Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Across from me sitting there, would they
Speaker 1: be mused expression as usual would be senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and today we wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: very interesting group of people. But I think you have
Speaker 1: something to read to us first. Yes, actually, this topic
Speaker 1: comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. This
Speaker 1: list your mail comes to us from Jack, and Jack says,
Speaker 1: Dear tech Stuff, I believe a discussion on the subject
Speaker 1: of four Chan, the Japanese image board, and the internet
Speaker 1: group anonymous is more than overdue. They have been in
Speaker 1: the news several times and are very important in the
Speaker 1: Internet community. Please consider my request. Thank you, Jack Um.
Speaker 1: All right, Jack, I actually wrote back to Jack earlier.
Speaker 1: Uh this he he requested this um early in November
Speaker 1: of two thousand nine, So we're just now getting to it.
Speaker 1: The reason why we're slow getting to it, well, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One is just that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of topics on our topic list that you know,
Speaker 1: to work our way through. But another is that we
Speaker 1: had to really think about whether or not we were
Speaker 1: going to tackle this one because the subjects are somewhat controversial. Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: So as a matter of fact, he wrote about this
Speaker 1: not terribly long ago. Yes, I I did it under
Speaker 1: a pseudonym. No, No, I didn't. I actually put my
Speaker 1: name to it. Um well, in a way I wrote
Speaker 1: about a related subject. Right, Because again, this is this
Speaker 1: is controversial on multiple levels. Let's let's start with the
Speaker 1: very basics with four chan before we talk about anything else.
Speaker 1: That's true actually that the idea behind four chan is
Speaker 1: is not particularly controversial at all. No, it's it's like
Speaker 1: many other websites on the web. It's was designed to
Speaker 1: be a community, an image uh an image posting community primarily,
Speaker 1: rather than a lot of other message boards in which
Speaker 1: you would post uh, you know, written material. Theoretically, the
Speaker 1: idea was, you know, I guess the idea behind it
Speaker 1: being something along lines of a picture is worth a
Speaker 1: thousand words. You would post a photo or an image
Speaker 1: of some kind to express your your thoughts, and they
Speaker 1: were mainly in the case of four chan, it was
Speaker 1: all about really kind of a Japanese animation as well
Speaker 1: as UH manga, the the illustrated. Essentially, they're like comic
Speaker 1: books or graphic novels, um but you know, they they
Speaker 1: and they they range from very simple stories for for
Speaker 1: kids all the way up to material that specifically meant
Speaker 1: for adult consumption. It's not you know, these aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: comic books for little kids. A lot of people hear
Speaker 1: the phrase comic books even today and still think, oh,
Speaker 1: that's something that little kids enjoy. But in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just like in the United States, the comic books
Speaker 1: in Japan cater to all different age groups and demographics,
Speaker 1: and UH four chane was kind of a place where
Speaker 1: people who enjoyed this sort of art could share that
Speaker 1: kind of UH enthusiasm with each other. UM. And one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about four chan is that it
Speaker 1: would allow people to post content without any identification whatsoever.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to register a handle or anything like
Speaker 1: that in order to go to four chan and contribute,
Speaker 1: which is UH very different from most other communities. And
Speaker 1: other communities, of course, you want to establish an identity
Speaker 1: that's how you make friends, it's how people know to
Speaker 1: contact you, it's how you can start up conversations on
Speaker 1: four Chan. You could do it completely anonymously with would
Speaker 1: theoretically protect you if you were to say, I don't
Speaker 1: know post material that might violate copyright, right, And I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out to UM when you mentioned that
Speaker 1: there there is adult art. We're not talking about pornography necessarily,
Speaker 1: necessarily because you're just talking about adult themes. Sure, because
Speaker 1: that's one of the few. I mean, even though you
Speaker 1: can post post things anonymously, one of the you know,
Speaker 1: you're not theoretically supposed to post pornography if I'm not
Speaker 1: not unless and except in a couple of the couple
Speaker 1: of the rooms within or the sections in four Chune
Speaker 1: do allow you to post stuff, all right, I was
Speaker 1: an impresson that was completely forbidden on the same So
Speaker 1: it's only in very specific area, yeah, very specific areas.
