MentalPolyphonics » Sci-Fi http://mentalpolyphonics.com Committees exist to share blame. Tue, 22 May 2012 19:18:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 I Am Legion, For We Are Many http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/i-am-legion-for-we-are-many http://mentalpolyphonics.com/posts/i-am-legion-for-we-are-many#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:00:04 +0000 Jack http://mentalpolyphonics.com/?p=1495 The whole Anonymous /b/ thing is really interesting. It’s sardonic anarchy with its own Wikipedia. It’s tribal warfare with digital neutron bombs — all the people are gone, it’s just structure. Look at this sentence:

[420chan] is an imageboard mostly filled with a strange combination of completely stoned people, cross dressers, and shota lovers.

(NSFW Link is theirs.)

The sentence is structured to entice you to dig deeper. “Click me”, it says, and once you’re through the looking glass you’re immediately and violently punished. It’s a memetic timebomb that goes off again and again and again.

The /b/ clans are turning communication tools into digital weapons, from griefing virtual worlds and wikis all the way down to DDOSing with bare packets: Technology-as-anarchist-prank. It’s fantastic.

The lovable detritus of the 4chan civil war live in a community immune to its own tactics — because invading /b/ is like pissing into an ocean of piss. And once the community reached a critical mass it exploded into this V-like noumenon Anonymous “who” identifies with the Biblical Legion. Truly Sci-Fi, PKD-style stuff.

Once again I find myself arriving in the future.

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