The action Anonymous took against the Church was initially reminiscent of other "raids" or "invasions," two common self-created terms for the organized antagonism of its targets. Characterized by threatening videos posted on YouTube and Direct Denial of Service attacks on Scientologist websites, Anonymous' skirmishes with its first powerful real-life presence were both fought on its home turf of cyberspace and in its own style of high-fun, low-impact harassment. According to Bunker, Anonymous' initially got involved "when a Tom Cruise videotape was leaked onto the internet at the same time the Tom Cruise biography hit bookstores. [The Church of] Scientology's systematic removal of the video from YouTube caught Anonymous' attention, and they got involved from a free speech standpoint." But defending free speech assumes that Anonymous would not silence the Church's own communications in retaliation - which they did - and that they would take their championing of the First Amendment more seriously than flooding a few websites and calling it a day - which they didn't.
How, then, did the raid on the Church go from DDoS attacks to standing on street corners in major cities around the world with signs, masks and cake - all within less than a month? How was it that Bunker watched "Anonymous virtually pivot on a dime?" For his part, Bunker became Anonymous' advisor, Wise Beard Man. "I made a video to suggest they stay within the law and do things the right way," Bunker says. "I worried Anonymous would attack me for daring to make the suggestion, but I felt I had to say something. Happily, most understood my points and agreed with me. They dubbed me Wise Beard Man and started to rethink their involvement and their tactics and quickly transformed in a way Scientology has never been willing to do." And there it is, in all its glorious simplicity - Anonymous rethought, transformed and changed. Did a convincing paradigm shift carry Anonymous into the real world with an ennobling goal?
Not necessarily. It was also an internal polarization: We only saw the more elevated, optimistically charged side in the real world, while its opposite sunk further into /b/. After all, if the entirety of the community had undergone a psychological revolution, the term "moralfag" wouldn't exist to describe the side of Anonymous that Bunker helped foster in the community. Behind every audacious real-world protest was the dilemma the moralfag presented to the traditional /b/tard. So much of the Anonymous mentality is the perpetual goal of retreating farther and farther from the expectations and norms of the real world; yet here were members of Anonymous, bringing their memes and their love for the humorously grim and perverse and even their anti-identities out onto the sidewalks of the real world with their signs and quips and masks and a certain unbridled joy at showing the world their carefully cultivated and impossible to decipher cultural complex?
