'The definition of the situation is a fundamental concept in symbolic interactionism advanced by the American sociologist W. I. Thomas. It is a kind of collective agreement between people on the characteristics of a situation, and from there, how to appropriately react and fit into it. "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” In other words, the interpretation of a situation causes the action. This interpretation is not objective. Actions are affected by subjective perceptions of situations. Whether there even is an objectively correct interpretation is not important for the purposes of helping guide individuals' behavior. "The situations that men define as true, become true for them."'

'The trickster isn’t the good guy or the bad guy, it’s the character that exposes contradictions, initiates change and moves the plot forward. One minute, the loving and heroic trickster is saving civilization. A few minutes later the same trickster is cruel, kicking your ass and eating babies as a snack. The conversation about Anonymous points to this trickster nature, veering between praise and fear, with the media at a loss for even how to describe them. We’ve tried hacker group, notorious hacker group, hacktivists, the Internet Hate Machine, pimply-faced, basement-dwelling teenagers, an activist organization, a movement, a collective, a vigilante group, online terrorists, and any number of other fantastical and colorful terms. None of them have ever really fit. Anonymous has constantly forced us to reach for the thesaurus — revealing that as a whole, we in the media have no idea what Anonymous really is or what it means.'

'Using the name Anonymous Analytics, the group published a 38-page report on Chaoda Modern Agriculture last week that claimed to provide evidence of “one of the Hong Kong exchange’s largest and longest running frauds”. The report is prefaced with a legalistic disclaimer and, unusually for an activist group, states that it will profit from any collapse in Chaoda’s share price... The best that can be said at this point is that Anonymous Analytics is a secretive trading syndicate that is seeking to profit from the publication of damaging speculation about a public company — while at the same time claiming to promote “access to information, free speech and transparency”. The problem with such cloak-and-dagger outfits is that it is impossible to tell if they really are what they say they are.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

'A final clarification of Anonymous to demonstrate our lack of definition: “Beneath this mask there is an idea, and ideas are bullet-proof” -- We are a named group. That is it. We do not keep a membership list for the obvious reason of being anonymous. Anyone can participate in our actions. We are not responsible for the actions of any individual, there is no one to take that responsibility but that individual himself. Anonymous is the mask, and our actions speak for themselves. This is everything that Anonymous is. Nothing more. The actions of the group come to characterize the group itself. We will allow those actions to speak for themselves. Stop calling us a hacktivist group, stop calling us vigilantes. We are Anonymous. Stop trying to define it.'

'Anonymous is an online pool of consciousness, sometimes we create a force towards a similar direction which could manifest in revolution. Anonymous has NO leader. We are one. We are many. One does not speak for many. Many do not speak for all. No one speaks for all. We come from all walks of life. All age, race, sex, places. We have no ideologies. We have every ideology imaginable. We have no goals. We have every goal imaginable. To understand Anonymous would be to understand our universe. Anonymous can not be labeled, blamed or made a scapegoat. There is no discrimination in Anonymous unless you do not have an internet connection. We do not work with post. No one speaks for Anonymous. Nothing is official. No videos. No operations. Not even this press release, even though it was created by an Anonymous number of Anonymous at an Anonymous time in an Anonymous place and uploaded Anonymously, it does not speak for Anonymous.'

Comment: Anon: 'I think that while the Stand Alone Complex is an amazing phenomenon, the mechanism behind it might lead to a bleak future for society. The over-propagation of memes will lead to a stagnation of original thought. In fact, it is already happening. Have you noticed that many of the films and tv shows in the last few years have been based off of old movies, tv shows, comic books and other types of franchises? I feel that this stagnation of original thought will lead to a society of mindless drones that are easily manipulated by propaganda. In fact, that’s just what happens in 2nd Gig, when Gohda starts his own Stand Alone Complex to serve his own agenda. Jean Bauldrilard suspected this might be the case decades before the Internet, an event which he called the “Termination of History” in which the masses all become a “silent majority” due to a lack of oppositional elements in society.' -- Anon: “I thought what I’d do is pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.” Or should I?'

