Remix of chapter "Phreaks, hackers & trolls" from the book "The Social Media Reader (Mandiberg, 2012)"

1. Phreaks, Hackers & Trolls
The Politics of Transgression
and Spectacle.
REMIX
EMMA THOMPSON
NATALIE SLACK

2. 1950–1960s: Freaking and Phreaking.
Phreaking is a slang term used
which exploits weaknesses in the
phone system to make long-
distance calls for free, tap into other
calls, take control of lines, get free
phone services.
Joe Engressia, also known as Joy Bubbles, was blind since birth with perfect pich. In 1957,
at the age of eight, he discovered he could “stop” the phone by whistling at a certain pitch,
later discovered to be a 2600 hertz tone, into the receiver. Which the eventually the media
show cased the “whiz kid” which influenced others into his footsteps
By 1961, phreakers no longer had to rely on perfect pitch to make their way into the phone
system. They were using Blue Box. This device was used to replicate the tones used by the
telephone switching system to route calls. enabling Blue Box users to act as if they were a
telephone operator..

3. 1970’s - Phreaking.
Phreaking came into the public lime John Draper, famously known as
light after a particular article called "Cap'n Crunch,”. the only link to the
“secrets of the little blue box” it was an sugary cereal was a plastic toy whistle
instant hit, because it revealed, in that was once a prize giveaway in
detail, the practices of Phreaking. each cereal box. In the late sixties, he
had discovered that the Cap'n Crunch
toy whistle's tone perfectly matched
the 2600-hertz long distance trunk
telephone signal. This enabled him to
make free long distance phone calls
around the world.

4. 1980s To Make a Thief, Make an Owner;
to Create Crime, Create Laws”—Ursula Le Guin.
By the 1980s, Phreaking growing but was increasingly joined by a
growing number of computer enthusiasts, many of them preteens
and teens, who extended the politics of transgression into new
technological terrains.

5. 1990’s – Hackers, Public enemy number 1 in the US.
 Throughout the 1990’s the Hacker underground was thriving, although there was an
increasing number of these types of hackers being nabbed and criminally prosecututed.
Case Study – Hacker and phone Phreaker Kevin Mitnick
Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s he was arrested and convicted multiple times
for various crimes which included computer fraud and possession illegal long-
distance access cods.
He was eventually placed on the FBI “Most wanted” list and was part of a three
year manhunt until he was arrested in 1995. He was in jail for five years, four of
those years were as a pretrial detainee and was placed in solitary confinement
for one year. Mitnick explained these extreme circumstances were taken
because a federal prosecutor told the judge he could use the phone to connect to
North American Aerospace command and launch a ICBM. He never gained
anything financially for his hacking and believes his harsh treatment was used
to send a message to the wider hacking community. He was released in 2002.

6. 2000-2010, Good Grief! The masses have come to our
internet.
In the year 2000 the floodgates opened with cheap Internet connections. Added to
this a host of new social media technologies, including blogs, wikis, social
networking sites, and video-sharing sites,
were being built and used by geeks and nongeeks to post messages, to share
pictures, to chatter aimlessly, to throw ephemeral thoughts into the virtual wind,
and to post videos and other related Internet memes. Internet memes are viral
images, videos, and catchphrases under constant modification by users, and with a
propensity to travel as fast as the Internet can move them.
During this time post 9/11 mandated stiff punishments for Cybercrimes. This
added to the crackdowns during the 1980’s and 1990’s made a much more
reserved hacker underground. Hackers like Kevin Mitnick are an endangered
species on cultural landscape of North America and Europe.

7. Trolls
 Trolls have transformed what were more occasional and sporadic
acts, often focused on virtual arguments called “flaming or “flame
wars, into a full-blown set of cultural norms and set of linguistic
practices.
 Trolls work to remind the “masses” that have lapped onto the shores of
the Internet that there is still a class of geeks who, as their name suggests,
will cause Internet grief, hell, and misery; examples of trolling are legion.
 Griefers, one particular subset of troll, who roam in virtual worlds and
games seeking to jam the normal protocols of gaming, might enact a
relatively harmless prank, such as programming flying phalluses to pay
a public visit in the popular virtual world Second Life during a high-
profile CNET interview.

8. Trolling Examples
Case Study 1. – World of Warcraft
During a virtual funeral held in the enormously popular massively multiplayer
online game World of Warcraft, for a young player who had passed away in real
life, griefers orchestrated a raid and mercilessly killed the unarmed virtual funeral
entourage.
Case Study 2. – In the winter of 2007 and 2008, one group of trolls, bearing the
name Anonymous, trolled the Church of Scientology after the church attempted to
censor an internal video featuring Tom Cruise that had been leaked. Eventually
what was simply done for the sake of trolling grew into a more traditional protest
movement.

9. Summary Wordle

10. References
All content taken from –
Mandiberg, M (2012). The Social Media Reader. New
York: NYU Press.