Curiosity, Toxicity, and the Complexity of Being Young Online

  

There is something I need to address. The surveillance operators have been trying to build a case against me based on things I did as a teenager, things that millions of young people did, things that do not define who I am, things that have nothing to do with the person I am today.

They want to cancel me. They want to reduce me to a few websites. They want to make me into a caricature, a "4channer," a "redditor," a "Pepe," an "incel," a "killer." They want to take the worst things I have ever done, the most embarrassing phases of my adolescence, and make them the whole story of my life.

This is what the surveillance operators do. They take fragments and build a false narrative. They ignore the complexity of human existence. They forget that people grow, that people change, that people are more than the sum of their worst moments.

I am writing this to set the record straight.

How I Ended Up on Those Websites

I browsed some of these websites out of curiosity. That is the truth of it. I was a teenager, and I was curious about what people said when they thought no one was watching. I wanted to understand the outer reaches of human expression, the places where people went when they were anonymous, the things they said when they felt they could say anything.

I did not discover these websites on my own. I was introduced to them through suggestions from others in high school. I am not going to blame anyone else, I made my own choices. But in retrospect, I feel ashamed that I ever browsed these sites at all.

Youth have too much curiosity. When that curiosity is anchored in toxic spaces online, it can lead to bad trajectories. In my situation, and in many others, the best remedy was to stop going on these websites cold turkey. I have not been on them since 2023, ever since I returned from New York to Canada. I avoid them because I know how toxic and traumatizing they can be.

It is already uncomfortable enough to admit these things. But it is what it is.

What I Actually Did Online

When I was a teenager, I watched certain YouTubers, including Pewdiepie, iDubbz, Pink Guy, Leafy, H3H3, etc. I saw definitions of weird words on Urban Dictionary. I occasionally browsed Reddit and 4chan. I was a lurker, mostly on the blue boards. I was curious about what people said when they were anonymous, when they felt they could say anything. I read things with sarcasm and skepticism. I did not take most of it seriously.

I was a teenager browsing the internet, curious about the fringes of human expression, exposed to humour that was too crude, too offensive, designed to shock and traumatize.

I am not proud of this. I feel guilty about it. But my teenage curiosity was not evil. It was not proof of a dark soul. It was a young person trying to understand the world, trying to see what people thought when they thought no one was watching.

The Complexity of These Spaces

Not everyone on these websites is terrible. Sometimes you find decent, interesting people there. But I still harbour absolute embarrassment and regret about going on these sites. It was unnecessary. In retrospect, I think: why do these websites have to exist at all?

It is uncomfortable to think that decent people who lack critical thinking and brain development would go on these sites thinking they are grown up and cool, and then be traumatized afterwards. That is kind of what happened with me. Thankfully, no one can force you to go on these terrible sites. Young people should be warned to avoid these places, explaining why, how it is not cool to be traumatized or to force yourself to see scary things online.

That said, I can understand the psychology behind it. Some of the people who end up on these sites are angry, bullied, or outcast. They are looking for a place where they can get their angst and anger out, where they can find others they can at least relate to. People who have been hurt often seek out spaces where they can express their pain, even in destructive ways.

The Positive Side: What I Learned from Gabriella Coleman

Despite the toxicity, I also saw something else in these spaces. I saw the potential for whistleblowing, for activism, for people coming together to expose injustice. This is what initially drew me in. I was inspired by the book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman.

Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist who studies hacker cultures. She is now a full professor at Harvard University. Her work focuses on the politics and cultures of hacking, online activism, and communities like Anonymous and 4chan. What I found compelling about her work is that she does not simply dismiss these spaces as vile. She takes them seriously. She understands that they are complex, that they contain both terrible things and moments of genuine political significance.

How Anonymous Went After the Church of Scientology

One of the first major operations that brought Anonymous into the public eye was Project Chanology, launched in January 2008. It started when the Church of Scientology issued copyright violation claims to have an exclusive interview with Tom Cruise removed from YouTube. The removal was seen by Anonymous as an act of internet censorship.

In response, Anonymous launched what they called "Project Chanology." They began with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Scientology websites. But the movement quickly evolved. Within weeks, Anonymous shifted to legal, nonviolent methods.