Speaker 1: It actually tells you which areas are are meant for
Speaker 1: mature audiences. Is kind of I kind of hesitate to
Speaker 1: use that word considering some of the content that shows
Speaker 1: up on Fortune, But you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: right of eighteen or older, let's say there are certain
Speaker 1: sections that are only meant for eighteen or older. Um,
Speaker 1: although one would argue that I think most of the
Speaker 1: people who are on those sections are not that of
Speaker 1: that age group, based upon the content and uh commentary
Speaker 1: that you find within those sections. Um. Now, the we're
Speaker 1: getting into, we're getting We're kind of getting ahead a
Speaker 1: little bit. I didn't mean to get ahead. I just
Speaker 1: was trying to clarify the adult sure sure the so well,
Speaker 1: like Chris was saying, Yeah, the adult themes don't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean pornography. I mean it's the same way as I
Speaker 1: would I would call like Law and Order an adult show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and one. It just has themes that that children
Speaker 1: don't grasp. You know, it's more sophisticated than what a child,
Speaker 1: uh considers entertainment. So same thing with these these these
Speaker 1: comics and cartoons or anime. I mean, people are gonna
Speaker 1: get upset, but has I'll call it a cartoon or
Speaker 1: a comic book. But I'm just trying to give an
Speaker 1: analog for people who are unfamiliar with the art forms.
Speaker 1: Um or I could just called japanamation. Hey man, that's
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. That's what that's what we
Speaker 1: called it. I remember that I was saying, you probably
Speaker 1: earned yourself ten listener meals right and in there well
Speaker 1: for calling a japanamation. I used to watch a lot
Speaker 1: of japanamation. I enjoyed japanamation. I remember when there was
Speaker 1: a section of the store that was called Japanimation, back
Speaker 1: before Animal became a popular before. Yeah, well, and animal
Speaker 1: is anime is definitely a more a more appropriate term
Speaker 1: because not all of this kind of animation comes from Japan,
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's unfortunately people would use the term
Speaker 1: japanamation to mean animation coming from any Asian country, which
Speaker 1: of course is you know, it's not really accurate. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, um, so four chance a community that
Speaker 1: is mostly based around that, although people began to in
Speaker 1: other interests as well, so it began to flesh out
Speaker 1: a bit, right. It wasn't just things that had to
Speaker 1: do with anime or manga. Um. You had people who
Speaker 1: would bring in stuff about video games and other kinds
Speaker 1: of pop culture entertainment, even music things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a specific channel where anything goes.
Speaker 1: It is the Random channel, the slash b channel, and uh,
Speaker 1: it is this channel that probably has gained four Chan
Speaker 1: the notoriety that it has people. When people say four
Speaker 1: chan and they're talking about things like controversy, um or
Speaker 1: trolling or anything like that, they're really mainly talking about
Speaker 1: this B channel, the random channel where anything goes because
Speaker 1: I think, um, I think Obi wan Kenobi would describe
Speaker 1: this channel as a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Speaker 1: I'm not making any kind of judgment on the people
Speaker 1: who go there, but I will say that they enjoy
Speaker 1: winding each other up. Yeah yeah, well, uh, you're not
Speaker 1: the first person to have made that exact comparison. Actually
Speaker 1: found other references were using that exact phrase. It's to
Speaker 1: the random Channel. It's probably in people's signatures and things
Speaker 1: like fortune B Channel, wretched hive of scum and villany. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I mean, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: about the Internet in general. A lot of websites uh
Speaker 1: produced communities of like minded people, people who have similar interests.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense that you know, people who like
Speaker 1: to uh uh to wind each other up, as you say,
Speaker 1: would would want to gather somewhere and this is just
Speaker 1: an opportunity for them to do that. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that the people who are posting
Speaker 1: in that channel are particularly sinister or mean spirited. They're
Speaker 1: more mischievous than anything else. Now, sometimes this mischief boils
Speaker 1: over into acts that are that go beyond on mischief
Speaker 1: into the realm of being criminal acts um or at
Speaker 1: the very least uh questionable, So it goes beyond just
Speaker 1: like ha ha pulled a prank on YouTube while you've
Speaker 1: actually caused damage in some way, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: through a calculable monetary unit or psychological damage or emotional
Speaker 1: damage or whatever. Um. But they enjoy pushing people's buttons.
