The Medium. The Message.

[leahbobet]

matociquala showed me the Anonymous videos this afternoon, knowing that I am interested in ARGs and odd twists on new media. If you haven't been following, someone(s) has...well, declared war on the Church of Scientology. Those two videos, plus a distributed denial-of-service attack on Scientology websites, have been the opening shot.

Watch on YouTube

(We will pause the essay for all science fiction writers in the audience to cream their pants.)

I am...so very excited.

Yeah, that's problematic. The idea-meme Anonymous is fighting against is one that I am not averse to seeing fought; I expect I might feel differently if this was a declaration of war on something I was more in sympathy with. But what excites me is...well, the tools.

We are finally learning how to use the internet.

That selfsame matociquala told me a while back that Hill Street Blues was the beginning of the ongoing arc in television (I am too young to know about this myself, so I take her word). Before that, TV episodes began and ended a story in their forty-some-odd minutes. Stories did not carry over, and characters did not grow between episodes. The model was essentially that of serial fiction -- in which there is no greater structural unit like the season -- but on a screen instead of a page. We were using older narrative conventions -- medium-derived conventions -- on a new medium where the limits were no longer the same. Hill Street Blues discovered that greater structural unit. Story changed.

The explosion of ARGs and ARG-style entertainment in the last decade is a push in a similar direction: poking at the lines between fact and fiction on the internet. There are a couple people who comment on this journal who are in fact, fictional characters. That's not apparent to the casual observer: reality can be falsified online. That's one of the ways this tool can work. People are starting to use that to tell stories bigger and better, with more immersion and participation, which is exciting in and of itself.

This is, however, the first time I'm aware of that the same tools have been used for large-scale activism.

The earmarks of this video are all the earmarks of an ARG rabbit-hole clue: anonymized voice, odd video, distribution to soak up the maximum meme-spread attention, the kind of vague and expectant language that promise more to come. This is important. Because it means to a large segment of your internet-going population, who've heard of if not participated in The Beast or Lonelygirl15 or Year Zero or The Dark Knight Returns, this fits into a narrative pattern they know. Big things are coming down the pipe. How do you know? Your Game Control/Gamemaster just told you so. And since they're Game Control, you're gonna believe them.

Automatic credibility.

Even if this is one guy in a basement with a grudge? I suspect this might work. Because we've learned how to write fiction with ourselves as the heroes, and now we're taking those tools and using them on real life.

So...this is the internet, unveiled, in its greater glory. This is what you do with the tool, when you've got it up to eleven instead of sitting at nine because your last medium only went to nine. This is what happens when you finally get rid of those narrative conventions that don't really need to be there because you go to eleven now.

Alternate Reality is becoming Real Life.

Are you excited? I'm excited. :)

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I LOVE ARGS. Love.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

So do I. They fascinate me.

A couple of us have an ARG startup and a business plan for taking it live. One of these days, we will, and THEN... :)

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

If I find out JJ Abrams is behind this, I am going to be so incredibly pissed off.

Except for that possibility, this is extremely exciting.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hee. Even if he is?

Enough people think it's real that...it's real. It's off the leash now. :) Sometimes consensus reality rocks.

[astolat]

Just poking my head in to say no, this is definitely not commercial -- the videos (at least the one with the woman's voice and all the fungi and blooming vegetation) are using pirated footage from the Planet Earth BBC miniseries. If someone was doing this as a pro PR stunt that would eventually lead back to them, they'd have their own footage.

[delta-november.livejournal.com]

As interesting as it would be, I don't see this going far. [Yup, I realize that I just wrote my own epitaph.]

Anonymous' stated goal is to destroy the CoS. A few DoS attacks may destroy the CoS's Internet presence, but we are not yet at the point where meatspace is so insignificant. The CoS members will not just evaporate once their web site goes down and unwanted pizzas are delivered to them at 3 AM. The timescale of this operation needs to be measured in years, and Anonymous doesn't have it.

