weev by pinguino on Flickr

Congratulations, Facebook! You finally acknowledged peoples’ right to be known by the names they choose. Last week you acceded to demands from the LGBT community and acknowledged that drag queens would be able to have personal profiles under their drag names, as opposed to Fan Pages.

Then you announced you was going to offer an “anonymizing app” that would allow people to communicate without revealing their real names.

And today it appears you suspended weev, the Internet’s most famous troll. For using his real name, Andrew Auernheimer.

Well, that’s what he told us, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

The profile is definitely down. Here is the personalized URL “weevlos” and here is the unpersonalized one, “id=100004628862274”. And it’s not the first time this has happened; three days ago he had a 24 hour suspension, which he claimed was for exposing (ie snitching on) snitches.

By “one of Sierra’s mob” he means someone who objected to his post yesterday in his Livejournal, “Women in tech”, doxing, Kathy Sierra, and the koolaid. Kathy Sierra, once famous as a leading internet marketing consultant, eventually became more famous for getting trolled right off the internet in 2007. Death threats, doxes, and some creative use of Photoshop, among other torture devices, led her to shut her blog and essentially disappear from the internet for several years. A quick glance at a Twitter search for “weev” will give some hint of the level of heat that his thoughts on “gamergate” and claims of sexism in tech have generated lately.

weev has always strenously denied being behind the trolling in 2007; he has oddly chosen this moment seven years later, when he is at the very top of his fame and notoriety, to reply, and to complain. And to fire some shots of his own, as is his way. The main thrust of his latest post is that “Women in Tech” (a cabal akin to the “Gay Mafia” that run Hollywood, presumably) wield their considerable power to marginalize white men by doxing and using the very techniques they complain of when used on the women themselves.

Whatever you may think of the post or its assertions, weev is now publicly claiming that one of those very FemIlluminati has reported him to Facebook and had his account taken down under false pretenses. It is indeed a classic Internet Drama move.

Knowing weev, however, it’s entirely possible (perhaps even probable) that this is part of an elaborate staged performance. Reality itself is in question when it comes to the intersection of internet drama and Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer.

Elsewhere, he’s set himself up as the champion of billionaire Pierre Omidyar, strenuously importuning Mercedes Haefer of the Paypal 14 to stop her collegues from attacking Omidyar and encouraging boycotts of his companies such as First Look Media, which owns TheIntercept (for which I am a freelancer). The Paypal 14 collectively face $85,000 in restitution for DDoSing Omidyar’s Paypal and other companies.

It is, however, far, far too late in the Paypal 14’s public campaign to change messages now.

Will a “Leave Pierre Aloooooone!” video from weev be too far in the future? Will the old “Free weev” campaign be revived? WILL HE GET BACK ON FACEBOOK BY CATURDAY???

Stay tuned. It’ll be messy. It’ll be complicated. But we bet it’ll be entertaining.

weev’s DMs with Mercedes Haefer on Cryptome

UPDATE October 09: He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! as if we were ever skeptical!

Featured Image weev by Pinguino on Flickr

Categories: Andrew Auernheimer, Anonymous, Censorship, Conspiracy, Facebook, Hackers, Paypal 14, Social Engineering, Trolling, Trolls, weev, Weird