In late 2003 Anonymous emerged, still dripping, from the primordial soup of the Internet.
A faceless and chaotic horde of subversive youth, Anonymous was fueled by remarkable creativity, untapped talent and a perpetual state of boredom. They lurked in the obscure depths of what was, at the time, a niche online subculture. Their early exploits ranged from harmless to cruel, hilarious to creepy — but they were for the most part restricted to a tightly knit realm of online forums and imageboards. In those early days one would be hard-pressed to associate Anonymous with activism, or any other kind of coherent positive social action.
Now, more than seven years later, the teenagers that once thrived on crashing Habbo Hotel parties have grown up, and the new Anonymous has matured both physically and ideologically.
Their metamorphosis has been quite remarkable. It’s like watching a caterpillar becoming a butterfly — except the caterpillar is into lolcats, rickrolling and tentacle porn, and the butterfly is a vehement defender of human rights with aspirations of activism on a global scale.
The 21st century saw the emergence of new forms of human interaction on a scale unlike anything we’ve ever encountered before. As of 2011 there are almost two billion people online. The globalization of information via the Internet has enabled like-minded individuals nearly anywhere on the planet to come together and share opinions and form bonds. Whether their opinions are on politics, world news, religion, sports, anime, video games or anything else, the connections established by these people have the potential to become as meaningful and substantial as those formed in real life.
Anonymous is a strong example of what happens when an online community of like-minded individuals decides to take up a cause and run with it. What’s especially intriguing in this case is that at some point between Chocolate Rain and the global financial crisis, Anonymous decided to throw off its ill-fitting black hat and step into the ring on the side of the “good guys.” That’s not to say they’ve completely abandoned some of their more questionable practices, but for the most part Anonymous has become a benevolent entity.
They first entered the public eye in 2008 during “Project Chanology,” which spawned global protests against Scientology followed by a number of web-based attacks that brought down Scientology websites. Since then Anonymous has moved on to a number of arguably well-intentioned causes, from supporting the file-sharing movement to the 2009 Iranian election. But it wasn’t until 2010 and the rise of Wikileaks that the full scope of Anonymous’ influence was recognized.
In a response to a number of large organizations severing their financial ties with Wikileaks — PayPal, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa, among others — Anonymous launched attacks on their websites, ultimately bringing down the homepages of both MasterCard and Visa. Recently, during the ongoing crises and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, Anonymous has declared its support of the Egyptian, Tunisian and Libyan people, taking down websites and propaganda portals run by those governments.
And already this year Anonymous has been engaged with the insidious Westboro Baptist Church (although there is a reason to believe that the initial reports of aggression toward the WBC by Anonymous were fabricated by the church itself) as well as the technology security firm HBGary, who foolishly challenged Anonymous on their own turf. Now, through “AnonNews,” Anonymous regularly publishes press releases and open letters addressed to potential targets.
This level of hacktivism is a significant departure from Anonymous’s cruder, more humble beginnings. Keep in mind that they began as unregistered members of a community designed to facilitate an unstructured discussion of video games, anime and porn (and all the bizarre combinations of the three).
While they have retained much of what they stood for seven years ago, the current public face of Anonymous is a product of the massive influx of mainstream exposure experienced by many online communities and social networks over the latter half of the last decade.
Major news networks worldwide now integrate Twitter feeds, Facebook comments and YouTube videos into their daily news cycles. As Anonymous grew more ambitious, its influence permeated these other social networks. Inevitably, like other elements of formerly underground online subculture, the faceless horde found itself in the spotlight of the mainstream media. If the spotlight has had any effect on Anonymous, aside from swelling their ranks, it’s that they seem to be holding themselves to a higher moral standard — at least in the public eye.
It’s their potent ability to influence real world events that has changed the way people view Anonymous. Now that the public has had a taste of what an organized online community is capable of when it materializes in the real world, the landscape of social media has been irrevocably changed. Gone are the days of dismissing online entities as insubstantial or unimportant.
Anonymous has set an important precedent by actively engaging real issues on a global scale. They have repeatedly demonstrated that a formidable contingent of the world’s youth can coalesce into a cohesive and subversive international entity, by harnessing the combined strengths of the Internet and social media. Because of this, future online communities will face fewer boundaries when establishing a more tangible and legitimate real-world presence.
As we move further into the 21st century it will be interesting to see how Anonymous and other online communities will evolve, and how they will integrate themselves even more into the fabric of our digital age.
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