Cognitive Dissidents

I have a “simple”, non-rhetorical question for you:

When you look at Anonymous, what do you see?

Context:

Jericho (@attritionorg) and I have been working on a BLOG series about Anonymous, as a follow-on to our DEFCON19 Panel called “Whoever Fights Monsters: Confronting Aaron Barr, Anonymous and Ourselves”. We’re pretty close to posting the 1st of these (possibly next week).

It dawned on me as we researched that one of the “distortion fields” surrounding “understanding Anonymous” is that we see in them what we WANT to see – like we do with a Rorschach ink blot test. We project. Our narrative says more about us, than it does about them. This is the double-edged sword that sometimes comes with symbols and iconography.

For those who didn’t immediately recognize the Friedrich Nietzsche reference in that DEFCON title, it comes from this:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

As a teaser to our series – and as I finalize my slides for my Anonymous talk for next Thursday at SOURCE Barcelona, I thought I’d throw this Non-Rhetorical Question out to each of you…

When you look at Anonymous, what do you see?

As succinctly as you can – either within the Comment field or with a BLOG post/response of your own… please add your take on Anonymous (initially, today, going forward, all of the above…)

I hope to share some of the more interesting responses during my talk in Barcelona.

Remember… as you gaze into the Anonymous Abyss… it too gazes back into you.

Artwork Note:

This Rorschach and several other BEAUTIFUL pieces of orignal artwork come from -MAR- at sudux.com – just amazing.