Anonymous

lifecircle

Hey all, i had a discussion with a friend online about the idea of Anonymous. Now..it was just a random off beat discussion because i find myself being increasingly fascinated with net culture as a whole, and no doubt, im going to be called out ALOT to some of the stuff i said here, both from ignorance and maybe through personal bias. I understand that, and actually because i would like to learn more, that i decided to post that conversation here so i myself can learn a thing or two.

So..here it is..unedited

Simbaro is me


Simbaro said
i was reading a few articles on the nature of anonnymous, and i ultimately believe that what we call annonymous is simply darwinsim exerted onto ideas and influence, it is this evolution of ideas that move the collective mind based on its strength and message

GJ said
i think it is more appropriate to call them /b/
the only event i can think of that involve ppl from other IRC is P.Chanology

GJ says
other then that

Simbaro .. says
why do you say "Them"?

GJ says
most others involve /b/

Simbaro .. says
its not any other
its a collective whole of a net culture

GJ says
whoevr participate
its too regional to say its the whole net culture

Simbaro .. says
i am becoming increasingly fascninated with the idea of net culture and created entity the more i view anonymous as what it is
how is anything too "regional" when we are talking about the net?
that we are talking about anonymous in a country called singapore is a great example

GJ says
the anon event that take place never spreads beyond the western continent

Simbaro .. says
im no longer talking about anonnymous as what the media or real life view them to be

GJ says
u talkin bout being annonymous or being anon?

Simbaro .. says
it is but a collective shared culture that evolves
try to stop thinking about being an anon or calling annonymous as a group, that exerts individuality onto context whihc i feel is not needed to understand the net culture
annonymous is simply a reflection of net culture
merely one of its reflections
and a good part of annonymous, from their videos and messages, seem to understand that
again im using annonymous as an entity to illustrate a point

GJ says
its just what u see when u don't sign in
ppl just use this lack of identity to do whatever they plz

Simbaro .. says
its a bed that allows for the human mind to make mistakes, and say, ok that was wrong, BUT ALLOWING the individual to try again
unlike real darwinism, nothing is lost but the idea
or the culture
and this builds and stackes and rebounds of each other, there is no individual, only ideas that form and generate momentum and order around them
this causes people to act as they do
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order

GJ says
u want to say like p.chanology

Simbaro .. says
yea, im interested from the social ideas and parallels to life and systems that Annonymous, both as the group, and as the net culture, represent
ill prob study more into it some other time

GJ says
not reading too much into it

Simbaro .. says
yeah its ok

GJ says
granted its pretty facinatin

Simbaro .. says
im just very interested in things like that

GJ says
tat p.chanology could happen is totally unprecedented

Simbaro .. says
other areas concern stuff maybe like social engineering or mass media

GJ says
if u r interested
ED has recorded lots of their activity
wikileaks incident
amazon

GJ says
there r some that is really immoral
not that i have anything against that
ever heard of porche girl or the ipod kid?

Simbaro .. says
there is only the idea that is, and even then, ONLY if there was sufficinet momentum of that idea for order to form around it
nope
not too big into memes
im only interested in the underlying idea of the phenomenon

GJ says
they're not meme
events

Simbaro .. says
it would make great concepts and ideas i could use for stories
ill check em out some time

GJ says
Eden of the East has that concept
instead of Anon
they hav NEETS
which are basically Anon

Simbaro .. says
heh
true..i gess
but Eden of the east kinda blunted and diluted that message with the idea of the super smart phones
but i would expect something that outrageous would be needed to bring the net culture and the collective dream as it were, into real life

GJ says
if net culture were brought into real life
i'm sure there'll be lotsa ponies

Simbaro .. says
it can never happen though

GJ says
n furries

Simbaro .. says
the net allows us to lose our inhibitions with the concept of anon and hecne we are both more accepting and willing to follow the sway of ideas and concepts
less so in real life.
And the furries are already around in america man, dont need to manifest the whole of net culture here for that


GJ says
i would love to see more protest against scientology though
hackin ~~ mm not so much

Simbaro .. says
i wont mind hacking against fox

GJ says
fox news hav enough jokes
even without anon
they'll still be the stooge

Simbaro .. says
china's flesh search is in many ways, a movement as unique as a phenomena as annonymous
another example of net culture

GJ says
flesh search?
u mean flash?