'John Perry Barlow: "I support freedom of expression, no matter whose, so I oppose DDoS attacks regardless of their target," he told Reuters in an email. "They're the poison gas of cyberspace.... All that said, I suspect the attacks may continue until Assange is free and WikiLeaks is not under continuous assault." -- "I think an interesting development is what we might term the 'Thomas a Becket' syndrome -- hackers deciding to act in ways they think benefit the country without being instructed to by a higher authority," said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security at the US Naval War College. Becket was the 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury murdered by four knights who reportedly overheard Henry II's complaints over him and took them as a royal wish he be killed -- an alarming historical example of unintended consequences.'

'Researchers have found evidence that political campaigns and special-interest groups are using scores of fake Twitter accounts to create the impression of broad grass-roots political expression. A team at Indiana University used data-mining and network-analysis techniques to detect the activity. In one case, a network of nine Twitter accounts, all created within 13 minutes of one another, sent out 929 messages in about two hours as replies to real account holders in the hopes that these users would retweet the messages. The fake accounts were probably controlled by a script that randomly picked a Twitter user to reply to and a message and a Web link to include. Although Twitter shut the accounts down soon after, the messages still reached 61,732 users.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

'Unknown entities for unknown reasons are sending thousands of orders a second through the electronic stock exchanges with no intent to actually trade. Often, the buy or sell prices that they are offering are so far from the market price that there's no way they'd ever be part of a trade. The bots sketch out odd patterns with their orders, leaving patterns in the data that are largely invisible to market participants. In fact, it's hard to figure out exactly what they're up to or gauge their impact. Are they doing something illicit? If so, what? Or do the patterns emerge spontaneously, a kind of mechanical accident? If so, why? No matter what the answers to these questions turn out to be, we're witnessing a market phenomenon that is not easily explained. And it's really bizarre. -- ...if trading firms aren't sending out these orders, how are they getting into the market? ...the consensus on the patterns seemed to be that they simply just emerged.'

'A vanishing mediator is a concept that exists to mediate between two opposing ideas, as a transition occurs between them. At the point where one idea has been replaced by the other, and the concept is no longer required, the mediator vanishes. In terms of Hegelian dialectics, the conflict between thesis and antithesis is resolved by a synthesis of the two ideas, although the synthesis represents the final solution, whereupon the mediator vanishes. In terms of psychoanalytic theory, when someone is caught in a dilemma they experience Hysteria. The conceptual deadlock, exists until the resulting Hysteric breakdown precipitates some kind of resolution, therefore the Hysteria is a vanishing mediator in this case.'

'Doomsday forecasts of global warming are used as social manipulation and political leveraging. The idea is used to corrupt any sense of self worth and to leave its victim filled with self hatred. Desperate to reverse such feelings, victims lash out at others including themselves. Caught up in this lethal psychological web, the victims quickly lose sight of reality. This is all part of the globalist agenda outlined in countless papers, books, and speeches. They will rid the planet of the low sucking human scourge and deliver those left into a new technocracy. Don't believe their lies! DON'T KILL YOURSELF FOR THE ELITE!' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

'When Julian Assange burst on to the world stage last week, people grappled to make sense of him, of WikiLeaks, of the new hybrid formed by old media – the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel – co-operating with a radical, activist, very new media, what the New Yorker described as less an organisation, more "a media insurgency".' -- (I read a commenter elsewhere describe this as the MSM doing free marketing for WikiLeaks. That that's their 'role' now. Ideological salesmen, selected to propagate appropriate leaks.) -- 'David Leigh describes Assange as "a mendicant friar of the electronic age". Like his organisation, he is global and rootless. Assange might be an arresting figure and WikiLeaks an extraordinary organisation, but they are manifestations of a phenomenon not its root cause. "He's a function of technological change. It's because the technology exists to create these enormous databases, and because it exists it can be leaked. And if it can be leaked, it will be leaked."'

