On Saturday, notorious Internet shenanigans-pullers LulzSec abruptly put a halt to the weeks of seemingly arbitrary muckraking it’s been unleashing onto the web for the past few weeks. In a note posted to Pastebin, naturally, the group explained that their “planned 50 day cruise has expired,” adding that they “must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.”
My first thought upon hearing this was that it made me even more convinced that the group has been some sort of double agent all along, wreaking havoc on the Internet at the urging of someone, the America government perhaps, in order to entice lawmakers into cracking the regulatory whip on the web. I’m not one to go much for conspiracy theories, but that one made a bunch of sense to me.
Here’s more from Saturday’s odd statement…
For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.
While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn’t that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.
Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.
Again, this all just seems to me like it was driven by an agenda to create panic over how vulnerable we, our government and our institutions are via the web. Can’t you just see some decrepit old fossil politician now taking to the floor of the Senate to argue, “These recent hacker attacks demonstrate how badly we need to reign in the Internet…these kids are out of control and must be stopped!” With that said, some LulzSec members may still be out there hacking it up, because once a gangsta, always a gangsta, right?