The Smoking Gun - Bane Of Internet Terrorism
AngelHedgie
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Registered User regular
As you may or may not have heard, there have been a group of pranksters online that have been terrorizing people, getting them to do all sorts of crazy things like toss mattresses out of hotel room windows, strip naked outside of the fast food place they worked, and even get them to drink their own urine. These "pranks" not only caused serious damage, but also jeopardized the safety of the people that were "pranked". And throughout this all, the people doing these things bragged about being untouchable.
That is, until The Smoking Gun cracked the case. And we find out that the leader of said merry band is - literally - a 25 year old man living with his mother.
I think that blogger/cartoonist August Pollak, commenting on the story at MetaFilter, sums it up the best:
Seriously - it's like all the stereotypes of the Internet have come to life. Of course, now with the case broken, one hopes that law enforcement will quickly deal with these individuals.
That is, until The Smoking Gun cracked the case. And we find out that the leader of said merry band is - literally - a 25 year old man living with his mother.
I think that blogger/cartoonist August Pollak, commenting on the story at MetaFilter, sums it up the best:
I don't really get how people are saying that TSG's "tone" is bad in this article. It seems really level-headed to me, and hardly condescending at all. There's only so many ways you can put a positive light on a 19-year-old sociopath cowering behind the boarded-up windows of the apartment he shares with his mom.
In fact, the details of the squalor are what grip me the most here... how many crime dramas have you seen that show the riches and success of the criminal prior to the downfall? These guys never even had that. I mean, for god's sake, even Osama bin Laden is a fucking millionaire. These kids, and half of them are literally that, are just losers. Their lives have no second act... just the pathetic start and the pathetic decline.
That's it. They're losers. Like when they catch the pedophile with his five-day beard and spaghetti-o stained undershirt. No book-selling gunfight. No songs in tribute. I guess that's what I meant in my earlier comment- the only single thing this guy had was the mystique of being clever and powerful and he just lost that. It doesn't even matter if he ever goes to jail or not, he's still a broke, ugly, unloved, fucking loser. He will never have a wife or a happy job and if he doesn't die in jail he will die alone. The people on this site are not real friends; they will never barbecue together or remember to wish each other a happy birthday. I recently lost my job, and my social life is a goddamn trainwreck- but I still have some friends, and I still have fun shit I do on weekends, and I still called my mom this afternoon and we talked about our lives and said goodbye with an "I love you too." And I don't think I've been less depressed about my current situation in a month after reading all that.
I really went in on this thinking I wouldn't be able to feel sorry for them, but I do. I feel so much sorrier for their victims, but Jesus... so fucking pathetic.
Seriously - it's like all the stereotypes of the Internet have come to life. Of course, now with the case broken, one hopes that law enforcement will quickly deal with these individuals.
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Alt response: and yet, those people who conned nigerian scammers into doing stupid stunts got high fives all round...
Pulling "pranks" that caused massive amounts of damage. (One was estimated to have caused $50K of damage.) Not to mention endangering the lives of people and outright terrorizing women.
You do it by calling and acting as if you're from the local utility, saying there's a gas leak.
As for the alt comment, the difference is twofold there - one, the scammed were people who scammed others, and two, those cons followed the "safe and sane" rule (that is, no actual hurting the person). All that happened to the scammers was that they got thoroughly embarrassed. These guys went after innocent people and actually threatened and endangered them.
Right so...uuuh...I have nothing, but I'm pretty sure that if you break into a house and broadcast it over the internet, the crime would still be burglary.
I was actually more looking for the type of shit done, but I found it myself.
Highlights include convincing people they are about to die in a gas leak or that they've just contracted Hep C.
Don't forget contacting women selling things like old baby stuff on Craigslist, getting them to give their address, then tell them that you're on the way to rape and kill them.
Yes, of course. Sorry, I was distracted by reading the profiles of the group, who's leadership boasts a drunk driver and a convicted pedophile.
That said, all I'm seeing is the 'gotcha calls' my local radio station makes every single weekday morning at 8am (which, for the record, I really can't stand), taken to another level. Its still rotten behaviour, but its not like there's no inspiration for it out there.
And of course, rather more than occasionally said radio stations manage to match this dude, and even outdo them, significantly! ...all by themselves.
Actually, the only difference between these assholes and the assholes I just linked is that these assholes don't have massive corporate interests protecting them.
*vom*
Albeit it looks to me like that wanker in the last one (with the 14 year old girl and the rape) is running out of friends rather fast. People aren't going to forget that kind of bullshit soon.
Edit: Holy shit that site just shows how much worse those assholes could get.
I will take the form of a large Baleen Whale!
Then we can dispense out JUSTICE!
What in the fuck is wrong with that girl's mother?
