Anonymous is a collective entity. Originating as an Internet meme on an imageboard, it represented the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an community hivemind. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known and preferred not to be known.

Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also provoked controversy.

In real life, their actions have been coined as “flash mob.” A group of people who assemble suddenly in a deliberately public place to perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse.

Often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire.

The appeal of anarchy:

Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s inventor, is reported to have said,

“Now we come… to the Web. Links don’t work. Email messages are misspelled. Discussion boards devoted to medical matters of life and death contain claims so false that they’d be funny if they weren’t so dangerous. The site that downloaded in a second an hour ago now takes five minutes. The link you thought would take you to pictures of endangered species instead sinks you into a porno site that sproutes new windows like poison ivy. Where’s perfection when we need it?

The imperfection of the Web isn’t a temporary lapse; it’s a design decision. It flows directly from the fact that the Web is broken on purpose.”

Collective Intelligence, or Hivemind for the better/worse

Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind and the no-central editor in charge policy of the open sourced internet encyclopedia, called Wikipedia, are examples.