Deflecting DerpOps
Crackpots ... with cable modems.
The suffix “ops” gets appended to a variety of online activities and it’s typically used in a derogatory fashion. Here are some common uses:
DivisionOps - social engineering meant to cause division.
GayOps - follows the chan culture norm of equating gay and weak.
SchizOps - targeting OR the use of a loose screw in some effort.
PsyOps - a former official term since replaced by “influence ops”
There are a variety of online conflict tactics that are meant as Psychic Snares. I recently had an encounter with a SchizOps practitioner that’s just too funny not to share here.
Attention Conservation Notice:
This is about dealing with a deceptive, hostile, low skills manbaby. If you’re not going to be doing hand to hand stuff there are likely better ways to spend your time than reading this.
Operating Environment:
Ten years ago I acquired a funny Google Voice number, 706-47-TROLL. As the years have rolled by I’ve found it handy to have a public number I actually check for SMS, so this fit the requirement nicely. I think I made the Telegram account associated with this number in 2016 or 2017, but I’ve since lost that. The most I’ll say via SMS any more is “get on Signal”. This screens out a lot of junk, forcing the other party to actually get a burner or a Google Voice number, so if they cross the line there’s a better chance law enforcement can ID them.
There is a low but not impossible chance someone I would actually want to engage would start using this method, but it’s an intentional public “mezzanine”, a place where anything moving is assumed to be hostile.
Initial Stupidity:
So the approach started in early December, and after six days of ignoring the final message I asked “Who is this”. There’s been some other stuff going on such that I figured I’d better check. The declaration that it’s Anonymous was the final blow, but guessing I’m from Georgia based on the area code already pretty much discredited the persona.
Derping In Earnest:
The persona trots out some old drama, and I’ve redacted their names. The “who” is irrelevant, but the methods matter. The accusation of “suicide trolling” makes me think this might be a Kiwi Farms denizen. That’s a shithole anti-trans cyberstalker site operated by the original develop of 8chan, Josh Moon. His behavior is such that he fled the U.S. and was last known to be hiding in Serbia.
More random babbling, throwing word salad at the wall to see if any of it sticks. The proffer of “help” is interesting, timing makes me think this is a pivot since I’m not instantly responding.
Anonymous as a vehicle for social movements died along with Occupy Wall Street. There are a few dead ends who won’t give it up, most recently there’s been an attempt to maneuver old Anonymous adjacent assets into a merger with NAFO. That has pretty much failed from what little I’ve seen of it.
The Sendoff:
What I got from observing this is pretty much what I said in the dismissal. The persona has outdated information which they are employing in an attempt to gin up trouble and it’s not working. Given the amount of time being spent this could be one of those situations where a bored manbaby gets some old files, $500 in Paypal, and is sent out to make mischief. There are others who’ve had a similar approach, hearing from one of them is what motivated me to write this, if they are funded a public point & laugh denies them the ability to claim they’re making progress.
Conclusion:
That whole monologue was about restarting Twitter drama. I spent ten years programming that environment, but it was obvious where things were going when Musk purchased it, and the end of API access in April was the final blow. I had been backing away prior to this and you should know the reason why - multiple encounters with large pools of what I took to be AI driven bots.
Twitter’s time as a global common is over and AI in volume is going to replace much of what was once done by hand. That guy is like a stable boy a century ago watching a line of cars coming into town. The confluence of activity at this time was enough for me to waste some of the Tuesday before Christmas looking at it, but this post is me closing the books for 2023, perhaps never to revisit them again.
We’ve been talking about The Online Operation Kill Chain here in the last quarter of 2023. The nature of conflict is evolving rapidly, so much so that we’re likely already at the point where much social media activity is AI on AI conflict. This is certainly already past stage three of the successive phases of the image from Simulacra & Simulation.
I hope the experience and skills I’ve been trying to convey using TOOKC as a framework will have some value for you in the future. But there are a lot of people, like this hapless SchizOps player, who have nothing to offer in that future. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a Ned Lud style rampage against automation taking their jobs.