[corysama]

I saw a good talk by someone who worked on the TV series. He mentioned that the writers were big fans of American cop dramas. They wanted to make a cop drama where the cops happen to be cyborgs. Not a sci-fi that happened to feature cops.

Anyway, much agreed. I think GitS:SAC is a much better predictive commentary than Black Mirror (of which I am also a fan). IHMO, it predicted Anonymous much better than I think most techies understand Anonymous today.

[igrekel]

Interesting, I used to think of the comparison between Anonymous and the "knights" in Serial Experiment Lain but now that you mention it, I now remember parts of it but feel I need to rewatch standalone complex.

[Blackthorn]

I don't think that comparison really holds...the Knights were basically what religion taken to its logical conclusion would be in a world where belief actually did impact reality and veracity of information. I think that's a lot more subtle and deeper than Anonymous.

Honestly that's a really interesting theme and I wish it was examined more in other stories but cyberpunk and even post-cyberpunk is basically dead.

[corysama]

Lain's "Knights" is closer to what Anonymous is portrayed to be. What SAC covers is closer to what Anonymous is.

[crucialfelix]

I would say that a Stand Alone Complex is emergent behavior. The participants do not need to be conscious that there are others or even willing to be a part of it. Anonymous is at most an echo of this style but its not organized like that.

[nfbush]

Tenuous, Anonymous is just a mask to get yourself media attention where Knights had organisation and skill. The only similarity I see is that people who associate with both groups use technology in attempt for social change.

[neltnerb]

I'd never thought about that connection, but I think the specific comparison is to the first series' "Laughing Man".

http://ghostintheshell.wikia.com/wiki/Laughing_Man

"'The Laughing Man' became something of a pop culture obsession for a time, much to the chagrin of the actual Laughing Man—the irony being that since everybody used his icon and name for their own purposes, the original meaning of his actions, an artful forced confession of the truth through fear in the public eye, became 'phony' itself. The effort to stand for and demand the truth was also lost forever."

That's so similar to how I at least understand Anonymous to exist that it's sends some chills up my spine. The things done in the name of Anonymous are all practically verbatim "Stand Alone Complex" type scenarios where there's not really a leader driving anything, but the interplay of "The Media", individual goals and interests, and a pseudonym to take credit all work towards the creation of a self-sustaining identity utterly independent to the original inspiration.

[digi_owl]

I can't shake the feeling that the media attention to Anonymous is what has given us this upsurge of "trolling" in recent years.

Meaning that people employ variations of Anon tactics, as reported by the media, against people and groups for the flimsiest of reasons.

[fl0wenol]

It used to be hard to discredit someone or their ideas; you had to have resources to make an idea seem grass roots or fund agent provacteurs.

Now we have trolling, sock puppetry, link echo chambers, and other mechanisms that attack our tendencies of contributing in social networks that make it easy for even a single individual with nothing but disdain and time to derail or discredit if sufficiently motivated.

It isn't Anonymous, but the penetration of internet and social network into everyday life that makes these tactics more effective than ever, and so anyone with a spare five minutes and a chip on their shoulder can froth the waters; they don't have to be living in their mothers' basement and have a file called "my_hidden_agenda.txt" on their Desktop.

[phaus]

That makes sense. Anonymous started as trolls. In the beginning, it was for the lulz. There was actually a good amount of infighting when they started becoming interested in social activism. This infighting persisted up until at least 2013.

[tripzilch]

> this upsurge of "trolling" in recent years.

Why would you say there has been an upsurge in trolling recently?

I'm not disagreeing per se, but the amount (and type) of trolling you see on your daily web browse is one of those things that heavily depends on the particular filter bubble you live in.

If you were to ask me, personally I observe way less trolling than back in the day, but I wouldn't call that a general trend cause I know it's just the part of the web I see.

There's one thing maybe (but again it might just be a function of the things I like to look at), is that a whole bunch of different trolling techniques that would have been considered "creative" or "highly original", most of them related to culture-jamming/subversion (in a very broad sense), memetics, or absurdism/surrealism, are not quite as "special" any more and routinely employed by (young) people for fun on media like Tumblr, etc.

[nfbush]

Anonymous has always been romanticized. The reality is that the original people who used that mask didn't care all too much, the image board community that formed it and it's early actions couldn't be more distant than what idealists have claimed it's identity as. At it's root's Anonymous was a shared identity for people who made Swastikas in Habbo hotel and other such raids having fun with the internet.

[clevernickname]

I think what corysama is getting at is that the "mantle of edgy script kiddies" Anonymous is very different from the "human flesh search engine" Anonymous.

[Jd]

Anyone know if the "Knights" use lambda calculus? If so I don't think they are that similar to Anon. Knights seem more like a hacker elite where as Anon is more like a flash mob.

[pdkl95]

Lain explicitly references the Knights of the Lambda Calculus.

https://lain.wiki/wiki/Knights_of_the_Eastern_Calculus

[angersock]

SAC had probably my favorite portrayl of a chatroom on the net.

[cvwright]

That's great! I always thought of SAC as "cyberpunk Law and Order". It's fun to hear that that was actually the intention.

[0max]

>it predicted Anonymous much better than I think most techies understand Anonymous today.

Simulacra is an ouroboros

[kbenson]

That makes a lot of sense, and it probably helped quite a bit in figuring out the series. The core of a cop's job and the crimes committed will remain essentially unchanged as time progresses, barring some upheaval in the social structure, but the method of the crime and the tools at their disposal will change. By leaving one thing the same and focusing on the rest, that grounds them in a way that makes it easy to immediately relate while also allowing them to explore interesting facets of a possible future.

[melloclello]

I always thought SAC was a little like Law and Order: SVU but with cyborgs