…. Anonymous.
What and Who is Anonymous? And WHAT are we Capable of? Take a fucking LOOK! from Helmut on Vimeo.
The language is a little hyperbolic, the music is a little obvious, and the abuse of proper capitalization and puncuation is a tad much, but still, not a bad video and it is a subject in which I am quite interested.
First, a little clarification, as the media, for all its efforts, does not quite seem able to grasp exactly what Anonymous is.
There is a hugely important website called 4chan.org, and originally it was just a place where people post pictures and links and such to the Internet, like dozens of others. Smut, funny videos, weird links from the past, the usual grist for the Internet mill.
On it, there is a section where anyone can post anything with complete anonymity. There’s no usernames, no signup, no tracking of any kind. It is the “anonymous” section, and it is from this the “group” Anonymous takes its name.
This section, over the last decade or so, became a unique environment, fast-paced, wild, anarchic, and freethinking. The complete anonymity meant that people were only represented by what they said and did, prompting people to wild and creative action. It became a place to express yourself and win the applause and praise of others, or their mocking scorn, all without personal risk. You did not even risk a reputation, because you have none. No identity means complete freedom.
It rapidly became a hotbed of Internet culture, generating popular memes, serving as a raucous mob forum for unfettered communication and hence becoming a powerful reactor core for the slowly forming world consciousness.
As such, it’s often quite ugly. Consciousness in the raw is not a pretty sight, and a lot of nasty behaviour, deliberate foulness, and goonish behaviour can be found there. But the fascinating thing is that as this molten consciousness cooled a little and began to find its voice and its power, it began becoming a place for action.
Participants would call attention to something they thought was wrong, and suddenly, there would be thousands of people attacking the target over the Internet. The one I remember hearing about is the Internet hell unleashed on someone who posted a video of them abusing a kitten to the Internet. This person had their personal information stolen and posted all over the Net, had their email flooded, had their credit cards hacked, and so on.
And all with no central authority, and no personal gain. People do this simply for the pleasure of purposeful action, and the approval of their peers.
You know, basic human motivation, no cash required.
More recently, as you can see by the video, this group has developed a social consciousness and an agenda of sorts. With the attack on Wikileaks, and obviously with heavy influence from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, they have become freedom fighters determined to strike back at the great wrongness of the world of today.
Being anonymous, they are accountable to nobody but each other and their own consciences. This is quite obviously scary. There’s a reason we rarely have torch wielding mobs play the hero in our popular movies. Individuals in a free society fear the mob mentality.
But I (cautiously) applaud them. They are the only sort of force that can overcome all the corrupt gatekeepers and senile dementors running the world right now. They are the youth, strength, passion, and idealism required to forge a new world.
They might be an unruly mob, but they represent enough power and idealism that they can actually threaten the powers that be. And that is something desperately needed in today’s rotten old world.
This is the Millennials searching for a way to strike back at the ills of the world and finding it. The hippies had sit-ins, rallies, and protests. The hipsters have the Internet, and that is a lot more powerful in a much shorter period of time.
I am intrigued by their threat to take on international banking. That would be the ultimate hack. The money Internet that is international banking is amazingly secure. It’s also the conduit of a lot of evil, of billionaires playing shell games with numbered corporations, ill gotten gains, and money laundering.
If they could crack that, and actually steal some of these bastards’ money and redirect it to, say, pro-democracy organizations or famine relief, then it would really get these fucker’s attention. Then they would have to listen.
Because nothing can stop Anonymous except shutting down the Internet.
And when they do that, you shut down your government.