Cyxymu - Sound and Fury Over Nothing?

Yesterday I decided to check out the blog of Cyxymu. 'Cyxymu' is the handle of Georgian blogger Georgy Jakhaia, even if you've never heard of him, you're probably aware of his existence - a massive denial-of-service attack on his various social media accounts brought Twitter, Facebook and other sites to a screeching halt last week, an event Wired breathlessly called the "Twitpocalypse" (seriously, I think the headline writers over at Wired.com need to get out more). With that in mind I surfed over to his Livejournal page (Livejournal is one of the most popular Russian-language blogging platforms).

So what's the site of the world's most notorious blogger like? In a lot of ways, probably a lot like your own Facebook page - there are photos of Tbilisi in summertime, talk about his upcoming vacation plans, links to articles about Georgian cooking and slang, and then among all that some commentary on last year's Russian-Georgian war and its aftermath.

Being a Georgian, it's not surprising then that Cyxymu's take on recent events are basically pro-Georgian/anti-Russian. He in one post refers to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as 'liliputin', a common play on his name among his critics; a few stories about Georgian refugees driven from the disputed Abkhazia region; stories about Russian aircraft shot down by their own troops during the war; and some speculation that Russia is trying to goad Georgia into a second conflict this summer. Many of the stories are taken from Georgian/Russian news sites, and most are things I've read before, sometimes many months ago like in the case of the Russian Air Force friendly-fire incident.

In short, Cyxymu is offering a mildly-interesting, though fairly-partisan view of a year-old conflict. So why all the fuss? He's certainly not some Iranian blogger huddled over his computer in a basement in Tehran, dodging the Basiji militias, trying to get out the unknown stories of the recent pro-democracy protests. Had it not been for the massive DOS attack against his accounts, much of the blogosphere would be blissfully unaware of his existence (one report I read said pre-DOS attack, his Livejournal page had a little over 50 followers). So again, you have to ask, why all the fuss?

Most likely he was the target of a handful of pro-Russian hackers who (for some reason) were annoyed by his posts and rather than just ignore them, decided to engage in some cyber-harassment. Because their efforts shut down the latest infatuation of journalists - Twitter - suddenly this bit of cyber-activism became an important story. It is also possible that the Kremlin ordered the cyber-hit on Cyxymu, yes it's like using a hand grenade to get rid of a mosquito, but Moscow has done that sort of thing in the past - like interfering in elections their candidate was sure to win anyway (Cyxymu has called on Russia to launch an investigation into the attacks on his sites). Of course it's also possible, indulge my conspiracy theories for a moment, that the Georgian government launched the attack themselves as a way of garnering more support for their side at a time when it seems to be waning amid ever-growing evidence that it was the actions of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili that sparked last year's war in the first place.

Really, the takeaway from the Cyxymu affair should be to put things in perspective in the world of new media. Georgy Jakhaia runs a few sorta interesting, fairly partisan sites, nothing more; and there are worse things in the world than the occasional Twitter/Facebook crash.