mm. daylight

So I came home last night, ate dinner, wrapped up in a blanket to watch tv and woke up at seven ten this morning.

Seriously. I don't even know what's going on with my body these days.

Fannish Quotes

Because one day I want a fannish metaquotes community, so until then, I will make my own fun.

From eleveninches:
Sure, it was funny the first few times, but I don't get how this trope has managed to last so long. Shouldn't fandom have moved on by now to, say, sex with non-humanoid aliens or weird kinks that make everyone uncomfortable?
--on genderfuck, livejournal

Someone make me a community of fannish metaquotes. Please? I don't want to do it myself, but I would totally be supportive, in that way I will occasionally say I SUPPORT YOU! I would also like to have god like moderator powers and no actual responsibility and tribute. And a pony.

Yeah. One day. It'll totally happen.

Social Activism and the Internet

What's a DDoS the RL equivalent of in the wide and wonderful family of social protest?

It's a funny question for me, because I think most of us kneejerk hate with a kind of ferocity that we don't get from seeing picketers around a store, petshop, church, social protest site, etc. Mostly because all of us gathered in tiny miserable balls at greatestjournal and wrote really sad porn together until the way and the light of Livejournal showered down upon us again. And I was totally on AIM with whoever would talk to me, fighting back tears and, wait, did you ever notice you can have an attack of crying and still communicate clearly and without spitting on anyone?

Hmm. Not what I meant to say. But it's true.

So I was thinking about the flexibility of protest in the real world (sit ins, meetings, protests, hunger strikes (questionable legality?), letter writing, faxing, etc etc etc) and how very little of that is actually possible on the internet.

Now, something else--I have absolutely no cred in this. I am not and never have been mistaken for any kind of social protester. I don't eat veal; I mean, that's it, and only because no one served it. The WGA strike isn't the first time I did a monetary form of supportive protest, but it's probably the one that's lasted the longest, because so many people I care about are directly affected. I was not raised by people with that kind of activism. I have not actually ever been in any kind of meeting room and/or facility in which any group of people planned anything protesting anything at all. I wasn't raised with it as a social norm. I do not internalize any of this. Except so far as to look and wonder what it's like to have this so powerful a part of your identity that you carry it everywhere.

So I guess I'm curious on this, those of you with traditions of activism, who carried signs and marched in protest; how is it translated to the internet? This isn't the worst we can do, any of us; we don't have to hack the pentagon to bring down the internet, and it's all nonviolent at that.

I'm almost sure I'm thinking about this too hard; I take comfort from teh fact someone, somewhere, will doubtless have Social Activism on the Interent as their thesis and then I can just read that. Link plz?

Comments

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

One day there will be SGA skullfucking fic, and then I'll regret ever saying that.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*bites lip* I'm waiting for Wraith-corpse-fucking. Which technically, Lost Boys can make a definite argument for.

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

You know, it's the equivalent of, not picketing, but blockading. The kind of protest where people chain themselves to the courthouse gate and try to keep everyone from getting in or out, or moreover, the kind of unpermitted march that blocks off downtown and everyone else who needs to get downtown to pick their kid up from daycare is royally pissed off. I believe this kind of blocking-off-city-center protest happened in San Francisco during the start of the war? I could be wrong.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Good comparison. I couldn't quite get a connection with normal picketing, but blockade sounds about right.

[ratcreature]

Well, mostly the groups I know use the internet to coordinate, also to publish alternate versions of events, like all mainstream media portray your groups as violent hooligans torching cars for no reason (even regardless of whether there were any burning cars), there is some power in getting your side of the story out there, i.e. on Indymedia and such. I've also seen more art project kind of things, like installations trying to garner attention for a topic or cause.

But I've also seen DDoS attack campaigns before, though they never really worked that effectively, like campaigns against airlines who regualrly deport refugees and sometimes these deportations happen to kill the deportees through the use of restraints and such, I remember attempts to crash the airline sites to coincide with demonstrations against that practice, mostly because too few people really participated.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

But I've also seen DDoS attack campaigns before, though they never really worked that effectively, like campaigns against airlines who regualrly deport refugees and sometimes these deportations happen to kill the deportees through the use of restraints and such, I remember attempts to crash the airline sites to coincide with demonstrations against that practice, mostly because too few people really participated.

*nods* That makes sense. I'm wondering if the surprise of this one in so many media areas is due to the fact it's not been *used* enough for this before, and oddly, I kind of wonder why it hasn't. If nothing else, I think those following this are becoming a lot more aware of what can be done on the internet other than be an endless source of porn and political commentary. Mostly, we categorize those who cause interrupts of service like this as "bad", but we don't necessarily categorize people who RL protest that way, so--I mean, an interesting thought is that the DDoS may actually become a legitimate form of social protest, not just something hackers do for kicks, because from what I can see, pretty much anyone with some time and the correct software can do it, and in a good size group, do it well.

