Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy Read online

  is a corruption of L O L, which stands for “Laugh Out Loud,” signifying laughter at someone else’s expense. This makes it inherently superior to lesser forms of humor. Anonymous gets big lulz from pulling random pranks. The pranks are always posted on the internet. Just as the element of surprise transforms the physical act of love into something beautiful, the anguish of a laughed-at victim transforms lol into lulz, making it longer, girthier, and more pleasurable. Lulz is engaged in by Internet users who have witnessed one major economic/environmental/political disaster too many, and who thus view a state of voluntary, gleeful sociopathy over the world’s current apocalyptic state, as superior to being continually emo.

  The term “lulz” was first coined by Jameth, an original Encyclopedia Dramatica administrator, and the term became very popular on that website. The nickname originated sometime in early 2001 when James (his real name, the -th suffix being a pun on his faggotry and his small p3n0r) was having a conversation with a lisping homosexual. James was being referred to as Jameth because of the person’s speech impediment. In June 2001, James decided to use Jameth as his LiveJournal account name. Don’t let him fool you—James craves the cock.7

  According to information from multiple interviews, including one with ED’s sharp and witty founder, Sherrod DeGrippo, weev did, indeed, participate in the conference call when Jameth coined the term; and Jameth is, in fact, gay. I never inquired about his lisp.8

  Today, the lulz can encompass lighthearted jokes as well, and are utilized and enjoyed by many Internet nerds around the world. But, at its inception, its demeanor was conceived as cruel—“laughter at the expense or the misfortune of others,” is how trolls like to define it. Lulz is a quintessential example of what folklorists define as argot—specialized and esoteric terminology used by a subcultural group. Since argot is so opaque and particular, it functions to enact secrecy or, at minimum, erect some very stiff social boundaries. As an anthropologist, it is tempting, no matter how ridiculous it seems, to view lulz in terms of epistemology—through the social production of knowledge. At one level, the lulz functions as an epistemic object, stabilizing a set of experiences by making them available for reflection. For decades, there was no term for the lulz, but trolls and hackers nevertheless experienced the distinctive pleasures of pranking. Once a name like “lulz” comes into being, it opens the very practice it names to further reflection by its practitioners. Trolls now pontificate over the meaning of the lulz, employing the term to designate particularly satisfying acts (whether or not they are intentionally done for the lulz) and also to diagnose situations lacking in lulz—which, of course, demands reparatory courses of action.

  Just what does the term do or signify which no other word can? This is harder to convey. But if we keep in mind that lulz derives from the acronym “lol” (laugh out loud), it becomes easier to see that lulz is primarily about humor. Lols are familiar to everyone who has ever sent a joke to someone by email. Lulz are darker: acquired most often at someone’s expense, prone to misfiring and, occasionally, bordering on disturbing or hateful speech (except, of course, when they cross the border entirely: thank you rape jokes). Lulz are unmistakably imbued with danger and mystery, and thus speak foremost to the pleasures of transgression.

  We can see the defining features of lulz in weev’s AT&T affair—not in his exposure of the security hole, but in the way he got respectable newscasters all over the United States to utter the word “Goatse,” unwittingly referencing one of the most disgusting images on the Internet. In practice, lulzy activity defies boundaries but also re-erects them. There is a divide between people who are merely LOLing on the Internet—without really knowing what the Internet is or where it came from or how it works on the inside—and those who are lulzing (i.e., hackers, trolls, etc.) and know exactly what the underbelly is about. The lulz are both a form of cultural differentiation and a tool or weapon used to attack, humiliate, and defame the unwitting normal LOLers—often without them even realizing that an entire culture is aligned against them. Usually, the lulz are inside jokes, but (often) they are equal opportunity: lulz may provoke laughter not just among trolls, but outsiders as well. The price of admission is just a bit of knowledge. LOLers can be drawn into the world of lulz thanks to websites populated by trolls like Encyclopedia Dramatica, 4chan, and Something Awful, which disseminate this knowledge to anyone who cares to look for it. Those who find it may choose to run away very quickly, or they might become the next generation of trolls.

  The lulz show how easily and casually trolls can upend our sense of security by invading private spaces and exposing confidential information. Targets receive scores of unpaid pizzas at home or have their unlisted phone numbers published, Social Security numbers leaked, private communications posted, credit card numbers doxed, and hard drive contents seeded. Trolls enjoy desecrating anything remotely sacred, as cultural theorist Whitney Phillips conveys in her astute characterization of trolls as “agents of cultural digestion [who] scavenge the landscape, re-purpose the most offensive material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting populace.”9 In short: any information thought to be personal, secure, or sacred is a prime target for sharing or defilement in a multitude of ways. Lulz-oriented actions puncture the consensus around our politics and ethics, our social lives, and our aesthetic sensibilities. Any presumption of our world’s inviolability becomes a weapon; trolls invalidate that world by gesturing toward the possibility for Internet geeks to destroy it—to pull the carpet from under us whenever they feel the urge.

