What happens when you put together thousands and thousands of creative, intelligent, and varied people on a community Web site with a broad scope and few rules? For starters, you get a massive exercise in group psychology and the meme concept put forth by Richard Dawkins. You get a factory for a majority of the Internet's fads, pastimes, and jokes. You get an amorphous antagonist of religious, industry, and political leaders. You get Anonymous.

Anonymous has received some attention recently for its cyber-attack on HBGary Federal security services and its threats and scattered actions against Koch Industries' Web sites and the Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous has been called everything from activists to hackers (and, yes, hacktivists). They're viewed by some as folk heroes, by others as terrorists. But who are they? Well, they're Anonymous.

Anonymous first garnered national attention over three years ago when it formed to take on the Church of Scientology. Anonymous staged protests against the church and promoted Project Chanology's own anti-Scientology campaign, decrying the church's tactics and ideals. I covered one of Anonymous' protests at the Church of Scientology near Times Square in New York. Hundreds of Anonymous came out wearing Guy Fawkes masks inspired by the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta, holding up signs protesting the Church of Scientology.

Since the Scientology protests, Anonymous has adopted other causes. It helped Iranian protesters in 2009 with the creation of the Anonymous Iran support site. It hacked the sites of businesses with anti-Wikileaks policies in 2010. It spammed YouTube with pornography. It attacked the Australian government over censorship. It took down the web site of white supremacist radio personality Hal Turner. It vandalized the Epilepsy Foundation of America's forum. It got an accused child molester arrested. And all of these things were done by different people from different places, at different times. Yet, they were all Anonymous.

Anonymous is not the name of an organization. In fact, "organization" is the least appropriate word to describe the phenomenon that is Anonymous. It might be better to call Anonymous a movement, or a trend, or even a philosophy. However, the best ways to describe Anonymous is as a group action, a spontaneous and unified activity performed by like-minded people with no specific starting point. Fans of anime might call Anonymous a "stand-alone complex."

My understanding of Anonymous comes from watching it at work. I've seen Anonymous mobilize against different enemies, for different causes, on different sites, and in different ways. Because it is so amorphous, the only way to truly understand Anonymous is to simply witness it in action, from the forums of 4chan to the streets of New York.

There is no roster with the names of Anonymous' members. There is no flow chart showing Anonymous' hierarchy. Indeed, there is no hierarchy to be charted. Anonymous' membership, if it can be called that, is scattered throughout the web site 4chan and parts beyond. It's just collections of people, connecting on the Internet and forming under the banner of Anonymous. When 4chan users see a cause that calls to them, they reach out and become Anonymous, serving as activists for that cause and antagonists for anyone they see as enemies of that cause.

The key to understanding Anonymous is its name, and the duality it bears. Everyone acting within Anonymous acts as an individual, on their own and with no orders or mandate. Some are hackers. Some are quiet protesters. Some are rabble-rousers. Some are pranksters. However, every individual remains faceless, nameless, and unwanting of attention beyond that which he/she/they seek through direct action. Anonymous simply forms across the Internet when a cause is made apparent.

Social sites have given rise to Anonymous through their sense of community, anonymity, and general lack of rules beyond the most basic principles of civility. Internet forums build these groups of people. Cross-membership leads to cross-pollination, and soon a movement grows. "/b/tards" on 4chan contact "Goons" on Something Awful, who contact "Farkers" on Fark.com, who all meet on IRC, coordinate on AIM, and post updates on Facebook. It's the old adage of someone having an idea, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on until a movement is born. Thanks to the anonymity provided by Web forums, social sites, and messaging services, this movement is Anonymous.

This structure, or lack thereof, renders Anonymous effectively unstoppable. Individual members and small groups of hackers might vandalize the sites of various organizations like HBGary, Koch Industries, and the Westboro Baptist Church, but they aren't acting as part of an organization, cell, or grand conspiracy. There is no ringleader, or even membership outside of whatever individuals decide to act. They simply raise the flag of Anonymous and fight under it until they feel they're done. Then they lower the flag and blend into the Internet once again. No real organization, just forum-dwellers or IRC-dwellers mobilizing, acting, and resting.