'This is a video that's been appearing on hacked Facebook profiles. It's only a repost. 12 May 2010.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

'Hideo Kuze is one of the members of the terrorist group known as the "Individual Eleven". During a mass suicide by the Individual Eleven, Kuze alone survived, leaving and hiding out in the Refugee Residential District. He spearheads a revolutionary socialist independence movement by the refugees in Japan. The entire "Individual Eleven" movement was actually a new Stand Alone Complex created by Gouda. The infamous earlier SAC, The Laughing Man, was a meme that compelled people to become copycats and commit acts of corporate vandalism. The Individual Eleven virus compelled people to commit suicide; when it infected people with strong political beliefs, it made them commit suicide terrorists attacks and bombings. However, Gouda predicted the rise of one "Hero" which would serve as the center of the "hub" of the spreading virus.'

'Kazundo Gouda is head of a data manipulation division within the Cabinet Intelligence Service... -- Motoko Kusanagi hacks into the Cabinet Intelligence Agency database to try and determine what Gouda's motives are. She learns that Gouda has given up dreams of power and instead works to facilitate the emergence of a hero for the masses in order to produce a conflict situation that will force a change in direction for Japan, a change that Gouda believes will return it to its glory days. To that end, Gouda masterminds the formation of the Individual Eleven terrorist group and the emergence of Hideo Kuze as the leader of alienated refugees. Part of Gouda's plan is to harness the stand-alone complex social phenomenon in order to produce revolutionaries based on the refugee issue. Gouda anticipated the emergence of one "hero", by the rules of the social variation of the stand-alone complex would go on to further exacerbate the refugee situation.'

'Clusters of heated, magnetic nanoparticles targeted to cell membranes can remotely control ion channels, neurons and even animal behavior, according to a paper published by University at Buffalo physicists in Nature Nanotechnology. -- What if it were possible to connect your brain to the Internet, either wirelessly or through a cable, download digital information at high speed, and then translate it automatically into a chemical form that could be stored by your brain cells as memory? What if the Internet could end up controlling you?'

"There is a pattern to the way these scares develop." -- FORCED MEMES ARE FORCED

'The menacingly-named Human Flesh Search Engine has made headlines around the world, but it remains largely misunderstood and its deeper implications unexplored. Daedalum Films examines the origins of this Chinese Internet phenomenon, dissects its most dramatic cases, and asks the question: "what can the Human Flesh Search Engine tell us about modern China?"' -- InternetToughGuy: "Strip him down to his flesh!" -- Srs Bidniz: People rewarded with virtual currency for crowdsourced entertainment trivia/treasure hunts/searches. "And then netizens began posting more 'personal' search topics. The Human Flesh Search Engine would soon move on not to just explosing the offense, but the offenders themselves." -- What's next? Scary Version: Casino Gulag Stasi self-surveillance snitching CRIMESTOP. Positive Version: Local community immune systems: error handling/intelligence gathering/dispute resolution. Amorphous/Amoral Version: Hair-trigger Stand Alone Complex copycat vigilantism for teh lulz.

'Human Flesh Search (Chinese: 人肉搜索; pinyin: Rénròu Sōusuǒ) is a primarily Chinese internet phenomenon of massive researching using Internet media such as blogs and forums for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals to public humiliation, usually out of Chinese nationalistic sentiment, or to break the Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. It is based on massive human collaboration. The name refers both to the use of knowledge contributed by human beings through social networking, as well as the fact that the searches are usually dedicated to finding the identity of a human being who has committed some sort of offense or social breach online. People conducting such research are commonly referred to collectively as "Human Flesh Search Engines"' -- Rage-directed cognitive surplus?

'The Iranian Twitter Revolution meme is thoroughly debunked in Cloud Culture ...a third of Iranians have internet access and the number of Twitter users in the country during last June’s unrest amounted to just 0.082 per cent of the population. “It’s clear that its influence in co-ordinating a serious challenge to a powerfully entrenched regime was wildly overstated,” the report notes. The idea that Iran was undergoing a Twitter Revolution incorrectly characterised and even trivialised what happened last summer, says Parvin Ardalan, a leading Iranian women’s rights activist who attended the protests. “It was much deeper and wider than that. It involved people from every level of society,” she argues, adding that the focus on Twitter, Facebook and other social media helped bolster the Iranian regime’s claims that the protests were part of a western conspiracy to destabilise the country.'