  I came to trolls just as a subset of them was experiencing a crucial transformation: increasingly, people working under the aegis of Anonymous began pursuing activism. Given the seedy underbelly I have just described, the development was beyond surprising. However, it was not without historical precedent: I recognized trolls as kin to the tricksters of myth. After all, I am an anthropologist, and tricksters are a time-honored topic of anthropological rumination.

  To Trick or to Treat?

  The trickster archetype comes replete with a diverse number of icons and often-delightful tales. Greek and Roman mythology brought some of these figures into the heart of Western culture: the mercurial Hermes and the bacchanalian Dionysus, among others. In West African and Caribbean folklores the role falls to Anansi, a spider who sometimes imparts knowledge or wisdom—and sometimes casts doubt or seeds confusion. Eshu, the god of communication and crossroads, is similarly ambiguous. Known for orchestrating chaotic scenarios that force human decisions, he can be a kind teacher or an agent of destruction. Among indigenous North Americans, Raven initiates change by will or by accident, and Coyote is a selfish beast who will trick any being—human or animal—to satisfy his appetites. The Western conception of the trickster has, since the medieval period, often been delivered in literature. Puck, the “shrewd and knavish sprite” who “misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was not an invention of Shakespeare’s, but has roots in a mischievous fairy of Celtic folklore. The shapeshifter Loki of Nordic mythology has recently reappeared in Hollywood films, mostly as a bland version of his mythological self, and still serves as a reminder of the capricious, vindictive role the trickster can perform.

  Tricksters are united by a few characteristics, such as the burning desire to defy or defile rules, norms, and laws. Often lacking both impulse control and the ability to experience shame, they are outrageous and unfiltered in their speech. Some tricksters are driven by a higher calling, like Loki, who sometimes works for the gods (though true to his fearsome nature, he sometimes causes problems for them). Many are propelled by curiosity and voracious appetite. They rarely plan their actions, choosing instead an unbridled spontaneity that translates into a wily unpredictability. While capriciousness often underwrites successful trickster exploits, it can also trip trolls up.10

  Trickster tales are not didactic and moralizing but reveal their lessons playfully. They can function normativ
ely—when parents offer scary stories to dissuade kids from misbehaving—or critically, allowing norms to be laid bare for folk-philosophical challenge. Lewis Hyde, who has written extensively on the trickster motif, notes that “the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be a space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.”11

  It is not difficult to imagine the troll and Anonymous as contemporary trickster figures. They are provocateurs and saboteurs who dismantle convention while occupying a liminal zone. They are well positioned to impart lessons—regardless of their intent. Their actions need not be accepted, much less endorsed, to extract positive value. We may see them as edifying us with liberating or terrifying perspectives, symptomatic of underlying problems that deserve scrutiny, functioning as a positive force toward renewal, or as distorting and confusing shadows. The trickster becomes one heuristic—certainly not the only or primary one—for understanding the sources, the myriad effects, and especially, the Janus face of morally slippery entities like trolls and Anonymous.

  Before we get to Anonymous proper, it is worth taking a brief (incomplete) tour through the vibrant tradition of trolling/tricksterdom on the Internet. The nature of the Internet—a network built on software—makes it ideal for both play and exploitation;12 it is like a petri dish for pranking. Indeed, hackers (and later trolls) have been at this sort of behavior for a long time. But it is only recently that some of these activities have attained a more visible, publicly available mythological status. For example, gathered in the Encyclopedia Dramatica are copious links to cases of historical techno-tricksterism. By exploring these lineages we can better understand what makes Anonymous—both the trolls and activists—distinctive among a broader pantheon of technological tricksters.

  A (Brief) Natural History of Internet Tricksterdom

  (Or, a Genealogy of a Lack of Morals)

  weev is a troll’s troll—a rare standout in a field that mostly spawns so many garden varieties.

  Troll ancestry boasts a rather eclectic and varied cast of characters. Trolling was common in the hacker underground—a place for subversive hackers who thrived in the 1980s and 1990s, seeking out forbidden knowledge by rummaging around, uninvited, in other people’s computers. But even they have to thank their direct ancestors, the phone phreaks, for the aesthetics of audacity. Fusing technological spelunking with mischief, phone phreaks illegally entered the telephone system by re-creating the audio frequencies used by the system to route calls. They did it to learn and explore, to be sure. But the thrill of transgression was equally integral to the joy of phreaking. In the 1960s and 1970s, phreaks would use their skills to congregate on telephone conference “party lines.” Phreaking attracted some blind kids, who found a source of freedom in connecting with others on the phone. Over the telephone wires, from near and far, people who couldn’t see each other would meet to chat, gossip, share technological tidbits, and plan and execute pranks. Lots of pranks. Naturally, most of these pranks involved phone calls. While most of them were lighthearted, a few exhibited a fearsome bite. Phil Lapsley, a historian of phreaks, recounts an infamous 1974 hoax where phreaks exploited a rare bug in the phone system to reroute all calls made to residents of Santa Barbara, California, to a phony emergency worker who would warn: “There has been a nuclear explosion in Santa Barbara and all the telephone lines are out.”13 weev, no stranger to history, adores phone pranks and sees himself as an inheritor of this illustrious lineage.

