NEWS: Hackers of a Different Variety

CULTURE: Hackers of a Different Variety

Six disgruntled patrons at a Beijing cyber cafe came into the building looking for the security guard who had argued with them on a previous night. They couldn't find him, so they did the next best thing: they started slashing the patrons.

The reports made a point of noting that all of the attackers were either 17 or 18-years old, and most came from "broken homes or single-parent families" -- suggesting that the stereotype of the black-clothed, violent kid with computer obsessions and a troubled home life has not yet breathed its last.

Stereotypes do get that way for a reason though.

Where the fuck were the superheroes?

best comment ever...

Yeah, because it's shocking when that happens. Look, every time some quiet person who seems to be normal and adjusted goes and kills a couple people, the news media eats it up and we are bombarded with it. We get the neighbor who says, "He was always so quiet" and people who knew them who say the same thing. Why are we bombarded with these stories? Because the media loves this Richard Corey shit. No other reason. When something people can't explain happens, they tell us about it.

And why, you might ask, are we more frequently told about these stories than we used to be? Well, one, the internet. We're writing on a tool that gives us information at a speed impossible even fifteen years ago. Two, there are now over six billion people on the planet, and with more people, more of these incidents occur. With all these people and all these stories, it's easy to forget that incidents like this are the anomolies that "Richard Corey" described. Just freak occurences. Overall, violence in school has decreased steadily since about 1990ish, but you wouldn't know it from watching TV. Thus, stereotypes actually can come about without reason. It's the same as the stereotype that blacks are stupid. No one has the facts.

[Edited on Oct 04, 2004 by TedKoppel]

This sounds like the movie Kung Fu Master is my Grandma, except in the cyber cafe there are kick ass tough girls with obviously Kung Fu mastering Grannies in tow.

Internet cafes are hot-spots for gamers. You know those kids who love to frag, but their parents "lock down" their machines? They go there. Or if they can't afford a computer at home. Or if they're skipping school entirely.

So basically, people are going their for their fix. They play games. And while there is a detached nature to fragging people online, when you team up with other players next to you, you form your own "clan", posse or even gang.

The violence makes sense if you compare their behavior to people in a pool hall or bowling alley getting worked up over trivial sports. Fragging is the new social sport for these kids, and guess what? The violence in the games doesn't cause the violence as much as the mob mentality of being in a game based world.

Or whatever. But I don't think the gamers should be blamed any more or less than any other group of people at a bowling alley or pool hall.

Nice.

too much gaming and coffee for those guys...

Stereotype or not, we're perpetuating it by talking about it. Just by making this an issue, we're feeding further media stories of this nature - they don't care what kind of attention they get, so long as people pay attention.

On another note, as a former security guard, this is EXACTLY why security guards are no where to be found unless there's
A) fresh coffee
B) hot girls
C) doughnuts

Otherwise, we're in the back room calling radio stations and downloading por....er....op-ed pieces on the current state of political turmoil the world over. (whew, good save!).