Anonymous

I've recently read an article series that made my head spin.
Anonymous, an internet collective that I've found incredibly difficult to categorize, is both a group of individuals without concrete goals and also a group with single-minded goals.
Anonymous is also easiest explained as the trickster; an entity that forces progress. They are neither the hero nor the antihero.
While Anonymous started as innocently as several crass lulz or memes could possibly be, it soon began to reinvent itself when it used lulz to expose a Tom Cruise interview of what Scientology meant to him. When the church attempted to kill Anonymous's fun, it marked the political turning point for the group.
Anonymous also went against AiPlex and Hollywood studios when they believed that internet censorship was being threatened. They launched their program, LOIC, to take down AiPlex and the MPAA's websites.
This culture, or collective - call it what you may exists for progress.
To the question of the more general idea of anonymity online, while one can try to remain anonymous, it's slowly becoming difficult to remain so for a length of time. For example, the MTV series Catfish makes its profits through exposing the people behind fake profiles.