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MTV Profiles "Hackers"

Posted by Roblimo on from the you-can-all-stop-submitting-this-now-thank-you dept.

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?

2 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Sadly enough... by RawkettPenguiN · · Score: 5

    *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.

    --
    Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
    1. Re:Sadly enough... by deepgeek · · Score: 5

      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.)