What the decentralized nature of Anonymous tells us about its power

https://lithub.com/what-the-decentralized-nature-of-anonymous-tells-us-about-its-power/

by laurex • 2 years ago

66 36 2 years ago

lithub.com

kryogen1c• 2 years ago

First paragraph: clause comma clause comma clause comma clause period. 8 commas to one period.

I mean I just can't read this. I'm far from a literary person, but this is awful.

HKH2• 2 years ago

It's the length of the sentence that makes it cumbersome.

esafak• 2 years ago

The writer's just generous with his subclauses and commas. Here's the opening sentence of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

A_D_E_P_T2• 2 years ago

It's not really that bad. Perhaps a bit old-fashioned; the author might be a fan of 19th century literature. That paragraph would be improved with a dash instead of a comma after "currents" -- but, besides that, there's nothing much wrong with it.

euroclear• 2 years ago

The author's name seemed vaguely familiar. He was involved in the 2011 email leaks from Stratfor and spent time in prison for it. Although the article notes that he "declared political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2021 and currently lives in London", it looks as though his request for asylum was denied earlier this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown

drekipus3• 2 years ago

We r legion xDDDD.

I have always felt that "the power of anonymous" is precisely the power that we claim it has. (As someone who was involved in 4chan from 2009 until 2015)

"Anonymous" is just the default username for someone on 4chan.

Asking "What does anonymous thinks" is a roundabout way of asking "what do <random people> think?" - but with the latter, you have to face reality that people think this. If we use the former, we can group everything together as a big scary "alt-right 'anonymous group' (tm)" and not have to face the fact that real people have opinions.

rexpop• 2 years ago

Anonymous is very probably (edit: at this point) just a cover for some totally centralized, authoritarian actions. At best, they are useful idiots for centralized powers.[0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

duskwuff2• 2 years ago

At this point, absolutely. At a guess I'd say that most of the real grassroots use of that nom de guerre faded out by 2010-2015.

drekipus3• 2 years ago

Oh absolutely. I'm glad that we are openly at that point of the discussion.

I was contending the (perhaps old) notion that "anonymous" was some gang of outlaws that have a secret hideout where they plot the next parliamentary blow-up guy fawks style

kmeisthax• 2 years ago

The anarchist deep state[0] strikes again!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

thinkingemote• 2 years ago

It's normal playbook to have embedded agents as close to the centre or top of an organisation as possible. I would expect states to be involved although not directly in control initially.

These groups tend to trust each other. What they should do is suspect themselves and especially those who seem better (resources, intelligence, charisma etc) than they are. The clueless newbie who is under suspicion is often the innocent one and the one giving the answers the state agent.

eqvinox2• 2 years ago

just a cover for some totally centralized, authoritarian actions

Acceptance of that ascription is admittance of not having understood Anonymous at all.

Anonymous isn't a cover because Anonymous isn't anything. If someone says Anonymous did XYZ, or Anonymous is XYZ, and you accept it, you've failed to do your homework in verifying your sources. (Because there is no source for a statement like that that could be verified.)

The crux of Anonymous is that it is by its own nature undelineated and conceptually undefined. At best, it is a label for a rough set of ideas, in continuous flux, but even that is questionable. Anything that calls itself Anonymous might as well be Anonymous. Since the label has no meaning, adopting it (or ascribing it) has none either.

Does that mean there are no authoritarian actors on 4chan? No. Does that mean there are no "Anonymous" actions that are authoritarian in setup? No. But does it follow that anyone has any kind of control over "Anonymous": No. There is nothing to control. You can't control a label.

If you genuinely want to understand the phenomenon of Anonymous, you need to study semiotics (and the somewhat ill-reputed field of memetics.) I can't quite recommend any authors anymore, it's been a long time since I spent any academic thought on it. Maybe look for generic introductions into these fields.

INTPenis• 2 years ago

Yes this is exactly what I wanted to say. I've been at 4chan since 2004, until I got banned several times in a row and just gave up going back around 2010.

Anonymous being blown up in the media was the funniest shit ever because we all knew what Anonymous was. It's more like a sub-culture than a hacker group.

Sure several hacker groups have existed under the anonymous umbrella but they were all 4channers, or b-tards. They were all under the same sub-cultural umbrella and could just as well been single actors acting under the anonymous brand.

So that's why anonymous will never go away, because it's essentially just people in some way influenced by the 4chan sub-culture, acting in the name of anonymous.

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

Anonymous is the internet of the 90s and early 00s, before it got commercialized into the cable TV package that it is today.

A_D_E_P_T2• 2 years ago

"Anonymous" is just the default username for someone on 4chan.

Not only is this the case, it's stringently enforced on a grassroots level. People are allowed to select usernames on 4chan, but people who do are considered less trustworthy and less savvy, and are generally disregarded by most anons.

Asking "What does anonymous thinks" is a roundabout way of asking "what do <random people> think?"

Right, but with the caveat that they're not at all random. The average anon is like the opposite of the average redditor: High in disagreeableness, a born contrarian, and fond of saying provocative things to elicit a response. ("Give me (you)s now.") So asking "what does anonymous think?" is like asking what random people with those traits think.

crngefest• 2 years ago

Great article!

In September 2012, journalist and Anonymous associate Barrett Brown, known for speaking to media on behalf of the group, was arrested hours after posting a video that appeared to threaten FBI agents with physical violence. Brown was subsequently charged with 17 offenses, including publishing personal credit card information from the Stratfor hack.[

drekipus3• 2 years ago

"on behalf of the group"

Naturally, once you reveal your name, you are no longer anonymous.

jchw2• 2 years ago

“Marie Sue” was a character, generally in fan fiction, that was clearly intended as an unrealistically perfect projection of the author;

I'm pretty confident it's specifically spelled "Mary Sue", and probably predates the Internet entirely, though I guess whether it predates the Internet or not doesn't really mean you wouldn't learn about it on the Internet.

For reasons unclear to me, /b/ stood for “random.”

This is inherited from the Japanese imageboard that inspired 4chan, Futaba Channel. As I recall, the original /b/ was actually "Anime / Random", but /a/ was already taken for the general "Anime" board, thus it was christened /b/.

---

I do have some more things I was going to comment on but I'll show some restraint since it's not like anything is really inaccurate, even if the commentary is weird to me in some places. That said, I wasn't really able to ascertain the point of this story. Like, about that headline: What does "the decentralized nature" tell us about "Anonymous's" power? I didn't really get much of an impression from the article.

Despite that, it was still an interesting trip through some of the more fascinating things in Internet history, and I found it amusing in that regard.

Unrelated tangent: I have a tendency to think of the early 2000s as the "early Internet", as it's used in this article, but it feels a bit silly when you think about it. It's still relatively early, but it's nowhere near the beginning, especially if you consider before the web. But, I guess since many of us were not there for much of the part before that, it's easier to think of the late 90s and early 2000s as being "the beginning".

duskwuff2• 2 years ago

I'm pretty confident it's specifically spelled "Mary Sue", and probably predates the Internet entirely...

It specifically originated as the name of the main character in a 1974 parody of bad Star Trek fan fiction. So, yes, it's pre-Internet.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100830041159/http://www.fortune...

0dayz2• 2 years ago

Afaik it was just that moot had made /a/ and was unsure of what /b/ should be about so he labeled it random.

jchw2• 2 years ago

Finding good sources for something like this is fairly hard, but actually /b/ was the very first board 4chan ever had.[1]

Though, actually, the explanation I gave still doesn't add up, because actually, I don't think Futaba Channel ever had an "Anime / Random" board. Whether there was already a similar nomenclature from another contemporary imageboard like world2ch is unclear this far away in time, but either way, even though an /a/ board didn't exist, presumably moot already "reserved" /a/ for a normal anime board, whether it was inspired by another imageboard or what. It's not too clear since there were a lot of potential choices and /b/ is a strange one in the grand scheme of things, and I don't think moot ever really explained it too well.

[1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/4chan-10-years-christopher-mo...

nyolfen2• 2 years ago

this dude has been coasting on this one thing for like 15 years

A4ET8a8uTh0• 2 years ago

This seems overly dismissive. We all have some impact on the society we live in, but not all impact is created equal.

Are you saying he should have done more? Are you saying he should do something else? Would you be willing to elaborate?

I am trying to better understand the nature of your complaint. I currently have very limited knowledge on the author of the article.

nyolfen2• 2 years ago

i am saying he did a relatively uninteresting thing and centered his identity around it, seemingly for the rest of his life. i find this pitiable.

mannyv• 2 years ago

Power to do what, exactly?

ziggyzecat• 2 years ago

Anonymous is a bit like Slim Shady back in the day, "I am whatever they say I am" ... but now he announced his own death so I guess the "Shady Sim" is approaching its boring end game ...

aw man, I should have been a farmer, after all, with some cows, sheep, chickens, bunches of dogs and cats, dinkel wheat & corn fields, and a botanical garden for exotic stuff; and of course a wife or two and breeding as our main hobby.

smitty1e• 2 years ago

I believe

That a Weev

Can deceive

Many an eve

Yet time's sieve

Will make grieve

badgersnake• 2 years ago

There was even a stage play about it - https://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/teh-internet-serious-bus...

What the decentralized nature of Anonymous tells us about its power

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