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anonymous

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FCJ-191 Mirroring the Videos of Anonymous: Cloud Activism, Living Networks, and Political Mimesis

By ⋅ December 17, 2015 ⋅ Post a comment

Adam Fish Lancaster University [Abstract] Introduction In August 2012, Wikileaks was hit with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from a mysterious group appropriately titled Antileaks. DDoS assaults occur when multiple computers simultaneously ‘refresh’ a website causing it to overload and shutdown. A shaken-up Wikileaks tweeted: ‘The range of IPs used is huge. Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them’ (Kerr, 2012). This is a constant problem for Wikileaks. Their website reads: ‘WikiLeaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to fully protect the CableGate archives, we ask you to mirror it again’ (Wikileaks.org). Eventually repelling the Antileaks attack, Wikileaks again took to Twitter to boast: ‘DDoS proof, financially & geographically diverse. We’re ready to rumble’ (Kerr, 2012). For Wikileaks, mirroring means copying and pasting the CableGate archives in resilient servers so that the content remains visible. Infamous for Guy Fawkes…

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FCJ-159 /b/lack up: What Trolls Can Teach Us About Race

By ⋅ December 30, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment

Tanner Higgin Independent Scholar [Abstract] I hate racists (even if I sometimes play one on the internet). Paulie Socash (Phillips, 2012) Closing Pools, Posing Questions I’d been a fringe observer of 4chan and /b/ for years, aware but ignorant of its pleasures and horrors. Then in a particularly aimless night of YouTube browsing, I watched something that plunged me into the /b/ abyss. It was a player made World of Warcraft (WOW) machinima video featuring a white human avatar dressed in plain clothes and a wide brimmed hat. This wasn’t remarkable, but what followed him—a group of dark skinned human avatars—was. Couched in a Benny Hill sensibility, the video featured a pack of ‘slaves’ who chased and were chased by the ‘slave master’ through the city of Stormwind to crowds of (one can assume) perplexed, entertained, and offended onlookers. The ‘slave chase video’ as I refer to it (it’s long…

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