Simbaro .. says
as in
searching out an anon user online
and finding their true names

GJ says
u mean ip address?

Simbaro .. says
no
your face
your address
everything
they post it on the net
basically you;re fucked in real life and online
basically online vigilantes and activism to a high level beyond the western Annonymous

GJ says
how they find your face?
facebook?

Simbaro .. says
chain doenst use facebook i think
china*
but man, they have ways i guess
havent you read news reports about things like this in china

GJ says
so far
Simbaro .. says
chinese netsizens are scary, and if you become a target of online vigilantims and a flesh search
man

GJ says
i've only heard bout address
contacts

Simbaro .. says
its so different from the western anonnymous
but very simillar to net culture as a whole

GJ says
i wonder how they find that

Simbaro .. says
no idea
and im very sure it can be done

GJ says
what if u dont hav any pics online

Simbaro .. says
i would say the chinese internet cultural identity is less lulz and stuff than anonnymous, but take things to very seriosu levels
you can get assualted in the street
your house will be defaced
especially after they flesh search you

GJ says
i heard that on dah news

Simbaro .. says
yeah
or chinese netisizens forcing the government to take certain actions
or pardoning certain people
it is both culturally and psychologically different than the ideals of the western annonymous
the chinese annonymous go for different goals and at different levels
but the idea of net culture remains the same

GJ says
internet is serious business
i guess only the chinese can say that

Simbaro .. says
plus dont forget that the chinese are experiencing more or less a different version of the process the western world grew up in when it comes to the internet
their's is a closed system that is a prallel to the western one
but not entirely the same
i guess we still cannot call Annonymous as a true singular collective idea of net culture as well as an entity, as long as different cultures exist and respond differently to the net
heh
how fitting..

GJ says
i wanna see one thing now after i reading wad u say
chinese anon duking out with western anon

Simbaro .. says
nah
we'll need translators

GJ says
i know
juz sayin

Simbaro .. says
too much hastle, ideas wont get across
no movement or sustained order
hehe
unless GOOGLE TRANSLATION to the rescue
but even that is still a poor fit

GJ says
its like 井水不犯河水
the closest one i see is posted on sankaku
nothing confrontation
meerly one side insulting the other side without evr receiving the reaction

zehaeva

I tried to read that, but I failed. I too have been all a buzz about the recent exploits of Anonymous and LulSec and I am quiet interested in the subject.

I can not be bothered to spend time to parse my way through your friend's speech patterns. More specifically the lack there of.

Maybe someone could translate it to English?

Rym

I am quiet interested in the subject.

Just watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

You will understand pretty accurately what anonymous represents after that.

lifecircle

I tried to read that, but I failed. I too have been all a buzz about the recent exploits of Anonymous and LulSec and I am quiet interested in the subject.

I can not be bothered to spend time to parse my way through your friend's speech patterns. More specifically the lack there of.

Maybe someone could translate it to English?

Heh, I'll try to do my own editing. :P

dsf

reading this makes me think of this

lifecircle

I am quiet interested in the subject.

Just watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

You will understand pretty accurately what anonymous represents after that.

Rym, I never did watch through the Stand Alone Complex. I did watch through the original ghost in the shell, though, and maybe have had some of it rub off into my views. How much would you say I got correct based on your understanding of Stand Alone Complex?

Neito

Here's how I think of it, and you can totally steal this analogy.

Anonymous is like an ant colony. No one ant is truly "In charge" and directing everyone on where to go to get food. Occasionally, someone finds something that interests a substantial minority of the group, and the chaos organizes itself for a bit, but nobody's in charge saying "Go here. Now go here."

zehaeva

I am quiet interested in the subject.

Just watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

You will understand pretty accurately what anonymous represents after that.

Did that quite a while ago, never got around to watching the 2nd gig however.