  The end of the analog phone network, after the divestiture of “Ma Bell” (the affectionate name given to AT&T by phreaks), spelled the end of the golden age of phreaking. It was largely replaced by the exploration of computer networks, giving rise to the hacker underground, which peaked in the 1990s. Although many of these underground hackers acquired, circulated, and produced technical knowledge—scouting for security vulnerabilities and edifying technical curiosities—they were also connoisseurs of forbidden fruit. Thus, it is no wonder that their actions expanded from strictly technical engagements and into ones that included mockery, spectacle, and transgression. They quickly distinguished their politics and ethics from the university hackers of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford; these hackers, who in the 1960s stayed up all night to access their beloved computers otherwise tied up for official use during the day, have been chronicled majestically by journalist Steven Levy.14 Though these early hackers also had an affinity for pranking, they abided by a more robust ethos of transparency and access than underground hackers.

  Many underground hackers were puckish in their pranking and hacking pursuits. They were mischief-makers and merry wanderers of the network. There was, however, a cohort of underground hackers who more closely resembled the Loki archetype in their network jaunts and haunts. When I interview hackers who were active in the 1990s about their trolling activities, the conversation inevitably turns toward a discussion of the most feared hacker/troll of the era: “u4ea” (pronounced “euphoria” and eerily similar to “lulz” in its figuration). So terrifying was this troll’s reign that every time I utter u4ea to one of his contemporaries, their demeanor blackens and proceedings assume an unmatched seriousness. u4ea is Canadian. More notoriously, this troll was “founder, president, and dictator for life” of hacker group BRoTHeRHooD oF WaReZ—(“BoW” for short; Warez is pirated software—“BoW” sought to poke fun at Bulletin Board System warez groups). According to a former member whom I chatted with online, the “paramilitary wing” of BoW, called “Hagis” (short for “Hackers against Geeks in Snowsuits”), went on cruel hacking and pranking campaigns against targets ranging from corporations, law-abiding white hat hackers, and infosecurity gurus, to basically anyone else who got in their line of fire. To take one example, in the late 1990s Hagis went ballistic during a multi-year feud with a white hat hacker named Jay Dyson. First they went after his Internet service provider, deleting all their files and knocking them offline for two weeks. Later, they deleted files on Dyson’s business website. For good measure, they harassed his wife with threatening messages, informing her, via her hacked email account, that “All the Dyson family will pay for the mistakes of Big Jay.”15

  Upon learning about this and other attacks from the former BoW member I chatted with, I wrote:

  : man, ruthless

  : yeah, we were a fairly vicious bunch to the point that i dropped out of the scene

  : why? i mean, what was driving people? is it just because people could?

  : hell if i know now to be honest

  : there were massive hacker wars that went on that nobody knew about

  : irc servers would vanish, ISPs would be wiped off the face of the earth for days or weeks

  : but it stayed within the scene

  : the media only ever caught hints of it

  : i mean, this was a time when hackers didn’t want attention, people who talked to the press were mediawhOres

  : we were a genuine subculture, our own news, our own celebrities, our own slang, our own culture

  And I could not help but add:

  : and your own wars

  Still, Hagis could also be quite jocular. Once, they defaced the Greenpeace website and posted what today might be considered a classically lulzy message meant to publicize the ordeal of an arrested phone phreak and hacker named Kevin Mitnick: “Phree Kevin Mitnick or we will club 600 baby seals.”16

  After going this deep (which is to say, barely scratching the surface), I decided that my interlocutors were right: it was time to ease off on my pursuit of u4ea. Barely anything has been written about this famous troll—and for a good reason.

  Trolling in the 1990s followed a different vector toward anonymity, as well. Outside of these elite, hidden hacker wars, ordinary users got their first bitter taste of trolling on Usenet, the seminal mega-message board. In 1979, the Internet existed as an academic and military network—the ARPA
NET—and access was limited to a select few. Naturally, a few engineers built a new system, Usenet, which they conceived of as the “poor man’s ARPANET.” Initially invented for the sole purpose of discussing obscure technical matters, it quickly mushroomed—much to everyone’s surprise—to include hundreds of lists with spirited and, at times, ferocious discussions. Technical subject matter was complemented by groups devoted to sex, humor, recipes, and (naturally) anti-Scientology.

  Usenet and other mailing lists are also where the term “troll” first came into common usage. It referred to people who did not contribute positively to discussions, who argued for the sake of arguing, or who were simply disruptive jerks (intentionally or not). List users frequently admonished others to “stop feeding the trolls,” a refrain still commonly seen today on mailing lists, message boards, and website comment sections.

  But Usenet also bred and fed the spectacular breed of troll who would intentionally sabotage conversations—leaving both list members and, especially, list administrators, exasperated. There is no better example than Netochka Nezvanova, named after the titular character in Dostoevsky’s (failed) first attempt at a novel. Appropriately, the name means “nameless nobody.” And, just like Anonymous today, it is believed that many different individuals and groups have taken up the moniker, making it an apt example of what media scholar Marco Deseriis describes as a “multiple use name,” in which “the same alias” is adopted by “organized collectives, affinity groups, and individual authors.”17

  Netochka Nezvanova’s artist statement, published online, captures the mad, spirited flair driving this character: