The world — particularly the online world — is proving particularly infuriating of late, what with childish hacker collective LulzSec harassing the Internet and now companies via phone, and the earlier news that 2K Games unceremoniously fired their PR company for its head honcho’s passionate outburst of frustration at the overly-negative reviews of Duke Nukem Forever. (Yes, he was a tit to talk about blacklisting publications in public. Yes, it likely goes on anyway. But I kind of understand where he’s coming from — to have your job being to show genuine (or at least genuine-seeming) enthusiasm for a product then to see the world unceremoniously take a large and steaming dump over it and then revel in how “clever” they’re all being with their scathingness must be an awful feeling.)
It’s times like this that it’s easy to feel like you miss that simpler time when “The Internet” only existed when you plugged it in and endured listening to that horrendous noise of a modem connecting. (Weeeeeeeee-skkrrrrrroooooooo!!!! BEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FFFFFFFKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHH.) But now the Internet is always there, and you can’t, it seems, get away from the bad things.
This is, in some ways, a good thing, as everyone is more aware of things that are going on thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and all manner of other services. But in other ways, it’s a bad thing — I recall around the time of the most recent major natural disasters that many commented a feeling of “disaster fatigue” brought about by the constant rolling coverage on TV and the constant stream of articles on the Internet. In many ways, having constant coverage spread out over a course of hours, days or even weeks reduces the impact of something happening — and as a result, the media feels the need to ram it down our throats even more, and so on and so on and so on. It also happens with reality TV shows, with the media going X-Factor/BGT/Big Brother/I’m A Cunt, Please Shoot Me crazy for the few weeks each of those respective shows is cluttering up the airwaves with its offensive stench until everyone is absolutely sick to death of seeing whatever Generic Talentless “Celebrity” X has had for lunch today.
Such is, presumably, the case with LulzSec. They hack someone and highlight their security flaws — that makes a point. But now it’s just a case of “HAY WE GONNA KEEP DOING THIS CAUSE IT’S FUNNY”. Whatever point they may have once been trying to make, it has been lost amidst some grade-A cuntishness of the highest order. And the frustrating thing — not to mention the thing they’re probably enjoying the most — is that the average person, annoyed, upset and frustrated with them, is absolutely impotent, with nothing they can do about it. Of course, you can try reporting it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, but who’s to know if they’ll be able to do anything about it?
I suppose the way to deal with it is to follow the advice your primary school teachers gave you when dealing with bullies — just ignore them and they’ll stop.
But will they? Perhaps a punch in the testicles will work just as well — perhaps even quicker.
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Finest piece of writing I’ve read in a while. Especially loved the part about disaster fatigue – what bothers me most about the sheer extensive coverage is that most of it’s inaccurate! I felt that about Japan in particular, hence my own personal dedication to it. As for the hackers taking over, it is just.. yeah maddening.
I’m still waiting for my Punch Peoples’ Testicles Through The Internet Machine™.