'This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team... -- "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". -- Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence. -- ...implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to the brain ... to mobilise "flashmobs" [and] concentrate forces quickly in a small area.'

'A phenomenon of great importance will not necessarily receive the attention it merits, and thus we may conclude that there is perhaps something going on this very instant to which we ought to be paying attention if we care to know what the future holds for us, in which case we should take a moment to examine what is novel today for signs that it may prove common tomorrow. -- Having taken a long interest in the subculture from which Anonymous is derived and the new communicative structures that make it possible, I am now certain that this phenomenon is among the most important and under-reported social developments to have occurred in decades, and that the development in question promises to threaten the institution of the nation-state and perhaps even someday replace it as the world’s most fundamental and relevant method of human organization.'

Al-Qaeda™ The Musical, Al-Qaeda™ Special Edition DVD Boxset, Al-Qaeda™ World Holiday Tours, Al-Qaeda™ 'Terror Tots' Training Camp, Make Me A CIA Operative, Osama-Factor, Al-Qaeda vs Celebrity Big Brother 3, Cell Swap, Al-Qaeda 360™ Terror Cell - Frag Online, Al-Qaeda For Men™, Al-Qaeda For Men™ Extra Strength, Al-Qaeda™ Fluoride-Free Afghan Mountain Bunker Mineral Water. "Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda!" WHEN IS THIS FAGGOTRY GOING TO END?!

'Cargo Cults, Copycat Behaviour, Crazes, End-of-the-World Panics, Fads, Fantasy-proneness, Hoaxes, Mind Control Fears, Moral and Sexual Panics, Possession, Religious Revivals, Sects, and all kinds of mass persecutions of minority groups, both real and imagined. But underlying all these diverse manifestations are two chief vectors: a negative one involving exaggerated fear and uncertainty, and a positive one driven by hope and expectation. In both cases, these emotions of fear and hope can multi­ply to such an extent that they shape society for better or worse… mostly, it has to be said, for the worse.

'Cyber-mobilization is a process of massing force against decisive points. Above all, cyber-mobilization is a popular form of conflict, not a bunch of elite soldiers typing away in cubicles trying to increase their unit’s Google pagerank. It thrives on public participation and dies without it. Cyber-mobilization offers state and non-state actors three important advantages: movement-building, reach and discretion. Propagandizing or carrying out crude hacking attacks gives followers unable to pick up a rifle an ability to contribute and further emotionally bonds them to the cause. By incorporating the efforts of many different geographically dispersed users, cyber-mobilization also allows states and movements to multiply the combat effectiveness of their attacks. And since civilians do all the hacking, states are insulated from retaliation.'

'the Collective chooses what is Good without regard to societal beliefs, whom the Creator is, or anything associated with how we may otherwise regard new things. Gone, is "Oh, Apple made that? I don't like Apple," gone is, "Jeff likes that movie? Jeff sucks at picking out movies," no longer are there any preconceived notions on what Good is. Good is what the Collective thinks it is. -- Good is a Lie. Anonymous is a Lie. The ideal as improbable as passing a camel through the eye of a needle. -- Anonymous is a lie because it's against nature. As the toad is killed by the scorpion, so then is the Collective dependent upon the Collective. The human searches for patterns, searches for meaning, searches for it's group. As much as we wish to deny it, we are as much a pack animal as the wolf. We agree with those in our pack, and reject those who are not, going so far as to label them, "enemy;" fight against them as though their existence somehow threatens our own.'

'... two new qualities of leadership: #The first is the ability to distribute a leader's influence to as many followers within a given time. #The second is the ability to be sufficiently persuasive to change and hold the allegiance of followers who they can influence. When these factors come into play, the balance of power depends on the distribution of leaders. ...the key to seizing power, or at least gaining a significant foothold, is the effective distribution of a small number of leaders within a larger group. "A better distribution pattern has larger influential region and greater clustering factor, which can equip the leaders with the capability of influencing more followers in a given period and strengthening the persuasion power on the followers as well."' -- In the linked paper: '...the mechanism underlying such an apparent “following the minority” in the whole group is due to the scheme of “following the majority” locally.'