On February 10, 2008, over 7,000 Anonymous members from more than 100 cities across the globe gathered in front of Scientology churches to protest. This marked the first time Anonymous organized an action that took place offline, people in Guy Fawkes masks, standing in public, demanding accountability. A second wave of protests followed on March 15, L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, drawing another 7,000 protesters worldwide.

The protests were documented constantly by participants, both to protect themselves legally and to control how their actions were represented. Anonymous also launched campaigns to expose Scientology's recruitment tactics, flagging deceptive Craigslist ads and working to inform the public about the church's practices.

How Anonymous Targeted Corporations and Government

Anonymous's activism extended far beyond Scientology. In September 2010, the group launched Operation Payback, targeting organizations that opposed file-sharing or that had cut off financial services to WikiLeaks. The targets included the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, and the law firms that had pursued legal action against The Pirate Bay.

The attacks used software called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) to flood websites with traffic until they crashed. But beyond the technical disruption, what mattered was the message: Anonymous was standing up against what they saw as corporate censorship and the financial strangulation of whistleblowers.

In December 2011, Anonymous hacked the servers of Stratfor, a Texas-based geopolitical intelligence firm often called the "Shadow CIA." They obtained five million emails and handed them over to WikiLeaks. The leaked emails revealed how corporations like Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola used Stratfor to gather intelligence on activist groups like PETA and to monitor the fallout from disasters like Bhopal.

The Human Side: Hackers as Complex People

What struck me most about Coleman's work was how she humanized the people behind the masks. She spent years building relationships with hackers, attending their conferences, chatting with them in IRC, and eventually interviewing some who were in federal penitentiaries.

She writes about Jeremy Hammond, a hacker who was serving a ten-year sentence for breaking into Stratfor's servers. She describes the moment in 2011 when Hammond told her in an IRC chat that he was "about to rm-fm a major target", in Linux terms, about to erase a hard drive. Minutes later, she saw a tweet from another Anonymous member announcing the hack of Stratfor.

She also documents the story of Sabu (Hector Monsegur), a prominent Anonymous hacker who was arrested by the FBI and became a government informant, eventually helping to convict others, including Hammond. Coleman navigates the moral complexity of these stories without reducing anyone to a simple villain or hero.

Coleman describes the hackers she studied as "complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people." She writes about their ethics, their humour, their internal conflicts, and their genuine commitment to transparency and accountability.

What I Took from Those Spaces

As a teenager, I was drawn to the idea that people could come together anonymously to challenge power, to expose secrets, to hold the powerful accountable. Coleman's book shows that these spaces, as toxic as they could be, also produced moments of real political significance.

This is not to romanticize Anonymous. Coleman herself acknowledges that their actions were often messy, contradictory, and sometimes harmful. But she also argues that trickster figures, for all their flaws, can impart lessons, expose underlying problems, and function as forces for social renewal. She describes Anonymous using the archetype of the trickster, a figure from mythology who is not clean or savory, but who can be vital for social renewal.

I found that tension compelling. The same spaces that produced cruelty also produced whistleblowers. The same culture that indulged in shock humour also took on the Church of Scientology, exposed corporate misconduct, and stood up for transparency.

That complexity is something the surveillance operators refuse to acknowledge. They want to reduce me to a caricature, a "4channer," a "Pepe," something stuck in time. They ignore everything else: my education, my volunteering, my research, my growth. They ignore the fact that I left those spaces years ago and have not looked back. 

If anything, my history with 4chan and my interest in Anonymous should make one thing clear: I am not aligned with the surveillance operators. Many of my values place me in opposition to them.

Some of the people targeting me are Scientologists. Others are connected to the very corporations and government entities that Anonymous targeted in the past. They represent the kind of power Anonymous sought to expose, institutions that operate in secrecy, that abuse their position, that believe they are above accountability.

I do not stand with them. To be clear, my knowledge of Anonymous is limited. I was aware of them a decade ago, and at the time, based on what I understood, I was drawn to what I perceived as their willingness to challenge power and expose wrongdoing. Looking back, I think it is worth taking seriously the values and motivations that drove people to participate in those actions, even if the methods were sometimes controversial or the outcomes complex.

