KISS bassist Gene Simmons—a man willing to parade around stages dressed up like "The Demon" while singing songs about sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll—isn't a man best known for the subtlety (or consistency) of his thought. In a 2007 interview, while explaining why file-sharing had killed music, Simmons said he wasn't going back into the studio because no one would pay for the tunes he creates. His very next sentence: "I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called Monster—a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year."

But threatening the Internet vigilantes of Anonymous with prison rape might be a new low, even for Simmons. Unless, of course, Simmons' true genius is simply calling attention to himself; in that case, he succeeded again spectacularly this weekend. Anonymous repaid his comments with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that has taken Simmons' website offline.

Spectator sport



It's hard to know who's the bigger asshat here. On the one hand, Anonymous has spent the last few weeks cyber-attacking everyone from the RIAA to the law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver to the UK government's Intellectual Property Office. The group's manifesto—"For this, you will be held accountable before the people, and you will be punished by them. We will not stop. We will not forget. We will prevail. We are anonymous"—could serve as the dictionary definition of "puerile." Leaders have said they will continue until they stop "being angry" as they try to change the world "OUTSIDE the basement."

And yet—they're going after Gene Simmons. Gene Simmons. This is the guy who told Billboard in 2007 that "every little college kid, every freshly scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask."

In 2008, Simmons threatened the world with a lack of new KISS material because the fans have "decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we're going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we'll record new material."

And earlier this year, Simmons returned to the idea of suing everyone in sight. "Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars," he said at the MIPCOM conference. The music biz "didn't have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we're left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There's no industry."

Given this history of statements, Simmons was targeted by some Anonymous members over the weekend. When his site came back online, Simmons uploaded a provocative new statement (archived by Slyck; the main site is still down).

Some of you may have heard a few popcorn farts re: our sites being threatened by hackers. Our legal team and the FBI have been on the case and we have found a few, shall we say "adventurous" young people, who feel they are above the law. And, as stated in my MIPCOM speech, we will sue their pants off. First, they will be punished. Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend. We will soon be printing their names and pictures. We will find you. You cannot hide. Stay tuned

In response to the message, Anonymous launched a new, collective assault on the site, taking it down again, and one can reasonably assume that more headaches lie in Gene Simmons' future.

The two sides clearly enjoy the attention (Anonymous is even tracking mentions of its DDoS campaign in the news media). And despite their obvious dislike of one another, there's a real similarity in their juvenile, attention-seeking public statements. ("They will be punished," / "You will be punished by them." "We will find you. You cannot hide" / "We will not stop. We will not forget.")

Still, of the two, only Gene Simmons had the "family jewels" to really man up and threaten some anonymous Internet vigilantes with prison rape—after he has sued away their homes and cars, presumably. Stay classy, Gene—and bask in the knowledge that you're a bigger assclown than some Internet punks who specialize in assclownery.