MTV Profiles "Hackers"

Christopher Sypal writes "I just found out that MTV is going to have a special this Wednesday (10pm eastern) called 'True Life: I'm a Hacker'. Looks exactly like what you would expect from an MTV show with 'hacker' in the title." If MTV wants to put *real* (and funny) hackers on the air, they ought to send a camera crew to the (highly photogenic) Geek Compound and do a show on Cmdr Taco and Hemos. Perhaps we should all write to mtvdart@aol.com and tell them so, eh?

Comments

Highly Photogenic?

[chromatic]

I'm not sure MTV wants to show Rob and Jeff not wearing pants all day, unless it's "Hackers: Living in an Underwear Commercial".

Sorry guys.

--
QDMerge 0.4 just released!

Sadly enough...

[RawkettPenguiN]

*takes off red hat for a few minutes and puts on asbestos helmet..*

..As a representative of the teens-early-20's generation (What is that called now? I'm too young to be Generation X...) this IS the kind of thing everyone believes. Say I bring a Linux manual or some Perl pages to school to read in my spare time--which I've done a few times this year.
"What are you reading that's so interesting?" Joe Average Student asks.
I tell them.
"That's boring," they scoff.
Then let's say I bring some printouts of 'Guide to (Mostly) Harmless Hacking' or some phrack exploits, stuff like that...(Last year I did this...I admit it. But it IS what brought me to Slashdot..;] ) Instantly I'm the center of negative attention by students AND teachers alike..."That's illegal!" "Hacking is against the law." "You're not going to DO that, are you?" "I can't believe you. Throw those away."

Thing is, we all know that the most the 3l337-haxor AOL kiddies will do is get telnet accounts, ping each other, WinNuke each other, download canned cracks, etc, etc. But they're mostly harmless. Just bandwidth hogs and arrogant adolescents.
I believe that a person with actual knowledge of *nix and how programming works is more dangerous than 100 AOL kiddies. The Media just doesn't know it, because, well, watching a bunch of geeks slurping Mountain Dew and poring over man pages is *boring*. ;]
So MTV slaps the "hacker" label on a bunch of stoned-drunk-whatever 20-somethings who want to break into school/bank computers. And they call it entertainment.
This is how the public thinks, I guess. So instead of bemoaning the AOL hax0r 31337's who like to make real geeks look bad, perhaps we should just go on with lives...and make more money than they do...

Just my $.02. Flame away.

Re:Sadly enough...

[deepgeek]

Speaking of Mt.Dew... I'd love to seem them do a realistic commercial some day. Show the real demographic that they sell to: A bunch of geeks coding, playing games, etc.

(Fade in to back of person typing furiously. Computer next to him has not case and the hard drive is on the desk next to him. We see him exit out of pico and attempt to compile the program he just wrote. Instantly the screen scrolls with errors.

Cut to his face, we see him smile.

Cut to his hand. It reachs for a Mt. Dew, pops the top, and the camera follows the can to the mouth. While he's chugging we see him hit the Up arrow key to recall the last command, hit enter, and the program compiles without problem. Flashy logo with lame slogan like "Choice of a Gnu Generation.)

Bank-hacking warrior children

[Plasmic]

Some choice quotes from the RealAudio streams that require no external comments to make you realize what a quality piece of journalism that this isn't:

"All I did was sell weed and listen to loud music and stay out all night. I was one of those kinds thinking 'Wow, I can change my grades or I can hack into a bank and do wire transfers'. It's the glamour of that that drew me in."

"There's no people telling you what you can and can't do. At 16, Chameleon left high school and became a superstar at the hacking underground. Working from a computer in his mother's garage, he penetrated some of the government's most secure military computers."

"Gotta breath. Your heart's beating. You don't know what you're getting into but then yet again you wanna do it. Typing the final commands and then you're wondering whether the other guy at the other end is waiting for you to come and bust you. You break into somebody's system, that's not allowed. Just by having the password for the other account, that's not allowed; it's all illegal."

Well, at least MTV didn't just find a buncha wannabes who thought they were radical dudes. Er.. doh!

A lesson in demographics

[Wah]

Anyone else here not watched it for years?

Anyone here over the age of 24? If you are you shouldn't be watching MTV, at least from thier eyes. They target an audience from 13-24, that's it. Did you watch it then? Did you like it then? Does it suck now, to you?

They also target by psychographics, i.e. intelligence. Guess which end of the spectrum they go for there. Guess which one /. goes for.

I liked it when they played videos, but do you know how much videos cost to produce? A 3-minute video costs much more than a 30-minute edit job (Real Rules & Road World). When you have to fill up 24/7 creative programming is important, cheap programming is very important, and quality programming is what HBO does.

erg...MTV

[Ribo99]

Anyone out there remember when MTV actually showed videos? Videos on Music Television, who would have thought.