Bones wrote:You get the general idea. I have never understood why these idiots claim to be anonymous. They don't even seem to grasp what the word anonymous means
Fun Fact, they don't have a clue about the history of Anonymous, how it started or why the masks are even worn.
A lot of people, including myself, who were involved in some of the earlier Anonymous protests and activities find these people tiring idiots who are jumping on the bandwagon because we somehow made Anonymous fashionable. We didn't mean to do that.
Anonymous started on the message boards of 4Chan, I won't link because it's not part of the civilised internet. If you have a clear mental picture of what is meant by these terms, "Lemonparty", "Tubgirl", "Goatse" you've either been there or read a posting by someone who has. If not don't (also don't ever put those terms into google). It was a place where people practised and refined the art of trolling. People were able to practice this because a board on 4Chan /b/ allowed anyone to post under the moniker "Anonymous" if they so wished. Anonymous became the username used when you wanted to suggest something fun for 4Chan to do.
The reason behind Anonymous was comedy, it did stupid things that were designed to cause offence and played pranks, in it's very earliest days. This included doing stupid things like taking over a browser based game called Habbo Hotel by a group of avatars all dressed the same and blocking access to the pool or making swastikas out of characters in the game. This wasn't just the fun of 4Chan though, other sites like Something Awful and Fark all played a part in these sort of shenanigans.
They were at that time the offensive little corner of the internet where a bunch of nerds were immature and offensive because they could be. They still are.
Then they decided to be offensive to the Church of Scientology (now whatever your opinion is about the CoS, be it creepy cult, well natured religion, or that thing Tom Cruise does) isn't that important. What was important was that a Scientology video of Tom Cruise talking about the joy he gets from being a super special Scientologist leaked onto the internet and 4Chan found it hilarious. So hilarious they kept posting and reposting it.
Nobody would have noticed or cared if the CoS hadn't done what the CoS does to anyone critical of the Church which was to send lawyers to try and take the video's down. That annoyed 4Chan, they were interfering with "teh lulz" which was considered sin. So 4Chan decided (in a collective gestalt way) to do some real digging on Scientology.
They found out a lot of stuff, the Linda McPherson Trust, some of the accounts by former Sea Org members of what they go through and decided this was wrong. 4Chan didn't like the church and decided to do something about it offline, some members also did very naughty things with a program made by 4Chan called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon to attack Scientology servers.
This led to the first (dis)organised worldwide protest of Scientology. 4Chan had done enough reading up on Scientology (these weren't dumb people) to know that if someone protested outside a Scientology church the church had a policy about finding out and publishing critical information. So the message went out, turn up wearing a mask.
So why did they pick THAT mask. Well they didn't. At least it wasn't a conscious decision. The movie "V for Vendetta" had just been released and nerds being nerds some had got copies of the mask because nerds do that. So they had this mask, from the film, and they thought "That'll do when I go protest, it'll hide my face".
The mask evolved from their on. It became a meme that Anonymous should all look alike, that you shouldn't be readily able to distinguish one member from another, so that the CoS couldn't develop up a file on you. That's why it's especially stupid that these anons paint and decorate their masks. The idea of wearing a mask is to make yourself not identifiable and the idea of THAT mask is that you look just like the guys standing next to you, so when you swap places you become harder to track.
The protests against Scientology also kind of split the movement, because suddenly Anonymous was doing something serious and serious was new territory for them. Some wanted to go back to doing offensive things for the lulz. In the end the gestalt consciousness of Anonymous reached an epiphany, anyone could join Anonymous (no secret handshake, no leaders, no responsibility, no way of joining other than just deciding for yourself that you wanted to), anyone could propose an op, and if other people who wanted to be Anonymous joined you, then that was fine.
So to a certain extent they can call themselves Anonymous and they can put on a mask. But to a lot of old school Anon's they are the idiot fringe and are tolerated because they make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention that can keep other, more serious, Anon's from being identified.
Their is a rather good documentary on Anonymous available on Netflix. Called "We are Legion: The story of the Hacktivists". If you want to know more about the movement it's worth a watch.