When I was half the age I am now, I fought in this war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer contains some context of those heady days. Julf buckled when the lawyers, guns and money appeared on his doorstep, and he is a much better man than these Anonymous kids.

The CoS is committed, has large resources, and is fighting for its life. Anonymous is fighting for glory. As soon as things go bad its members will cut and run.

Again, drawing from my youth, we thought we were untouchable in our basements [I was actually in an attic...] with our modems. Then Phiber Optik was sent to jail. Real jail. Suddenly it didn't seem as much fun any more. I can't imagine that one of the Anonymous folks won't meet up with some jackboots, especially once they start on some of the RL pranks that they plan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phiber_Optik

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

1) Daaamn. I was entirely unaware of the history here.

2) Is that the case they were cannibalizing for that awful Hackers movie?

3) I suppose I do believe in...well, public uproar. Even if it's very much managed public uproar, and I suspect that most people really don't have the attention span for hobby-causes. But...wouldn't it be cool? *g*

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I got here from matociquala's LJ.

I think the first thing that came to mind while watching was "Hmmm, a new ARG of some sort?"

I haven't been keeping up with ARGs, but I remember my first "contact" with them was a game where you actually gave out your phone number and such, and there would be phone calls to you and whatnot. I don't remember the name, but a friend tells me it was probably "Majestic."

Are they still as...raw, I think is the word I want to use, as that? The ones I've heard talked about lately don't seem to be - they appear safely ensconced on the internet, meaning you might get an Email or discover a clue out there on the WWW, but you aren't going to get a strange phone call at 2am in the morning, or a letter isn't going to appear at your front door.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yup, probably Majestic.

Year Zero is pretty damn multiplatform immersive. The rabbit-hole clues were flash drives left in the bathrooms of NIN's European tour gigs, and there were in-person events, phone elements...not sure about postal mail. If you click on the link to it in the post you'll find the wiki people set up to solve it. I think elements are still going, after almost a year. It's a piece of art in and of itself.

The Dark Knight one requires footwork too, I hear. It's running mostly in the continental US, so I don't get to play. :(

The one we did a year and a half back, Waking City (http://torgame.com/), was two weeks of sheer utter madness: tons of footwork. Online content. Phone calls with characters. Mailed stuff. The works. We chronicled our team's trip through it at tor_underground if you're curious. Looks like it was a one-time thing, at this stage, which...I'm almost not sorry about? It sort of makes the whole thing that much more unique. *g*

So, after all this natter -- I think they're getting more and more sophisticated. And I also think that back when Majestic ran...people just had not been eased into a comfort zone for what it was doing. It was possibly too ambitious, although there were apparently issues of execution.

[pjthompson]

Scientology have so much money and so much stealth. They offered (anonymously) the Cult Awareness Network so much money to take over operations from them that the founders couldn't resist. Then they struck themselves from the databases and manned all the phones with Scientologists. They'll do anything to protect themselves.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

This...I think, works to the advantage of the people running this thing. Think about this as narrative. Scientology's just cast themselves as the Big Evil Corrupt Bad Guy.

People love a David and Goliath story.

[phantom_wolfboy]

I just wanted to point out that when you say Hill Street Blues was the start of "was the beginning of the ongoing arc in television", you mean American television. Dr. Who, to choose one example that I'm familiar with, was doing ongoing arcs in the 60s. And I remember watching Star Blazers (which, of course, was the Japanese series Space Cruiser Yamato) and being blown away by its serial nature -- and that was in the late 70s.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

*ahem* And I quote:

That selfsame matociquala told me a while back that Hill Street Blues was the beginning of the ongoing arc in television (I am too young to know about this myself, so I take her word).

I am not a post about whose TV show can beat whose up. I am a post about communication media and activism. *g*

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

We hit all the relateds around 7:30 tonight.

I figure there are probably twice as many now. *g*

[runawaysoldier.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call this an ARG; this is just the Anonymous legion from 4chan.org and the other *chans doing what they do best: fighting for control of the internet.