Speaker 1: Mostly they're pushing each other's buttons because a lot of
Speaker 1: the shenanigans that go on in the random channel on
Speaker 1: four chane, that's where they stay. They pretty much are
Speaker 1: going back and forth. Um. It's it's a group of
Speaker 1: people who have not necessarily identified themselves in any way.
Speaker 1: So there's it's it's hard to get organized when when
Speaker 1: you do that. It's not impossible, as we'll get to
Speaker 1: when we get to anonymous, but it makes it a
Speaker 1: little more difficult. And U, I mean, this hasn't stopped
Speaker 1: them from cre eating some pretty popular ideas that eventually
Speaker 1: kind of took a life of their own and became
Speaker 1: Internet memes. Yeah. You you might be actually surprised to
Speaker 1: hear some of the the trains of thought that have
Speaker 1: escaped from that area and and made their way across
Speaker 1: the internet and even onto national TV. As I have seen, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that you know some of them
Speaker 1: are are are really pretty funny the truth. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean things from some of the some of the things
Speaker 1: you've seen online or that you've probably seen online, either
Speaker 1: they got their start on four Chan or they were
Speaker 1: popular rised on four Chan and then immediately exploded on
Speaker 1: the internet. Things like loll cats. Yes, so that the cheeseburger, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: you see a cute picture of a cat with a
Speaker 1: funny caption written in some sort of sub English apparently
Speaker 1: the kind of English that cats thinking kitty pigeon? Is
Speaker 1: that what's called? Okay? Yea? So anyway that, um, you
Speaker 1: can you can attribute that to uh to four chan.
Speaker 1: You can also things like rick rolling, which is a
Speaker 1: should we explain? Oh well yeah, sure for the for
Speaker 1: the two people out in the audience who have never well,
Speaker 1: it is possible they know what it is and don't
Speaker 1: know that it has a name for it. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: this uh, this is when you are are given um
Speaker 1: a video or actually it could be virtually anything. Somebody
Speaker 1: gives you a phone and they've changed your ring to
Speaker 1: Rick Astley is never Gonna give you Up? You've been
Speaker 1: Rick rolled, or somebody says you have to check out
Speaker 1: this cool loll cat video and uh what turns out
Speaker 1: it's Rick Astley's never Gonna Give You Up video. And
Speaker 1: then there's the float from the two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: Macy's Thanksgiving the Parade from Cartoon Network in which Rick
Speaker 1: Ghastly actually stepped out and sang the song himself on
Speaker 1: National TV. Actually theres by that point and it actually
Speaker 1: become yea Steele joke. It was already but yeah, by
Speaker 1: the time Thanksgiving to those neighbors all around, it was
Speaker 1: considered to be pretty old. And then a year later
Speaker 1: we start seeing the iPhone worm go out that replaced
Speaker 1: people's jailbroken iPhone background image with Rick Astley, and I'm thinking, seriously,
Speaker 1: how much longer is this joke gonna go. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it will come and go in spurts, as these things do.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it will, But I mean the other thing
Speaker 1: that we can count on is the fact that eventually
Speaker 1: there will be another weird meme that will come out
Speaker 1: of four Chan. So I was going to point out
Speaker 1: to speaking the law Cats meme that um they did
Speaker 1: an interview. Actually, Love Grossman of Time magazine did an
Speaker 1: interview with Moot, the founder of four chan, about the
Speaker 1: law cats, because um, that appeared on four chan, and
Speaker 1: then somebody else basically took the idea and ran with
Speaker 1: it and made the site um which sold for two
Speaker 1: million dollars. And uh, basically Moot said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's cool, that's fine. He didn't seem to be at
Speaker 1: least according to Mr Grossman, he didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: too really concerned that he wasn't seeing a penny of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's amazing how some of these things take off
Speaker 1: and then leave the channel and yeah, leave home and
Speaker 1: start their own families. Yeah, we'll getting back to the
Speaker 1: random channel. Uh. So, first of all, I I guess
Speaker 1: we should have said this earlier. UM, I don't recommend
Speaker 1: you go to four chan and check out the random Channel.
Speaker 1: In fact, I I advise against doing it. If you
Speaker 1: are going to do it, uh, don't do it at school,
Speaker 1: don't do it at work. Uh, you might want to
Speaker 1: turn images off on your computer because they're they're posting
Speaker 1: stuff deliberately designed to get your goat, right. And not
Speaker 1: only that, but I mean you can and in the
Speaker 1: random channel you can encounter things like pornography. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be there. The only thing that is specifically
Speaker 1: against the rules in the random channel is no child pornography.
