What it's like to participate in Anonymous actions

The article was written by Professor Biella Coleman, an anthropologist and professor at NYU who studies hacker culture. She's written a lot about Anonymous, 4chan and /b/ and teaches a class on the anthropology of hackers at NYU.

It's easy to understand what anonymous is if you spend some time on 4chan/b/: it's people. Some of those people try to rally more behind some cause, be it just or lulzy, and many of those leaders will fail. Occasionally, some of the anonymous people agree and form a rally, which gains steam in the same way any fad does.<p>Anonymous is pure, direct democracy: equivalent to anarchy.