Anonymous versus Scientology - Pittsburgh Edition

An interesting thing happened in Pittsburgh yesterday: thirty or forty nerds (of both genders) stood up from their computers and walked, drove or used public transportation to get to the local office of the Church of Scientology. There, in below freezing temperatures, they stood in masks, hats, sunglasses and coats, and peacefully protested the tactics employed by the Church of Scientology in suppressing information about its beliefs and practices.

However, these were no ordinary nerds, and this was no isolated, easily ignored protest. The protesters were members of internet strike force Anonymous, a group that sprung up out of some of the least censored places of information exchange on the internet: the *chan family of boards. The boards, which include the notorious 4chan, serve as a home to one of the internet's most vibrant, rapid-paced, bewildering, brutal and intellectually incestuous cultures. Serving as houses of exchange for images as well as ideas, they are the secret forges in which lolcats were forged and the breeding grounds in which memes exponentiate.

Anonymous emerged as a kind of group identity in these troubled waters, a sort of lurking presence that would have you believe they are always behind you, watching what you do, always there to mock anyone who displays overweening pride, a collective voice moving through the shadows. You see, anyone can post anonymously on one of these boards, but you never know which anonymous comments are Anonymous.

This shadowy group of forum dwellers and IRC aficionados was incensed when, on January 18th, the Church of Scientology attempted to have a certain infamous Tom Cruise video (check the tag) removed from Youtube as a copyright violation. Considering this act an act of internet censorship, Anonymous launched Project Chanology on January 21st with a video in which a synthesized voice read out the following message over intensely menacing music and time-lapsed footage of clouds:

"Hello, Scientology. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who trust you, who call you leader, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed."

The message continues, in brilliant propagandistic form, and was merely the opening move in a strategy which yesterday saw actual human beings taking to the actual streets in actual anonymity, except for the brave few who left their faces uncovered, and those who were picketing in areas where masks were prohibited. Some of those made do with hats, scarves and sunglasses. The nearest protest,as far as I'm concerned, was the one in Pittsburgh.



A friend of mine, who we're going to call Jordan Edwards*, was able to make it to the scene. He took the pictures you're seeing, and had this to say: "Besides the fact that it was a protest, everything seemed pretty cordial. No one was shouting anything, they were just waving signs and talking politely to the people who stopped or honked their horns."


*The illegitimate son of John Edwards. Yes, this is a pseudonym. Somewhat.

The rest of the pictures depict similarly peaceful scenes, which seem to have been a general theme for the day, with protesters apparently enjoying themselves. There was an incident in Hollywood where a Scientologist woman apparently approached, heckled, and then assaulted protesters before being dragged back into the Scientology compound and subsequently arrested. I find it infinitely amusing that, as she approaches and attempts to provoke hostility, Anonymous begin to chant, "Don't feed the troll!"

I think this is the first time we've seen an internet subculture become actively involved in protesting organizations or events in the real-world that do not directly threaten them. Certainly, it's the first time an internet subculture has organized global protests of an organization in under three weeks.

Pundits and traditional journalists have frequently disparaged the internet generation for writing about things on their blog, but not taking action in the real world. Events like this, which remind me of flash mobs (or, more accurately, smart mobs) on a global scale, make me wonder if we're just still figuring out how to best arrange such displays.

It's something to keep an eye on.

The Internet on Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise: Scientologist.

I'd like to apologise for my failure to be offended by the Tom Cruise Scientology video. I should remember that when the States were a series of colonies, we were an experiment in religious tolerance: that the most absurd, most conservative religious sects of Europe were deposited here, and that our national tendency towards superstitious, hateful evangelism is a direct result. Although I should have noticed by now that tolerance of any kind is clearly a terrible idea, I seem to keep doing it anyway. I'll never learn. I'm deeply sorry.

I'm also entirely wrong about all of this because, as many of my fellow nerds will, I think, agree, I don't find a religion based on the writings of a science fiction author to be all that strange. Last night I had a dream in which Storm and Beast appeared to me as gods, and Marvel isn't even my preferred universe.

Being a fool, I think that most of what Tom Cruise says doesn't seem particularly crazy, simply enthusiastic. Which is what happens to most people who find a faith, rather than being born into one. The person who can see that this thing they found, simultaneously incomprehensibly ancient and brand new, this thing that really works, that makes such perfect sense, is the correct thing for them, rather than the correct thing, full stop, is exceptionally rare.