Speaker 1: Anything else is considered fair game. So everything other than
Speaker 1: child porn is fair game. And so I mean that's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff people, And I'm telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: some of you might be thinking, hey, that sounds kind
Speaker 1: of cool. It's um an interesting experience. It's disturbing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I yeah. When I was researching how how internet trolls work,
Speaker 1: I specifically went to four chan to check it out
Speaker 1: because a lot of trolling um is attributed to four chan.
Speaker 1: Because again we're talking about mischievous people who like to
Speaker 1: push buttons. So sometimes they'll go to other Internet communities
Speaker 1: specifically to cause a little mischief and and raise a ruckus.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so you know you want to go
Speaker 1: to the source, you go to four Chan. Well, I
Speaker 1: had to turn my images off almost immediately as soon
Speaker 1: as I got there, because I realized that if I
Speaker 1: did try to surf that while at work, even though
Speaker 1: it was research, I would likely have to watch that
Speaker 1: video from HR again, and I don't want to have
Speaker 1: to do that if I don't have to. Uh So, Anyway,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that you'll see on a random
Speaker 1: channel if you were to go includes lots and lots
Speaker 1: of very dark humor, I mean like gallows humor stuff
Speaker 1: where people if if you remember, like after any huge tragedy,
Speaker 1: almost immediately there start people start making jokes about that
Speaker 1: tragedy as a coping mechanism, and for some people that
Speaker 1: is just so insensitive and taboo that it's immediately offensive.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of stuff you're gonna find the random
Speaker 1: channel buttons. Yes, So if someone famous has just recently
Speaker 1: passed away, I guarantee you the first place you're gonna
Speaker 1: see a joke about it will be on four Chan
Speaker 1: in that random channel. You know it. As soon as
Speaker 1: someone's heard about, they're gonna be there, like, how do
Speaker 1: I make a punchline where this person's name is the joke? Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of material you'll find on there. However,
Speaker 1: something kind of um unusual really came from chane that
Speaker 1: was not necessarily an Internet meme, but U a group
Speaker 1: that has occasionally tried to to mobilize to protest specific
Speaker 1: uh other groups and other policies. And by that, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about anonymous, and that sort of takes its name
Speaker 1: from the ability to remain anonymous while on four chan. Yeah, essentially,
Speaker 1: and they're an anonymous. The members of anonymous aren't all
Speaker 1: necessarily members of four chane or people who contribute to
Speaker 1: four chan. Uh. The anonymous actually spans across several different communities,
Speaker 1: and some people who didn't even belong to any of
Speaker 1: those communities just heard about it, agreed with the the
Speaker 1: general principles of anonymous, and kind of went along for
Speaker 1: the ride. So it's like this enormous anonymous mob of
Speaker 1: Internet users. Yeah, they don't necessarily know who one another are. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily know the identity of other members. Um.
Speaker 1: There is no cent realized leadership, which is both a
Speaker 1: blessing and accurse to this group. Part of the blessing
Speaker 1: is that if the group as a whole has done
Speaker 1: something to tick off some other organization, there's no one
Speaker 1: specific you can point to and say this person is
Speaker 1: to blame. There's no accountability. Uh. But part of the
Speaker 1: curse is also that it can be very difficult to
Speaker 1: organize a group to do any particular task because you
Speaker 1: don't have a centralized leadership. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to to suggest in an anonymous way a course of
Speaker 1: action and have other enough people agree who you know
Speaker 1: share your same perspective, agree to it, and for that
Speaker 1: to catch on. So it has to kind of spread viral.
Speaker 1: E Yes. But and but it has been effective because
Speaker 1: they've been able to stage protests in cities around the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: now the biggest target of their protests has been the
Speaker 1: Church of Scientology, now members of anonymous. And here's the
Speaker 1: other here's another issue with anonymous. When you have a
Speaker 1: big anonymous group and there's no centralized figure, there's also
Speaker 1: no centralized voice for the group. Uh. You have what
Speaker 1: the majority of the group seems to believe in. But
Speaker 1: then there are people around the edges who may have
Speaker 1: different beliefs or a stronger uh conviction about a certain
Speaker 1: principle than others and will take things to a greater
Speaker 1: length than the group itself might want to go. And
Speaker 1: so that's what. How do you make a set of
Speaker 1: rules to govern a group where it's a group filled
Speaker 1: with people who are all anonymous and no one has accountability.
