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lauralhReg and I watched We Are Legion last night, which is all about 4chan (/b/) and Anonymous becoming more than just a Lolz movement. It's kind of crazy, because Reg is rereading the Illuminatus! trilogy right now, and I was like "JULIAN ASSANGE IS LIKE A LESS SMOOTH SIMON MOON!" I mean, forget postModernism, we are post 1984 right here, through the looking glass. If you've been on the internet before 2004, you knew that attacking Scientology was a good way to get your server shut down. In the movie we watched this Nebraskan kid who basically ran a program that's like the "evil" version of SETI at home - it just hits "refresh" on a website till the website gets DDOS'd. I mean, he was one of like thousands who did this, but because he was a rural kid who wouldn't be able to get a good lawyer, the FBI went after him. And like an idiot, he admitted what he did to the FBI.
So, yeah, he goes to jail for a year, and has no computer access for 2 years in total. But that's the end of it, once his sentence is over there is nothing else they can do to him. I mean, I know it looks bad that you can actually go to jail for a DDOS attack if you have a shitty lawyer, but this is literally the worst that the Scientologists have been able to come up with. I don't condone death threats, which apparently they got on their 1-800 line, but they couldn't get the five people who did that. And if you were clever enough to run this Ion Cannon program through a proxy (which, honestly, should be a default option, script kiddies), you were gonna get away scot-free. This is a huge deal, that the Scientologists, who have all this money and power, are basically now impotent.
And that's just the start of it. The movie shows how some hackers basically set up old school IRC and modem lines for Egypt when their government shut it down. Basically, it's now impossible for a government to completely close the lines of communication, no matter how hard they try, even if they're machine gunning down people in the streets. It's truly amazing.
Unfortunately the movie ended with the whole "occupy ***" thing, which I'm sure a year ago actually looked real. But with all these other Anonymous "movements" there was an actual goal in sight. I understand the Occupy kids were mad, or unemployed and sick of it, but it seems like the Occupy kids were merely allied with Anonymous, not actually utilizing the power of Anonymous. Which is understandable - people on 4chan either have jobs or at the least have computers in their parents' basement, not really the same exact people in the Occupy movement. So that sort of annoyed me, including that footage of a movement in which nothing actually moved.
And then I went to see The Perks of Being A Wallflower, based on the book of the same name. Well, loosely based, like most books made into movies, but I rather enjoyed it. Although they kept the same music references from 2000, which made the soundtrack basically my college years. I wasn't sure if that was just the writers being lazy at first, but I think it was. I don't actually believe that the youth of today listens to '80s music. I didn't believe it in 10 Things I Hate About You either.
But as a painful reminder of being a teenager that listens more than talks, it accomplished that goal, oh yes it did. Watching the one you want with someone who treats them like crap. All this painful horrible teenage angst, along with the thrill of not knowing what the night will bring, something wonderful, something poignant, the movie brings it all there. It's a nostalgia-fest for anyone who was a teenager in the '90s, and probably before and after. (I mean, I wasn't, so I don't know. I just know that music is powerful as hell for me, and the Smiths put me there.)
Anyway, very emotional, evocative of not just the misery, but also the hope, that being a teenager entails. I mean, I think most of us had rough years, but there was hope too, even if it was mostly after we got out of our house. There's a lot of sympathy for Charlie's pain, but there's also the cautious optimism that things actually are going to be good for him. Despite the fact that he still has THREE MORE YEARS of high school...
So, yeah, he goes to jail for a year, and has no computer access for 2 years in total. But that's the end of it, once his sentence is over there is nothing else they can do to him. I mean, I know it looks bad that you can actually go to jail for a DDOS attack if you have a shitty lawyer, but this is literally the worst that the Scientologists have been able to come up with. I don't condone death threats, which apparently they got on their 1-800 line, but they couldn't get the five people who did that. And if you were clever enough to run this Ion Cannon program through a proxy (which, honestly, should be a default option, script kiddies), you were gonna get away scot-free. This is a huge deal, that the Scientologists, who have all this money and power, are basically now impotent.
And that's just the start of it. The movie shows how some hackers basically set up old school IRC and modem lines for Egypt when their government shut it down. Basically, it's now impossible for a government to completely close the lines of communication, no matter how hard they try, even if they're machine gunning down people in the streets. It's truly amazing.
Unfortunately the movie ended with the whole "occupy ***" thing, which I'm sure a year ago actually looked real. But with all these other Anonymous "movements" there was an actual goal in sight. I understand the Occupy kids were mad, or unemployed and sick of it, but it seems like the Occupy kids were merely allied with Anonymous, not actually utilizing the power of Anonymous. Which is understandable - people on 4chan either have jobs or at the least have computers in their parents' basement, not really the same exact people in the Occupy movement. So that sort of annoyed me, including that footage of a movement in which nothing actually moved.
And then I went to see The Perks of Being A Wallflower, based on the book of the same name. Well, loosely based, like most books made into movies, but I rather enjoyed it. Although they kept the same music references from 2000, which made the soundtrack basically my college years. I wasn't sure if that was just the writers being lazy at first, but I think it was. I don't actually believe that the youth of today listens to '80s music. I didn't believe it in 10 Things I Hate About You either.
But as a painful reminder of being a teenager that listens more than talks, it accomplished that goal, oh yes it did. Watching the one you want with someone who treats them like crap. All this painful horrible teenage angst, along with the thrill of not knowing what the night will bring, something wonderful, something poignant, the movie brings it all there. It's a nostalgia-fest for anyone who was a teenager in the '90s, and probably before and after. (I mean, I wasn't, so I don't know. I just know that music is powerful as hell for me, and the Smiths put me there.)
Anyway, very emotional, evocative of not just the misery, but also the hope, that being a teenager entails. I mean, I think most of us had rough years, but there was hope too, even if it was mostly after we got out of our house. There's a lot of sympathy for Charlie's pain, but there's also the cautious optimism that things actually are going to be good for him. Despite the fact that he still has THREE MORE YEARS of high school...
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Date: 2012-10-04 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 09:12 pm (UTC)my point was more that that's only the latest scandal of his, though, and they all kind of blur into each other since they're so similar...
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Date: 2012-10-04 09:15 pm (UTC)I had someone BRINGING ME DIAMONDS. TRUE STORY. Then my brother threatened him with a baseball bat. I miss city life.