The Idiot's Guide to Anonymous

(Lamer's Disclaimer:- Yes, I'm making generalisations here. Yes, Anonymous are a large group of a lot of different people, yes I'm talking in stereotypes, and yes I probably don't know crap, blah blah. This is purely my own observation)

So after seeing that my last rant about ATS' misconceptions of Anonymous apparently fell on deaf ears, I'm back with volume 2. Hopefully, this one will successfully Deny (at least some) Ignorance.

Originally posted by lacrimaererum
Ok, so its in hoax. Nothing I can do about that.

I am still perplexed by this story. After all the good work this week with Wikileaks and the GIFiles I really don't know why anon would come up with something like this.

This is why. If you think Anonymous only exist in order to help and benefit the public, you don't know anything about them at all.

Anonymous are not Han Solo or Robin Hood. You need to think Chaotic Neutral, NOT Chaotic Good.

Newfag (that is, Chanology and after) Anonymous often see themselves as public benefactors or wannabe Chaotic Good superheroes, yes. Pre-Chanology Anonymous generally do not. They commit an act purely because it amuses them, and they don't care in the slightest whether the consequences of said act are positive or negative to anyone else. Because they were usually sociopaths, they'd likely prefer it to be the latter, in fact. The new school, as another point of contrast, are more and more left anarchist, more and more merged with Occupy, and more and more concerned with offline operations. The old school were generally too entropic to care about politics at all, but often pretended to be Nazi sympathisers or racists, purely in order to attempt to traumatise people.

The only thing that the two groups have in common, is a desire to protect the Internet. However, even with this, they have very different motivations. The old school want to do it so that the lulz (defined originally with sadistic/sociopathic connotations - READ that link) can continue. The new school, broadly speaking, are motivated by the "common good," angle, as well as by a superhero complex and/or the idea that they can be more empowered to create positive change when the mask is on, than when it is off.

You also can't generalise about which of these two factions are responsible for a given act, operation, or whatever. The newfags might help Wikileaks out of a desire to be altruistic or to fight corporations and governments; but just as easily, the old school might do it because leaks tend to be extremely destabilising, and the one thing that the old school primarily love, is chaos or entropy, purely for its' own sake. We're talking Discordianism practically applied and turned up to eleven.

Ditto with the Galactic Federation of Light stuff. Remember that Anonymous can be anyone at all, which potentially even blows my model above, completely out of the water. That means that it's entirely possible that someone within Anonymous believes in Ashtar. That might not jibe with your (and my) image of the archetypical Anon, no; but then again, maybe that's entirely the point. The oldfags in particular do not like anyone being able to define them or pin them down.

The point of all this, is to stop thinking of Anonymous as though they're a national government. Whenever you people see a single YouTube video with the word Anonymous on it, you immediately think that that video is the gospel truth, and applies to every single individual who identifies themselves as an Anon.

It doesn't. It may not apply to literally any other individual at all, other than the person who uploaded it. Your problem is that you haven't upgraded your own cognitive model of what Anonymous are.

Yes, that sounds about right. I consider myself pretty well informed, although haven't spent much time in dark corners of the internet and cannot claim to be a member of any of these groups.

I am fascinated by this 'battle' between the old and new school of the the hacking collective (collectively known by laymen as ANON) and have been wondering how real it is. Although I agree with your division, the main division in my mind are those hackers that consider themselves socially responsible in some way, political even maybe, and those that just do things for the lulz. Up until your post I had somehow pictured in my mind that the scrip kiddie types (youth) fall into the lulz category and don't really give a crap about the wider picture and the older ones have evolved into activisim.

As you point out there is considerable overlap between the old and new schools where they might persue the same goals for different reasons. Yes ANON isn't one entity, rather a multitude, but as anybody who is part of the collective issuing statements in the name of ANON makes the message that much more powerful and perpetuates the idea of a single organisation working towards a common goal.

Because they were usually sociopaths

reply to post by petrus4


What?

Originally posted by freethinker123
Yes, that sounds about right. I consider myself pretty well informed, although haven't spent much time in dark corners of the internet and cannot claim to be a member of any of these groups.

Given that I've tended to have a bit more time on my hands than most, I've made something of an anthropological study of Anonymous; to the degree that such is even possible, of course. I was also active to a very limited degree, in both Project Chanology, and (in online but non-DDoS terms) Operation Egypt. Given the degree I had read years previously about Hubbard, I agreed with the goals of Chanology; but the aftermath of Op Egypt was where my own disillusionment started to set in. I realised that the Egyptian people weren't actually any better off after the removal of Mubarak, and that the person who took office afterwards, was his named successor anyway.

