On a slightly more serious note, if they didn't try to sound so f*cking epic all the time, they might actually achieve something? As it stands, the whole "Anonymous" thing doesn't add-up...
a) The shadowy scaremongering alienates older people. It almost sounds like a "divide and conquer" set-up by some dumbass intelligence outfit. Get all the young people rallying behind some non-existent bullshit, and get all the older people cynical and pissed off at the young people... Why can't they sound persuasive and try to fight back against the propaganda that people are exposed to in everyday life?
b) Where's the sense of struggle? The only time they ever seem to call for support is when they want people to download software to take down other people's websites. What is the average 18-30 year old supposed to do when he or she sees that youtube video? Sit back and relax because Anonymous has it all under control? Like that's gonna help change the world!
c) There's Pastebin, there's mashups, mobile apps, encrypted communication, pseudonymous currencies, prediction markets... how hard can it be to make politicians feel a real sense of accountability? Don't they understand that governments are made up of flesh-and-blood people?
Anonymous isn't an organization in the strictest sense. All it was to begin with was a bunch of people who frequented anon image boards such as 4chan that would periodically group together for pranks or raids. It was much more a loose coalition of bored teenage internet terrorists than it was the elite hacker 'hacktivist' organization that so many media outfits try and promote it as.
Infact, if you look at the history of anonymous, you'll find very little actual 'hacking' occured. 90% of the time it wasn't political, and it was just fucking with people (habbo, bald4bieber, etc.), and the remaining 10% that was political was usually achieved by ddos or social engineering.
Due to the fact that it began to get media attention from (usually very poorly researched) stories, lots of little kids started getting into it because hey fuck the establishment right? And thus enter into the 'epic' youtube videos and faggy guy fawkes mask golden age of anonymous. Many times kids would actually make youtube videos claiming that 'anonymous' took down sites that they never did and whatnot, it got really sad actually.
And here we are today. List of reasons anonymous will never accomplish anything besides entertaining people in the news:
- no central leadership and thus no actual pre-determined goals or rules
- many of the groups largest 'accomplishments' were actually done by other groups such as lulzsec
- convincing people to help with raids and ddos and whatnot is much harder if its for political reasons as opposed to being for shits and giggles
- things like the cut4bieber campaign ruin the public image of a white-knight hacktivist organization that are in most peoples minds and thus turn the
public against anonymous
- most anon attacks you hear about in the news were committed by different people, whoever was bored at the time really. It's not like there is some
central inner group that does most of the attacks. As a result, while singular attacks are entirely possible, launching a full-scale campaign against
multiple targets over a long period of time will never happen.
- no central form of communication