[ratcreature]

Well, most of the social activism groups I know are rather small. And well a couple of dozen people can block things and make themselves seen in RL, but you need a lot more to DDoS a large website, especially if you want to go it down for longer than ten minutes or so so that things are truly disrupted. And the larger a group is the harder it is to get radical actions.

Also, while I'm sure you can set up software as to not risk being persecuted for eventual damages, it is hard to gauge that risk for non-technical people if you install something that goes beyond manually visiting a website. There is more experience with the risks you take with established forms of protests, and also training for that. I mean, if you are say in a anti-G8 group and decide to participate in say a camp that does blockades, there's workshops how to do that, minimizing the risk to yourself, and training in strategies (personally I've always been too wimpy to participate in things that are likely to get me beat up by police, I have to admit), but even on a lower involvement level, say just a plain protest march, there'll be flyers to with numbers whom to call if you get arrested, how to act, how to organize yourself in groups so that you have witnesses should you be singled out, all this stuff. But who knows what'll happen if they declare you a "cyber terrorist"? there's less precedence.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Tech knowledge would have to be a large part of it; the 23 rules of conduct in a protest would need to have an internet equivalent, wouldn't they? And the base knowledge of what you're doing and how--I was wondering, with chanology, about the ability to idetnify the computers myself.

[eschaton-redux.livejournal.com]

I would call DDoS attacks violent; they're just not violent in the physically harmful context. They're violent in a psychological one. Take the DDoS on livejournal: that was an attack that denied a large group of people access to their accounts, many of which contain immensely personal creations their authors consider as part of their identity. The DDoS against CoS is analogous--it is a direct attack on a ... organization that as has been seen in the past is fiercely territorial and possessive of "mere" ideas, to the point of attacking fair use. The DDoS goes beyond fair use of content to deliberate abuse and of course, denial.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be a cyber equivalent of a blockade or even forcing a particular store not to carry a certain product? Granted, they can be used for good or evil, but since the purest forms don't actually allow destruction of the physical computer system (though from what I read, it *could* do that), I'm not sure it would fall under truly violent. Mostly because the internet has a differnet inflexibility; ie, picketing a place in RL is easier than picketing a particular *site*.

Actually, I"m not sure *how* you'd picket a particular website. Email taking the place of letter writing campaigns, overloading a bulletin board, faxing, but the physical equivalents aren't as easy to translate over.

[eschaton-redux.livejournal.com]

I see it more as an attack on identity, I suppose, and less of a blockade. If you wanted to blockade a site as such, you could simply hack the site and make it unusable. Of course, you could also hack to change the content of the site in some fundamental way as to serve the same identity-attack purpose. (The internet is a many splendored thing.) In the end, picketing and maintaining a DDoS both rely on stamina.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*thoughtful* I think hacking falls close to violence than the DDoS, but that could be just me; the internet has a lot of new definitions and implications in those kinds of actions. Interesting.

[slodwick.livejournal.com]

I would totally be down for a fannish metaquotes!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Start it! *EAGER*

[slodwick.livejournal.com]

Should it, um... have a "clever" name? Like, "fannish_metaquote" or "overheard_fandom"?

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i like the second on a lot!

and i love the idea :)

[eschaton-redux.livejournal.com]

I second the second.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I like the second one!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

where is it???????

I am a child of the internet. I *expect* instant gratification! *grins*

[slodwick.livejournal.com]

DAMN CHILD.

overheardfandom!

Now, because I'm a sucker for aesthetics, I have to make it pretty. *works*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Can I advertise it now?

*BOUNCEBOUNCEBOUNCE*

[slodwick.livejournal.com]

Dude, I still have to make it pretty and set up the rules, but if you really want to tell folks, have at. :)

[greyhat.livejournal.com]

I love creativity in my favorite fandoms, but still, genderfuck will NEVER get old for me. I read them all, unless they suck too much for me to comprehend the plot. Am I one of the lame ones? I don't actually perpetrate the sex-change fic. Hrm.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

You may well know this already, but I didn't -- it seems that Anonymous's attack on Scientology comes after a less-well-reported-on attack by the same people on a number of feminist sites. http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/misogyny-bares-its-teeth-on-internet/2007/08/20/1187462171087.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

I have a pretty strong negative reaction to DDoS attacks even when I think the target is a bad one, I agree, and I'm finding it hard to articulate just why I will give real world protests more leeway (though not a huge lot more, actually) -- maybe just because real world protesters are putting something on the line, literally, and because they can't use tech to turn a small group into a problem for millions. But I have class soon and not enough time to think!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I'm still torn on the ethics of a DDoS, mostly because a lot of the RL activities in activism simply don't have an equivalent online. And also because--well, I hate to say I'm bowing to the inevitable, but this method is the inevitable. It's easy, the newest Internet user could figure out how to do it in five minutes or less (all I needed was to understand what it *did* to figure out the method).

It's--hmm. I really don't know, to be honest.

What's a 'trope'?

[philexos.livejournal.com]

The second I click 'post' it'll come to me, but if I don't... it won't. Go figger.