Hunting down Anonymous

P.E.

My first encounter with Anonymous happened in a grade 9 P.E gymnastics session. Half a dozen of us were lined up waiting to have a go at jumping over the horse. Just as I was making my approach some Anonymous bastard yelled out "Don't fuck up!", which made me lose my balance and crash headfirst into the horse. As I spat the dislodged foam from my mouth I turned around to face the culprit, only to see forty laughing faces looking back at me. I knew I had to track him down, but how? He had won this round, but the seeds he had unwittingly sewn would shape my life from that point on.

I had to out-think him, find his weakness. I knew the thrill of the last encounter would not be enough to quench his insatiable thirst for my humiliation so I decided to play along and bide my time. Sure enough, next appropriate gym encounter the same thing happened. I was distracted again mid maneuver and suffered the same humiliating fate but as I lay there on the floor I knew I could catch him. You see, he had used a different phrase this time. "Have a nice trip!". He was getting more confident, and I had a plan.

As a keen reader of Australian Computing and DSP World I had heard about the advances in Voice Recognition that were being made in parallel with the increasing power of the microprocessors of the day. While getting VR to the point of instantly recognising voices was years away, using the basics of frequency decomposition and Hidden Markov Model analysis it was relatively simple to create a crude voice recognition system capable of running on my home 486. Now all I needed was the input.

Using my father's Dictaphone and a lot of patience I was able to record Anonymous's gymnasium taunts as well as the roll call of the two combined P.E. classes. In less than a year I had obtained the necessary data to nail my nemesis. Revenge was my next challenge, and Pedro Lucas was my target.

Digging through the bins of the nearby newsagent I amassed a collection of hardcore homosexual fetish magazines. I then spent three months studying the handwriting of both Pedro and my uncaring, and in my eyes culpable, P.E. teacher Mr Parkinson. After writing a series of dated love letters with increasing levels of passion and explicitness I hid the forgeries and magazines in Mr Parkinson's desk and Pedro's school bag and locker.

The fuse to my wicked tinder keg of revenge was to leave a page of the explicit magazine hanging seemingly accidentally out of the locker. Recess came and within minutes a crowd had formed and was trying to prize the rest of the pages from Pedro's named locker. Teachers were called and the full force of my plan came into action.

From the perspective of the Police it was an open and shut case of homosexual infatuation and molestation. Mr Parkinson was charged with twelve counts of sexual assault. Pedro was given counseling for years due to his refusal to admit what had happened and, from the letters, the apparent ferocity of the abuse he endured. He attended a nearby school for a while but dropped out as soon as he was able. After a number of petty theft and assault charges he was kicked out by his parents and the last news I heard about what he was doing bore a surprising similarity to the acts of depravity I had forged in my letters.

The McDonald's Incident

The next tale of my battle with Anonymous brings us forward in time to 1998. I was in the third year of my degree and had taken a job at McDonald's a few years earlier to pay for my studies. By now I had risen the burger ranks to Assistant Manager and on ever increasing weeknights I had managerial control of the store. Taking my duties seriously I emptied out the suggestion box at the end of every night and read the responses, if any.

Usually the comments ranged from the constructive 'service too slow' types to the childish but harmless 'Mary on drive-thru is hot' or penis depiction types. Around March of that year though things began to change. A new note writer, an Anonymous note writer, had appeared and he was getting personal. I am paraphrasing the notes below but they give you an idea of what I encountered.

"Enjoy your McLife loser"

"Did Daddy touch you too much McLoser? Get a real job"

"Ninety percent of McDonald's managers use meth to dull the pain of their futile existence"

When I got the last one something snapped. This guy was deliberately aiming these at me. I asked around at the managers weekly meeting and no-one else had seen anything like this in their suggestion haul. It was clear he was attacking me, and in a few months it got clearer. The vitriolic attacks became more and more personal until there were comments on everything from my haircuts to my selection of badges. The rage I had not felt since high school suddenly reappeared and it was game on.

The suggestion box was located on the side wall and had openings both inside the store and in the drive-thru lane. Our camera system only covered the main areas so Anonymous was free to drop notes as he pleased. I mulled over my approach for weeks. Finally deciding that once again mathematics could come to my rescue.

Statistics more specifically. I started emptying the box three times a night and secretly copying the drive-thru order records. The notes were seemingly random in frequency but usually no more than two a week. By day I went to Uni, by night I worked and by early mornings I analysed my records. At first there was nothing, then slowly a weak pattern appeared. Banana milkshakes were 12% more likely to appear on nights a note was dropped. No pickle cheeseburgers were 26%. I was on to something, I just needed more data.

Then the unthinkable happened. The notes started dropping off. For a whole week there was nothing, then the next Monday a half hearted "You suck" appeared then nothing for another week. I started to panic. The patterns were getting clearer but my dataset was nowhere near large enough to make a positive match. Then I had an idea. I posted the following above the note slot the next night.

