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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Apart from the usual "this is something important that is happening" (which is not quite HN "intellectual curiosity" territory, what is striking is the use of what I assume is a V for Vendetta mask - with Red and Green daubing.

How culture spreads is ... fascinating.

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That is like ...nothing, then you have like no idea how omnipresent this type of pop culture is (for good or for worse). Of course iranians watch these types of movies and of course an iranian hacker would be aware of the mask symbolism

These masks are also made by the Chinese in the billions and available in any "Bazar" for very cheap so they're a cheap way to obscure your identity :)

Not saying this is the case here (for TV this is probably well considered and it's not the standard Chinese mask which is the 'smiling' version) but there might be more than one explanation especially for seeing them on the street during protests.

Maybe that was the intention but it doesn't really look like a Guy Fawkes mask at all though, other than being a white face mask. Eyebrows and eye cut-outs are different, it has a full beard, it's not a v-shaped face, etc.

The genesis may have been “V for Vendetta” but I believe Anonymous used a similar mask and it’s possible the hacker/s are aware of that.

Anonymous, and many other unrelated protesters, used the V for Vendetta mask when protesting against Scientology not just as a symbol but rather because of the cult..er church well known tactics of harassing anyone who opposes them. They usually followed protesters until they put the mask off so they or their car license plate could be photographed easing the identification.

The red and green is just the Iranian flag though. What culture were you thinking of? Suiseiseki?

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