Sorry this is long, but it's actually a shortened version of the 2-3 pages in word i wrote after this made me inspired to get the whole story out there..I think ill create a blog or maybe a book or something now..lol
As a four year member of anonymous I'd like to clear up any confusion
Anonymous in its beginning (Or my beginning) reffered to a group of netizens who posted on the 4chan message board system. It more specifically reffered to those who posted on the messageboard /b/ or random, the letter of the messageboard and the nature of those who posted is where another term(now out of use for the most part) to refer to the collective comes from; /b/-tards. The term "Anonymous" came from the fact that the /b/-random message/imageboard allowed users to post anonymously(Or sometimes depending on the era forced them to post anonymously, reffered to as "Forced anon") with their names appearing as "Anonymous". The board itself and its postings could be best described as "Anything goes.....pretty much"; Hilarious postings, Parodies/Satires, Disgusting things(Shock images), Offensive things(Racism bigotry etc), anything under the moon. ALso found on the board was a multitude of Injokes or what is called "Memes"; Images and/or phrases etc that either where posted out of imagination, and became popular, or a reusing/retooling of a phrase from a movie, and contained relation to something virtually non-understandable to an outsider looking in; examples include VTECH JUST KICKED IN YO(A reference to hyundais vtech engine and later the virginia tech shootings), ITS A TRAP(relation to admiral ackbar from starwars, and the concept of "Trap crossdressors). And of course Caturday; whereby every saturday people would flood the messageboard and post pictures of cats most often containing a caption(as was the case with many images on 4chan). There are probably OVER 9000(thats another meme, reffering to a DBZ clip in which a charcter espouses another charachters powerlevel as being "OVER 9000", In the anonymous sense it is a synonom for "A ridiculously Large number/amount")
Also contained in the board was the concept of "Raids/Invasions". The idea of anonymous members going enne-masse to another website and "Doing something" on that website for "A particular reason"(Most often in the form of going on the forums or a chatroom and making comments/posting images). The things done, websites raided, and apparent reasons behind the most members doing it(remember that by nature it's near certain for discrepencies among individual users reasons) varied and has changed as the history of anonymous progressed. In my early days, Raids where for Lulz; the sake of eliciting personal enjoyment through watching targets responses to actions agains them..pretty much all raids contain an element of this. And as well in the beginning raids where on anything, Christian Fundamentalists, HabboHotel, Chatrooms of all types, including porn. How the raid happened; offensive images would be posted, anons would "troll" the website, etc. Overtime both what appeared to be the general consenus on why what and how in regards to raiding changed. SPECIFICALLY with the raid against Hal Turner's racist radio show(which itself was an example of anonymous moving outside of the internet and into other forms of media) there was alot of "discussion" among anonymous members. Some on the "We are doing this because he is a racist" camp and other Anons on the "We are the internet hate machine, we do this for our own enjoyment". Remember what i said about Anonymous varrying individually, well as the collective grew so did the variances of opinion. This was probably the beginning of a divide being noticed in anonymous, with members wanting to remove some of the most "Socially Unacceptable" methods of anonymous, Others decrying this attitude and Saying that change like this is bad because It undermines what anonymous is really supposed to be about. Around and Before this time divisions such as this had led to large shakeups in the way things where; Notably many splitoff "Chans" flung anonymous members elsewhere to other unaffiliated "Chan" based message boards, some browsing only one, others browsing multiple.
Then came Scientology; Originally plans where set out to go after scientology through normal anonymous means, Prank Calls to disrup their communications, Black Faxes(Faxing Multitudes of black sheets of paper to them in order to waste Ink), and using the newish method of "soft-Hacking" or "Skript-Kiddie hacking" to bring down their website; Basically using macros/script to "Download" as many bits as fast as possible off the server tying it up. Some anonymous members could have also expressed themselves in stronger more "Deemed Offensive" methods, as anonymous is a group of large individuals, some more "Offensive" then others, However I seriously doubt most of the scientology claims hold much water as we always did things in "jest"(no matter how offensive it seemed. We brought the website down, we where youtubing like crazy and so far This was a "Sucess", and we where getting news coverage. At this time, and in the lead up to the original anti-scientology actions alot of anon's expressed opinions that scientology was a "Formidable Oponnent" for us, and that this was "Going to take some time" but would lead to lots of lulz for us. As media attention and internet attention grew(Having been growing since inception), then came a YouTube video from a long time scientology critic Mark Bunker, Warning us of getting in trouble, and suggesting using our resources in otherways etc, this one youtube video Somehow and for some reason caused the largest and most drammatic collective shift in the largest majority of those people who considered themselves "Anonymous" I had ever seen, and how or why it happened is absolutely beyond me.
But of course with any organization there are those who stick to old values due to disagreence with the changes. The members at the protest where probably those type, I dont know if they where carrying anti emo signs or not as your article doesnt say. but if they where, then its most likely anons trolling for the lulz and has nothing to do with emo beign described a cult. Or if they werent holdign signs it could be Emo anonymous memebers or anonymous members who agree with the cause and for some reason or another wish to have themselves identified as anons at that protest. Who knows really, could be anything. but i can tell you what its not. and thats a representation of a larger majority of anonymous holding anti-emo beliefs over the daily mail relating them to a cult, nor would we stand by them. general anonymous consensus against emos from what ive seen ranges from don't care to "Annoyed"(as alot of people are who frequent forums and the like), to finding them huge lolcows to troll. It depends on the anonymous really.
