Anonymous Threatens Internet With "Operation Blackout"

[IamLEAM1983]

Oh, Anonymous, you so crazy. Shine on, you silly diamonds.

Seriously. You just want to pat them on the head in a cold, patronizing sense (à la "Father Knows Best"), take out a pipe and a newspaper and proceed to not give a shit.

Nothing's gonna happen. This is on the same level as children going "I'm leaving forever!", packing up some bags, freaking out mid-packing and running back to their mommy's arms, bawling "I'M SO SORRY, MOMMY!" all the while.

Just replace the metaphorical mother with online porn or scheduled MMO group events, and you've got an accurate portrayal of what's going to happen.

 

[Simonoly]

What are they going to threaten us with next? Are they going to turn off the Sun?! Maybe they're going to turn the world's oil supply into sticky chocolate sauce? Or perhaps they're going to program our toasters to rape our cats?!

Honestly Anonymous, nobody cares about your puerile attempts at "protest". I'd like to see what sort of convoluted logic they try to use to justify this threat...

 

[Fox242]

You know what will make the people come around to your cause? Not fucking Shanghaing them into it! Anon has never been effective at all. They are nothing but a bunch of jackasses with delusions of power. I would laugh at the fact that they think that shutting down websites of governments that launch mass campaigns of violence against their own people will actually work, excpet that people still die because shutting down a small part of cyberspace will not stop bullets.

What really brought me to hate them is their tactic of sending out personal information about the family members of people that they target. That is the lowest point that you could sink to, they are nothing but scum to me.

If they actually pull this off, then this will be the end of them. Only the die hard wannabe anarchists that crawl around from web page to web page repeating their bullshit will be left to support them. They don't give a damn about "the people" because if they did, then they would realize that the websites blacking themselves out voluntarily a while go effectively killed SOPA. Their is nothing voluntary about what they plan to do. They wanna protest something, and we all have to pulled into wheter we like it or not.

Then again, I don't know if this will work. This is Anon after all.

 

[renegade7]

Great. Fucking great. The anonymity thing makes it even worse: if the government is indeed in the pocket of Hollywood and Wall Street, this is the perfect excuse to round up and imprison anyone on the internet they don't like. This sort of thing is the perfect excuse for ISPs and copyright holders to push internet access monitoring.

Go on a lot of forums (The Escapist) where anti-Hollywood and anti-Wall Street sentiment is common? Well you could be anonymous so jail. Accidentally get a virus/worm/trojan from anonymous? Jail. Ever even navigate to The Pirate Bay? Jail. They could even try and hit you with terrorism charges, I actually would not put it past them.

Anonymous...please stop. It isn't funny. It isn't helping. You are causing more problems than you are solving. Please, FFS learn to protest peacefully. And actually just protest period. Threatening people does not make them want to give you more freedom. Want to know why you so effectively took down Scientology? Do you want to know why the WBC became universally hated after your involvement? Because you took to the streets and actually did something about it. You PROTESTED. You didn't threaten them (which would have made you the bad guy). Just to remind people of what these guys used to be, how far they have fallen, and what they should aspire to be again if they actually want to get anything done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgIegk7ud4Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdLqnxKn-SU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJwSjor4hM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2pfbMqKeo

These guys actually stood for something at one point.

 

[Simonoly]

I adore how people have so little understanding of the way the internet works that they think Anon is going to actually shut down the internet, cut itself off from other members, or this is some sort of message that would hurt them as much as anyone else and is not going for its intended targets IE bankers and corrupt government.

Basically what is being proposed is to make it so as the average slack jawed yokel playing on an iphone or their laptop goes to try to use the internet and they will see that it does not work and in order to get it to work goes beyond the ability of even above average(albeit just above average) computer users.

This represents the widest berth of internet users, and Thats how you target the government and bankers and copy write lobbyists and others. You get the largest bulk of people on the internet pissed off, so they will get off their lazy asses and do something about all this nonsense. In essence what Anon is trying to do is be the Morpheus for the world of the matrix we live in. The only problem with this ideology is that if people are too thick to know how to work around HTTP protocols, and they are too lazy to be bothered with fixing the problems the internet faces, then a large portion of the people who get pissed off at this will end up being wrongly pissed at Anon, instead of being pissed at the fuckers causing the problems that prompted Anon to do something about it, especially as soon as the media spin doctors get a hold of it and turn it into a terroristic threat to destroy the Uhmerukun way of life. Its a noble intention that would be doomed to backfire.

Now, with all that said, I tend to doubt it. This is not the first time this has been brought up. Also "anonymous" claimed (as in some random person claimed) that Anon would be shutting down Facebook on the 5th of November, and I am still waiting for that one to go down. I think it would be cool, it wont work, and Ill believe it when I see it.

YEH! *fist pump*

Anyone who doesn't know how to work around HTTP protocols is obviously mentally ill and should be shot out of a canon into space!

