Anonymous - A little understanding

Hi everyone, for clarity I'm not a member of this group, nor do I pretend to know everything about them, but the media seem to be completely ignorant, and having seen their names on the Morgan Stanley hacked in operation thread, I wanted to make sure this community doesn't misunderstand them in the same way.

They have successfully trolled Oprah, (ready to attack withover 9000 penises etc.), the New York Yankees (Rickrolled), helped revive Risk Astley's career (same way but a different net effect), broken into a security firms own security, obtained the guys SSID number and 50,000 of his files and put it on his own twitter account (he threatened to expose their identities), caused serious trouble to ACS: Law (profiteering by sending legal demands to thousands of "illegal downloaders", uploaded huge amounts of indecent footage to youtube (to make a point) and are the only bunch other than wikileaks (who they defend) to actually stand up to the corporations and people whom the planet would be better off without. Other targets were scientology, (first result for dangerous cult on google), and scientology, perhaps.

So, why do they do it (This is my best guess):

Internet anonymity brings out the worst in people but can also the best. (A WoW gamer needed private medical treatment to save his life, friends and family couldnt find the cash but his online gamer friends found it for him). Anyone that stood up to these corporations to expose what they do would be silenced by gagging orders, and had war waged against them. As they now have anonymity, they cannot be targeted. They do it in their free time, so you cant fight them with cash. Any money you throw at it you burn. You may disagree with their methods, but you cant argue their results. They have had significant impact on some big names.

For an example of how the media completely misunderstand these guys. After the youtube incident, the media said "comments appeared on these pages saying I'm 12 what is this". Those posts are also internet meme's, posted most likely by fans or the hacktivists themselves to increase the media hype.

In short, they're smart, underfunded and hell if their governments offered them a job then they'd give back to china 100 times over what their own state hackers do to Western companies. Don't ever try and mess with them, you can't win.