{"id":1685,"date":"2009-08-06T09:55:53","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T14:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2009-08-06T10:24:53","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T15:24:53","slug":"web-2-0-terrorist-malwebolence-the-lulz-of-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/08\/06\/web-2-0-terrorist-malwebolence-the-lulz-of-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Web 2.0 “Terrorist”:: Malwebolence & the Lulz of the Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alleged
Alleged destruction as a result of Pranknet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crossposted on Rhizomicon<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Just a short blog, as I’m on the road en-route from Toronto to San Francisco for ASA<\/a><\/strong>. So, I got into Iowa City around 9PM last night and I saw a\u00a0tweet<\/a><\/strong> from CBC, linking to a story on the “mastermind” behind Pranknet<\/a>, Tariq Malik. <\/span>The Smoking Gun<\/a> goes into great deal outing Pranknet {with media clips} and their nefarious activities and <\/span>BoingBoing<\/a> <\/strong>and Canoe.ca<\/a> have a short articles on the matter.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/strong>In a nutshell, Tariq and others used Skype to make various prank phone calls getting unsuspecting people to do destructive things based on appeals to authority for chatroom audiences. In a sense, it’s reminiscent of the Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience<\/a><\/strong>. It also reminds me of ethnomethodological “breaching experiments”<\/strong><\/a> but this isn’t about social science, this is for the “lulz.”<\/a><\/strong> See this NYTimes article on “lulz” and “malwebolence” <\/a><\/strong>that a friend forwarded to me last summer {HT: Terri}.<\/div>\n
Tariq wanted to build an audience based on his comedic “genius,” but since being outed, he’s cowering in his mom’s Windsor, Ontario apartment.<\/div>\n
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Twitterversion::<\/strong> {Twitter is<\/span> was down, 6 August 2009 9:55 CDT} \u00a0Canadian Web 2.0 “terrorist” outed by The Smoking Gun http:\/\/url.ie\/26mf & http:\/\/url.ie\/26mg #ThickCulture #CBC @Prof_K<\/a><\/div>\n
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