Over the course of the last week, Anonymous decided to move against Sony for going after someone who hacked their PS3. The result has been less than impressive, described by Sony spokespeople as a minor annoyance.
To explain what is going on here, lets start with two key phenomena, de-individuation and online dissociative disorder, critical linchpins of the Anonymous personality.
Deindividuation is the loss of individual identity experienced by members of a group or crowd. This phenomena has been known to the world of psychology since 1895, with the publication of Gustav Le Bon's work on crowd theory. The theory explains why crowds of people will often do things, like encourage would be suicide victims to jump, that individual members of a crowd would not. Three elements are key to deindividualtion: anonymity, lack of responsibility and crowd size. This effect is commonly used to indoctrinate people into the military, and religions. It turns out that it can be equally effective online.
Online Disinhibition Effect is the phenomena whereby people are willing to say and do things online that they would not otherwise do. This effect has been attributed to common use of racist and homophobic speech online. This effect is compounded when people are speaking online under anonymity.
Now look again at Anonymous. Knowing how individuals act when online and as part of groups, the organization, by its very structure, foments erratic and destructive behavior. The rule organizing participants is simple, anyone can be Anonymous, all they have to do act in its name. Working together, users are part of a cause, but are encouraged not to feel responsibility for their actions, instead those actions are the action of the collective known as Anonymous.
This can lead to a lot of contradictory actions. Factions within the Anonymous community play out as Anonymous fighting itself. Since anyone can be Anonymous, there is no one true Anonymous. This also means that not all actions will be executed with equal skill. All it takes for Anonymous to do something is for a small group to decide to act as Anonymous, and suddenly "Anonymous is Attacking Sony." This leads to all sorts of problems for law enforcement trying to stop the organization, you can't simply arrest the leaders - there are none.
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