Sorry this is long, but it's actually a shortened version of the 2-3 pages in word i wrote after this made me inspired to get the whole story out there..I think ill create a blog or maybe a book or something now..lol
As a four year member of anonymous I'd like to clear up any confusion
Anonymous in its beginning (Or my beginning) reffered to a group of netizens who posted on the 4chan message board system. It more specifically reffered to those who posted on the messageboard /b/ or random, the letter of the messageboard and the nature of those who posted is where another term(now out of use for the most part) to refer to the collective comes from; /b/-tards. The term "Anonymous" came from the fact that the /b/-random message/imageboard allowed users to post anonymously(Or sometimes depending on the era forced them to post anonymously, reffered to as "Forced anon") with their names appearing as "Anonymous". The board itself and its postings could be best described as "Anything goes.....pretty much"; Hilarious postings, Parodies/Satires, Disgusting things(Shock images), Offensive things(Racism bigotry etc), anything under the moon. ALso found on the board was a multitude of Injokes or what is called "Memes"; Images and/or phrases etc that either where posted out of imagination, and became popular, or a reusing/retooling of a phrase from a movie, and contained relation to something virtually non-understandable to an outsider looking in; examples include VTECH JUST KICKED IN YO(A reference to hyundais vtech engine and later the virginia tech shootings), ITS A TRAP(relation to admiral ackbar from starwars, and the concept of "Trap crossdressors). And of course Caturday; whereby every saturday people would flood the messageboard and post pictures of cats most often containing a caption(as was the case with many images on 4chan). There are probably OVER 9000(thats another meme, reffering to a DBZ clip in which a charcter espouses another charachters powerlevel as being "OVER 9000", In the anonymous sense it is a synonom for "A ridiculously Large number/amount")
Also contained in the board was the concept of "Raids/Invasions". The idea of anonymous members going enne-masse to another website and "Doing something" on that website for "A particular reason"(Most often in the form of going on the forums or a chatroom and making comments/posting images). The things done, websites raided, and apparent reasons behind the most members doing it(remember that by nature it's near certain for discrepencies among individual users reasons) varied and has changed as the history of anonymous progressed. In my early days, Raids where for Lulz; the sake of eliciting personal enjoyment through watching targets responses to actions agains them..pretty much all raids contain an element of this. And as well in the beginning raids where on anything, Christian Fundamentalists, HabboHotel, Chatrooms of all types, including porn. How the raid happened; offensive images would be posted, anons would "troll" the website, etc. Overtime both what appeared to be the general consenus on why what and how in regards to raiding changed. SPECIFICALLY with the raid against Hal Turner's racist radio show(which itself was an example of anonymous moving outside of the internet and into other forms of media) there was alot of "discussion" among anonymous members. Some on the "We are doing this because he is a racist" camp and other Anons on the "We are the internet hate machine, we do this for our own enjoyment". Remember what i said about Anonymous varrying individually, well as the collective grew so did the variances of opinion. This was probably the beginning of a divide being noticed in anonymous, with members wanting to remove some of the most "Socially Unacceptable" methods of anonymous, Others decrying this attitude and Saying that change like this is bad because It undermines what anonymous is really supposed to be about. Around and Before this time divisions such as this had led to large shakeups in the way things where; Notably many splitoff "Chans" flung anonymous members elsewhere to other unaffiliated "Chan" based message boards, some browsing only one, others browsing multiple.
Then came Scientology; Originally plans where set out to go after scientology through normal anonymous means, Prank Calls to disrup their communications, Black Faxes(Faxing Multitudes of black sheets of paper to them in order to waste Ink), and using the newish method of "soft-Hacking" or "Skript-Kiddie hacking" to bring down their website; Basically using macros/script to "Download" as many bits as fast as possible off the server tying it up. Some anonymous members could have also expressed themselves in stronger more "Deemed Offensive" methods, as anonymous is a group of large individuals, some more "Offensive" then others, However I seriously doubt most of the scientology claims hold much water as we always did things in "jest"(no matter how offensive it seemed. We brought the website down, we where youtubing like crazy and so far This was a "Sucess", and we where getting news coverage. At this time, and in the lead up to the original anti-scientology actions alot of anon's expressed opinions that scientology was a "Formidable Oponnent" for us, and that this was "Going to take some time" but would lead to lots of lulz for us. As media attention and internet attention grew(Having been growing since inception), then came a YouTube video from a long time scientology critic Mark Bunker, Warning us of getting in trouble, and suggesting using our resources in otherways etc, this one youtube video Somehow and for some reason caused the largest and most drammatic collective shift in the largest majority of those people who considered themselves "Anonymous" I had ever seen, and how or why it happened is absolutely beyond me.
But of course with any organization there are those who stick to old values due to disagreence with the changes. The members at the protest where probably those type, I dont know if they where carrying anti emo signs or not as your article doesnt say. but if they where, then its most likely anons trolling for the lulz and has nothing to do with emo beign described a cult. Or if they werent holdign signs it could be Emo anonymous memebers or anonymous members who agree with the cause and for some reason or another wish to have themselves identified as anons at that protest. Who knows really, could be anything. but i can tell you what its not. and thats a representation of a larger majority of anonymous holding anti-emo beliefs over the daily mail relating them to a cult, nor would we stand by them. general anonymous consensus against emos from what ive seen ranges from don't care to "Annoyed"(as alot of people are who frequent forums and the like), to finding them huge lolcows to troll. It depends on the anonymous really.