MØdding the M3dia
From Mod Mania
The internet is a scary place when you think about it. And the reason it is so scary is because it isn’t really a place at all, its a virtual world on which people can store data, usually with the intent of having other people view it. Or in other words, it is a communication tool. Anything can be ‘posted’ on the internet by anyone, at any time, in any country. There is no customs agency. Sure, if you post a video of yourself on YouTube detailing your plans to assassinate Barrack Obama, the appropriate law enforcement agency is going to arrest, and fine you appropriately. But unless the YouTube staff want to, they don’t have to delete the video from their systems, so long as they’re central server is located in a country that couldn’t care less about Obama.
Websites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are essentially the same thing as a computer’s OS (operating system), they make it easy for someone without coding knowledge to post information on someone else’s hard drive by providing an interactive visual interface. What this means for the end user is that any data they put onto a website like this is stored in someone else’s server, which could be set up in any country on the planet. And the data which on stored on this server is only subject to that countries laws, which in some places can be very ambiguous.
One of the most interesting aspects of the internet is the way which people interact with it. People seem to lose almost, if not all of, their inhibitions when it comes to posting personal data and expressing themselves. It allows them to both reveal personal information to friends and family without direct contact, and to talk to people anonymously about any of their exploits and issues. Case in point; A previous girlfriend of mine was quite a talented manga artist (Japanese comic art style), however out of embarrassment she would never let me see any of her drawings or folio’s, yet she didn’t mind it when I looked at her personal online gallery, featuring every last sketch and scribble she ever did.
Although not cited very often by the media, the immensely popular image hosting website www.4chan.org is the source of almost any internet stereotype that exists. More importantly though, it runs on a system of complete anonymity. Users are able to post any message, with any image attached, in complete secrecy. The only way to figure out who posted what would be to confiscate the websites servers, and trace the users IP address back to its source. This would normally be easy to do, but 4chan is a very popular website, with a very powerful server, and a very small hard drive, meaning that a users post is generally deleted from the system with 30 mins of posting, depending on the activity at the time (the more users online, the more data, and hence the faster the wipes.). Users from 4chan’s random board (/b/ is the boards code) have actually developed a rather heavy notoriety mainly because of the ‘events’ they group together to participate in online, the most popular being what is known as a raid.
An internet raid is an ‘event’ in which a group of people either ‘spam’ a website forum with random and/or abusive messages, or when a group of people collectively hack through a websites security to cause general mayhem . Users of 4chan /b/ board are the shining example of this process, and have even given themselves a group name of Anonymous.
It is important to note here that 4chan is a website that anyone can join for free, there is no signup process of any kind, and no user details of any sort are stored, or even requested, by the website. There is also no defined member list as it fluctuates so heavily.
Anonymous has actually been involved in some very interesting, and questionable, raids in recent years, they are also in a constant battle with the church of scientology, just because they can be (this is something which has actually spewed out into the real world, with protestors wearing V for Vendetta masks rallying for the eradication of scientology in busy public spaces, this can actually be seen occasionally outside Flinders st station).
2008 has so far had 3 notable online raids, the first being the constant raiding on Tom Green’s internet radio talk show. During his call back sessions members of anonymous have been calling in making references to 4chan ‘meme’s’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme) this is something which has become commonplace on his show’s, and is even a revolving theme during his interviews. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbYs37ptjxM&feature=related)
Another similarly harmless common raid is that of Habbo Hotel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habbo_hotel) in which members of anonymous sign up with an avatar depicting a black male with an afro in a business suit, and then group up around the swimming pool citing the ‘pool’s closed’ meme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgmP6K2m2xA&feature=related
The other two notable raids this year have been a tad more serious in nature. The first was an attack against Oprah Winfrey after she aired a tv special about 4chan being a paedophile network (which was in itself actually a raid, as Oprah was tricked into citing meme’s relating to children’s show Dragon Ball Z throughout the episode). In effect, anonymous created artificial webpage images with messages regarding Oprah being found dead in her house, apparently murdered. These images were then posted on various news websites, to stunning effect.
-http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080920121141AAIxxfn
-http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/72kn0/oprah_winfrey_found_dead_in_home/
-http://digg.com/celebrity/Oprah_Winfrey_Found_Dead_in_Home
A quick Google search of ‘Oprah found dead’ will quickly demonstrate the effect this had, it even ended up showing on CNN’s rolling ticker which grabs news articles automatically from ‘reliable’ websites. Although this did not receive very much media coverage, if any at all, it is a prime example of how easy it is to modify, and create falsities in the media.
The most recent raid however was performed by a single 4chan user, and received very strong media attention around the globe. That was the raid of Sarah Palin’s yahoo email address (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6WZHVi9RKQ).
Activities like this would simply not exist without the internet. Whether or not this is a good thing is at the discretion of the individual however, as not everyone has such a bizarre sense of humour.
all images are from 4chan's /b/ board, and therefore belong to noone.
