Now then, it has been a while since I really frothed at the mouth
and ranted on my blog… Today I am back to it…
First of all, I want to explain that I empathise with the vast majority of people who find comfort in being able to communicate with the world online.
Though it is a shame that real life human interaction is more difficult for some people, the internet and technology make it easy to sit behind a computer and be whoever you want to be.
What with roleplaying games, interactive platforms and virtual realities becoming increasingly more popular as are online networking sites and social networking, it is easy for more and more people to socialise, meet new people and sometimes even be someone else online — maybe someone that they are not in real life…
The reason that I empathise is that as a younger man, I regularly went to a roleplaying club with my best friend. We played games such as the well know ‘Dungeon and Dragons’ and others, and I got to wield swords and fire lightning bolts at trolls and various other baddies.
I got to stimulate my imagination, express myself in ways that I never would in other environments and it was enormously good fun.
Even back in those school days, the vast majority of people that were involved were those that did not get to express themselves in public, did not have as much interaction with mainstream social groups and were often far more fun-filled being someone else.
Why am I going on about all of this today? Let me tell you…
When I got up this morning, someone had hacked into this website. They erased my homepage and put some illiterate message saying “Hacked by…” and then some crummy name that they obviously think is cool. Can you tell that this irritated me?
Then, if you visited my website, you would get a virus attempting to get into your system!
What the heck is the point? Why on earth would you do this? What a senseless act! To me, this is simple vandalism.
This is no different to someone who smashes windows or causes damage for no reason. I just don’t understand it. The street thug is a very different creature though… They are physically interacting in the world, albeit in a destructive way.
What makes someone sit behind a compuer and be calculated in causing damage and harm to someone else? Because that is what they did to me and those visiting my site. Spineless. Pointless and ridiculous.
Now, I don’t want to sound like my Dad, and I know I am going to… The world is changing and in an increasingly virtual place where the vast majority of interaction is through a keyboard and PC, the mind can concoct all kinds of ways of causing harm to others — now for my moralising and reframing…
Much better that our vandals are turning into this though, eh? Much better than someone throwing a brick through your window or smashing up the bus stop, isn’t it? I am happier thinking that virtual thugs can do their malaffected vandalism in their bedrooms.
I’ll be back blogging about hypnosis, personal development and my usual topics tomorrow, just had to share that with you… Do you see what I have done? I have gone and expressed my emotional neediness this morning by virtual means here by blog… Crazy modern world 😉
Yesterday I was driving alongside a really horrible driver, someone who kept honking like crazy whenever someone would do something absolutely normal, like make a turn, or when they followed the speed limit, and she tailgated every person she got behind, weaving in and out of the various lanes trying to get somewhere more quickly, and yet somehow ending up stuck at all the same stop light as me.
I looked over at her and saw such an angry, unhappy, pathetic visage, and I made up my own little story about how miserable she must be, and realized that none of us every knows all the details. She may not even know why she’s acting the way she is, so why would I think I know her story?
And it reminded me of a poster we had at the food bank where I used to volunteer. It said something about how we need to be nice to everyone because we don’t know there story, and to always remember, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Sounds noble, right? But what that implies is that somehow I have more grace than the other person, and that somehow God has frowned upon them, while blessing me with what I have.
Anyway, the point is that we don’t know why some hacker is venting his frustrations at people trying to make a difference in the world. Maybe you were a random target, or maybe there’s something he finds threatening on some subconscious level about the idea of self-improvement. Or maybe he or she wants to feel anonymously powerful because they feel powerless in their life at home.
Eh, enough pontificating. 🙂
Maybe the kid was just some jerk.