"Please make your comments constructive. Abusive notes are not appreciated"

It was like a red rag to a bull. The notes I was looking for reappeared, along with some other random abuse of course but by this stage I could recognise Anonymous' handwriting like it was my own. After a few months, and a few more carefully worded note-box messages, my dataset was ready.

I had worked out it was an 86% chance that if someone ordered a no-pickle cheeseburger and a Fanta between 6:30 and 8:30pm on a monday then it was my man. I was ready, now for the revenge.

Using my access to the University's medical training hospital I started collecting samples. Unfortunately, infectious pathogens are not as easy to get hold of as you may think and after two weeks I only had samples of Hepatitis C, Legionnaires' disease and Salmonella. It would have to do. Salmonella was the key here, because it would enable me to prove my selection process and determine if I had just infected an innocent person.

Monday came around and with it was an excitement I had not felt in years. My concoction of revenge was concealed in a small needleless syringe and it took every bit of my finesse not to look suspicious as I hung around the order monitors. Finally at quarter to eight the magical order came through. I spilled an unattended thick-shake on the floor and order a packer to clean it up while I dispensed the germs and handed the order to the drive-thru attendant.

It was a nervous few days while I waited to see if I had hit the right person, but sure enough, there were no notes that week. No notes the next week, and when I left a year later there was no sign of my Anonymous enemy. I sometimes wish I had looked in the window to catch a glimpse of my attacker, but I think it just makes the victory sweeter to let him remain Anonymous and beaten.

The Blogosphere

The final story brings us closer to the present. The blog age had appeared and I embraced it like a Irishman does a dawn whiskey. By 2006 I had carved out a decent niche in the political blog world and was receiving respectable praise from like minded politco-bloggers. Then he struck.

I suppose I left myself open to it by not requiring registration to post but my misguided love of free speech blinded me and I still had my un-jaded heart so I let them post. Nazis, Nationalists, Vegetarians, Christians, my blog was open to all and sundry, but then the posts from one particular commenter became less about what I had written and more an outright attack on my person.

Again the rage resurfaced. It had remained dormant for so long it was like a past life and I had almost forgotten about the lives I had ruined previously. I tried to fight my instincts, I tried to reason. It was for naught. Weeks and countless comments passed and I realised I had to act. Same old story, find Anonymous first and revenge will follow.

But I was facing a whole new medium here. This was a completely Anonymous internet commenter. How in the world could I find this man? The answer lay in patience... and the stalker's paradise that is Google. Egging the poster on I collected as many comments as I could in order to analyse the writing style. I then dropped subtle questions in order to elicit as much information as I could from Anonymous and gradually build up a profile of my attacker.

Months passed and I grew closer to my prey. A few phrases stood out and indicated this man was from the west coast of the US. Still not nearly enough to use. I then started a petty battle of insults that unwittingly tricked our man into revealing much more than he would have liked. It was the phrase "you cuntish dickwizard" that stood out the most. A quick Google turned out that it was a recent creation from a thread on the forum SomethingAwful and was posted no less than a week before he used it on my blog. I had a lead, and post style cross-matching lead me to forum user CrashTestDubya.

His profile gave me nothing but his post history lead me to a YouTube video he posted last year. The contents of the video are unimportant (a dog barking in time to Metallica) but the blurb of the video suggested this was his account, namely JacksonBollock. The user profile listed a myspace page under the name of Jack Boule. It was my man.

His myspace account was blocked to all but friends so I created an account using a suitable nerdy sexy girl pic from NerdySexyGirls.com and friended him. Knowing he was from the west coast I made my location San Francisco and wrote on his page. Soon I had his AIM and got his home city and name, then the whitepages gave me his address.

From there I accessed the sex-offender registry in his area and found some particularly nasty ex-cons who lived nearby. After finding a suitable candidate I tailored a craigslist add to the 'gentlemen's' preferences and added some photoshopped pics based on some photos from his flickr account. I then found Mr Prison-Rape's email and sent him the ad, BCC'ing Anonymous' girlfriend from his facebook. He responded immediately and within hours was on his way to Anonymous' house, a rapidly emptying bottle of tequila and a dildo the size of your forearm his reported only companions.


It was over, but something was wrong. I had spent months in my search for this man, yet, in the destruction of his relationship and possible arse virginity I had somehow lost my way. I had let it consume my life. It was almost like I had let him get to me. I vowed then and there to never take a hurtful troll seriously again. For the sake of my soul I have decided to let things go now instead of getting all worked up about them and trying to destroy others lives, because, let's face it, besides the lives of the half-dozen people I have mentioned, the only life I was really destroying was my own.

It's just not worth it.