Log Entry #72: Trolls And Hackers

Dealing with some people can cause a variety of side effects; some of them are anger, anxiety, heightened blood pressure, death…

OK, that last one is a bit drastic, nevertheless, it is very true.

I’m having trouble with accepting criticisms of others; no matter what, I get wildly contrasting responses—it is insane. Some people love the changes we are making, while others despise them. The second group has no problems with eloquently expressing themselves online. There lies the reason for my recent attitude to disregard almost all forms of critique directed my way.

Let me elaborate. The Internet has become a sieve where everyone feels obligated to express their disagreement and take it as a God-given right that everyone else should accept their opinions. Even when they say how they understand and respect that other people have different points of view—in most cases, they don’t. They want someone who will give them instant gratification and justifications of their views, and get very angry and abusive when that doesn’t happen.

At first, I read all the online forums, sites, and articles concerning the S.U. and Genesis Corporation. A bunch of people were so bitter and highly disapproving of everything we did. It went so far that they judged us for meddling with the viral contagions and curing the infected. We apparently interfered with the internal workings of their respective countries, and they didn’t like that. That got me intrigued to find an answer to why they were taking such moral high ground and why there was so much hate and bitterness in their words.

It always hurts when someone is calling you names and writes ugly things about you and those you care about. It is even worse when someone shows such amazing ungratefulness for something you did out of kindness. It goes without saying that almost all of them were hiding behind usernames and handles. You may name them Internet trolls, but that is just a vague label; I was interested in who they actually were, the people behind those pseudonyms.

It was not hard for me to find out their real identities, and then to send them an email to their personal addresses. I made a test group of about a thousand individuals that left some pretty vile comments and opinions online.

It began with “Dear, X. I am writing to you about your comment/blog/article…” I asked them to explain what we were doing wrong and why they were so bitter about the changes we were making in the world.

A funny thing happened, most of them never responded, and like mice escaped in their little holes. A part of them erased their email accounts and only a small number replied. Most of those replies were with antagonistic disposition, ranging from “How did you get this email!” to threats about suing me for invading their privacy.

Only a handful were honest responses where people explained their attitudes. I may not agree with them but I respected that they were standing behind their words.

The Internet enabled every single individual to get everything out of the cesspools of their minds without any filter, which is needed in a functioning society to work. Imagine if some of you spoke in real life in the same way you do online; there would be many more fistfights and deaths in the world.

I don’t know if it is a good or a bad thing, that freedom of anonymity. It often shows human base nature, without all restraints that hold people back in real life. But there is one thing I know—I am going to do things my way disregarding all those anonymous critics… to hell with all the trolls.

***

There was one more thing concerning the Internet that annoyed me, and it involved the S.U. citizens.

What is the use of technology if you keep it contained, and under total lock and key? The decision to offer CEIs to every citizen of the S.U. was a big one from the start. Cerebral Enhancer Implant is a very powerful piece of tech, not something to be taken lightly. Michael and the others in the inner circle had the Pro variant; the ordinary consumers did not have any need for the ultra-upgraded version. It wasn’t that it cost more to give the best possible tech, but I saw no reason for that policy. People often buy computers with ramped-up specs, which they will never use to their maximum potential. For that reason, everyone else received the lite version. It had the processing power to allow uninterrupted medical nanites use, and more than enough left for it to run standard consumer applications.

CEIs were so widespread among citizens of the S.U., it was natural that they would use them as the primary communication and social interaction device (how many of you cannot live without your phones?). That was not the issue, what irritated me were all the hacking attempts from Earth, and there were hundreds of them… daily.

I’m not talking about the lone hackers that were trying from their parent's basements to rise to a new challenge, just so they could say they did. They were mostly harmless, and if I saw that there was no malicious intent—I usually recruited them. When you get right down to it, brainpower is brainpower. More than a few of them became our citizens over time, and some are working for Alice and Elizabeth’s intelligence section. But for those who were trying to hack them with evil intent—I wiped all their systems clean and made it very hard for them to use computers, since I wiped clean any other they purchased. They could use them as much as they wanted as long as they were doing it offline; once they were connected, that was it, game over—I win.

It may seem as too harsh of a sentence, but there is a good reason why in civilized countries those with criminal convictions are not permitted to own a gun… at least legally. I see no difference; if they so much use their phones to check email, that device is permanently bricked.

Those were all small potatoes in comparison with the big dogs, the cybersecurity sections of various governments. Now, those were not alone, and they knew what they were doing; besides, they were annoying as hell. I mean, these termites would not stop, even if their attempts were leading them nowhere; they couldn’t comprehend what they were trying to do.

OK, the social sites and a few intermediate servers I used were easily accessible to them, but that was only because I never tried to sever them at all. They were there for me to have more control over what goes to the Ascension and what comes down. Although, once the links went to my satellites, it was game over. Those things were controlled by MIs and their programming was essentially alien. It had so little in common with what those cyber experts were familiar with and what they were taught in school, it wasn’t even funny. Try to explain HTML to a very intelligent gorilla; he would uncomprehendingly look at you, and maybe ask for a banana… using hand gestures of course. (If he asked you with spoken words, you might as well rename him Cesar.)

So, did I do the same as I did to lone hackers and wipe their systems? Of course not, where was the fun in that?

I made a server farm that had impressive amounts of memory; whenever they tried to hack some of our systems, I redirected them toward it. After a while, they managed to break through firewalls and access the system. I wonder if they celebrated when that happened? It was a Herculean task, even if it was no more than a game for me.

There was nothing on those servers; all right, that’s not the truth, there was something—gibberish. A collection of made-up signs that were doing a good approximation of Matrix scrolling lines, without really doing anything. Oh, there were some things inside that would tickle their imagination, small pieces of words, and something that looked like programs—all make-believe.

By my calculation, it will take them years to figure out that they have been duped, and by then, I will probably think of something else. I wonder if I should send them a fruit basket when that happens with a jack in the box that will carry a small Gotcha flag when he pops up. Something to think about.

The point is, I am sick and tired of digital attacks, of any kind. Be they in the written form of people’s disagreement, to hacking attempts on my systems. They all take a piece of my time, even when most of the work in dealing with them is done by MIs. But the sheer amount of them is insane. The Earth’s population is in the billions, and when a good percentage of them want something out of you… it’s like standing in front of a tsunami.

I’ll have to do something about it in the future, as I have no intention of spending decades or centuries catering to people’s whims.