Cole Stryker's new book on 4chan and Anonymous, called Epic Win for Anonymous, was only published on September 1—but the death threats, pizza deliveries, and magazine subscriptions are already rolling in. Stryker waded into 4chan's notorious /b/ board to announce his book's publication; the very first response was "Kindly kill yourself immediately." Anons have tweeted his home address, even down to the correct apartment number. And he has been signed up for every spam e-mail list on the planet.

The first rule of /b/ is that one doesn't talk about /b/, so writing a book about 4chan was unlikely to be received well, whatever its message. But Stryker takes it all in stride, telling me, "In order for Anonymous to intimidate you, you have to give them the tools to find out information." He has no naked pictures floating about, no secret blog in which he confesses his love for Cabbage Patch dolls. "The worst they can do is send me garbage in the mail," he says.

And they have. While 4channers and Anons like to believe they're a "shadowy group of merciless bastards," in Stryker's words, that illusion is shattered a bit when someone takes readers on an ethnographic journey into their heart of darkness. Stryker understands the impulse and compares it to the anger you might feel after a favorite indie band signs with a major label and your little sister plasters their posters across her room.

"I'm actually pretty sympathetic toward Anonymous in the book," he says.

The pure love of creation

That's not to downplay some of the truly heinous acts of harrassment in Anonymous history. Stryker actually began the book trying to answer a key question: "Why would somebody want to be a part of this?" 4chan's /b/ board, in particular, has been known for child pornography, adult pornography, targeting young kids for harassment, anti-social behavior of all kinds, hate speech, and just about anything else one might imagine.

But it has also been one of the strongest meme-creation points on the 'Net, spawning everything from "lolcats" to catchphrases like "epic win!" to Rickrolling. It has done so with a purity of motive, too; unlike sites like Reddit, 4chan has no karma points or reputation system. Users almost all post anonymously and many share pictures they have created. To Stryker, 4chan shows the thrill of pure creativity, the "joy of creating something interesting or funny" for others to see.

While 4chan may well live on for quite some time, Stryker has more skepticism towards Anonymous, which emerged from within 4chan's ranks. Because the movement has no real direction, it can be hard to sustain any particular political program; all it takes is some 14-year old with a plan to attack some harmless organization to discredit the group in the public's eyes. "Anyone can take up the flag of Anonymous," says Stryker. "I don't think they're ever going to be a serious force in terms of political activism—they're just too conflicted in what they want to accomplish."

Whatever the future holds for 4chan and Anonymous, both groups had better prepare for more book-length treatments of their activities. The self-published /b/: The Random Anonymity Culture And A New Direction For Anonymous appeared last year, Stryker's Epic Win has just appeared, and other books (and book proposals) are in the pipeline; I was even asked about writing a history of Anonymous in the aftermath of the group's hack into security vendor HBGary earlier this year.

Anonymous/4chan are getting the sociological treatment that, a few years back, was largely reserved for Second Life. Books like Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World, and I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life came and went. Will the fascination with 4chan and Anonymous last longer?