We're over it.
*rubs temples vigorously* We've always had high hopes for Anonymous, the rogue group of unnamed hackers that speak a good game but rarely come through with its promises of revolution. Its fall from grace is disheartening …
We cheered when they attempted to irritate ISIS with angst-fueled satire, were embarrassed for them when they failed at discrediting the KKK (as if the group isn't on everyone's shit-list already?) and only slightly questioned its motives for going after Donald Trump. Now though … now every interaction with the group becomes more lackluster than the one previous. But its latest target, Denver, hits too close to home — we're calling shenanigans.
The people of Anonymous are pissed off at the city because of its sweeping "homeless clean-up" that's been taking place over the past few weeks. Per a video uploaded to YouTube on Mar 12, the action against the city is in direct reference to the controversial "camping ban" enacted a few years back — essentially making homelessness illegal. Lately, videos and personal accounts have been appearing online about the distress these kinds of campaigns are placing on those without an address. The two major problems of the situation being: nobody in the city wants homeless to literally live where they walk, but those without homes don't have many other options because of overcrowded resources and lack of infrastructure to house those in need.
It's a shitty place for a city to be in. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Getting the Internet to Photoshop ISIS fucking sheep or slightly delaying their recruitment strategies by tattling on them to Twitter is great and all, but are there any quantifiable results stemming from any of Anonymous' actions other than a few websites being down for a few days or wrong information being leaked about innocent bystanders? The group lays claim that they've already attacked the Downtown Denver Partnership website, shutting it down for a few hours — but what the fuck is that going to do? Their daily site traffic likely only garners users in the low thousands. All something like that is going to do is irritate a few senior citizens looking for a phone number to call and complain about their neighbor's cat meowing too loud.
This war on authority looks great on paper, but unless people are out doing actual things that make actual sense, it's really just more noise on the 'net that's going to sink faster than Ben Carson's presidential campaign. Anonymous' hearts are probably in the right place, and they may be doing some good that we're not privy too, but until they start doing constructive things other than just releasing unlisted phone numbers (the horror), maybe our dreams of masked crusaders were just that, dreams.
We're over it.
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