::fibreculture:: The Leisure Class as Lynch Mob (Scientology vs. Anonymous)

[Christian McCrea]

Jean and list,

Yes, 4chan was very active in spamming Chocolate Rain, as it was a
sticky on the most popular forum board for a couple of weeks, meaning
hundreds of thousands of people were seeing it every weeks. There was
some horror and introspection amongst Anonymous when it was figured
that they had taken a part in making Dr. Pepper money. I specifically
recall some embryonic stirrings of methodological mapping - while
everybody is Anonymous, there is still very much a structure. Those
who have the wherewithal to produce a youtube video, photoshop or
page, perform a raid, or cause 'epic lulz' (or the like) as was the
case with Tay found that they were little more than unpaid viral
marketers.

> assuming many of us secretly delight in anyone attacking Scientology, at
> least a little bit, the Anonymous war on it doesn't look like it's exactly
> motivated by a sincere desire to propagate Enlightenment values.  It looks
> like a game to me.

Isn't that interesting, that we keep our delight secret? I've heard a
not unconvincing case that attacking Scientology turned net activists
against the more libertarian elements of hacker culture because the
line between activity to protect free speech became vitriolic. This
particular event is like you said, a game.

>  But I wonder if the kind of en-masse mobbing that allegedly started the
> Chocolate Rain 'phenomenon' off would ever work if it had a purpose beyond
> "influence for influence's sake"?

Well I think more broadly if we look at social hacking and
manipulation from the era of Neuro-Linguistic Programming research,
Chaos Magick, the birth of Scientology and Satanism (whose genesis
moments were intertwined) and the Celestine Prophecy / Louise L. Hay
affirmation technology genre - all that stuff feeds into what most
Anonymous will be familiar with; Fight Club, a smattering of
fourth-wall shattering comic series, maybe some apocryphal 90s
internet culture.

I guess what I want to get at is that hatred for Scientology... may be
latent and native to the internet. The whole idea of the chan boards
is that they are a decentralised and anti-authoritarian area - Hakim
Bey's TAZ run by drunken louts - and yet here there is a massive and
spontaneous assault. The internet's culture at this level is
overwritten with this sort of thing. Your comment is so interesting -
would it ever work if it had a purpose beyond "influence for
influence's sake"? I think the idea of influence is key; the
experimentation with social hacking  given over to, well, idiocy.


-Christian McCrea
Swinburne University of Technology