Pitiful Brandfagging

Anonymous is, has been, and will remain DEAD.

The image board culture that birthed Anonymous in the early years of the 21st century is one of relentless disinterest in being commodified. The language of that world is an intentionally offensive cryptolect, calculated to drive away any marketing weasels that might find it to be fresh and interesting. The word “fag” is heavily overloaded, it’s a noun, a verb, an insult … or a compliment, depending on the context in which it appears.

If I MUST write about Anonymous, which I really prefer to avoid, I am only willing to spend just so much time explaining. You’ll need to do your own research to really understand.

Attention Conservation Notice:

If this language REALLY bothers you, I have a helpful infographic that will assist you in coping with your distress.

Faggots, Generally Speaking:

Being called a faggot is an insult, consistent with how it’s used by cretins in MAGA hats. It denotes … vulnerability … poor judgment … it’s not explicitly a gender related thing.

Engaging in faggotry is uniformly bad, the connotation is that it’s an active expression of … of unacceptable things, it’s broader than the definition of a faggot. As an example, my taking the time to explain these things to outsiders is itself a base sort of faggotry, for which I WILL be publicly insulted.

Fag is a much more nuanced thing, it’s a suffix for both nouns and verbs.

I am a creature of the dark ages, the time before the web, and this makes me a curious sort of “oldfag”. This is used in the same manner as OG, the abbreviation is short for “original gangster”, and it’s long since slipped into general usage.

What made this rise in public visible was Newfags Can’t Triforce, an image board culture thing.

I am a deeply disgusting thing in the eyes of the lulz focused troll culture - a “moralfag”. There was a brief time when the image board psychopaths and reform minded activists made common cause. This was always a contentious thing. Minus the politicization, Anonymous was a digital crab bucket - anyone who became known as a distinct persona, and then known as a specific person, was a “namefag”.

I guess in summary, when you see “fag” as a suffix in a noun or “fagging” associated with a verb, you know that it’s a thing that has risen to the point of being a topic of conversation in that world.

Current Cringe:

This brandfagging is today’s sad little effort to ride the coattails of the long dead meme of activist Anonymous. The ways in which it is wrong are, well … they’re legion. Warnings are a whole genre themselves, but this lacks the context. What has Anonymous done since 2012? Not much to warrant any great concern. This video missed the … malevolent nature of the original. This tries to be scary, 2011 Anonymous WAS scary.

Back in 2011 some union folks who’d participated in the Wisconsin Capitol occupation sent me a video they’d made for review. It had the Anonymous imagery, it had the correct audio voice, but they spoke of “the struggle”. It was obvious labor movement speech, I could hear Which Side Are You On? in my mind as I read it. Anonymous does not struggle, it makes its victims struggle, perhaps allowing them a bit of hope, but only when there is an imminent, inescapable second blow about to land.

That video is just … wrong.

Federal Bureau of Anonymous:

The FBI provided funding to James McGibney in 2012 for the purchase of the @YourAnonNews Twitter account and the associated domain.

If you read Probable Pissposting you’ll find a sworn affidavit regarding McGibney being an FBI informant, along with all the rest of the corruption that is endemic in that world. It’s a sick culture, always has been, and as soon as its utility was lost, the moralfags discarded it.

I emerged from those years battered and hunted, but no one I had worked with closely got in trouble. That was thanks to a mixture of quick reflexes and plain dumb luck.

Anonymous Reboot 2020:

Aubrey “Kirtaner” Cottle, the owner of 420chan, who DOES have a legitimate claim to being the founder of Anonymous, reappeared in 2020 after a long absence. We had mutual acquaintances but I was active before he was born, then I was adulting while he was misbehaving, then I was sick but politically active, while he was just … elsewhere.

The January 6th Capitol Siege set off a wave of activity much like 2011. Parler was first, then Gab, Gettr, Truth Social, a number of other right wing entities, and the the most damaging of all, the Epik intrusion. Unlike 2011, there weren’t really any public entry points where one could get involved, and the prior venues like AnonOps were trailing, not leading. Aubrey loves the limelight more than any other person I have known, and urging him to be more cautious was an exercise in futility.

So far as I know, none of that has ever been prosecuted. Insurgent activity maps to the power law distribution, and much like the FBI directed LulzSec rampage in 2011, it quickly became obvious that one or more nation state actors were in the driver’s seat. Kirt was reprising Barrett Brown’s 2011 role as spokesman, and just like Barrett, he got himself in trouble of his own accord. If you’re the curious sort, his ex-wife’s handle is Spar, and something she said online is what brought him down.

Kirt got himself collared, and the first order of business was whomever forbidding him to have anything to do with me. He and I have occasional public exchanges, but I haven’t heard his voice since late 2021. I must have wrote about 800 words on why this was, then thought better of it, and picked out a meme I got from Kirt instead.

Conclusion:

Anonymous is dead, it’s yesterday’s gas station sushi, but not out of the cooler, you’re digging it out of the dumpster behind the station. The biggest thing associated with the brand is an FBI operation and there’s a technical term for anyone who chooses to get involved with it at this point. So don’t let this be you …