a mask that can be put on. There is nothing that can keep either group in check except for how aligned each one is with the core values that it seeks to defend, and how that tension resolves. Why doesn't Anonymous rail against Jihad? Where people that might otherwise be labelled racist, however accurately or not, could then proceed with their actions without having that inhibition.
- praptak 16y ago
  "Why doesn't Anonymous rail against Jihad?" They do, on a small scale. Some folks create some blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad and post them on imageboards. Some people print them out and post IRL. Pick anything and you'll probably find a group of people waving the Anon flag and rallying against it. TLDR answer: It just hasn't got enough traction.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Anonymous is not an organization. It is just a bunch of people without a leader who hear someone suggest something, hear someone else give instructions, and then do it because they think it sounds smart. It's just like any other bunch of people doing that for any other thing, it doesn't have to be a DDOS or harassment. It could be religion. Some guys hear Muhammad or Buddha speak, think they're pretty smart, and decide to start doing what they say for a while; the group is not the taste-testers, but the devoted followers. Anonymous is the undefined mass; people with leaders in IRC rooms are the individual organizations plucked from an undefined, unorganized mass. Treating Anonymous as a coherent group with a coherent leader is the same thing as saying "Humanity today DDOSes MasterCard", "I'm publishing a list of humanity's leaders", etc. It's a completely meaningless misnomer; there is no cohesion to humanity whereby one could direct any significant portion of the entirety of humanity, just as there is no cohesion to Anonymous -- it's just a group of people without definition or mission statement, and it is too broad to mean anything. Heretofore most participants in "Anonymous" raids, etc., have been users of 4chan or similar message boards, but again, that's a very expansive and large group, there is no significant percentage of its users involved in any one attack or following any one leader or chain of command. It, like our previous example of the entirety of humanity, is too broad of a definition to have meaning. An organization is not an organization until you have leaders and subordinates with definable positions. Before that, it is just a bunch of guys talking about ideas, some liking some, others liking others, and coming and going as they please, some involved in one event under the one marshal and then going to one held by another. That is not an organization, but a bunch of drifting, undecided people. And that's what Anonymous is, too. You do not have a terrorist or criminal organization just because someone can drop in to a common forum and get a bunch of script kiddies to act as his personal botnet for a single event. The participants are not initiated into his group and they have no obligation, affiliation, responsibility, or position in it, they are just guys who heard an idea, thought it was cool, tried for a while, and moved on.
  - adrianwaj 16y ago
    Not unlike setting up a news.arc forum called Anonymous and letting people upvote ideas to do certain things and anyone can join, and anyone can upvote. A forum like this doesn't exist per se, but that's the archetype. There'd be no (or optional) usernames either. Things that involve scientology, wikileaks, involve lulz (uploading porn into YouTube), censorship or counteracting actions against the board get the most upvotes and galvanize the most people into action. There is no leader, but on certain items, there is someone that posts, and there are a few key contributors to the outcome of the item. On that note, does an anonymous (not Anonymous) news.arc exist? Say an anonymous HN? (IE in effect randomizing usernames for each posting ...maybe public randomizing, but privately tied to the one user, that way users can have some degree of vested-ego, ie regarding karma, but publically be without inhibition-- maybe downvoting on the front page too, and more than -10 downvotes per comment)? Is the cloak and principle that is called Anonymous an outcome of 4Chan?

by parfe 16y ago

adrianwaj 16y ago

Sort of like Jihad? Except here only for otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against freedom vs otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against Islam? The argument lies whether the acts are actually unsavory, otherwise unsavory, if the perception of being a threat is correct and whether that threat is valid enough to justify a response. So when if ever does Jihadism/Anonymous go to far? So Anonymous is really just a mask that can be put on. There is nothing that can keep either group in check except for how aligned each one is with the core values that it seeks to defend, and how that tension resolves. Why doesn't Anonymous rail against Jihad? Where people that might otherwise be labelled racist, however accurately or not, could then proceed with their actions without having that inhibition.

praptak 16y ago
"Why doesn't Anonymous rail against Jihad?" They do, on a small scale. Some folks create some blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad and post them on imageboards. Some people print them out and post IRL. Pick anything and you'll probably find a group of people waving the Anon flag and rallying against it. TLDR answer: It just hasn't got enough traction.
cookiecaper 16y ago
Anonymous is not an organization. It is just a bunch of people without a leader who hear someone suggest something, hear someone else give instructions, and then do it because they think it sounds smart. It's just like any other bunch of people doing that for any other thing, it doesn't have to be a DDOS or harassment. It could be religion. Some guys hear Muhammad or Buddha speak, think they're pretty smart, and decide to start doing what they say for a while; the group is not the taste-testers, but the devoted followers. Anonymous is the undefined mass; people with leaders in IRC rooms are the individual organizations plucked from an undefined, unorganized mass. Treating Anonymous as a coherent group with a coherent leader is the same thing as saying "Humanity today DDOSes MasterCard", "I'm publishing a list of humanity's leaders", etc. It's a completely meaningless misnomer; there is no cohesion to humanity whereby one could direct any significant portion of the entirety of humanity, just as there is no cohesion to Anonymous -- it's just a group of people without definition or mission statement, and it is too broad to mean anything. Heretofore most participants in "Anonymous" raids, etc., have been users of 4chan or similar message boards, but again, that's a very expansive and large group, there is no significant percentage of its users involved in any one attack or following any one leader or chain of command. It, like our previous example of the entirety of humanity, is too broad of a definition to have meaning. An organization is not an organization until you have leaders and subordinates with definable positions. Before that, it is just a bunch of guys talking about ideas, some liking some, others liking others, and coming and going as they please, some involved in one event under the one marshal and then going to one held by another. That is not an organization, but a bunch of drifting, undecided people. And that's what Anonymous is, too. You do not have a terrorist or criminal organization just because someone can drop in to a common forum and get a bunch of script kiddies to act as his personal botnet for a single event. The participants are not initiated into his group and they have no obligation, affiliation, responsibility, or position in it, they are just guys who heard an idea, thought it was cool, tried for a while, and moved on.
- adrianwaj 16y ago
  Not unlike setting up a news.arc forum called Anonymous and letting people upvote ideas to do certain things and anyone can join, and anyone can upvote. A forum like this doesn't exist per se, but that's the archetype. There'd be no (or optional) usernames either. Things that involve scientology, wikileaks, involve lulz (uploading porn into YouTube), censorship or counteracting actions against the board get the most upvotes and galvanize the most people into action. There is no leader, but on certain items, there is someone that posts, and there are a few key contributors to the outcome of the item. On that note, does an anonymous (not Anonymous) news.arc exist? Say an anonymous HN? (IE in effect randomizing usernames for each posting ...maybe public randomizing, but privately tied to the one user, that way users can have some degree of vested-ego, ie regarding karma, but publically be without inhibition-- maybe downvoting on the front page too, and more than -10 downvotes per comment)? Is the cloak and principle that is called Anonymous an outcome of 4Chan?