squidbuddy99:
Wait a second, the 'rebel' Anon's name is Ryan?

Ryan.
Andrew Ryan.
Bioshock.
Atlas' rebellion.

I see what you did there, little moth.

Batman: Pretty fishy what happened to me on that ladder.
Gordon: You mean, where there's a fish, there could be a Penguin.
Robin: But wait! It happened at sea! See? "C" for Catwoman!
Batman: Yet... an exploding shark was pulling my leg!
Gordon: The Joker!
O'Hara: [It] all adds up to a sinister riddle. Riddle-er. Riddler?
Gordon: Oh! A thought strikes me! So dreadful I scarcely dare give it utterance.
Batman: The four of them. Their forces combined...
Robin: Holy nightmare!

Trouble achieving solidarity while embracing anonymity seems... ironically predictable.

I can see even deeper irony than that.

At its more pure core, I could see anonymous' concept of "we are legion" to imply that nobodies are everywhere and that even individuals can have an influence, a message intended to cow interests who would encroach on personal rights because they feel individuals are powerless.

However, the very second anonymous expressed any kind of unification, they ceased to represent this original idea of empowered anonymous individual, they became the very kind of special interest group that forces their will upon others that they hated to begin with. That's pretty ironic, and also common as dirt in any revolution in history.

But it gets even better. Now, as of what's reported here in this article, we've two (and more) splinter special interest groups fighting over the right to be the public face of an organization whose whole point was not to be a special interest organization and without a public face to begin with. That's irony squared. Or maybe cubed. Honestly, I lost count.

Ey guys!
guys!
listen for a second!
guys!
guys!
what if...?
Just a second.
What if sony made the massive hack to himself so they could blame Anonymous and start a civil war inside?

Well this gets them off the hook for the Sony attacks then, they were too busy having a slap fight.

This is one of the main problems with a group that supposedly has no heirarchy, organisation or chain of command, after a while you're gonna find individuals who attempt to exert control regardless (odds are on you're gonna be faced with more than one person thinking this way as well).

With no main centre of authority or command any fights or 'civil wars' will not only end up being more along the lines of aggrivated people lashing out at who they think deserves it but will ultimately just shows why unaccountability and anonymity are bad qualities for a group to posess (especially those who are intent on tackling large issues and instigating change), these are things which will inherantly fuel paranoia in others which will only lead to more conflict.

As these petty exchanges continue you'll have people on all sides feeling bitter and wronged and wanting to get back at their 'attackers' (and what better way to get back at someone who counts on their anonymity and lack of accountability than to reveal their identity and actions to the public), after a while it'll become very clear that the 'big bad Anomymous' really isn't untouchable after all.

Just my prediction of what infighting in Anonymous would eventually result in.

Oh look. Drama. On the internet.

What a twist!

Remember kids, Anonymous never attacks anyone else maliciously. Only themselves -;)

There are some quite interresting stuff in the PM logs, looking at the most recent, there's a couple of messages from "Tux" to "Owen" who was kinda a main person.
It involves Tux getting a "tip"
this is what i found:
Tux -> owen: I've just received a tip
Tux -> owen: That we will go under another ddos attack.
Tux -> owen: This time by another group
Tux -> owen: Aka helldive.
Tux -> owen: I suggest we discuss
Tux -> owen: Alternative IRCs

That's something i found interresting :o
Looking at the approximate date of these messages (Some of the newest of the logs before they crashed/got hacked

Ahh... The frailty of human ambition.

Find this fitting :D

cursedseishi:
I guess you can say Anonymous...
*slips on shades*
doesn't know who it is anymore...

you just won the internet.

HAH! I totally saw this coming...

UrKnightErrant:

That's because you're thinking of anon as a single organization. It's not. It's an amalgam of hackers and script kiddies. Just because an anon picks up a cause it doesn't mean that he has universal, or even majority, support. In fact it's entirely possible... actually pretty likely... that different anon groups will eventually find themselves divided on an important issue and hacking in opposition to one another. And that's OK. It's all about the lulz anyway, right? Anon vs. Anon will would be a mad fun show.

Posting member IP addresses is just LOW. This Ryan guy is either one serious douche bag or a fed snitch.

cursedseishi:
I guess you can say Anonymous...
*slips on shades*
doesn't know who it is anymore...

How do I give you Internet points for that? Seriously, do you have a PO box I could sen cookies to?

Also, Anon vs Anon, the battle that will destroy the Internet.

CosmicCommander:
AnonOps is a damn namefag organization and is part of the cancer of moralfaggotry, nefags and melodrama that infests Anon. I tire of these AnonOps assholes acting as if they are the leaders of Anonymous- and their inspiring of the countless acts of stupidity and namefaggotry that they've inspired.

Anonymous isn't some damn evil, mysterious, omnipresent syndicate; nor does it have a leadership. It isn't something to brag about, to buy clothing, to openly discuss. Fucking cancerous morons who call it a "lifestyle" are also wrong- it's a chaotic hive mind that exists only as a mantra for certain actions. And guess what? It is meant to be FOR THE LULZ.

Ryan is like this. However, he is unintentionally fighting the cancer. Therefore, I encourage him.

EDIT:

Grunt_Man11:
I knew something like this would happen.

Anonymous is the Roman Empire of the internet.

It was only a matter of time before it was destroyed from the inside.
The process has begun.

Please learn what Anon actually is before thinking it's some sort of centralized super-body.

