Who is Anonymous?

Over the course of the ongoing Palin Email hack story, a flurry of information has passed from major media, to blogs, back to major media, and on and on. The early reports named the online group "Anonymous" as having claimed credit for the crime. Subsequent reports have now shifted suspicion to what may well be a Democrat operative. It leaves me wondering the answer to a question nearly everyone was asking the day the story broke: Who, or what, is Anonymous?

I've been researching this question, and I have come up with some very interesting answers. I even had the opportunity to exclusively interview some of the Anonymous members who will, of course, remain anonymous. For starters, Anonymous doesn't appear to be a "what". Rather, not a single "what". The makeup is more a loose confederation than a group with a defined edge. The outline is fuzzy, as well as the purpose.

If you look through media reporting over the last year, you will no doubt come away with one of two definitions of Anonymous. Either you'll think they are a left-wing protest group who engages in online activity, or you'll think they are a fearsome group of hackers and cyber-bullies, who sometimes protest. Neither of these definitions is correct. In fact, in many ways, no definition is correct.

Anonymous originally coalesced online. This was not by a grand design, but rather by happenstance. Users of a common group of websites, where most users posted anonymously (literally under the username "anonymous") began to jokingly refer to anonymous as an entity unto itself. As if it were a real person out there, named anonymous. The meme took on a life of it's own. Anonymous became responsible for bad jokes, for funny pranks, you name it. The joke grew and spread, as internet memes do, at the speed of computing.

Soon there became a collective awareness of a self-identity. Anonymous was no longer a mere joke, it was a identifier. Anonymous became a net community.

The community had ups and downs, and in some circles developed a reputation for "griefing". Griefing is a term for online mischief, which can consist of anything from email pranks, to harassment in online gaming, to very real and torturous stalking. An intimidating picture developed on the outside, a picture of a band of marauders. It is a picture which in no way could encompass the whole spectrum of Anonymous. In fact, the range continued to grow for Anonymous, spreading across the world. Users spawned popular internet memes, jokes which we are all familiar with now, such as the lolcats (I can has cheezburger?) They used sites like 4chan to trade inside joke graphics which caught fire across the web. Most of the members of Anonymous were part of this culture alone, neither pranking outsiders nor engaging in internet mischief. It was a strange humor, but it was their humor and it became a defining feature of the group. Still, to outsiders, the more intimidating image of the few grew the fastest.

I asked an Anonymous member about this reputation. Has it been blown out of proportion? Does the group cultivate the hardcore image? A brief answer is that a lot of it has indeed been blown out of proportion, not least by coverage concerning their high profile clashes with Scientology. I won't go into the history of the conflict with the Church of Scientology, but suffice it to say for now that some Anonymous members eventually began protesting the group IRL (in real life). Over time, this division or "wing" of the group became identifiable in their own right. Referred to by insiders as the "Chanology" wing, they are the dedicated protesters against the Church of Scientology. It is this group seen in the press, often wearing Guy Fawkes masks. They are strongly dedicated to activities both legal and non-confontational. They are careful and they are cooperative. They do not run afoul of police at their protests. As I recently found out, they aren't always protesting either. (And yes, you were just rick-rolled.)

This culture within a culture did not separate from the online home, but they do differ in some ways. They are more likely to organize as firm groups, more likely to undertake group efforts. Of course this, too, is not the overview image of the group.

Anonymous is, by definition, anonymous. so users largely didn't know one another. Anyone could act however they liked and use the anonymous reputation as cover. If someone decided to take things a step further, to move into hacking for example, there was no culpability for the others. Indeed, most would have no knowledge, and certainly would have no ability to object. They are anonymous, and do not answer to one another. It is a hard concept for outsiders to grasp.

It seems to me, every member of the group has a picture in their head, a mental image of what it is to be in Anonymous. They know what an outsider is. They know who Anonymous is. Each one of them may not have the same picture, but each of them has this picture. It's that shared perception which creates the group. Looking in from the outside, the actions and the philosophy appear on the left, as social anarchy must. However, within the group one finds a high degree of sentiment from the right. Indeed, in speaking with members of anonymous I'd be surprised to find out if the demographics weren't almost perfectly split on issues. It is not ideology which brings Anonymous into relief.

Indeed, nothing really brings Anonymous into relief. They are the fighters of Scientology, and the lovers of funny cat graphics. They are jokers and chatters, and they are hackers and griefers. They watch each other's backs, and take no responsibility for one another at all. Anonymous isn't a group, but they are many. I've spent two days looking into Anonymous, and there's only one thing I know for sure. There are a lot of them, and the press has yet to take their measure, either by number or intent.

When I started out I wanted to know one thing: Is Anonymous a group of malicious hackers, marauding across the internet like modern day pirates, answering to no one and taking what they please? The answer is, as I said, not simple. There is, to be sure, a degree of that. Yet it simply cannot be the definition of Anonymous. They are too much, too many. They are not this cohesive group people think they are. The persistence of the image can be attributed to two sources. One, obviously, is that people fear that Anonymous is exactly that. The reputation has spread through internet chat rooms, MySpace, and mainstream media coverage because it's scary and sensational. Also, as we saw with Gov. Palin's email, it's easy for small, independent actors to make claims on behalf of the whole.

The other source, however, is Anonymous themselves. Because although they do not claim to be such a group, they think you ought to know: they could be.

Exclusive! Tonight on Unusable Signal, Tommy Christopher and Caleb Howe will be joined by members of Anonymous, to talk about the group and the events of the last few days. Don't Miss It!