This thread is an interesting example of what happens when you reconstruct even recent history backwards from media. This is all Anonymous as dumbass journalists reported it, not as it was, which was... mostly just a meme. https://twitter.com/yunhophobe/status/1266941805842575360

Like the whole point was "anybody" could be anonymous. There was never a leadership body, or a consensus. People constantly argued about "moralfaggotry" vs "the lulz" (ie being political or activist vs trolling for the joy of it), or tried to act as leaders, but to no avail

By virtue of just being a meme concept, Anonymous was a million totally contradictory things. Individuals or small groups would post a call to action (meme, instructions, w/e) and people would either act in it and join in, or not (or mock it ruthlessly and sage it)

But there was never a collective, never a goal, never an ideology in any cohesive meaningful sense. To such extent there appeared to be such things, it was generally small groups or individuals just claiming the title/iconography however they saw fit.

Before Chanology, Occupy and the Anti-Authoritarian Hacktivist Collective there was Anonymous the Hackers on Steroids, the Internet Hate Machine, the internet's very worst mongol horde of barbarian trolls, terrorists and cyberbullies

There was no change there, at least not until online culture and 4chan culture changed for other reasons. Sometimes "trolling ops" that caught anon's zeitgeist had some political dimension, other times it was closing the pool at habbo hotel. kinda random.

And for every "op" or idea or target that caught on, was a million guys who tried to get Anon to harass a girl who turned them down or some other dumb shit, which would end in rigorous mockery and "not your personal army", or if you where unlucky a richly deserved doxxing

But yeah, basically you just had a free-floating loosely culturally affiliated, fairly diverse group of people that was collectively "Anon" and you'd post whatever trolling or "hacktivism" you wanted to do and people would get on board or not. That's it.

And the primary directive for any of these proposals was to be "lulzy", with any activist or socially conscious ideals being subsidiary to that (at least until anons started believing their own hype post-chanology )

Also there was almost no hacking. Within Anon (or using it as a way to "rally troops") where people who could hack or where also in actual hacking groups, but mostly it involved being a "script kiddie", that is taking already written programs and just running them.

Most of those "hacks"? Not hacks, it's a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service). It's just getting thousands of people, using website stress-testing tools or software like Low Orbit Ion Cannon, to use up all a server's bandwidth and crash it or get it taken offline.

It's just a bunch of guys posting memes in an IRC and gaming while in the background their computers simply reload a webpage millions of times in rapid succession.

I mean, even the Guy Fawkes mask thing started as a series of goofy mspaint stick figure cartoons about "Epic Fail Guy." it wasn't until chanology and occupy that people decided they needed to wear masks irl and chose guy fawkes masks cuz of memes, then it became iconic

I dunno, I guess I just wanted to provide some sorta, historical context and clarity on the whole "Anonymous" thing seems it seems like the mythology is overshadowing the reality, for whatever little it's worth.