Anonymous: An Exploration of (the lack) of Idenity on the Internet

As part of the Kansas State University Digital Ethnography Research Team's study of identity and anonymity on the Internet, I have begun a study of a movement that labels itself “Anonymous.” However, Anonymous is no movement in the traditional sense; it has been said that it is more like an Internet-wide phenomenon. According to Chris Landers of the Baltimore City Paper, quoting an appropriately anonymous source going by the pseudonym “Doc,” Anonymous is “the first Internet-based superconsciousness,” and Landers goes on to say, “Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're traveling in the same direction. And at any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely”(Landers 2008).

The phenomenon's start can be credited to a Japanese image board in which the posts of anonymous users could be judged on the merit of their content, rather than by the name of the poster. This inspired the founding of 4chan.org, an image board composed of several forums devoted to various topics, predominantly anime, but their most popular forum is their random board, known as /b/. However, as one “anon” from Northern Virginia put it, “Anonymous existed before it was called Anonymous” (Landers 2008).

Anonymous, if it must be (loosely) defined, is a mass of faceless pranksters, protesters, activists humorists, and lurkers found across the Internet and all over the world, who simply choose, for whatever reason, to remain unidentified. They are found on 4chan.org, in /b/, but also on humor sites like SomethingAwful.com, or activist sites like whyweprotest.net, which was spawned as a result of a “raid” on the Church of Scientology planned by the anonymous posters in /b/; they are also found posting on any Internet news site or blog that allows anonymous posting. In short, this manifestation of anonymity is virtually everywhere. They come from all walks of life – different religions, different cultures, and have come together to create, intentionally or unintentionally, a subculture of their own, in which anyone choosing to remain unknown may participate.

A study of Anonymous is important to our wider study of identity and anonymity as it hints at the future of identity in the digital age; as society grows and changes, these two competing states, being known and being unknown, alternate in their importance to society. The more faceless we come to feel, the more important it is to be recognized; and yet, the more recognizable we become, the more we retreat and seek the privacy of the facelessness of which we despair. The culture of Anonymous rebels against the enforced order that causes this conflict, choosing instead to revel in the chaos caused by their various pranks and protests. In an age of microcelebrity and diminishing privacy, Anonymous and their activities paradoxically make famous (or infamous) the very faceless mass that is defined by the name. It mocks those seeking their own fifteen minutes of fame, while as a phenomenon, it has become famous, itself, as have certain members and former members identified by pseudonyms or whose private, identifying information has been leaked onto the Internet – an activity known as being “doxed.”

I began my study in October of 2008, lurking in /b/ and on whyweprotest.net; thus far, I have had no interactions with members of /b/, and have had only fleeting conversations with members of Why We Protest (WWP) on their IRC channel following an attack on their site on November 2, 2008; these conversations were entirely casual and superficial in nature, and yet were revealing in the language used; I was immediatedly greeted as a potential “scilon” (a member of the Church of Scientology or one of its sympathizers) or OSA (a member of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs). This pervasive paranoia seems only half-joking; while those who protest Scientology genuinely fear identification at the hands of the Church, out of concern for alleged attacks of reprisal, this seems to also be a way of saying, “Welcome to WWP . It's a bad idea to trust anyone; especially on the Internet.” This is the way many at WWP greet everyone – even people whose Internet pseudonyms they recognize.

My research at /b/, however, has been another matter, entirely. There seems to be very little in the way of activism, though there still lurks the occasional anti-Scientology protester here and there. A “random” image board, it is frequently populated with pornographic photographs and hate speech; there is hardly a post that does not contain a racial or sexual slur. However, there seems to be a playfulness to this – there is the sense that such insulting speech is only posted because it will offend. Though I can see no clear way of every discovering this for certain, I suspect that some who post these slurs are members of the minority groups they insult, and the posts are a form of irony for them. Despite the frequent claim by members of /b/, “there are no girls on the Internets,” perhaps some of the posters on /b/ are, in fact, women, and not the stereotypical image of the average /b/tard as being a white male teen in his grandmother's basement.

Infamously dubbed “the asshole of the Internet,” /b/ can actually surprise those who expect to see nothing but popular memes, porn and vicious insult for the sake of it. In one recent example, a poster seeking advice on how to deal with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, threatening to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, or, failing that, to “an hero,” a popular meme on /b/ that means to commit suicide, was met with posts filled with well-intentioned, helpful advice, urging him to share his feelings with his girlfriend, to avoid drugs, alcohol and suicide, and to work on himself for himself, rather than for her; however, /b/ being what it is, he also received posts like the following: “She's a bitch. You're a faggot. Both of you die in a fire.”

