The Strange Saga of Steubenville Vigilante Deric Lostutter , JUSTICE UP-ENDED
Lostutter had to drop out of high school and help support his mom and brother by working instead. After a tough break-up, he spent several months homeless and drunk, then floundering in odd jobs after moving with his mom to Kentucky. When he saw the documentary, We are Legion, about Anonymous, on YouTube last summer, he identified with the portrayal of underdog geeks fighting the Man. “I watched that and I just went ppffff,” he tells me, splaying his fingers on either side of his head like an exploding bomb. “My mind was blown,” he says, “I was like, ‘there’s people out there like me, thousands of people out there like me.’”
It didn’t take long for Lostutter to become Anonymous. He bought a cheap Guy Fawkes mask on eBay, and opened a Twitter and a Facebook account under the nickname KYAnonymous. There was no initiation to endure nor dues to pay to join the group. Like anyone else, he was in simply because he said so. But a $2 costume and a social network weren’t enough to make a difference in his or anyone else’s life. He needed an Operation.
Lostutter didn’t have to look far to find some bullshit to rally against. The Clark County, Kentucky, school board was embroiled in controversy over allegedly mishandled funds and a superintendent who allegedly fired a football coach for not playing her grandson. (The superintendent denied those allegations.) But despite stories of rats in the cafeteria and untreated black mold at an elementary school, nothing changed in the small town. And, like a self-ordained superhero with a new mask and a mission, Lostutter thought the power of Anonymous could help win. “Bullying pisses me off,” he says, “even workplace bullying.”
Anonymous Operations begin with a declaration — usually either by a video manifesto on YouTube or a post on Internet forums. One night last fall after getting home from his job as a car mechanic, Lostutter launched his first one, OpEducation, posting as KYAnonymous that the school board had “put the students second and monetary gain first,” but now Anonymous was on the case. He included a list of the school board member’s family names, cell phone numbers, and home addresses — a bit of hacking known as a “dox” — to prove it.
More: The Strange Saga of Steubenville Vigilante Deric Lostutter