While one can many draw analogies and parallels, I were more interested in the specifics of today's culture and politics. Where anon will fit in with us here. How our current governments will try to interact/ignore them. How they may evolve. Where they will go from here. Where we, I mean our culture in general, will go from here. How much actual impact they will have.

I suppose the easiest answer is to just point and say "It's like that" and not bother to go any deeper. You can't honestly say that we will end up exactly like GitS:SAC, can you? And even if you do, are you not interested in how we get from here to there?

Rym

You can't honestly say that we will end up exactly like GitS:SAC, can you?

In the long run? It will likely be scarily similar to GITS:SAC.

Dr. Timo

I am quiet interested in the subject.

Just watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

You will understand pretty accurately what anonymous represents after that.

I would argue that they are trying to represent that, but are going to fail due to insufficient population size of able participants and increasing resistance from incumbents with the power to change the rules of the game.

You can't honestly say that we will end up exactly like GitS:SAC, can you?

In the long run? It will likely be scarily similar to GITS:SAC.

How do you know we aren't already at that stage? The premise of GITS:SAC was that second order simulacra manifest in ways which are apparent to us. This is not necessarily so, in fact even in the case of weak emergence (where the phenomenon is entirely derivable) the lower complexity system can be completely ignorant of the higher complexity system.

lifecircle

You can't honestly say that we will end up exactly like GitS:SAC, can you?

In the long run? It will likely be scarily similar to GITS:SAC.

But would GITS SAC (if my knowledge from the original GITS holds) not be representing a few ideas that has to be implemented before such substantial mechanics come into play?

-That there would be a possibilty of connecting the human mind to the net, and having the possibility of creating a unified structure that could represent the human condition?

- That only with such deep connection to the net and thus the minds of the many in society, that barriers such as culture and ethics can fall away, and even then, most probably not

The human condition varies in so many places across cultures that it would be certain that different groups would treat the net in a totally different way and use it in a totally different way. The Anonymous culture in China reacts and operates differently from the larger western world based on principles and traditions, such as the idea of the feudal system and one party government. Or that many chinese use the net as an outlet, not simply because for the 'Lulz" (im sure many do), but as a means to push forwards social justice that is denied to them in the real world. Especially in places that are rural and backwater.

The question then..would all these different social ideas placed upon the net from different groups of humans, can all culminate into a one single shared entity of Annonymous in the future and is that even possible?

Jason

Question: Can Anonymous be considered a terrorist group? They use threats and (electronic) force to try to change corporate and social policy....

Rym

Question: Can Anonymous be considered a terrorist group?

I'd say no. There's no group. Each individual is acting of his own volition with no organization or orders. Individual groups who claim to be "members" of "anonymous" may act in concert, and if these individuals themselves acted as terrorists, they could probably individually or in their small groups be considered such, but "anonymous" isn't actually a thing.

If I do a thing because I saw someone else I don't know and have never interacted with directly did the same thing or said that someone should do a thing, are the two of us now part of an organization of some kind? A conspiracy? That's would be like saying that bartenders have a conspiracy to get drunks in different parts of town drunk and rowdy.

Jason

There certainly are cells. Terror cells are usually very isolated and act on their own. ARS had an article a few weeks back about a top-ranking cell and the Anonymous leadership revolution. Anonymous is clearly "a thing" in the same loosely-defined opt-in way. It's very much about self-identification... but then again, so are most terrorist groups.

lifecircle

There certainly are cells. Terror cells are usually very isolated and act on their own. ARS had an article a few weeks back about a top-ranking cell and the Anonymous leadership revolution. Anonymous is clearly "a thing" in the same loosely-defined opt-in way. It's very much about self-identification... but then again, so are most terrorist groups.

I am of the belief that Anonymous is simply the execution of ideas by a human intelligence: that intelligence may be a singular or of a group mentality. There is no classification of anonymous simply because they are what they are; unknowable, never certain. No one can be 100 percent sure that it is a group or if it even has leadership, when all these could simply be human logic trying to force a recognizable system onto the chaos that is net culture. I feel It is a "Thing' as certain as we know that the Universe is a "Thing", yet at the same time completely unknowable

Jason

That's very esoteric of you, Simbaro, but the membership and actions of Anon are finite and can be measured as part of a set like other data.