Speaker 1: It's really tricky. So arguably you would say that the
Speaker 1: the original group anonymous group when they started Project Chernology,
Speaker 1: which is the the specific initiative aimed against the practices
Speaker 1: of the Church of Scientology. Uh, they were moderate in
Speaker 1: their approach in the sense that they said they were
Speaker 1: not targeting the church as a church. They were targeting
Speaker 1: specific practices that that the church allegedly follows. So they
Speaker 1: lay they they alleged that the church was, for instance, uh,
Speaker 1: bankrupting its members and brainwashing people, or at least separating
Speaker 1: them from their support system and cutting them off from
Speaker 1: the outside world so that they become completely dependent upon
Speaker 1: the church itself, right right, I remember seeing that they
Speaker 1: were that those were the things that they had accused
Speaker 1: of the Church of Scientology, and taking people away from
Speaker 1: their families and and and also accusing the Church of
Speaker 1: Scientology itself of using very draconian tactics to silence any
Speaker 1: kind of protest, any sort of Uh, anyone who would
Speaker 1: say anything against the church would receive um an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of pressure from the church in various ways. And
Speaker 1: and really it would range from the threat of lawsuits
Speaker 1: to actual criminal acts committed against you or harassment against
Speaker 1: you and your family. Um. So you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a group of anonymous people with no sense of
Speaker 1: accountability and an organization that is being accused of uh,
Speaker 1: some pretty scary tactics. Uh. This is like the stuff
Speaker 1: of movies. I mean, you know, you don't you don't
Speaker 1: normally think about this kind of stuff happening in real life,
Speaker 1: and yet it is unfolding in cities around the world, um,
Speaker 1: throughout the year. I mean, you'll find it here about
Speaker 1: anonymous protests, usually somewhere in the vicinity of a Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology location. Uh. If the if the area in
Speaker 1: which they are protesting allows it, many of them will
Speaker 1: wear masks. Uh, and many of them have adopted the
Speaker 1: guy Fox mask used in DA Right. The whole idea
Speaker 1: this is a kind of standing up for the individual
Speaker 1: down with this tyrannical organization sort of thing. Um goes
Speaker 1: with the theme. Yeah. Now, the group also says that
Speaker 1: if it is not legal to wear a mask too,
Speaker 1: to not do it. We don't don't don't break the
Speaker 1: law in your efforts to protests the church, and the
Speaker 1: reasoning behind that is you're more likely to do more
Speaker 1: harm to your cause than to help it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that uh, I haven't seen any reports that they have
Speaker 1: done any you know, physical damage or broken any laws necessarily.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I remember reading that at at least
Speaker 1: one protest they brought cake and they were offering a
Speaker 1: cake to people. Um. Basically, I think is a way
Speaker 1: of saying, look, you know, we're just saying we don't
Speaker 1: with their practices. Um, we just want some attention drawn
Speaker 1: to this. Although they they are um, at least in
Speaker 1: one case, I remember reading that they were attempting to
Speaker 1: have their tax codes change with regard to the Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology, so that they're um, you know that they
Speaker 1: are actually trying to achieve that one at least that
Speaker 1: one end goal, rather than doing any you know, serious
Speaker 1: harm to it. They're trying to change the way the
Speaker 1: government sees the church. Yeah. And um. There are several
Speaker 1: YouTube videos that are attributed to Anonymous. This is kind
Speaker 1: of funny because when you think about it, anyone could
Speaker 1: create those videos, whether they are part of Anonymous or not.
Speaker 1: And Some of these videos are um, you know, they're
Speaker 1: just they're very blunt and they lay out what the
Speaker 1: groups um complaints are against the Church of Scientology, why
Speaker 1: the group is uh as organized protests against the Church
Speaker 1: of Scientology. Um, And it's you know, just very straightforward.
