Alan Is Good

Something very interesting happened on February 15th, 2009.

Act 1:  Anger

Early that morning, a disturbing video was brought to my attention.  In the video, a masked teenage boy picks up a house cat, slams it against the wall, and repeatedly punches and slaps at it.  He turns on the shower and gets the cat wet before leaving the crying animal in a heap on the ground.  The laughter and taunting of the poor cat made the video all the more disgusting.

It’s near impossible to NOT be upset after watching the video.  Eventually the video is submit to Reddit, a user-generated news sit where links are voted up or down by the community.  Enough people upvoted this video in just a few short hours to make the front page of Reddit, and thus its exposure increased exponentially.

Act 2:  Action

The internet works in weird and crazy ways.  If you’re not familiar with ‘trolls,’ ‘lulz,’ and the legion of the Anonymous, a) you don’t visit my blog enough, and b) you won’t fully understand what happened next.  I’ll do my best to debrief the noobs with a few cryptic bullet points:

• There exists a well known image board community on the internet where everyone posts anonymously
• When anonymous, people can do or say anything
• When anonymous, human nature indulges in extremes
• Anonymity naturally is a good breeding ground for dangerous hackers and mischief makers
• This community has ruined/trolled/interrupted people’s lives
• Sometimes they do so with good reason, sometimes just for fun
• This community also enjoys harmless fun, and thus many of the web’s jokes and memes are born here
• The LOLCats were born in this community, posted every Caturday
• The Anonymous have always ‘loved’ cats

It’s like a mathematical proof.

The Anonymous community is not a band of heroes.  The sheer strength in numbers and the passion behind what they do could change the world for the better if they were morally motivated, but they aren’t.  My good friend M3RKVRY describes Anonymous as a hurricane, every bit as likely to ruin a good man’s life as that of a bad man.  Their unanimous response to the cat abuse video was interesting:

“No one f***s with  a cat on Caturday.”

Oh of course.  The incident happened on Caturday.  See, there are other videos/images of cats being hurt and abused floating around on this image board, but those weren’t posted on Caturday.  The internet is often as simple as it is complex, apparently.

I monitored the Anonymous’ online investigation and conversation throughout the day.  Their efficiency, organization and their clever is unparalleled.  Like with Lex Luthor, if only they used their powers for good…  Anyway, from a single Youtube video they were able to:

• Track down the YouTube account’s zip code
• Facebook and MySpace search for the zipcode and username
• Confirm they had found his MySpace page (via an image showing the same carpet and background as found in the video)
• Confirm the boy’s Facebook page
• Post the boy’s name, age, location, school everywhere
• Post the boy’s mothers’ name, cell #, work address and work phone
• Post the number to the local news station and the sheriff’s office
• Flood the news station and local law enforcement with phone calls and emails explaining the situation

That’s a productive Sunday.

Act 3: Applause

Later in the evening, this was posted online:

By hook or by… well, probably by crook, the Anonymous did something that happens to align with our definition of justice.  Hey, no questions asked – we’ll take it.

On this particular day, Anonymous, Caturday and the interwebz wins.  How about that?

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