I don’t mean to write only about those annoying bits of info that ruin a book, a film or a series. I’d like to include the variety of plonkers who spoil our fun with selfish acts (this includes spammers and hackers).
Sometimes, it’s very easy to spoil things for others, and it can even happen by accident. Sometimes, all it needs is us having seen, or read, something and chatting about it with friends, and then you’re overheard (or read online by chance) by someone who didn’t know and… spoilers. When that happens, it’s annoying, but it’s an accident.
Then, you’ve got the stupid twat who, because s/he’s seen or read something, believes that everybody’s on the same page. Again, that’s annoying, but when you end up dealing with such people, spoilers may happen (you may be tempted to slap the guilty one, but we all have to deal with weird bunnies from time to time).
Now, there are trolls who enjoy ruining the fun of others and who are working hard to spread spoilers as far and wide as they can.
I’ve been lucky up to now, and I had to deal with very few spoilers, and all were thrown at me by accident.
Now… malice isn’t the same thing.
We could see the rise of trolls when telephones no longer went through switchboard and the connection was direct, phone to phone; then some twats started phoning at odd hours just for the sake of annoying people and waking them up or such childish things.
The song changed when private computers and the Internet spread.
I don’t really know if spammers appeared first or if it was hackers, but they can be annoying. Granted, most spammers can now be blocked with efficient filters and appropriate programming, but there’s spamming on a bigger scale: spamming that can send so many messages to one recipient that it’s going to make the recipient’s servers crash. (Looks eastward) Yea… that’s common with some people/nations.
That particular variety of spam is more than annoying. It’s criminal; not less than that bloke writing from Africa, asking for your bank refs before he can send you millions of dollars or the Russian casinos selling drugs online, but those are more visible (and we’re not even aware of the size of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to massive spamming!).
That kind of spam is just as nasty as the people who invent computer viruses. A few years ago, I was working in some IT nest, and I knew there were virus-makers in the building; good thing for them (and me!) that I never located them because I’d have sorely been tempted to make one of my boots connect with a very specific part of their anatomies (yes, the one that could turn them into professional sopranos). I know that they were having fun creating viruses… Pardon me, but where’s the fun when you damage someone else’s work (or fun, or whatever)?
The species I really find despicable, too, is the hacker kind. Do we get to hear about Robin Hood hackers? No, mostly not… Some of the ones who work for the police are hackers who were caught red-handed doing something illegal and were offered one way out (points at IT nest mention: we had one caught that way).
What do we get today? Well, mostly things like the Leveson Inquiry, where people working for the media hacked famous people or families who had been victims of crimes.
That’s not a spoiler, but that’s a spoil.
I really don’t understand what some people get from spying on others and ruining their reputations, or… whatever. Just this week, I heard about someone who got hacked; then, the hacker proceeded to impersonate the hacked victim. What for? Some twisted fun? Some idiotic belief that the rest of the world would fall for it? I’m afraid, that just like the cases we get to discover in the current Leveson Inquiry, it’s just people who know how to do it, think they’re entitled to do it, do it, and see their victims squirm and enjoy the show.
In my book: that’s despicable and low, but, what’s worse, it potentially spoils (back to spoiling, in a rotten way) my fun, and just for that, I’m ready to get the aforementioned boots ready to annihilate some soft tissues if given the chance.
I’ve never been interested in fishwrappers (and I’ll never be now), but when some plonker’s targeting people I enjoy reading and is preventing me from getting into contact with them, I get the boots and the Voodoo dolls ready.
Just like when people plagiarize works and pretend some excellent creation is theirs, even though the world (all right, exaggerating a tad on that one) knows they’re lying, I’m angry on the victims’ behalf. While the thief who plagiarized some work is easy to find because s/he’s bragging, the common hacker is a rat in the shadows (my apologies to actual rat, who are useful).
You’ve got to be better than the hacker to catch him, or her, and in the meantime, the hacked victims are left in limbo.
I know that spoiler-trolls and hackers must have brains wired in a very specific way, but that won’t stop my brain from growling at the mere mention of people who were raised in barns (my apologies to barn, which are useful) and don’t understand that revealing plots is poor etiquette (or netiquette), or who hack nice people to steal bits of their lives because they’re jealous (or anything just as nasty).
I don’t want to know what’s going to happen in the crime novel I’m reading, or the film I’m going to see next week, or the series that’ll be back on telly next month. Somehow, it’s a very good thing that I’ve had to deal with mild spoiling only because I know the boot threat is not a threat. It’s an omen. Spoil my fun, and face my wrath if I catch you.
If most hackers are anything like the twats who were creating viruses where I used to work, they’ve got an ego the size of the sun, and they love playing gods. That’s when I’d like someone to hunt them down to give them a dose of their own medicines. I’m not sure they’d realize how wrong they are to play with other people’s lives, but perhaps the message would reach the brains of some of them (I’m being super optimistic here).
Now… I can’t use gaffer tape to shut the mouths (or stop the hands) of spoiler-trolls, and though I’m not too bad in IT, I can’t track hackers down.
I can’t.
But for spoiling my (or my friends’) fun when they do, I can wish them some very, very, very, very interesting karma! I’m not sure it works, but a gal can dream.
Spoiler-spreading and fun-spoiling plonkers should really get some potent message from the universe, be it from an Inquiry or from one of my boots come one day. This is one of the many forms of bullying, and it should be denounced as such.
[goes to polish boots, for when…]
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