Speaker 1: Others are a little more sinister and uh spooky. And
Speaker 1: here's where it really gets kind of crazy, I mean
Speaker 1: really crazy. You get the Church of Scientology saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look this proves that Anonymous are there. They're terrorists, you know,
Speaker 1: they are trying to use terror to to cow us
Speaker 1: into changing the way that we operate, whereas Anonymous is saying, hey,
Speaker 1: that's not us. Our policy is outlined in this video
Speaker 1: over here. That's what we think. We aren't the ones
Speaker 1: posting that. And here's the thing is that you don't
Speaker 1: know if it's someone in Anonymous or not, because like
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, there may be people an Anonymous who
Speaker 1: think that the the group's policy doesn't take a heard
Speaker 1: enough stance, or here's an alternative. They're just some mischief
Speaker 1: makers who are posing as Anonymous just to stir up trouble.
Speaker 1: Like they don't care one way or another if Anonymous
Speaker 1: achieved use its goals. What they care about is pushing buttons,
Speaker 1: getting back to that, So you can't relieve in tell
Speaker 1: what the motives are behind the people who are posting
Speaker 1: these things. Or you know, you may hear of a
Speaker 1: report of the Church of Scientology saying that, um, that
Speaker 1: someone hacked into their computer systems, and they'll they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: this has to be anonymous. Well it could be. It
Speaker 1: could be that it was a group of people with
Speaker 1: an anonymous who took that initiative. Um, but it could
Speaker 1: also be that it was completely unrelated and there and
Speaker 1: anonymous is the scapegoat. I mean, again, here's the trouble
Speaker 1: of having a big group of people with no centralized leadership.
Speaker 1: And you know, uh, arguably you would say, well, according
Speaker 1: to the quote unquote official anonymous approach, and again it's
Speaker 1: hard to define what that is, but according to that,
Speaker 1: any such attacks would be against the group's principles. But
Speaker 1: you know, again, you don't know. Maybe it's people on
Speaker 1: the fringe of anonymous who who are trying to up
Speaker 1: the vigilante activity. Maybe it's just someone who wants to
Speaker 1: cause as much mischief as they possibly can. Uh. That's
Speaker 1: why it's kind of hard to talk about these folks.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're very clever, maybe too clever for
Speaker 1: their own good in a way. Well, they're so decentralized too,
Speaker 1: that it's kind of hard to pin down, you know,
Speaker 1: a course set of values and beliefs that Anonymous represents.
Speaker 1: They're so dis and and the group itself has also
Speaker 1: been accused of other activities besides things that are not
Speaker 1: related to the Church of Scientology at all, other kinds
Speaker 1: of mischief um. In some some cases that was a
Speaker 1: kind of civil disobedience in order to protest a particular
Speaker 1: set of policies. In other cases, it just seemed like
Speaker 1: it was kind of a mean spirited joke that was
Speaker 1: done for no other reason than to cause a stir um.
Speaker 1: And once again, it's impossible to say which ones like
Speaker 1: because Anonymous itself doesn't have I mean, there's no firm
Speaker 1: membership role. It could be that this is a splinter
Speaker 1: group of the full group of Anonymous. It could be
Speaker 1: that it's a large portion of Anonymous. It could be
Speaker 1: its people who aren't even related to Anonymous. But for example,
Speaker 1: there was not that long ago there was a whole
Speaker 1: thing about a website that was designed to be a
Speaker 1: forum for people who suffered from epilepsy and migraine headaches
Speaker 1: and um A group essentially created uh handles within this
Speaker 1: forum and began to post images of flashing lights things
Speaker 1: that would theoretically set off could set off an epileptic
Speaker 1: attack or perhaps trigger a migraine, depending on if you know,
Speaker 1: if you had that visual stimulation, if that's what set
Speaker 1: you off, and you know, what's the point of that?
Speaker 1: Why do that? But it's the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you're just causing as much trouble as possible. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: if your tactic works, you are possibly actually causing harm
Speaker 1: to another individual. I mean in a way that's even
Speaker 1: if you don't want to call it terrorism, it's at least,
Speaker 1: you know, just just malicious, mean spirited. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: is is that the same group that's protesting draconium practices
Speaker 1: by you know, by another group? Is that or is
Speaker 1: it a totally different group. I mean again, it could
Speaker 1: be it could be any anybody doing that and anonymous
Speaker 1: taking the blame for it, regardless of what it's an
Speaker 1: anonymous member or not. So um. Yeah, it's weird stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, there there's some some things that are attributed
Speaker 1: to the group that just don't really add up. But again, uh,
Speaker 1: it could even be that there are some people who
Speaker 1: are active and anonymous, who are at protests, who go
Speaker 1: to every single one they can, who don't really believe
Speaker 1: in the ultimate cause. They just like the the noise.
