slamboard

I was obsessing about politics and I saw some derogatory term that I didn’t understand. I went over to the urban dictionary. None of the ‘definitions’ for my term were remotely plausible, darn kids.

I noticed that scientology is paying to advertise on urban dictionary as well as YouTube.

I am willing to sell this blog to scientology for a reasonable offer.

Tom Cruise was back on an Oprah set. The audience of the taped interview has been sworn to secrecy. I suspect that some of them will anonymously blog about it before the show airs.

Tom is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the movie in which he played a minor living of the avails of (heterosexual) prostitution and occasionally dancing in tighty-whiteys.

The image above has been transformed for the purposes of satire (I put the text version of air quotes in all by myself).

Scientology is paying for advertisement on YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google. Google has been criticized in the past for its cooperation with China. Tom Cruise pumped money into China while making Mission Impossible III. Supposedly scientology is committed to making human rights a reality around the World. That must be why their most famous member injected $10 million into a totalitarian country that is the most famous human rights abuser.

I commented here and there when Anonymous first set their sights on scientology. I suggested that the group would quickly lose interest in their campaign. It appears that they haven’t.

The media attention, however, has pretty much evaporated.

scientology is dealing with the situation with the same tactics that they have been using for years to deal with strong critics. They have named a few ‘Anonymous’ members. Those members will probably have to contend with a campaign of harassment and also litigation.

There are several third parties who are standing up and condemning the actions taken by Anonymous against scientology. Many of them point to the fact that they are giving scientologists the perfect opportunity to claim that they are experiencing religious persecution. I agree with this argument, and I would like to point out that many countries do not recognize scientology’s claim to be a religion, choosing instead to view scientology as a business enterprise.

In some respects, scientology is very much a multi-level marketing scheme. I was hesitant in writing that because I don’t want to give MLMs a bad name.

I have been critical of scientology in the past on this blog and elsewhere. The organization that sometimes calls itself a religion and sometimes doesn’t is presently under attack by a disorganized group of people who revel in the power of the mob without apology or reflection. The fact that they are focused on a big, bad target at the moment does not make them the good guys. They have been known to wreak havoc on an individual’s online activities and personal privacy for the simple reason that the individual was enjoying what the group perceived as unwarranted celebrity. Another group of people who get attacked are randomly chosen from a list of hacked passwords for MySpace and other social websites.

I am in no way optimistic about their attack on scientology because I know that the group has a very short collective attention span. The only meme that doesn’t get old is complaining about old memes.

I want to compare and contrast two very different instances of crowdsourcing for you. One is the exposure of the Kimkins fraud. The other is the Anonymous attack on the church of scientology that is being talked about in the papers today.

I am 99.9% certain that there is no overlap in the participants. Anonymous is a shadowy collective that is mostly comprised of technically savvy teenage misanthropes. They are, by their own headcount, legion. I brought up their recent activities to a young man in their demographic this morning and he advised me that they are just looking for attention. He was surprised when I told him that papers of record were discussing their attack on scientology. According to him, the media are giving them what they want.

There has been an element of anonymity in the Kimkins controversy, but some of the most active and effective people are not anonymous. I think the rascally teens that comprise Anonymous might be a bit impressed if they found out about the incredible crowdsourcing effort that found all those Russian Bride Pictures.

Both groups incorporate humor into their activities, although they have serious goals. Sometimes Anonymous behaves badly. Jeannie Baitinger referred to the anti-kimkins people as terrorists on more than one occasion, one of which was on national television.

I have been on the periphery of something that was attacked by Anonymous before and I realized that while they have strength in numbers, their Achilles heel is their inability to have a sustained interest in any one target. In fact, I think they abandon their efforts as soon as the attention that the crave begins to wane. If the people who put in the effort to expose the Kimkins fraud had the same attitude, big things might not have happened.

I have been critical of scientology on a regular basis and I have very little sympathy for their plight now that hundreds of thousands of hackers are trying to bring them down. I won’t shy away from being critical of Anonymous either. They have many interests and activities that are beyond the pale with regard to societal norms. For the most part, Kimkins detractors are the kind of people who represent societal norms.

I was at a loss for content, so I typed the word business into the search box on YouTube. I plan on doing a long post about MS Surface this weekend. Tonight I am just going to put this 26 minute documentary about the financial grey area that is at the core of scientology ( A rotten core BTW ).

I think the longevity of this messed up cult lies in the revenue streams that it provides for those who perpetuate it. I have fairly strong feelings about this issue, but to be honest, I am also hoping to generate traffic by creating controversy.