There's a language to Anonymous, involving a complex amalgamation of 1337, memes, acronyms and in-jokes that the rest of us just don't get - and while there are commonalities between the various sites that are home to those who call themselves "Anonymous", there are certain words and phrases that are more heavily identified with one group or another. What's "in" lingo for Project Chanology might be out of step with /b/, and what's popular there might not be noteworthy at SomethingAwful. And even more covert and deep-core language might tell us the difference between a poster who is "obviously" joking, with one who means what they say - while the medium of text makes sarcasm and playful humor harder to recognize, like any other culture, there are probably subtle signals not obvious to an outsider which tells a member of the group how serious the "speaker" is. This is one of those more complex questions I'm hoping to find an answer to.

As my research thus far has only been limited to two of numerous sites that fall under the umbrella of Anonymous, my research does not really provide enough context to adequately describe the phenomon; to correct this, I will be expanding my research to include other groups and sites, like SomethingAwful.com, Patriotic Nigras, and Encyclopedia Dramatica; more will be added as my research reveals other potential field sites. It is my intention to eventually interact with posters on each of these forums, under the same pseudonym that I am using to present this research, Femina Incognita; I will be giving them full disclosure of our project, its and my intentions, and access to our research hub so that they may thoroughly investigate the sincerity of our work. I will also attend at least one Chanology protest of Scientology, and participate anonymously, masked as they are, though I will fully inform the protesters as to the nature of my presence.

Works Cited

The Baltimore City Paper. April 2, 2008. “Anonymous Takes On Scientology (and Doesn't Afraid of Anything) by Chris Landers. http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=15543

4chan.org

SomethingAwful.com

encyclopediadramatica.com

A reflection on Neil Whitehead's "Post-human"

As we approach our ethnographic studies of anonymity and identity on the Internet, we find ourselves facing an incredible challenge of significance - we have a desire to learn, and to share what we learn with others, not only so that they can learn from our work, but so that we can learn from their responses - thus, we must not only be knowledgable about the subject of our ethnography, but we must also be sure that it conveys a message that is meaningful to our audience. This class, from its beginning, has taken a very unique approach to ethnography - the medium of video, not only in the documentary form, but in the form of vlogs, where students reflected on the topics of their research and even interacted with their audience through exchanges of video responses. Now, as we, this latest group of students, tackle this new topic, we approach it with video, as before, but already, we see the need to explore other forms to express this that will convey more and different meanings, and perhaps be increasingly significant to our audience. It was with this challenge in mind that I read the article "Post-human" by Neil Whitehead.

Whitehead, by far, has had the most unusual and interesting approach to ethnography that I have ever seen - he calls it "performative ethnography" and the process by which he learns about his subject turns the byword of our discipline, "participant observation," on its head - he calls his method "observant participation," a far more active method of learning. He speaks of desire as a motivation for the material, rather than the reverse, and points out that it is desire which fuels ethnography, though this desire is hidden, covert and trivialized. He approached his research on sexuality and violence by a creative musical endeavor, creating, with the help of several others, a popular Goth/Industrial band known as Blood Jewel. This band, as he pointed out, and the creation of art as a form of "visual lyric" to accompany the music and convey its messages of empowering violence and sexuality, was not a mask by which he could conduct fieldwork, but the fulfillment of a desire to create, and to explore violence and sexuality in a bodiless, "safe" medium which is becoming more and more desireable today - the Internet. This gives his research a sense of authenticity that a lot of ethnographic work in the recent past has lacked - while anthropologists engaging in self-reflection often produced ethnographies that seemed more like biographies than actual studies of the people they engaged with, Whitehead's work, his "self-ethnography," allows both him and the reader to learn about not only ourselves, but the society around us. It is self-reflective, but it is also far more productive.

So what can we take from his work that will help us in the production of our own work? This practice of observant participation could certainly carry us a long way, and though it doesn't give us a new medium to convey our message, it does give us a new method of discovering just what that message really is, what it means to us, and what we want it to say to the people who see it. By actually being the subjects of our research - by embracing the role of the faceless on the Internet rather than simply observing others who do, we can more keenly understand what it means to be anonymous - what constraints it places on us, what freedoms it grants us, and just how powerful our words can be when no one knows who we are.