People tell you that power in this sector comes from how good your opsec is, your credibility & how big of an audience you have.

I don’t agree.
For as long as someone is known as powerful, by these stereotypical standards, they can never be truly powerful, because once someone becomes known as such, this becomes their biggest threat, & biggest vulnerability.

Real power, comes from trickery, & your ability to fool people.

Around August 2015, Thadeus Zu, a millennial from Australia, hacked Ashley Madison, one of the biggest dating organisations in the world.

7 years later, no one has found out who Thadeus Zu is, despite getting his alias correct, they could never pin it to an identity, & some, even publicly cleared Thadeus’s name, saying there was no proof he was the hacker.

Thadeus is an interesting person. He despises the government, he despises nearly every organisation around him, because he knows too much, &, most people, wouldn’t look twice at him. Thadeus lives his life being constantly underestimated, called a schizophrenic, a conspiracy theorist & dismissed. Nearly everyone he knows in real life, would laugh at him, if he told them what he’s done, and what he’s capable of.

This, is true power.

You see, Thadeus never took a public W, he prioritised outcome, data & the truth over taking the credit for it. I think that’s powerful.

There is a huge amount of power in favouring what you know, over what people think of you. Thadeus is a true genius, who recognised that taking credit, although would make him look powerful, would also make him vulnerable, to police, to Ashley Madison & to anyone who disliked his work.

Valuing your cause enough to not need validation, that, is power.

I believe in a similar technique. I believe there is some power in being seen to be losing. For as long as you remain a known but anonymous entity in this sector, you’re an atomic bomb, waiting to be doxed, called out, scrutinised.

If you give people something to use against you, and it doesn’t have to be real, an identity, a name, “content”, or, a list of “Ls”, you’ve bought yourself time, & a head start.

Being seen as a loser, stupid or mentally deficient, is almost like being on persistent stealth mode. The assumed “winners”, or game-masters on the Internet, never truly have power, because they are always suspected.

If you host a community, a podcast, a Twitch channel, or if you’re a popular poster, have perfect Opsec, and have never taken an L, you’re always going to be 3 things:
- Someone who’s personal data is of high value
- Scrutinised constantly
- Suspected for any Ls your oppositions take

That isn’t power, that, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Just like Zu, I am not interested in credit. I am not even interested in neutrality. I’d go as far as to say I’d even prefer being thought of as a fool.

Anyone who’s power relies on reputation, on public Opsec or on popularity, is someone obsessed with validation. To me, that is the opposite of power.

Those who can hold the information they have, achieve great things, yet don’t require praise, reputation or validation, are the ones who will always win.

True winners, remain unnamed.

People often ask me why I don’t care about what people say about me online, or why I haven’t been scared off the Internet, logged off, or made too embarrassed to leave. The answer is simple.

I don’t care how I’m viewed, if people laugh at me, feel sorry for me, hate me, despite popularity, anonymity & a seemingly untarnished reputation being easier, that’s all they really are.

Connections, skills, creativity and trickery, can’t be bought with reputation, Opsec or with credibility. Those things are meritocratic, & you can’t get a leg up to achieve them.

Anyone who values what they know, who they know, or what they’re capable of, over taking credit, popularity or validation, is someone who will never lose, even if they are seen as a loser by the public.

There is an obsession with reputation on the Internet. People often forget that a name, a face, a voice, or even, a public “L” are all things that can be forged. They mean nothing because anyone can create those things with the right tools.

People never question the validity of the data they have, they never question “milk” or “content”, and this, is a weakness.

People take gossip at face value, & are desperate for it, they’ll click on anything, & believe anything you put out there, because they arrogantly assume that lolcows, thread subjects, the people they view as losers, would be too stupid to ever be able to fool anyone, which makes it easier for anyone intelligent, to pass themselves off as a loser, & obtain a constant alibi as one, forever too incapable to be suspected.

How well do you really know the subjects of the threads you read? It would be smart, to question everything.