When he sounds a bit off, it seems less a result of the religion itself, and more because he, as an individual, is a smug bastard. My favourite parts of the video are the late remembrance that Scientologists can be female, as opposed to being Tom Cruise, and the hesitation before saying "us" when clearly he'd been thinking "I".

I suppose you're intimidated by the flashes of culthood. Complete compliance is demanded! You must not be a spectator: take action! Bring more people to the truth! Alas, I seem to lack the tools to be sufficiently intimidated by this. Having endured thirteen years of religious education for two different religions, both of which I stopped following by the age of thirteen, I seem to have developed the notion that people are intelligent and strong and usually can't be made to believe things they don't want to believe. Could Tom Cruise make you a Scientologist? Did he? No.

The element of the video that I find to be disturbing is the simple fact that Scientology is, of course, exploitative and charges people for enlightenment and knowledge. This is despicable. Tom Cruise's first words in the video, "I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it's something that you have to earn," is nought but a sales pitch.

Of course I don't think that people should have to pay in order to feel sane or healthy, to rise in a hierarchy, to gain knowledge. This is why I also distrust privatised health care, weight loss programs, Louis Vuitton, and academia. Yet again, Scientology fails to bother me. I've grown far too accustomed to tolerating capitalism.

In which we Become a Celebrity News Blog

So how about all this Tom Cruise hullabaloo? All the moral vindication of mourning Heath Ledger without all the dulling "I'm a hollow husk of a human being" side-effects of placing idle bets as to when Britney's gonna shuffle off, sans culottes, into the ether. But this whole Scientology business? With Anonymous's's "threatening" youtube video? In response to Tom Cruise's's flipping out over his spf or whatevs? What is up with that? Is there some kind of turf war? Has the internet gone all Warriors? That would be awesome. FUN MINI GAME: DESIGN THE ELEVENNAMES GANG OUTFIT.
I am uncomfortable, though, with the idea of a bunch of people essentially terrorizing a slightly legitimate religion, in much the same way I am uncomfortable with the Westboro Baptist Church being criminalized. I wouldn't mind too much, of course, but it sets a dangerous precedent that we as a culture would inevitably fuck up to justify whatever kind of skullfuckingly inhuman atrocity our most deviant minds can come up with.

So, I mean, can we just get along? Maybe? No?

The real problem I have with the whole scientology thing that's out there is Tom Cruise. It's a testament to the man's celebrity power that when he acts like an idiot, people stand up and take notice. John Travolta and Kirstie Allie (and maybe Will Smith?) cannot arouse this level of interest and attention in popular media, because they seem too wholesome or well-balanced. No, it takes a truly disturbed and charismatic individual to peak our interests, as any internet satanist (or even worse, aforementioned Westboro Baptists, whom I despise too much to even link) everywhere will tell you.

It's the tyranny of our own sick fascinations. Tom Cruise is a handsome man (he still looks like he did in effing Legend!), who is rich and powerful. Will Smith, Kirstie Allie, and John Travolta all have terrible flaws to them, weaknesses we use to reaffirm their human status as flawed, struggling individuals. Rich, handsome, energetic Tom Cruise exists like one of the aliens he doubtlessly worships, a strange visitor that normal humans can't quite understand. And what we do not understand we humans hate and destroy. I'd feel much better about the whole arrangement, too, if Tom Cruise were devoted to some sort of non-hateful sect of an established religion, instead of the warily litigious Church of Scientology, last seen in the public eye making South Park edit their one episode where Chef goes away. So it's easy to hate them.

The hullabaloo, then, becomes a function of a highly visible (insane) celebrity with and intensely unlikable church that relies as much on lawyers as it does on belief. Tom Cruise is the focal image, then, that we can use to view the event, much in the same way that the image of devastated african americans "looting" from a sunken grocery store is what we remember of Hurricane Katrina. Which is, of course, always inaccurate to my thinking - things are always so much more complex than our brains are wired to understand (thanks Google) for whatever reason, and that these oversimplifications are the starts of where wacky, obviously flawed rumors become agreed-upon facts. Without concrete knowledge of anything, then, it is impossible to make a rational judgement.

And we know this, as people. If you question your perceptions, everything is suspect. But that doesn't mean that we, as a culture or as an anonymous, don't take such suppositions seriously. The same sort of groupthink fever becomes widespread around elections and football games - it's just a function of our identity as human beings.

Anyway, my current identity is of "tired guy who can't write for shit today", so let's stop this where it is, and I bid you good day.