Scientology, the Internet, and You

I guess I've been quiet on this topic for too long now though I feel like a slowpoke for commenting on it now. If you've been reading the blog out there in cyberspace somewhere you probably already know I'm a pretty outspoken person when it comes to scams and religious nonsense and general foolishness like conspiracies and "holier-than-thou" attitudes. As such, I feel I need to write something about the current events spawned by the Internet.

Scientology has been getting a lot of press lately, especially because people love to watch Tom Cruise do stupid things. Scientology has also given us some laughs in the past like the absolutely attrocious John Travolta movie Battlefield Earth. Not everything about it is a laughing matter however. Scientology has been blamed for luring people into their group and slowly indoctrinating them, forcing them to pay more and more money to learn the secrets of the "religion" which gets more and more absurd and involves space aliens and I'll stop now because it's all been said before. In any case if you try to leave or criticize Scientology you usually find yourself on the receiving end of legal action and harassment. Their policies which include not wanting their followers to medicate themselves and their absolute hatred of psychology (they base most of these beliefs off of L.Ron Hubbard's Dianetics) has at the very least caused one death, a woman by the name of Lisa McPherson. In any case you can do your own research and make your own conclusions on what some call a religion, others call a cult, and I call a corporate enterprise.

A few weeks ago a Scientology recruitment video staring Tom Cruise was leaked onto the Internet where it was promptly made fun of. Scientology sprung into action to have this video removed and in most cases they succeeded though Gawker.com saw the video as newsworthy and decided not to remove it even after threats of legal action. This didn't really matter anyway because the video had already made its rounds and everyone saw it and parodies even made it to late night television shows. The attempt to suppress/censor the Internet however caught the attention of some people. These people are known as "Anonymous."

If you know who Anonymous is, then you have one of a few reactions to them. You're one of them, you're apathetic towards their acts, or you absolutely hate them. If you don't know who Anonymous is let me just simplify it by saying they're a loose group of people (thousands of people) from various websites who troll/grief the internet looking for amusement from it. Sometimes this comes in the form of hacking, sometimes they're more creative and prankster-like. A few of Anonymous's acts have spilled over into the real world and they've even pranked a few celebrity's like Tom Green and bankrupted the former internet radio show host and white supremacist, Hal Turner. Sometimes they have a good reason for attacking people, but most of the time that reason is because doing so will be funny. They can get away with whatever the hell they want on the Internet because they have their anonymity and there's so many of them and they know it. This makes the best way of fighting them not to fight them. Of course Anonymous is mostly comprised of college age computer geeks but they've got people all over the world of just about every race, gender, and age.

And so began Anonymous's grudge against Scientology. The opening shot was a DDOS (denial of service) attack against Scientology's website which managed to take it off line. That wasn't enough for Anonymous however and something really interesting happened. On February 10th Anonymous took to the streets in the real world, protesting the church of Scientology world-wide, donning V for Vendetta style Guy Fawkes masks in most locations to protect their anonymity while speaking out against Scientology. The crazy group of Internet griefers had manifested themselves in the real world. In only two weeks the power of Internet communication and organization had launched a worldwide campaign. This has now become a real war. Anonymous peacefully attacked every corrupt facet of the Church of Scientology all because Scientology couldn't keep Tom Cruise's giant mouth shut. The protests were peaceful and a complete success. The old-school protesters were amazed at this new army's formation over night. I have to admit, it was nice to see people in my generation stand up for something even if there are better things to protest than Scientology.

Unfortunately Anonymous is known to get bored, that is unless Scientology continues to provoke them and thus continues to make Anonymous laugh. For the first time in Scientology's history they had nothing to litigate, nothing they could counter-attack. I don't know what repercussions all of this will have, as Internet culture is a strange thing to outsiders and seeing it appear outside the Internet is nothing short of a coming cultural revolution. The Internet is changing society in the same way that television changed it before that, and radio before that. All I know is that I'll be eagerly watching.

Fight Anonymous, for everlasting peace!