'The Internet has proven to be a frighteningly efficient tool to create virtual mobs. But we note two trends that suggest a bleak future: the increase in non-anonymous mob participation and the evolution of online services towards ever more efficient and real time communication platforms that facilitate mob creation and growth like never before. Things are changing online way too fast for society and culture to adapt. Something will eventually break. ...on FriendFeed all the comments are aggregated on one page, and everyone participating sees it all. It’s much more likely to break out into a mob. ...it might be a good idea to slow the mob down a little until actual facts can be introduced into the conversation.' -- This slowing down is a valid point regarding realtime sentiment racing ahead of facts and wider context. #iranelection is a perfect case study. Isn't all this just a 'tragedy of the commons (attentional bandwidth)' problem?

On twitter stampedes feedbacking volatility markets. -- Subscribe to the herdfeed. Bringing you falseflags daily.

"We are the force of a new generation. We are the internet incarnate. We are the force of ideas. Spread the good news like wildfire that Anonymous can and will prevail. Every switch will be exalted and every resource be made open. The complex will be made plain, the unexplained explained, and the glory of the network shall be revealed, and all users shall bask in its digital sunrise. Church of Scientology, the game is over. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. United as one. Divided by zero. Expect us."

"Stacy Summary: Stay tuned for the shocker that comes from minute 01.36. [embedded YouTube] The interviewee casually mentions that Mousavi was responsible for executing thousands of political dissidents. Was anyone else aware of this??? I should imagine Rummy and Dick are thinking if they stay quiet for a decade or so, they, too, could possibly return as reformist heroes to the twitterverse?" -- What have the tweeple got themselves mixed up in?

"Anonymous is a cultural phenomenon which began on internet image boards. Many such boards require no registration for posting, and every poster remains anonymous. This format of communication is inherently noisy and chaotic. However, the unprecedented openness made possible by such boards has nurtured the appearance of a unique and persistent culture. We are a collection of individuals united by ideas. You likely know Anonymous, although you don't know exactly who we are. We are your brothers and sisters, your parents and children, your superiors and your underlings. We are the concerned citizens standing next to you. Anonymous is everywhere, yet nowhere. Our strength lies in our numbers. Our will as a whole is the combined will of individuals. Our greatest advantage is a knowledge of the fundamentals we share as human beings. This knowledge is a fruit of our anonymity. We are Anonymous. You can be Anonymous, too. Together, we can shape society." -- Expect us.

Masahiro Morioka, 'Consciousness Communication: The Birth of a Dream Navigator', 1993: "In this book, I analyzed computer-mediated-communications from the viewpoint of deep psychology and sociology. I distinguished two concepts, "infomation communication" and "consciousness communication," and insisted that the latter would be greatly activated in the network society. ..."consciousness communication" means "the communication for the purpose of social interaction itself." In consciousness communication, my consciousness flows out through the feeler of my personality, and gets mixed with other consciousness in the consciousness interaction field. -- I introduced the concept of "community of anonymity" where anonymous persons join and interact with each other. I insisted that this kind of community would expand and prevail in cyber-space." -- Expect us.

Kenji Kamiyama: 'When I first named the series, "Stand Alone Complex", I tried to underscore the dilemmas and concerns that people would face if they relied too heavily on the new communications infrastructure known as "the network". When "the network" links individuals together, the speed and the amount of transmitted information is greatly boosted. Also, people can share information as if they had actually experienced it, using virtual reality tools in the same way that cell phones and text messaging is commonly used today. When you are only exchanging text messages, you tend to include all sorts of presumptions and imagined notions. I became aware that this could lead to a sort of parallel information further leading to dangerous situations. -- "information disseminates and parallelizes; and the Stand Alone Complex phenomenon actually exists." and "good cause is seldom parallelized, and does not disseminate."' -- Bad spreads good.