As I see it, the problem is the message and the meaning have become two utterly different things. The idea of Anonymous was birthed from being for the lulz, but the minute someone even briefly attached a meaning or greater purpose to the actions... well, you get AnonOps and groups like them. And there's really not a damn thing that can be done about it, when the message gets consumed by the meaning others decide to ascribe to it. See also, religion. Which one? Take your pick. See how many splinter groups you get from interpreting one holy document of your choosing. And at least those groups have a book to refer to. Anons have... well, the internet. Beyond that? Depends on what they believe in and why they show up. Who invited them, or if they invited themselves.

Ironically, your decrying them for attaching identity and purpose to Anonymous actually indicates you yourself already have in your mind a clear concise picture of the One True Anonymous... which means you attached a specific identity and purpose to the concept as well. The door swings both ways on that, and regardless of if that was the original concept or not, time distorts all things.

Going back more on topic, in some vain attempt to tie this all together, this fight will be brutal and ugly if it goes down. Neither side is likely to be willing to back off, and if anyone knows how to engage in 'unconventional war' on the net, it'd be the dogs in this fight. Ironically, all this will likely create is a hell of a lot of splinter groups, rallying around whatever new websites and chat areas spring up in the aftermath... Ryan's insane effort to remove the leadership may only create hordes of new groups and new leaders. Give those groups a year, and each one's concept of what Anon means will differ from the next. Should be interesting/amusing/frightening to see what develops. Nothing engages and radicalizes like shaking up the status quo.

RDubayoo:
Oh, and another thing, I thought Anonymous didn't have centralized leadership and all that jazz? And yet this article describes a "hierarchy" being established within them, and Anonymous leaders "going rogue" and abusing roles and... you know what? I've decided that from now on I'm not going to believe a single word written by any Anonymous apologist ever again.

You don't see that's the entire point this has happened?

How is this a major threat?? Anonymous is plainly everyone surfing on many other parts of the internet...

Lord of the flies man.

Ryan just took took a swipe at smashing the conch^H^HAnonOps

This reminds me of Star Wars and their governmental war...

Then I remember what most members of "Anon" is and then I picture Family Guy Star Wars instead.
"Aren't you a little fat for a Storm Trooper?"

geizr:
If you really want some popcorn munching entertainment, check out this version of the story from Ars Technica:
The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers seized
Isn't real-life something? I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

i was so into that article that i accidentally dropped my coffee when setting it on the table.

DAMN YOU ANONYMOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From what I've gathered so far this whole thing isn't as serious as one would imagine by reading a couple of articles. It just seems to be an ego vs ego match... on IRC... yeeeah, that props up a few speculations whether or not the whole thing should have made the news.

Although, I have to admit that it would make a pretty cool espionage film, if the people making it were given some artistic liberties.

Well, let me quote The Internet: "And nothing of value was lost".

the great internet civil war of 2011.

Awesome XD

fun to see a bunch of hackers with too much time on their hands turn on themselves and make it public at the same time. makes for an entertaining read.

I wonder if we could somehow set this up to be like on of those ancient gladiator battles, complete with the Coliseum if Rome will rent it out.

Anon infighting has always been around. It wont effect most people.

change "800,000 hijacked computer botnet" to "800,000 hijacked killer mechs", and this fight could get really interesting

I laughed so much when I saw this title! "Anonymous Attacks Self!" actually looks like the kind of thing a hypothetical gaming pased publication along the lines of Private Eye would come up with!

How do we know if this isn't a publicity stunt
just to get more attention? <_> Oh yeah, we don't.

Shadie777:
I swear we need to have a movie of this.
It would have guns and explosions!
somehow....

Get Michael Bay to develop it?

It would be about exploding CPUs caused by viruses (That look like C4s went off), and a Hacker trying to get some from an FBI agent. Then the army rolls out its latest devices to track the hackers and the hacker plot gets completely forgotten.

!234ing Michael bay.

This "Ryan" character is a hearless person, doing the worst thing ever and hurting younger, smaller Anons by giving them...their identities! *dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!*

This is seriously fucked up in the realm of things, and just...well I feel that in the scheme of things that the attacks is really being launched by a guy who felt left out and wanted to make his way to the top by any means necessary, stepping on smaller Anons to to get there like a dictator or something, and if Anon is about helping speech, than what it attacking people for personal gain for?

Either way, seems like an interesting fight is developing, fuck Cable, who needs PSN when we have this

Dastardly:

Tom Goldman:
Permalink

Is anyone surprised by this? This has been a long time coming. You get a group of wanna-be activist pranksters together, and you start talking up this image of the indestructible, unknowable "legion" (puh-leez)... You drum up some press that treats them like some force of nature, mysterious and destructive...

Of course they're going to start splintering and infighting. It's an illusion of power, and even that vague promise of power-without-accountability is enough to start screwing people's priorities up. This isn't Anonymous changing. This is Anonymous moving toward its inevitable conclusion, showing its true colors.

Personally, I'm glad that his little outburst resulted in the outing of quite a few of these punks. Maybe a few of them will be sent to jail. You know. For the lulz.

why be surprised, power corrupts people, and anon is just a bunch of people.

Oh how I just love a good ol' Civil War, it looks like some of my 'enemies' are about to destroy themselves.

But in all seriousness, I just find this rather amusing, I don't have any real love for Anonymous, and seeing them start breaking off into factions and "warring" with each other is pretty fun.