Down and Out in a Land of Script Kiddies

by tyrus568

Back in 1992 I was one of those

PGP encoding
Usenet trawling
DikuMUD playing
H/P/A/V/C trading

warez kids

one of the

Pirates with Attitude Owning the Internet backbone
(but back then it was called ARPANET and there was no web)
Cult of the Dead Cow savages
armies of DEF CON black hat hackers
equipped with batteries of 14.4k Sportster U.S . Robotics modems
using hardwired data jacks of CATS cables coiled like nests of Ethernet vipers
stripping Ma Bell's networks bare
and red-boxing old AT&T pay telephones for unlimited long-distance calls
and sifting through old issues of 2600 magazine
and trading warez on IRC channels with my Razor 1911 crew to keep me company
launching a Rise in Superior Couriering to underground bulletin board systems
and ANSI graphics artists keeping the Scene alive
authentic pirate warez junkies
sneering at that movie Hackers, instead a roaring chorus of voices chanting, "Free Kevin Mitnick!"

and utilizing

tightly curved motherboard circuitry bristling with shiny diodes
and a symphony of squealing Telex communication codes
to send out data streams scratching across the sky in a coiled synergy of spitting electrons
chunks of bits arranged mathematically in logical precision
marching in perpendicular lines down through the stratosphere
hard drives full of free software leeched from heaven like Manna
those were the days
the days when we were free

Now, in 2017,

We have icy cold electronics datamining sterile lives,
Facebook selling everyone's information to other corporations for profit
Google Search Index suppressing the good sites
$900 video cards
1.2 trillion digital circuits in one square inch of CPU
ISPs and the NSA watching my every transfer
Proxy after proxy blocked and banned
IRC closely monitored by Internet watchdogs
Usenet removed from standard access
IT industry fragmented with data corruption
Chinese corporate espionage
unlimited copyright terms robbing the Public Domain of its right to the culture of the People
motherboard circuitry embedded with hidden hardware tracking algorithms
a draconian crackdown on cyberpunks
Alphabet knowing everything about my life because I use Gmail (and they sell it to the highest bidder)
Every byte, every phone call intercepted at NSA datacenters

Nowadays I'm having to

Use VPN tunneling to infiltrate hidden FTP sites
as well as gain access to elite invite-only torrent trackers
I'm using clusters of torrent seedboxes to keep my ratio alive
plus using TOR hidden service s to meet my esoteric needs
encrypting my hard drives
jailbreaking my phone
scrubbing my data history
and avoiding the corps as much as possible
then watch the little birdies all flock to The Pirate Bay and 4chan, the shithole of the Internet

Maybe it would be so much easier to just become a total Internet and media pariah, leave the underground pirate Scene,

Maybe it would be better to fade into obscurity
read books, enjoy nature and actually talk face-to-face with people
instead of becoming one of those ADHD Adderall-popping Facebook and Instagram slaves
I've got to break free
unplug from my electronic shackles
I've got to break free
I've got to let go of the system
Because the system's trapped me

I'm a dying breed

Fuck the system
Fuck Google
Fuck Microsoft
Fuck Apple
Fuck Facebook
Integer buffer overflow
Save to system
Reboot