Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Rumpole of the Internetz

I’ve read a few stories about Anonymous, the non-group of whatevers who occasionally band together when they really, really want to in order to stick it to the man by assaulting their web sites and such.

It’s good to see the boys – now, I assume there are girls involved as well, but given the nature of things, I’m sure most of them are boys – doing something with their talents, whatever they may be. I, too, have felt the urge to protest. Mostly furniture store sales and the occasional yard sale and car wash. One election year I put up a sign reading “Don’t Vote. It Just Encourages Them” on the front of the house. Just for the lulz. So I understand that they want to have their say.

But toilet paper? Really? I understand the Koch brothers connection, yadda yadda blah blah blah. But you know what? How many people really want to go online and research toilet paper? How many of us really noticed Anonymous’ failed distributed denial of service attacks against Angel Soft, brief as it was? Unless you’re in my house usin’ my toilet paperz, I promise you I didn’t notice. At all.


Protest is a great American tradition. It brought us the civil rights movement. It brought us the American Revolution. Suffrage. The repeal of Prohibition. But if political hacktivism the Anonymous Way is the way protest is headed these days, no wonder it’s going out with a whimper, as Ars Technica writes. (And Anonymous, this is Ars Technica, Rumpole of the Bailey of the Internet here, poking fun at you. I wouldn’t take that lying down, friends.)


And when you post things like this:
We laugh in the face of tragedy, we mock those in pain, we ruin the lives of other people simply because we can, these things we do for the lolz [sic] and we do them with no remorse, no caring, no love, and no sense of morality, we attack all things in this way, we can, we will, and we have destroyed countless that stand to harm Anonymous.
And then get people to agree with it, well, no wonder you’re fragmentary and losing your effectiveness, at least in the Toilet Paper Wars.

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