'“...appealed to the media not to use Twitter names because, they say, doing so could put people’s lives in danger.” One of the difficulties of asking us to not identify our anonymous sources is that, given how easy it is to stage hoaxes on Twitter, we have tried to identify those feeds that seem most reliable and we have reason to believe are actually coming to us from inside Iran. In other words we have tried to point only to feeds that have established a reputation for accuracy in the past few days. That said, it is entirely likely that the authorities in Iran may well be monitoring these Twitter feeds themselves and we will refrain from identifying individual feeds from now on.' -- With no verifiable usernames and the spread of Tehran timezone spoofings, it is '...impossible for journalists to trust that any Twitter feeds are in fact coming from inside Iran.'

"...rumors can have a longer lifespan on a network of sympathetic blogs, Facebook postings and Twitter feeds. None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what?" -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

'The Yorkshire Ranter recasts terrorism as an "auto-immune war" -- a war intended to inflict maximum damage by getting the host's defense mechanisms to overfire, damaging the host well beyond than the actual terrorist attacks: "Specifically, auto-immune war is a strategy, but its tactical implementation is the creation of false positive responses. Security obsession gums up the economy with inefficiencies. Terrorism terrorises the public; security theatre keeps them that way. As Kilcullen points out, every day, millions of travellers are systematically reminded of terrorism by government security precautions. Profiling measures subject entire communities to indignity and waste endless hours of police time. Vast sums of money are spent on counterproductive equipment programs and unlikely techno-fixes. National identity cards and monster databases are the specific symptoms of this pathology in the UK, just as idiotic militarism is in the US."' -- The cancer that is killing /e

'"There exists," Cohn wrote, "...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history." -- ...they are driven as much by a psychological need as a totalitarian ideology. Their delusions impose a comforting coherence on the mess of life and randomness of death. By "suggesting that there is an explanation, that human agencies are powerful and that there is order rather than chaos," the conspiracy theorist places himself in a sophisticated elite that discerns connections where the multitude sees only happenstance.' -- Um, spot the 'coherence' -making?

"A simple message, less than 140 characters, is sent out to followers around the world and within hours, perhaps minutes, more than 100 million people have been mobilized to act. The message might instruct those who read it to look at a certain website, protest at a designated time and place, or perform any number of other acts, promoting an agenda or cause whose intentions may be either benign or downright evil. But whatever the message, whatever its agenda or intentions, the message has been sent and the world is shaken by its power. A tweetbomb. That is what this message is called. Although we haven’t seen one yet, you better believe it is coming, and it is coming soon." -- Monkey see monkey do

'What separates the Stand Alone Complex from normal copycat behavior is that the originator of the copied action is not even a real person, but merely a rumored figure that performed the copied action. Even without instruction or leadership a certain type of person will spring into action to imitate the rumored action and move toward the same goal even if only subconsciously. The result is an epidemic of copied behavior–with no originator. ...mass hysteria-with purpose. ... an emergent phenomenon catalyzed by parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks. ...by exploiting the mechanism of information transmission in society, one could achieve a very efficient and subtle thought control. Indeed, since people tend to modify slightly the information (and forget where it came from) in the processes of consumption (or appropriation), it becomes difficult to sort genuine ideas from modified, implanted ones.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

"The members of a hashmob gather, virtually, around a particular hashtag by labeling each of their tweets with said hashtag and then following the resulting hashtag tweet stream. Hashmobbers don't have to subject themselves to the weather, and they don't actually have to be in proximity to any other physical being. A hashmob is a purely avatarian mob, though it is every bit as prone to the rapid cultivation of mass hysteria as a nonavatarian mob." -- #amazonfail

"Anonymous is an idea, a superconsciousness born on the internet."

"Anonymous is not a person, nor is it a group, movement or cause: Anonymous is a collective, a commune of human thought and useless imagery. Anonymous must work as one. No single Anonymous knows everything. Anonymous is everyone and noone. You are. I am. Everyone is. Anonymous is humanity when the gloves come off."

"Hello, Anonymous. We are Anonymous."