DevilUknow

So Anon has announced "The Plan". It is, by all appearance, the typical left wing anarchist "our only hope is that we all changed everything about the way everyone lives man!" stuff.

They should totally just make "phase 1" the milk carton thing that Rym talked about.

lifecircle

That's very esoteric of you, Simbaro, but the membership and actions of Anon are finite and can be measured as part of a set like other data.

How so when by the very idea of Anonymous is to be unknown? Is not the many singular human actions acting on ideas as Anonymous intelligences the very essence of what it is?

Or rather, do you have any clear cut data on structure and organization that can treat Anonymous as an entity with an individual classification? Note that i treat the idea of Anon as the idea of net culture that expresses itself distinctly around different regions of the world. I view the Anonymous that the western media speaks off often as simply one of the expressions of order and darwinsim of ideas left free to the net. Like how the Chinese "netsizens " and their particular ideas on how to use the internet (Flesh searching for eg) are very similar to trends propagated by the western Anon. It seems that both reflect a communal and underlying need to express an idea or ideology onto the net.

GauntletWizard

How so when by the very idea of Anonymous is to be unknown? Is not the many singular human actions acting on ideas as Anonymous intelligences the very essence of what it is?

Anyone can act as anonymous; What Jason refers to is the groups that form within it, like Lulzsec. There are, quite certainly, cells of anonymous that can be observed, tracked, tagged, followed, and prosecuted. You could even, reasonably, make a list of everyone who had ever acted on behalf on Anonymous in some way, though that would be fairly meaningless in the current context. The point is, even though anonymous is a self organizing structure of people acting independently, there do emerge leaders and heirarchys - The people who make the announcements, come up with the ideas, and make the most important actions.

The question in my mind is such: How soon before some of these groups have their leaders arrested and tried? And how will that affect the morale of the community?

Victor Frost

The paranoia in me would say that video and forum is a honeypot for governments to get the IP's and online aliases of subversives.

WindUpBird

The US government owns the majority of the world's internet backbone infrastructure. The internet itself is a honeypot.

Victor Frost

~_~ Honestly? That's like telling someone who wants a pet fish to go to the ocean because it has the most fish.

WindUpBird

~_~ Honestly? That's like telling someone who wants a pet fish to go to the ocean because it has the most fish.

Ga-derp. I didn't realize you were referring to a specific video and a specific forum; rather, I thought you meant video channels and forums in general. Sorry bout that.

However, it is widely speculated if not 100% confirmed that the backbone servers DARPA owns are tied into federal systems that sniff all of the traffic moving through them. So for a bunch of very picky aquarium enthusiasts, the US government sure does like kicking sand around on beaches.

Victor Frost

That's still unlikely. Running deep packet inspection on that amount of traffic is very difficult and taxing.

WindUpBird

That's still unlikely. Running deep packet inspection on that amount of traffic is very difficult and taxing.

They've got the money and resources. ECHELON is busy monitoring unknown quanities of satellite trunks for anything resembling a threat, and, while it has been defunded under its original name, the Information Awareness Office still has programs operating under the auspices of the Disruptive Technology Office. One of these is called "Basketball," and its stated aim is to extract, analyze, and disseminate massive amounts of data collected from the internet or other sources.

Difficult and taxing? Yes. Practical? Certainly not. Are they doing it anyway? Yep.

dsf

You guys are funny.

YoshoKatana

What are people's opinions of LulzSec's new initiative? (AntiSec)

It seems they are actually declaring "Internet War," and have attacked various American and Brazilian government websites, and want to go after banks. They seem a lot more organized than your standard Anonymous cells. Do you think this is second-order simulacra at work, or a discrete power structure/organization?

EDIT: It kind of reminds me of the Great Hacker War in the early '90's.

Not nine

Brazilian government websites

HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE HUE.

Daikun

What are people's opinions of LulzSec's new initiative?

Bumped for relevance.