I used to be a hacker. A fairly prominent one, to boot. While you might not have heard of my exploits, you might have seen my face in newspapers or on television. In fact, it might very well be the case that when you think “hacking” or “cyberattack”, it is my visage that pops up in your head.
For some reason, I was really popular in the focus tests, so PR ran me over and over again. Whenever there was a press release, my face was there. When we took credit for something, my face was there. When we denied having anything to do with something, my face – actually, no, they ran the guy down the hall. Handsome fella. Nice headwear.
Anyway, the reason I left the business was all the corporate branding. Did you know we had to wear the balaclavas during active working hours, just in case we managed some spectacular hack and had to do an emergency photo op? It got real crazy towards the end, and our offices were more like photo studios than actual hacker dens. We had to run in parallel wirings just to ensure that everything kept running. Those spotlights draw power like a –
Anyway, it got real slow actually doing things towards the end. PR had figured that certain poses worked better than others, so we had to practice facing the computer in photogenic poses. The balaclava plus pointing a gun at the screen was really popular, for some reason. I mean, a gun? What kind of hacking feats do they think you can do with a prop gun?
One day, I realized I was actually working two jobs. One as a criminal mastermind hacker who made large international institutions tremble in their metaphorical boots. Another as a stock photo stunt man with ridiculous headgear and utterly unergonomic working conditions. With my latent carpal tunnel, you can only really point at something for so long, you know, and our medical insurance didn’t cover those sorts of things. Pre-existing condition, if you’d believe it.
So, yeah, if you’re thinking of becoming a glorious hacker, such as you see in the news all the time – don’t. It’s all corporate branding and no hacking these days. Not like in the olden days, with international rollerskate chases and synchronized phone booth calling and all that. They just talk about those things to lure you in.
But they never tell you how warm those balaclavas are in those damned spotlights. –
More longer friend see that sky? 