

What it's like to participate in Anonymous actions - selenamarie
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/what-its-like-to-participate-in-anonymous-actions/67860/

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selenamarie
The article was written by Professor Biella Coleman, an anthropologist and
professor at NYU who studies hacker culture. She's written a lot about
Anonymous, 4chan and /b/ and teaches a class on the anthropology of hackers at
NYU.

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jdp23
Very richly detailed and clearly presented. "From at least this vantage point
Anonymous starts to look more like a group of seasoned politics activists,
debating the merits and demerits of actions and targets, warning for example,
not to attack the media. Even if these documents cannot be taken as the
totality of Anonymous, they reveal that some of the participants do engage in
strategic and political thinking."

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pigbucket
It's an appropriate counterweight, I think, to the unmitigated and much too
facile condescension that some have been indulging in lately.

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CGamesPlay
It's easy to understand what anonymous is if you spend some time on 4chan/b/:
it's people. Some of those people try to rally more behind some cause, be it
just or lulzy, and many of those leaders will fail. Occasionally, some of the
anonymous people agree and form a rally, which gains steam in the same way any
fad does.

Anonymous is pure, direct democracy: equivalent to anarchy.