I am not in a position to endorse everything Anonymous has done, nor do I have a comprehensive understanding of what they currently represent. But I do think there is something worth considering in the impulse to stand against institutions that operate without accountability, that abuse their power, that cause harm without consequence. That impulse, to expose, to hold accountable, to resist, is not one I am ashamed of.

The surveillance operators are the opposite of that. They possess significant technological and institutional power, and they use it to terrorize individuals. They operate with anonymity and privilege, relying on systems that most people cannot access. They are not exposing injustice. They are perpetuating it.

I do not stand with them. I stand with the principle of accountability, with the impulse to resist unchecked power. Whatever my limited knowledge of Anonymous may be, I would rather align with those principles than with the people doing this to me.

Why I No Longer Go There

I have not been on the websites once (aside from Reddit) since 2023. I stopped cold turkey. 

But I do not pretend that these spaces are "evil". They are complicated. They contain both darkness and light. They have given us whistleblowers and activists, but they have also given us radicalization and cruelty. They are spaces where broken people go to express their pain, sometimes destructively, sometimes productively.

Regardless of whether you are curious or a psychologist or someone trying to understand the world, I would still say: avoid these places. Have professionals study them with empathy, but ideally, these spaces should not exist in the form they do. And yet, I recognize the positive aspects, the free speech, the whistleblowing, the things that would not otherwise be exposed. It is a tension I hold.

What They Try to Make of It

The operators take my teenage curiosity and twist it. They speak to me in infantilized voices. They try to bombard me with acoustics, as if I am still trapped in the cesspool of 4chan and Reddit. They hope to cancel me, to call me a "4channer," a "Pepe," a "robot", something stuck in time. They want to compare me to the worst stereotypes of anonymous internet culture.

Some of them try to ignore everything else. They ignore my values and person-hood. They ignore my family and friends. They ignore my Faith. They ignore the people in my life who know me. They ignore the research I have done. They ignore the fact that I lived through COVID-19, that I have worked real jobs, that I have relationships with real people who love me.

Some of them want to reduce me to a few websites, to compare me or try to turn me to a killer, an incel, a monster, a case instance of someone who once lurked 4chan. They want to say that because I was curious as a teenager, I deserve to be treated this way. 

This is a lie. It is a lie they tell to justify what they are doing to me.

What I Actually Think About Those Who Post There

I have come to understand that a lot of the rage-fuelled posters on those websites are not posting from a right state of mind. They could be suffering. They are angry. They have been bullied, harassed, traumatized. They are lashing out because they have been hurt. This does not excuse cruelty, but it explains it. It reminds me that people are complex. People have reasons for what they do, even when what they do is wrong.

I have empathy and sympathy for them now, just as I did as a teenager. 

Because I have been traumatized. I have been harassed. I have been pushed to the fringes of my sanity by people who have no right to do what they do. And I know what it is like to be angry, to want to lash out, to feel like the world is against you.

This is why I cannot judge people based on their worst moments. This is why I cannot judge people who are not in their right state of mind.

My Privilege and My Gratitude

I live in Canada. I have access to law enforcement, to healthcare, to education. I have people in my life who love me. I have a community, even when I feel alone. I have the freedom to speak, to write, to document, to seek justice.

Even now, as I reveal the injustice I experience, I cannot say I feel like a true victim. Not because what is happening to me is not real, it is. But because I know that there are people in the world who have it so much tougher. People who are constrained by their social strata, by their social circles, by their work. People who cannot speak. People who cannot fight back. People who are trapped.

My freedom in Canada is truly immense. My ability to not be forced into politically or socially constrained positions is a privilege I do not take for granted. To go my own way, to live outside "the system" in the ways that matter, to have the space to be myself, this is not something most people in the world have.

What I Believe Politically

I would most closely identify as a democratic socialist. I believe in systems that care for the vulnerable, that distribute resources more equitably, that ensure no one is left behind. 

What They Still Hope For

Even now, the operators hope I will become mentally ill. They hope for a collapse, quick, total, undeniable. They want to point to that collapse and call it prophecy fulfilled.

