Harper, Michael David: Fear the hashtags of rage

Jan 31, 2012
34 notes

Fear the hashtags of rage

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That’s the bad of Internet activism, but there’s also an ugly: “it’s somebody else’s responsibility to take the hits for what we want.” We want to write our protest signs and have somebody else march with them. By God, our service providers should stand up for what we believe in, secure in the knowledge that if they lose business, get shut down or even face jail time, we’ll write the angriest blog posts ever about that. Maybe not under our real name, you understand. Can’t be too careful.

Nowhere is this more evident than in quasi-groups like Anonymous, whose idea of activism is entirely based on causing fear of retribution. You didn’t want your server taken down? You shouldn’t have said or done something you knew we wouldn’t support. We spread your credit card information all over the net? You shouldn’t have done business with someone we don’t like. Your server was taken down because it was hosted at the same place our real target was? You shouldn’t have done business with people who do business with them. Members seem to genuinely see themselves as civil rights crusaders, missing the point that protesters put themselves at risk to draw attention to their cause. One doubts that unknown parties breaking into the Montgomery bus depot at midnight to slash tires and spray paint “W3 R L3G10N” on windshields would have had quite so profound an impact as Rosa Parks did.
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There are many good points relating to these sort of short term activist campaigns in the post, but I particularly like the points on Anonymous. The Internet is a fantastic way to spread information and organize, but changing your Twitter avatar or taking down the servers of a major corporation are not activist actions in themselves.