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You know him as Anonymous. In Japan, they call him Nanashi, or Toshiaki, or VIPPER. But around the world, he is the same sort of organism known only on the Internet: a collective entity, unable to control itself, doing whatever it pleases.
Contents |
Characteristics of Anonymous
- Anonymity: duh. The secret ingredient of Anonymous is that nobody is allowed to stand out. All are one, and nobody can speak for all.
- Anonymous has critical mass. There are so many of him that to squash a single cell has no effect on the organism. In other words, if you were to arrest a single person for slander, the rest of them would still be doing it. This has caused major legal problems on 2channel, where Anonymous is a public figure.
- Anonymous tells Anonymous what to do, and Anonymous generally does it. Anonymous is extremely difficult to keep under control.
- Anonymous finds all of this very amusing.
History of Anonymous
- 2003: 4chan introduced with anonymity possible, but because the comment field looks like a blog field, the possibilities of anonymity are not immediately clear. Some start using it immediately... but most see the "name" field and want to fill in their Internet ego.
- Early 2004: Moot tells people to "fill in the name field", with a 4chan banner even. I am annoyed, because this is not the way it's done on 2ch.
- Mid-2004: I write my famous essay about anonymity in response to moot. Moot appoints me 4chan moderator and administrator of the text boards. I implement FORCED_ANON on some of the boards, which causes nerd rage amongst people who were trying to protect their 4chan identity.
- Late 2004: Moot gets W. T. Snacks to implement FORCED_ANON for /b/. It is flipped on and off several time. When it is turned on, some people actually try to sign their posts, and are of course mocked ruthlessly. When it is turned off, supporters of tripcodes and anonymity start separate threads asking all the anons/tripfags to report in and demonstrate their size. Tripfags start mocking anonymous users as a single person named Anonymous. Somewhere in the darkness, I rub my hands and say "just as planned..."
- Christmas 2004: The text boards become world4ch. I write an improved version of FORCED_ANON for the text boards which allows people to enter in a name anyway if they use the "advanced reply" box.
- Early 2005: Moot fires me from 4chan after I am snarky with some of the banned users. Control of the text boards is handed over to MrVacBob. Shiichan development halts as well.
- Late 2005: After Internet decades of civil war, anonymity becomes so well-accepted on /b/ that tripcode users are few and far between. Anonymous becomes a force of unforgiving hatred.
Conflict between tripfags and Anonymous
People with usernames are known to Anonymous as "tripfags" (or in Japan, the more polite phrase kotehan, "fixed handle"). Anonymous does not like usernames. If someone tries to sign his post and stand out from the crowd, Anonymous will mock him. Other forums that require usernames are seen by Anonymous as places where people go to enlarge their egos. Tripfags, similarly, see anonymous boards as populated by people too cowardly to reveal their real names, due to a misunderstanding of what makes the anonymity so powerful. On 2channel, where kotehan and Nanashi mix freely, the boards generally segregate to prevent flame wars.
In defense of Anonymous
When I wrote my anonymity essay in 2004, I didn't actually believe everything I wrote. I am anti-Internet, and I wanted to unleash a force on the Internet and make it less predictable. This force, the "Internet Hate Machine" (interesting choice of language), is simply amplifying the essential anarchy of the Internet. A lot of people point to 4chan as its source--the same way Richard Feynman was singled out as "the problem" when he told his Los Alamos boss about an insecurity he found in the padlocks, even though he was only dicking around and the padlocks themselves were the real problem. Really it is our infinitely large, hyperspecific selection of information (in 4chan's case, entertainment) that is at fault. People gain false comfort from being cooped up with a choir that echoes their views. When they unexpectedly run into another group that holds opposite beliefs (in 4chan's case, an active disruption), the Hate Machine goes into action.
The comedy of the Internet Hate Machine video, of course, is that Anonymous itself does not hate, but merely enjoys the fruits of other people's out-of-proportion hate. When we take into account the fact that the Fox 11 video's "victim" was himself a nerd who had tried to get Anonymous to harass his ex-girlfriend and was merely dealt blowback instead, the Fox 11 investigation was 4chan's biggest success yet. Anonymous operates on the same principle as the Ventrilo Harassment guy: watching other people blow up, when they're doing something supremely unimportant, is funny.
In offense against Anonymous
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy
While there is no way of stopping Anonymous and no way of regulating it, it is clearly not a force for fun alone. Generally they derive their pleasure from upsetting other people. Attacking an epilepsy forum, though, could cause the deaths of random strangers. There is no malicious motive here, just laziness and a want for new sources of amusement. The imperative is on the individual to recognize that just because people leave forums unsecured on the Internet doesn't mean it's their responsibility to extract fun from other people's suffering before the window closes.
Anonymous motivated
Anonymous as a collective can rarely be motivated to do anything useful, especially if it involves standing up from the computer. This phenomenon was first noted on the Something Awful forums where many people eagerly mobilized in anonymous form to attack furry forums, but few would stand up and get off their computers to go volunteer somewhere.
However, in 2008 Anonymous was united behind the cause of attacking Scientology, probably for the following reasons:
- Scientology is a cult which presents a real threat to the happiness of the civilized world: it brainwashes free people, ruins lives and occasionally leads to unfortunate deaths.
- The basic assumption of interfering with people's Internet jobs is that there is little important information which needs to be distributed on the Internet, but informing people about Scientology is in fact an important job.
- The medium itself which propagated Anonymous (the /b/ forum on 4chan) was slowly degrading and no longer represented a brilliant and creative user base. In fact, most Anonymous were growing quite tired with the newbies who were desperately trying to be cool, and failing. So, the attack on Scientology represented an attempt to unite users both new and old something as entertaining and powerful as /b/'s original accomplishments circa 2005 and 2006.
- Additionally, they were probably getting ass cramps sitting on their chairs so long.
Comment by David X.: Anonymous may have just this one shot before being overrun, to achieve something so superbly epic, so as to pass into the legend matching the subcultures of old, even as the movement is diluted and the free internet itself falls under the weight of government regulation.
While the anti-Scientology movement represents a break from the "law" that Anonymous is unforgiving and does not want to help anyone, this law was never really set in stone in the first place. For example, many Anonymous loved Nurse-kun.