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Well kittens, it’s been almost a full week since r/Anonymous got a surprise makeover. On Sunday, August 23 it suddenly turned from a boringly respectable space for the latest in Faceless Do-Goodery Hive news into The Furry Pad, a candy-coloured Comic Sans-bedecked furry sex subreddit, and since then there’s been no going back. Backdoor, maybe.

One of the moderators spoke to us about the change, on the condition we not specifically identify them. The mods list hasn’t changed: greggh, asderferjerkel, FVanon, Sethdood, Ramona Little, NinjaNetizen, SaraByAccident, and Tuxedage. Some or all of them were in on it, as we soon learned.

This grand transformation didn’t spring fully-formed overnight, this moderator told us. It took years of irritation, but finally that itch needed to be scratched. Or skritched. Whatever.

“Ever seen the movie Black Death?” he asked us. “It was a small German-made movie where Sean Bean dies and some pre-teen monk gets severe PTSD watching it. Then he becomes a witchfinder and burns people alive in the last 30 seconds of the movie. I’m the monk.”

The plan to transform the subreddit was hatched with another such monk, and naturally alcohol may have been a factor.

“I met up with another mod at a bar who was visiting my hometown for work, and we finally hatched what we had always considered our ‘Gotterdammerung’; one big giant fuck you to the 50-odd moralfags that have been whining on our channel for the past 2+ years and the 27,950~ spambots, dead accounts and zero-days we call subscribers. As soon as it was voiced we were giggling like retards. Total of an hour’s worth of planning. Then Sunday happened. What a glorious day it was.”

Tensions have long simmered between the moderators and the more social justice, campaign-style of Anonymous supporters who used the subreddit.

No actual hacking or techno-skullduggery was involved in the transformation. “This was absolutely an internal decision that was wholeheartedly approved of afterwards by the top subreddit mod (who can always ban us all and start from zero). We did, however, change permissions for certain moralfag mods we we certain would cockblock or attempt to cockblock the changeover.”

“Everything was and is being done using only the tools Reddit gives us as moderators. HOWEVER, one has to wonder what those brigading the fuck out of the subreddit are using. Any post that goes up that is within the limitations of the new rules is downvoted to zero in under a minute. The butthurt is strong.” That hasn’t stopped them, however; people, if only via sock puppet accounts, are continuing to make furry posts in the subreddit on an ongoing basis.

“The timing was perfect because apparently we got ourselves hooked into a bandwagon of sudden subreddit changes that upset the userbase. All the really *fun* people and subreddits on reddit and voat think we’re part of some massive SJW conspiracy. I can’t believe how well this has worked. Best of all are the fucking assholes that somehow think that the original sub, full of cancerous moralfaggotry, was acceptable. I have had to report people to the FBI AT LEAST SEVEN FUCKING TIMES in a year and a half because they bragged about something extremely illegal they did or wanted to do and I didn’t feel like being subpoenaed or detained because some agency thinks I supported it.”

Why do this? Why not, he told us. “Anonymous has been garbage since the second marblecake was exposed and Reddit was never good. Reddit is 4chan’s /b/ pretending to have a conscience, thinking that magical internet points mean something, and thinking that anyone gives a fuck about your opinion on the cops, or women, or anything really. Hitler was right, he was just an underachiever, and Reddit just proves Bill Hicks’ famous outburst.”

Anonymous’ amoral roots in 4chan are a long way from its crusading internet presence now, but he cautioned us not to view this as /b/ versus the white knights. “Saying this is just a continuance of the old conflict between moralfags and trolls is dishonest and claiming that this is all black and white. Politics and activism in anonymous are okay IF PLANNED AND ORGANIZED WELL. The problem is no one has really planned a moralfag op well and executed it properly in nearly 5 years now, not on a large and public enough scale to care, anyway.”

Ah, so more of a “in my day, we walked five miles to sign in to IRC” sort of thing? That the kids nowadays can’t pull off quality ops? “Everything [lately] has been based on conspiracies, half truths, extremely biased news sources, or just shit that would be plain unacceptable in the old days. The problem is one of a lack of discretion and opsec. Be all fucking gay and social justice, I don’t give a fuck, just don’t put out a 40 minute video about how you’re going to ‘destroy’ Dalhousie University because a frat got rapey. You don’t need a fucking mask or a hivemind for that.”

In the old days, “NYPA” was the rule, Not Your Private Army. Nobody deliberately tried to get the attention of Anonymous, much less Yoo-hoo’d them on Twitter to join in a pet cause, as if Anons were some kind of Internet 911 utility. “Too many people are being extremely lazy and using Anonymous as a quick and dirty recruiting tool for their individual pet causes, to crowdsource solutions to problems no one gives a shit about, or in more nefarious cases, to get lots of unskilled, free help for government operations that can quickly be denied. The last one is extremely debatable, but still worth mentioning.”

It was indeed mentioned by Jeremy Hammond in his statement released at his sentencing hearing, where he stated that under the direction of FBI informant Sabu, he and other AntiSec hackers attacked several foreign countries, countries he later realized were targeted by the FBI for political reasons.

“Use our tactics, do whatever the fuck you want, just don’t use the name. The name is only good for a handful of things, and general activism is not one of them.”

And those tactics? “All Anonymous ops by design have a shelf life. Nothing about how we operate is supposed to be prolonged or long-term. The model of a classic Anonymous raid shows ruin of the target, then finding a new target as the final step. How does that fit in with a classic protest or demonstration? At all?” So an Anonymous operation, in this interpretation, is not so much a crusade as a never-ending process.

We asked why, of all things, the mods had chosen furries as the material for this slap to Anonymous. “‘New Anonymous’ is fucking garbage. Furries are more tolerable. At least when furries have a gay orgy at a hotel they clean up after themselves and try to keep the noise down so they don’t get kicked out.”

Lastly, we asked if he had any messages for Anonymous, or for Reddit. And did he ever.

To Anonymous: Fucking die already, eat a bullet To Reddit: Fucking die already, eat a bullet

But…tell us how you really feel…

Categories: 4chan, Activism, Anonymous, DramaSec, Hackers, Hacktivism, Humor, Interviews, Media, News, Ops, Reddit, Trolling, Trolls