It was then that I also began to realise that new school Anonymous are fundamentally dupes; and that although they seek to generate positive political and social change, they actually get led around by the nose, by the very people they think they're in opposition to. Most Anons are young, (born post-1990) angry, and exceptionally naive; they adhere to their emotions and the prevailing groupthink first, and logic and fact checking second. (If at all)

This makes them extremely vulnerable to being manipulated and personal armied by people like George Soros, or anyone else who has sufficient money, and is able to get both money and influence to them, in such a way that it remains low key.

The oldfags were right when they used to tell the newer people, that the single biggest mistake they made, was taking what they did too seriously. The new crowd are passionate and angry, and they want to play for keeps; and it is that very anger which makes them vulnerable to the enemy.

Ma Durga didn't defeat the demons by becoming angry herself; she did it by playing. Hackers know that more than most people; but many of the newer Anons are not real hackers, and it shows. They don't think like that, and more importantly, they don't feel like that; so they have vulnerabilities which the hacker mindset doesn't.

Up until your post I had somehow pictured in my mind that the scrip kiddie types (youth) fall into the lulz category and don't really give a crap about the wider picture and the older ones have evolved into activisim.

The DDoS demographic are generally the former, IMHO. There are not a lot of older people within Anon that I am aware of; some, yes, but they are not the majority. The archetypical 30+ Anon is an anarchist who for whatever reason, never got a haircut and a suit and tie, or sold out; and there aren't very many of those. People tend to slow down at around 28 or so; and that usually means adopting more conservative politics as well. Churchill observed that change.

I agree, good post. If anyone wants to know what anonymous *really* is, all they have to do is spend 1 day looking at their forum posts and irc chats, and 1 day protesting with them against whatever the wind blows them to protest on that day. After researching you will find there is no leader, their opinions, views, political, religious views are as varied as any random number of college students. The local divisions attempt to have leaders, but the second that attempted leader says something that the others don't agree with, that self promoted leader loses his clout, because there is no real leader of the group. There will be ones that set up websites, but they aren't leaders, they probably are looking to make friends more anything else. I'm for them in most cases, but because 'they' are so varied, even 'they' disagree with themselves, in that respect you could say if the group were one person it would be schizoid, the headless body is chaos, but it is chaos that is like a mass consciousness, as long as there is not a single individual leader at the top it will continue to function pretty smoothly. Lulzsec were taken out because they were their own small group, easily identifiable, unlike anonymous, but I have to admit lulzsec were actually hackers, not saying there aren't some in anonymous, but because anonymous is so big in comparison, there are a lot of wannabes. Do a search on Jake Davis topiary, he was the real leader of lulzsec, he appears to be the Kevin Mitnick of his home town, remember the 'Free Kevin' bumper stickers? I remember, probably because I lived near where he was imprisoned.

Originally posted by Razimus
Lulzsec were taken out because they were their own small group, easily identifiable, unlike anonymous, but I have to admit lulzsec were actually hackers, not saying there aren't some in anonymous, but because anonymous is so big in comparison, there are a lot of wannabes.

I don't actually believe that core Anon are all that big, to be honest. This is a totally blind guess, but I doubt there'd really be more than probably 200-500 people at the most. The point, of course, is that they're able to use the very word "Anonymous," to imply that they are vast, when that isn't really the case.

The proverbial 99% (and I'm not talking about Occupy's abstraction, here) are exceptionally timid, and have a very low pain threshold. Of the 1-3% of the population who might get sufficiently angry to go to a protest or demonstration, they'll likely only do it once. If they get thrown in jail for 24 hours, they'll very rapidly take the hint, and stay at home forever after. Charlie Veitch was given a week in solitary by the Glasgow police, and is back out on the streets; but people like him are the exception, not the rule.

The overwhelming majority aren't even so much apathetic, as they are cowards.

I've never bought their claims of doing good deeds for the sake of doing good. I'm pretty good at seeing through bs, and these guys are definately full of it.

But you should be careful though. Rallying against these kinds of guys tends to make the rallyer a target for them and their shenanigans.

I don't consider these guys heroes or good Samaritans at all.

You notice, they only strike at people who can not fight back against them. They will not under any circumstances go after a target like Wall street because Wall street has the power to find out who they are and prosecute them.

And that makes them cowards.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
You notice, they only strike at people who can not fight back against them. They will not under any circumstances go after a target like Wall street because Wall street has the power to find out who they are and prosecute them.

And that makes them cowards.

Cowardice in one man's interpretation, can be shrewd tactical decision making in another's, ESC.

Personally, I interpret cowardice more, as overall inaction. I do not necessarily see it as a form of cowardice, if an individual is unwilling to instigate conflict which they know that they are not going to win. However, I will agree with you that there can be a fine line, between wise target selection on the one hand, in order to mirror one's own capabilities, and bullying on the other.