My "Hackers" 25th Anniversary story: I saw it in a studio big-city screening room with professional movie critics, as the guest of a friend. I had some...um..."practical experience"...with the subject and culture. So I struggled to stifle laughter and MST3K-style comments. (1/?)
But I was JUST old and mature enough to recognize that this was a professional environment and any misbehavior would reflect poorly on my friend. So I was silent. We grabbed lunch right afterward. That's when I opened the floodgates. (2/?)
Amidst laughter and bites of a chicken club sandwich, I mocked the whole thing. The characters' attempts at "hakspeek," the culture, even the fact that the dude crowdsurfed and nobody stole his alpha pager. BUT THEIR HACKS, OMG HOW LAME! (3/?)
I was really on a roll (and, yes, full of myself) so I walked my friend through how most of the crew's techniques would have totally gotten them caught/couldn't possibly have worked/were WAY more complicated than they had to be. (4/?)
So point by point, I explained how to REALLY do all that stuff. And I went further, explaining how they could have done it invisibly, or done far, FAR worse. Eventually, I recognized that my friend had stopped eating and I sounded like Jeffrey Dahmer critiquing "Seven." (5/6)
I think my friend took it all in good humor. Looking back, it makes me recognize that "Hackers" got at least ONE thing right: lots of people in that culture in the 90s were arrogant *****s with very poor social radar. :) (6/6)
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