Anonymous

Co-existence has created a fucking monster.

For far too long Encyclopedia Dramatica has gone without proper information regarding the Anonymous collective, mainly due to the fact that, for years, such a write-up was completely unnecessary. These were the ages when Anonymous was simply the army of /b/, an anarchistic troll force with a slight touch of moralfaggotry that progressively grew stronger. Today, the masses know Anonymous as "a hacktivist collective" that, through means of packets (read: LOIC), protesting, and web defacement work to defend and preserve such ideologies as free speech, freedom of the press, etc. At the same time, news stories occasionally float up detailing 4chan campaigns to bring grief to grieving families, or send pop stars to communist nations. Any reader looking to inquire knowledge on such people, and with a solid lack of e-culture knowledge, would now be asking themselves questions that can broadly be placed under the what, who, and why categories.

To better answer these, this article has thus been rewritten so that the Jews at Know Your Meme are no longer the only entity with "credible information" regarding the elevation and accomplishment (for better or worse, depending on point of view) of Anonymous.

What?

The easiest of these puzzles to solve would be "what is Anonymous".

Anonymous is simply a loose coalition of anybody who chooses to be Anonymous.

A brief history of Anonymous

The word "Anonymous" originated from the *chan scene, which most readers probably know by now.