I draw the comparison to kicking an anthill, but it’s also like dumping your garbage at the door of every radio station in the world.
Once or twice you might get away with it, because we know there are stupid people out there and maybe you just don’t know any better.
But if you keep doing it, and you’re trying to make money from it…. Well, as a dj I have an often used maxim: “don’t ever piss off the guy with the mic.”
Blog spammers: We will hound you to your door. We will harrass your ISP. We will notify your suppliers and distributors. We will Pass The Word.
You will know what it is like to have your anthill kicked. And we will win, because collectively our voice is so overwhelmingly, exponentially louder than yours. Our guns are bigger, and we are smarter than you.
We evolved from hackers. You evolved from door-to-door insurance salesmen.
Who would YOU bet on?
Inspired by The Comment Spam Manifesto. Spread the word. Hack the planet. =)
We evolved from hackers?
There are some problems with the manifesto, but I’d rather go along with it than be the naysayer.
COMMENT:
There are some problems with YOU, sonny!
/hard time
Why don’t you email me some suggestions?
Rarely do I jump to the defence of the blogger cause, but you’re in need of a history lesson.
Firstly, you might be confused with the particular meaning of the word “hacker” that Adrian intended. “Hacker” originally meant “A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities“. The media has very much corrupted the word, as the media is wont to do.
The first blogs undoubtedly emerged from the old .plan files. To give you an idea how old .plan files are, Finger (the protocol to query .plans) became an Internet standard in December 1977; SMTP (the protocol to send email) didn’t become a standard until 1982. This was back when the Internet was still called ARPANet (ARPA = Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the US military now known as DARPA). Trust me when I say the only people on ARPANet back then were hackers.
Once the web took off about 15 years later, the logical evolution of the .plan file was to become web-based. Although there were some personal blogs virtually from the beginning, the vast majority of the primordial blogs were used for coordination and communication between groups of hackers. I should know, I briefly had one such blog back in 2000. These served essentially the same function as the original .plan files, allowing others to see what you’re currently working on and what your future plans were regarding various geeky endeavors.
Many of the concepts originally developed and tested by the blogging hacker community transferred over to what became glorified personal diaries. That’s how the fadtastic blog community you see today came in to being.
It’s also interesting to note that .plan files haven’t been completely superceded by blogs; notably John Carmack (lead developer of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, Doom, and the Quake series) is still fingerable. Click the link if you want to get a feel for how finger used to work.
Well, at the risk of nodding enthusiastically, that’s pretty much exactly what I meant. I agree with Ryan- the new media-mangled definition of hacker bewilders me, because I think of hackers as explorers like William A. Higinbotham and the succeeding generations that pushed all the limits. So yes, we evolved from them, because we are seizing a new medium and making it our own, independent and vocal.
Also- kickass contribution, Ryan. Thanks much.
fez and i came up with a simple solution to blog-spamming last week. we’ll talk.
I must say Ryan, you’ve put a lot of research into that comment… though, I’m not quite sure I’m one who needs informing of such things. I guess I was looking more for clarification as to which type of hacker they were talking about, the traditional person who goes forth and does cool shit, or the mean, bad, nasty media-influenced person who is malicious.
It was more tongue in cheek than anything, especially considering the audience.