Which is, sorry to say, a huge chunk of the population.
And she and the daughter are frankly the only people likely to get constructive help as a result of that sorry mess, since the cops and child services are now involved. There'll be no such corrective action taken against anyone else involved
Funny how easy it is to trace these people, I'm pretty sure some folks on here make themselves more untrackable while all they do is download DVDs of Mulan and Little Mermaid.
Yeah, these are the same type of people ( the 'prankers') that thought by putting that whole internet freedom speech in the agreement to their servers they were protected from the police...
It's interesting.
Here in America, I sort of assumed all radio sucked because the stunts were faked. All those phone calls are faked and everything is a work. But apparently, it even blows when given freedom to actually do those things.
edit: on that last clip, it seems like the mother railroaded them into that. She had to know. Did the hosts know? Without hearing the full show it is hard to say just how much the hosts are to blame. They probably should have shut down the contest after that answer but, again, I can't hear the full show.
I still think these guys are pretty vile. I spent some time on IRC when I was in college, and saw first hand how easy it was to convince lonely geeks to do something jokey or pranky when you're dealing only in text. These guys seem to do both IRC and voice chat, and the constant one-upmanship just means they're hurting more and more people. But yeah, it is interesting that these people are essentially complete losers. I found it interesting that some of them talked about turning into something like Crank Yankers, or other comedy-prank shows, considering how often the subject of video game influence comes up here.
Hopefully they can be dealt with now that their identities have been revealed.
My Backloggery
Reading that article the best course of action is getting their moms to make them do their chores
As the child says in the transcript, the mother knew that she had been raped. But the mother had the child come on the show and get hooked up to a lie detector anyway. If the mother had cared about her child more than fifteen minutes of fame she wouldn't have gotten her daughter into this in the first place. I'd say she's a bit beyond "constructive help".
The other 'pranks' that those radio hosts have pulled are appalling, and I hadn't read about them until you linked to them.
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Canadian and US law enforcement co-operate all the time. If the initial investigation ended at the boarder it's only because someone higher up decided it wasn't worth his time to catch some internet pranksters.
They are definitely going to be arrested.
There was a longer transcript I read where they said outright that the mom should have told them ahead of time. So no, they didn't know. Radio guys only had one really out of line comment, which was pushing the point after she admitted it, but I would (at least LIKE to) think that it was just trying to fill space while figuring out how the hell to react.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Local article that really just reiterates the smoking guns, but it includes a little about how they tracked down Malik and how they are 100% sure it was him.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Its just fucked up and creepy, even if the circumstances hadn't been quite so horrific (I'd be amazed if there wasn't any fallout prior to the hosts being suspended on the people who are supposed to vet these things - how the fuck do you end up hooking an unwilling rape victim to a lie detector to ask her about sex?) what exactly did they want? When would learning about a 14 year olds sex life ever be fun, and not at all weird when you're all mid twenties at least?
Abusive of the parent, I agree. I don't really feel like the radio show was up to dirty tricks. They wanted an entertaining show. They didn't expect that this girl
1. Didn't really want to be there
2. That she had been raped.
They should have stopped it at step 1 but they didn't - who knows how serious the child is when she says she doesn't want to be there. They absolutely should have stopped it at step 2.
It's basically the same as those shitty mid-morning My Daughter Is Out of Control shows but on radio. I'm not saying it is good or talented radio.
I don't want to end this discussion but it probably doesn't belong here. So I apologize for even quoting you to get started on it. So...yeah, I agree with you but then in some ways I disagree.
Erm... the difference is that on Maury the girls are all "Yeaaaa, I sleep with men for moeny. I've had over 40 different partners. Once I had 7 in a single day. Women too. I'm tryin' to get pregnant cuz I'm gonna be a better mom than this dumb bitch."
And the mother is all, "I love my baby, I don't know what to do anymore, please help me!"
Incidentally, if you're asking a minor if they've had sex, legally you're asking if they've been raped. The radio station had no business running the segment with minors involved in the first place.
What? Look I agree with you that the segment never should have been produced or aired but that is just factually wrong. Depends entirely on local laws. eg: many states in the US a minor (eg: anyone under 18) could still be older than the age of consent.
I'm massively bewildered that anyone here thinks there's any remote justification for the people who decided to run that segment, by the way. What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Well, no. You were making a universal statement (minor having sex is always rape). Thus only one counterexample is needed to show that you are indeed talking out of your ass.
The world is not the US but some states in the US provide that counter example.
quick, get the matches and kero!
Here's a tip for, you know, not being a pedantic idiot: context is important. In a thread where we're talking about interrogating a 14 year old about her sex life in public, there's no room to argue that the law might think she's not been assaulted if the answer is affirmative. Jesus wept, dude.
Splitting hairs now, people.