This reminds me of "wars" kids in my neighborhood would have when I was about ten years old. Each group of kids would think up highly elaborate plans of subterfuge, sophisticated camouflage, and spying, that, when executed, basically consisted of throwing some moldy walnuts over a fence at the other groups of kids.
What they both have in common are groups of children with too much time on their hands.
4chan is that dumbass kid who releases bees into the classroom just to laugh at everyone who doesn't want to get stung.
If there's a backstory, it's probably something that everyone else would shrug off and move on with their lives, but for whatever reason, the sociopaths at 4chan cannot.
Yes. Though Tumblr and 4chan both have older users, the ones that participate in this kind of thing "seriously" are generally of that cliquish high school mindset and narrow worldview characteristic of but not limited to teenagers. Ironically, it's that same earnestness that provokes raids like this.
Why would you destroy your time, resources, and sense of humanity for this childish crap?
Anyone know the origins of "What is Air?". It seems to be yet another meme that's passed me by, but Googling doesn't yield much in the way of an explanation — just lots of people on Tumblr saying it and finding it seemingly funny... http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/WHAT+IS+AIR%3F
It's normally used when reblogging a photo that makes you laugh so hard that you can't breathe. I'm not sure of its origin, but it's pretty widely used on Tumblr.
Can anyone suggest how to defend against these type of attacks?
Is it simply a case of rate limiting by IP? If so, anyone suggest an easy way of doing this (I assume limiting at the web server level is not good enough?)
You're not anonymous to admins, only to users. Every post is still associated with a big fat naked IP address and it's a single click to ban a user of a specific post.
What they both have in common are groups of children with too much time on their hands.