Anonymous Declares Friday 'ISIS Trolling Day' — Here's How to Join In

Impact

Internet, take note: hacktivist group Anonymous, officially at war with the Islamic State group, has scheduled a full day of ISIS trolling for Dec. 11 — and don't worry, anyone can get in on the #trollingday fun. The group posted instructions for needling the terrorist organization on GhostBin, assuring readers that they needn't join Anonymous in order to slam the terrorist organization on Friday. All participants need to participate is a social media outlet and some embarrassing photos and/or insults at the ready.

Anonymous' plan: "You may be wondering why we are 'trolling' ISIS and planning all these demonstrations against ISIS," reads the Anonymous dispatch. "But to understand that you must first see how ISIS works. They thrive off of fear they hope that by their actions they can silence all of us and get us to just lay low and hide in fear. But what many forget and even they do is that there are many more people in the world against them than for them. And that is the goal of this mass uprising, on December 11th we will show them that we are not afraid, we will not just hide in our fear, we are the majority and with our strength in numbers we can make a real difference. We will mock them for the idiots they are."

How to get involved: There are so many ways to troll ISIS, and Anonymous has conveniently divided them up by category — "Facebook // Twitter // Instagram // Youtube // In the "Real World."  

Twitter uses can share "mocking photos" of ISIS, linking them to the group's trendiest hashtags, call the terrorist organization Daesh (it hates that) and tag posts with #Daeshbags wherever it applies. As in:

Meanwhile, on Facebook, Anonymous expects that participants will sniff out ISIS pages and report them, circulate more "mocking photos," and perpetuate the Daeshbag name-calling. Instagram users can do the same, along with gramming shots that show no fear in the face of ISIS. 

Things will be a little more labor intensive on YouTube, where users have been asked to "make mocking videos of ISIS" and to enlist other accounts to join in the effort to "belittle" the Islamic State group, whose YouTube accounts should also be reported to YouTube authorities.

IRL endeavors basically amount to participants papering their cities in the same kinds of pictures they would use for social media ISIS sabotage. 

Following the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which ISIS took credit for, Anonymous declared war on the group. "Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down," a masked spokesman for the Hacktivist group announced in a November video. "You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go. We will launch the biggest operation ever against you." Which apparently includes strategic bullying on social media.

ISIS responded to the Anonymous declaration with a statement calling the masked hackers "idiots." And yet Anonymous has seen some success with Twitter trolling before: An affiliated account — @CtrlSec — had identified more than 11,500 ISIS-associated accounts as of last March, when the Daily Dot reported on their tweet war. Of the handles @CtrlSec found, more than 9,500 had been suspended and more than 100 deleted. Friday's efforts could yield some kind of result, but ultimately, "the effect of such efforts is almost impossible to quantify," in the words of the Daily Dot

Cue the Linda memes.

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