Speaker 1: There's that too, So people who just enjoy being a
Speaker 1: rabble rouser um. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 1: place for civil disobedience. I think that that is if
Speaker 1: if you have if your rights are are whittled away,
Speaker 1: you start to have very few other options. Um. But
Speaker 1: there's a right way to go about it and a
Speaker 1: wrong way to go about and I think maybe causing
Speaker 1: people to have epileptic seizures is possibly not the right way.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know we don't right, we don't know
Speaker 1: who it is. That's the brilliance behind anonymous um or
Speaker 1: anyone who manages to be on the Internet and not
Speaker 1: leave a a easily trackable record of who they are.
Speaker 1: And that's that's difficult. Yeah, it's actually really tricky. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who are in anonymous. If
Speaker 1: you were really determined and you put enough pressure on
Speaker 1: the right people, you could figure out who most of
Speaker 1: them are, um, but it would it would take a
Speaker 1: lot because you would essentially have to be able to
Speaker 1: pressure Internet service providers into giving you the information about
Speaker 1: you know, I s p s and things like that,
Speaker 1: and are rather not I s p s but IP
Speaker 1: addresses and things like that. Um, And that's most I
Speaker 1: s p s would never really do that without a
Speaker 1: court order because it you know, once you start violating
Speaker 1: the trust of your customers, you don't have customers anymore.
Speaker 1: So so they have a pretty good net of protection
Speaker 1: around them. But I wouldn't say they're impervious, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: fascinating group of people. Yeah, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't really get into the whole trolling thing, but
Speaker 1: uh yeah, there are a lot of people and four
Speaker 1: chane have also been accused of or at least the
Speaker 1: kind of mentality that you find in four chan is
Speaker 1: often um the four Chune random channel, I should say,
Speaker 1: is as often associated with trolling in general on the Internet.
Speaker 1: People who just like to go to different communities and
Speaker 1: cause misery and and make conversations breakdown into flame wars
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, just because I get their jollies
Speaker 1: out of derailing any kind of civil conversation. Um, you
Speaker 1: know lulls. Yeah, same people who are griefers and games
Speaker 1: will go onto a game and just they're only the
Speaker 1: way they get enjoyment from a game is by causing
Speaker 1: other people frustration. Um. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: eventually grow out of that, which is another reason why
Speaker 1: people will say that the folks on on the random
Speaker 1: channel at Fortune seemed to fall into the fifteen year
Speaker 1: old board boy category. One of the articles I read
Speaker 1: about about Anonymous suggested that they a lot of them
Speaker 1: were middle class teenage people. So yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the along with that, the people
Speaker 1: I've seen in the pictures at the at the actual
Speaker 1: protests tend to fall into um, older teens and early
Speaker 1: early to mid twenties, based upon their build and uh
Speaker 1: and things like that, because in most cases their mask,
Speaker 1: their their masks looked very youthful. Yeah, they were very young.
Speaker 1: Guy Fox um, and Guy Fox is just one of
Speaker 1: the kinds of masks they wear. That's it's probably one
Speaker 1: of the more popular ones. But you'll see people wear like,
Speaker 1: you know, just the dust mask or whatever. Um. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, so yeah, I hope that, Um, that's
Speaker 1: a good little overview of four Chin and Anonymous. Now,
Speaker 1: granted there's a lot more that we did not go
Speaker 1: into this. These are very deep subjects, both of them
Speaker 1: in fact, and uh, we could probably do two or
Speaker 1: three podcasts on them if we weren't afraid of getting
Speaker 1: attacked for the lulls, which I live in constant fear
Speaker 1: being attacked for the lulls. Please don't attack me for
Speaker 1: the lulls. It's not that funny. But um, are are you?
