respecting Anonymous

I don't see anyone really talking about it, but it's really amazing the history of Anonymous. This recent debacle with Allan Barr (may he reap the benefits of humility) and his talk about "founders" and "almost founders" of 'Anonymous' kind of made me furl my brow.

4chan, if anyone didn't know is the dirty schmirty armpit of the internet. It's hard to explain what 4chan is about. It's dirty, raunchy, funny, heart warming. If lolcats are caffeine and an epic rick-roll is marijuana, 4chan is uberdank heroin (i'd say crack, but I don't want anyone to think I am implying 4chan is cia). It's all about FUCK YOUR RULES; and it evolved into this self-respecting culture. The internet vigilantism always happened; a thousand people all trying to impress each other by fucking up someone's life is pretty powerful. But somehow throughout this people started realizing it worked.

And that's what anonymous really is. It's just the idea, the realization, that on the internet even if you don't take an effort to hide it still takes a lot of resources to find you, and thus you can act with relative impunity. And lulz will be had. Who doesn't love a good cocky dipshit selling snakeoil to politicians to come tumbling down? Don't get me wrong, I respect people trying to go out and 'get theirs' but seeing justice brought to someone who deserves it, especially someone who doesn't think it's coming is just too good to pass up.

A bunch of frantic politicians obviously pulling stings in a blatant attempt to shut down probably one of the most important resources for understanding the world, one of the greatest things to happen, ever; and then having those complacent companies dropped (even if only temporarily) by a bunch of random people is *GREAT* entertainment. I fucking *love* to do my browsing and see that 'Anonymous' pwned some douchefuck or another.

We are living in a god-damned sci-fi novel right now. Some cocky hacker has the world governments by the balls, technology is so advanced all the power in the world can't stop a 1337 h4x0r and anonymous packs of vigilantes are doing random acts of pwning for great justice.

You know what makes me sleep better at night? Hackers. Hackers are always going to have lots of power. Hackers are virtually always good people. They might be cocky, but usually because they are right so often and have to argue with idiots constantly.. they may not be 'nice' people, but they aren't going to do evil shit to you because they're selfish. Script-kiddies might and will.. but I have to imagine as a hackers skill goes up, his dumbshit output goes down. The worst the shit is that you're trying to do, the harder it's going to be to find a hacker to do it for you.

Anyway, mad respect for Anonymous; sometimes internet vigilantism goes wrong.. but swift justice isn't perfect, and that's unfortunate.. but it seems inevitable. But, douchefucks getting blown up for the lulz? I can't see how that isn't a really really good thing for everyone.