 

[Jodah]

I'll believe it when I see it. Anon doesn't have the stones or the manpower to pull that off.

 

[Talvrae]

hope if they do it, there will be prison time for thouse responsible.... Seriosly

 

[Xman490]

Anyone notice how the date mentioned is "March 31st", the day before April Fools Day?

For once, I anticipate an April Fools Day prank: Anonymous might have all of its available members post the same video, saying "April Fools!" on midnight April 1st.

 

[Simonoly]

Great. Fucking great. The anonymity thing makes it even worse: if the government is indeed in the pocket of Hollywood and Wall Street, this is the perfect excuse to round up and imprison anyone on the internet they don't like. This sort of thing is the perfect excuse for ISPs and copyright holders to push internet access monitoring.

Go on a lot of forums (The Escapist) where anti-Hollywood and anti-Wall Street sentiment is common? Well you could be anonymous so jail. Accidentally get a virus/worm/trojan from anonymous? Jail. Ever even navigate to The Pirate Bay? Jail. They could even try and hit you with terrorism charges, I actually would not put it past them.

Anonymous...please stop. It isn't funny. It isn't helping. You are causing more problems than you are solving. Please, FFS learn to protest peacefully. And actually just protest period. Threatening people does not make them want to give you more freedom. Want to know why you so effectively took down Scientology? Do you want to know why the WBC became universally hated after your involvement? Because you took to the streets and actually did something about it. You PROTESTED. You didn't threaten them (which would have made you the bad guy). Just to remind people of what these guys used to be, how far they have fallen, and what they should aspire to be again if they actually want to get anything done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgIegk7ud4Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdLqnxKn-SU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJwSjor4hM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2pfbMqKeo

These guys actually stood for something at one point.

I remember! I remember! Thanks for the links to the videos. I completely forgot about the WBC thing. Genius!

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Why even given some random 'tards this attention?

"Hur hur, we belong to Anonymous. We are, like, totally serious people and stuff. We are going to bring down the internet! Hur hur. Fear our random forum posts!"

Anyone sitting behind their computer and pretending to be in this so called group is delusional and/or a troll. Anonymous are a joke. A cute little label nobodies like to give themselves to feel special.

Please, let's ignore them to death and give the spotlight to people who actually matter, you know, like doctors, nurses, civil rights lawyers, mental health care professionals, lobysists that actually get shit done.

 

[rayen020]

why can't they find the 12 year old computer genius in LA thats suppose to write the pluto's kiss virus like in //.hack? now that's how you take down the internet. Still i'll be driving cross country on saturday so i think i'll listen to NPR/news radio station and see how they do without the internet to look things up...

I'll believe it when I see it. Anon doesn't have the stones or the manpower to pull that off.

actually they probably do have the stones. but yeah not the manpower. And especially becaue they announced it the people in charge of those things are going to be on extra alert for stuff...

 

[Elate]

So basically, they're shutting down the bit that, y'know, every day users, use. GOOD JOB ANON.

 

[cp2u]

"Hey guys, you know how we can protest sopa? Let's shut down the whole internet! That'll get the public on our side for sure."

 

[Wintermoot]

I usually support Anon but I don,t see how this going to work without a HUGE (and by huge I mean planet wide) EMP bomb.
this also looks desperate but it,s not like SOPA is going to do anything different.

 

[Texas Joker 52]

I can't help but doubt that this threat is real. After all, right after March 31st is... April 1st. April Fools Day. And Anonymous does things 'for teh lulz' more often than not. Why not threaten to shut down the internet for a day, and when it doesn't actually happen, come around the next day and go, "April Fools!". Really, it would be one of the best April Fools jokes to date.

... Of course, I could be wrong. But I certainly hope not...

 

[viranimus]

YEH! *fist pump*

Anyone who doesn't know how to work around HTTP protocols is obviously mentally ill and should be shot out of a canon into space!

Yes yes, I get it, well played.

 

[Parnage]

Not enough face palms for how stupid this plan is. The internet does not work like this. Expect nothing to happen except for an excuse to pop up as to why it didn't happen.

 

[spartan231490]

Why hasn't somebody shut up these whiny idiots yet? I'm so sick of their thinly veiled childish rampages that will never, ever, ever, accomplish anything, other than undermining the efforts of real protests and real protesters everywhere.

 

[Ryu-Kage]

Without even reading the entire article, I'm just gonna say this: If Anonymous was going to do something, they would've just done it.

How many times in just the past few months has "Anonymous" threatened to do something? Now how many of the threats actually happened? NOW, how many incidents have occured where something happened, followed by "Anonymous" saying that they did it? Seems like a heavily unbalanced scale to me.

Since this is merely a threat (and one day before April Fools' Day), I'll be watching the Runaway Guys play on Space Land in Mario Party 2 while idiots who believe this threat are worrying that their Internet will go down.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

The most hilarious part about this is that the people it will affect the most aren't even the people they claim to be mad at. For being such savvy tech gurus, they don't really seem to think these things through.