In April 2024, they used their technology in an attempt to destroy me. I am still here. I am still writing. I am still documenting. Whatever they believe they accomplished, it did not hold. Their predictions have already failed.

They use terms like "lol" or "loli." They borrow language from 4chan, "lul" to signify breakdown, "1" to mark me as their first "3" they found. They want to invoke imagery from Japanese anime and cartoons, infantilized and perverse. These are their categories. These are the boxes they try to put me in.

I do not belong in them, nor do I support and stand against their activities of cruelty, obsession with wealth and capital, and war mongering. I am not their first. I am a person with a life that cannot be reduced to their terminology.

Who They Really Are

Some of them are toxic. Some of them are cruel. They call me a hypocrite while doing what they do. They are connected to American secret society networks, old families, young operatives (some my age, younger, older), men and women alike. Their goal is to frighten, to destabilize, to break.

They accuse me of narcissism. They tell me I am worse than them. They call me a hypocrite. They tell me I should feel worthless. They want me to make bad decisions, to become miserable, to become unattractive. They tell me to die. They say they will watch me to the end.

They target my relationships, with my parents, with my friends. They hope people will hate me. They hope people will not believe me. They hope I turn against my parents and they turn against me. They hope I become poor, isolated, broken.

This is not about me. This is about what they lack. Their cruelty comes from emptiness. Their obsession comes from envy. They have nothing of substance in their own lives, so they try to destroy what others have. 

My Response

I will not be reduced to a few websites. I will not be defined by the worst moments of my teenage years. I will not be cancelled by their lies. I will not become the fantasy they want me to be.

I am not what they say. I am someone who has grown, who has changed, who has learned. I am a daughter who loves her mother. I have Faith in Jesus Christ. I am a survivor who documents. I am a Canadian who understands the privilege of living in a free country. I am a person, complex, sometimes contradictory, trying to do what is right.

They want to reduce me, and I pray that Jesus Christ will not allow them to succeed in their wicked intentions.

References & Notes

On Gabriella Coleman and Anonymous

Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist and professor at Harvard University whose work focuses on hacker cultures, online activism, and communities like Anonymous and 4chan. Her book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014) is a landmark ethnographic study of the Anonymous movement. She argues that Anonymous operates as a "trickster" figure—messy, chaotic, often offensive, but capable of exposing injustice and challenging power. Coleman's work shows that these spaces are complex, containing both darkness and moments of genuine political significance.

On Project Chanology

Project Chanology was launched in January 2008 after the Church of Scientology attempted to remove a Tom Cruise interview from YouTube. Anonymous responded with DDoS attacks, then shifted to nonviolent protests. On February 10, 2008, over 7,000 protesters gathered in 100 cities worldwide, marking Anonymous's first offline action. A second wave of protests followed on March 15. The campaign exposed Scientology's practices, including deceptive recruitment tactics on Craigslist.

On Operation Payback

From September 2010 to January 2011, Anonymous conducted Operation Payback, targeting organizations that opposed file-sharing or cut off financial services to WikiLeaks. Targets included the RIAA, MPAA, Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, and law firms involved in pursuing The Pirate Bay. The attacks used DDoS software called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC).

On the Stratfor Hack and WikiLeaks Partnership

In December 2011, Anonymous hacked Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm nicknamed the "Shadow CIA," obtaining five million emails. They partnered with WikiLeaks to release "The Global Intelligence Files," which exposed how corporations used Stratfor to gather intelligence on activist groups.

On Judgment and Complexity

  • Matthew 7:1-2 "Do not judge so that you will not be judged."

  • James 4:12 "There is only one Lawgiver and Judge; who are you to judge your neighbor?"

On Growth and Change

  • 2 Corinthians 5:17 "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

  • Philippians 3:13-14 "Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal."

On Privilege and Gratitude

  • 1 Corinthians 4:7 "What do you have that you did not receive?"

  • Psalm 103:2 "Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His benefits."

On Those Who Wish Harm

  • Proverbs 24:17-18 "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls."

  • Psalm 7:15-16 "He has dug a pit and hollowed it out, and has fallen into the hole which he made."

Biblical References

  • Isaiah 54:17 No weapon formed against you will succeed.

  • Psalm 27:1 The Lord is my light and my salvation.

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