Here's the lowdown: http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology (http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology)

The anonymous voicemask is used because on 4chan and the other *chans, posters are all kept anonymous. Anonymous is thus used as a collective term for all of its members.

This is nothing like an ARG, to me at least. We know *exactly* who is behind this. They've done it before. (http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/GoddessMine) It is everyone and it is no one; it is Anonymous.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hi, there.

I'm fully aware this isn't an ARG and where the attack's originating from. What I'm pointing out here is the communicative tactics that are being used, how they're similar to ARGs, and what this means in terms of exploiting the medium and the narrative protocols already built into people's heads (because they play ARGs).

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Alas, I am obviously a jaded old fart.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Alas. ;)

[kiji-kat.livejournal.com]

There are a couple people who comment on this journal who are in fact, fictional characters.

That is brilliant. How did it come about? (I almost want the same thing for my own journal now.)

Also, I came across this video last night and thought I'd share it. Gives me a bit more faith that this is a movement with an actual meaning behind it rather than some sort of publicity stunt on behalf thrill-seekers:

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Shadow Unit (http://www.shadowunit.org/)? A few of the fictional people there have livejournals. They've been doing some interacting for a while. *g*

There's another one who's a character of a friend of mine, but I'm not sure if she wants that cat out of the bag or what she plans to do with it, so.

[(Anonymous)]

02/10/08 11:00 AM Worldwide

It has come to the attention of Anonymous that there are a number of you out there who do not clearly understand what we are or why we have undertaken our present course of action. Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not "a group of super hackers". Contrary to the assumptions of the internets, Anonymous is not a group of *chan script kiddies. Anonymous is a collective of individuals united by an awareness that someone must do the right thing, that someone must bring light to the darkness, that someone must open the eyes of a public that has slumbered for far too long.

Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life - lawyers, parents, IT professionals, members of law enforcement, college and graduate students, veterinary technicians and more. Anonymous is everyone and everywhere. We have no leaders, no single entity directing us - only the collective outrage of individuals, guiding our hand in the current efforts to bring awareness.

We want you to be aware of the very real dangers of Scientology. We want you to know about the gross human rights violations committed by this cult. We want you to know about Lisa McPhearson. We want you to know about former members of Scientology's private navy, SeaOrg, who were forced to have abortions so that they could continue in service to the church. We want you to know about Scientology's use of child labor and their gulags. We want you to know about Operation Freakout and Paulette Cooper. We want you to know about Operation Snow White and Scientology's efforts to infiltrate the government of the United States of America.

We want you to know about all of these things that have been swept under the rug for far too long. The information is out there. It is yours for the taking. Arm yourself with knowledge.

Be very wary of the 10th of February. Anonymous invites you to join us in an act of solidarity. Anonymous invites you to take up the banner of free speech, of human rights, of family and freedom. Join us in protest outside of Scientology centers world wide. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. We will be heard. Expect us.

[delta-november.livejournal.com]

http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=51051816

You look like a bunch of script kiddies to me.

"Anonymous 01/15/08(Tue)22:53:10 No.51066899

can anyone actually hack?"

You can't make that stuff up...

PS: Why do the snappy retorts always come a half-hour later?
"You may be legion, but your feet are of clay."

PPS: Advice from a retired Cypherpunk: Release a PGP public key. Sign your pronouncements. Allow potential collaborators to contact you securely. You'll be taken somewhat more seriously.

[delta-november.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Administrators_of_711chan.org_end_attack_on_Scientology

The buckling begins. Now we shall see if the meme has spread far enough beyond its original host that it becomes self-sustaining.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heh. This is gonna be interesting.

[alien-radio.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I missed this, but I've been following this for a couple of weeks now, and much of your analysis is spot on. I know for a fact that persons involved (no leaders since there are no leaders, contribute what you contribute it's up to others to make something of it) have engaged in a strategy to use ARG tactics, although to be honest by the time this was put into practice the meme had already reached firestorm level.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Huh. It's interesting to know how deliberate that is, thank you.

I get the feeling the thing's dying down some, but I might not be in the right corner of the internets this week.