Obfuscation and tactical engagements

The milieu of the Internet affords the widespread proliferation of economies of symbolic exchange. These informational systems of meaning and exchange are less tethered to the traditional relations of politics, material wealth, and social status as the centrality of media perception of image (corporate, personal, social) defines the power discourse of the Net. The perceptions of legitimacy that the media image confers identity and use value, defining the intellectual capital of the Internet that is caught in the endless cycle of symbolic production and consumption. However, on the 'level playing field' of the Net, tactics of confusion and obfuscation of that identity by groups performing critical inquiry into corporate power disrupt the cycle of intellectual capital and make those oligarchic structures evident.