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Guy Fawkes mask, from V for Vendetta.
Photo Credit: Ben Fredericson at Flickr
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Anonymous activists have become terrifying to the powers
that be, despite (or perhaps because of) their apparent disorganization
and probably in excess of their actual capacity.
February 1, 2012
The enigmatic Internet-driven collective Anonymous, thank goodness, has an anthropologist in its midst. For a few years now,
Gabriella Coleman has
been arduously participant-observing in IRC chat rooms, watching
Anonymous turn from a prankster moniker to a herd of vigilantes for
global justice. In an extraordinary new essay at Triple Canopy, “
Our Weirdness Is Free,” she summarizes what Anonymous is all about this way:
Beyond
a foundational commitment to anonymity and the free flow of
information, Anonymous has no consistent philosophy or political
program. Though Anonymous has increasingly devoted its energies to (and
become known for) digital dissent and direct action around various
“ops,” it has no definite trajectory. Sometimes coy and playful,
sometimes macabre and sinister, often all at once, Anonymous is still
animated by a collective will toward mischief—toward “lulz,” a plural
bastardization of the portmanteau LOL (laugh out loud). Lulz represent
an ethos as much as an objective.
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