Inundated by pop culture and TV commercials, many in Generation Y , especially technologically savvy males, shared a general disdain and cynicism for the 21st Century culture.
[video flipping through channels of MTV, VH1]
On image boards, especially the “anything goes” board /b/, soon ballooned into a haven for teenagers and 20 somethings who needed a place to release their emotions anonymously or look for entertainment, advice or a sense of community, among others.
Contributors to 4chan formed their own variation of language, broke away from the rules of society by shedding their identity and the ideas and opinions that were held back from the daily grind in the physical world were unleashed on the image board. More often than not, posts were usually in a sarcastic and playful attitude meant to produce the most “lulz,” a term synonymous with appeasement or laughter.
[screen videos of 4chan, excerpt from interview]
The board turned into a center of a quasi-counter-culture movement in which the group began to take actions against celebrities, celebrity wanna-bes or groups that misused the Internet. These actions ranged from sending 10 pizzas to people’s houses, prank calling cell phones, posting flashing images on a support message board for people with epilepsy and posting messages on Oprah’s website claiming to be part of a global pedophile network that is raping children everywhere.
[screenshots of raids, epilepsy screen shot and Oprah video]
The attacks never garnered much media attention and the board basically was unknown to much of society. Then, in January 2008, a video was posted on YouTube that showed Tom Cruise talking about his religion, Scientology, among other topics. As the video gained popularity, the Church of Scientology tried to have the video removed from YouTube. This infuriated many contributors to 4chan and other anonymous message boards, and the raid on the Church of Scientology ensued.
[show Cruise video then it being cut off halfway through]
From January to April 2008, hundreds of news articles and broadcast reports were published about the conflict between Anonymous and the Church of Scientology.
[bombardment of broadcast and print reports]
These reports were mostly brief intros of the battle and the news media generally portrayed the Anonymous movement in the same prototype they had made for hackers of the 1990s and 80s and other youth rebellion movements. Though some journalists delved deep into Project Chanology and Anonymous, some labeled the group as “cyber-terrorists,” or called their actions hate crimes. They mostly dwelled on the many crude acts that ANonymous carried out.
[Fox 11 report and other misleading news reports showing the slime of Anon - also mix in some clips of actual Anon attacks]
These stories rarely, if ever, took the stance against Scientology, and the hundreds of comments following the news articles or videos often complained about the lack of reporting on Scientology’s supposedly shady activities. This inadequate reporting also extended to all Anonymous related activities.
[collage of video responses from Anon, interview quotes from Landers]
But they also got the word out about these shady activities because of the ability to comment on stories or videos. If the story missed these points, posters, possibly from Anonymous, posted their insights about Anonymous. Anonymous in a sense formed its own unprecedented form of news media through blogs, YouTube and Digg. This method of truth-seeking extended past Project Chanology and changed along with the news forms of media.
[screen capture of typing in blogger, Digging article, typing comments on story, interview quotes from Landers]
While Project Chanology has fallen considerably from the ire of the news media and Anonymous, the loosely organized group continued it's crude counter-culture behavior while also holding celebrities and businesses accountable on the Internets. Just recently, it is suspected that a prominent hacker, Weev, outed Amazon.com after several gay and lesbian literature and films were taken off it's top-selling lists. Though Amazon claims it was an internal error, many on the interwebs believe it was purposeful censoring.
[Amazon fail news reports, screenshots]
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