Speaker 1: Are you exhausted by the subject. Yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things that it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: because it's so hard to pin down, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I understand why other people would be interested
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, yeah, it's you know, if it weren't
Speaker 1: for the fact that I have to disengage half of
Speaker 1: my Internet browsers capabilities before I go to such a site,
Speaker 1: I would probably check it out a little more often. Also,
Speaker 1: I think it's blocked in our network now, it wasn't
Speaker 1: back when I was researching trolls lesson learned. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that'll bring us around to our second A
Speaker 1: bout of listener mail. List listener mail comes from Emily
Speaker 1: and he says, Chris and Jonathan, thanks for a better
Speaker 1: than Josh and Chuck podcast, even though it was a
Speaker 1: while ago. I have a comment on your two thousand
Speaker 1: thirty eight podcast. I have a Palm pilot M five
Speaker 1: oh five that runs with Legacy. I've tried many times
Speaker 1: to download the off that allows me to use the
Speaker 1: email application and sync the Palm with my computer. It
Speaker 1: does not work. There's no version of the software that
Speaker 1: works with newer systems like Windows Vista. In the process,
Speaker 1: I also discovered that there is no tech support for
Speaker 1: old poems. If the same thing happens with most machines
Speaker 1: that run with Legacy, it will not work with many
Speaker 1: other computers, and when that person encounters the problem, they
Speaker 1: will not be able to fix it. So unless this
Speaker 1: person is very intent on keeping the system because it
Speaker 1: is ancient, and willing to spend the money they could
Speaker 1: use to buy a new system on fixing the old one,
Speaker 1: the person should get a new system. Thanks and keep
Speaker 1: pod guessing. You're nine grade devotee Emily you know she says,
Speaker 1: by the way, I love puns, pie and awful jokes,
Speaker 1: three things you won't get on stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: and by the By the way, could you talk about
Speaker 1: internet blocking systems like the ones in place at school
Speaker 1: that don't allow you to go on Facebook or YouTube.
Speaker 1: That's funny that she should mention that. Sure, why is
Speaker 1: that because we were just talking about it four chance. Yeah. Firewalls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's essentially a firewall. Um. I mean, there are many
Speaker 1: different versions and variations of the firewall, but it's not
Speaker 1: that hard. It's it's a It can either be hardware
Speaker 1: or software, and you just most of them have a
Speaker 1: setting where you can tell it specific u r l's
Speaker 1: that it will not allow people to access. So you
Speaker 1: try and go to it and you'll get a message
Speaker 1: back saying you can't access that site. Uh. Many of
Speaker 1: them will come with a list pre programmed of of
Speaker 1: u r l's that are known to be either time
Speaker 1: sucks like Facebook and Twitter, or um, you know, have
Speaker 1: questionable content on them like four chan. There you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's sort of like a set of
Speaker 1: parental controls for an entire network, right. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me like she was talking about legacy as being
Speaker 1: a kind of, uh, like a specific program. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about when we're talking about legacy systems is not
Speaker 1: necessarily a specific program, but older programs that have been
Speaker 1: used within a an organization for years and years and
Speaker 1: years and there is no longer any support for them
Speaker 1: because the company that created it is no longer around
Speaker 1: or has moved on to other systems and no longer
Speaker 1: supports it. That's what a legacy system is. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: unfortunately the uh, the original palm os is uh sort
Speaker 1: of in that boat because you know it is it
Speaker 1: still functions. As a matter of fact, Lennox has it,
Speaker 1: you know, built in support for it, but you know,
Speaker 1: you have to go to third party clients at this
Speaker 1: point to to get support for the palm Os And
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: they're just going to let it drop now, especially with
Speaker 1: the new web os it comes webs and when the
Speaker 1: we boss webs um that comes with the Palm Prex
Speaker 1: and the Pixie. Yes, and Emily may very well have
Speaker 1: meant that, it was just kind of difficult to tell
Speaker 1: from the way she praised that, so I just wanted
Speaker 1: to cover all the bases there. Well. Thanks for the email, Emily,
Speaker 1: and thanks Jack for your question that started off this
Speaker 1: whole podcast. If any of you have any questions, suggestions,
Speaker 1: anything like that, send us an email tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Remember, every Tuesday at one
Speaker 1: pm we have tech stuff Live and you can check
Speaker 1: that out at the blogs at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Just look on the right hands side. You'll see the
Speaker 1: links there. Chris and I will talk to you again,
Speaker 1: possibly anonymously, really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the new tech stuff
Speaker 1: blog now on the house stuff works homepage, brought to
Speaker 1: you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you