Supervirus writers
Published: 05 Jun 2001 22:09 BST
Or have you tried associating with famous people -- reading "Hello!" or "OK" so that you can drop names in conversation?
All these actions are what you do if you want to make some mark on the world -- but feel that you'll never amount to anything -- and so, I suspect, is the instinct to "abstain as a protest" in the general election.
This week, the fact that there are angry people out there, actively trying to sabotage other people's computers even if they don't know the other people. Denial of service attacks; subtle viruses which piggy-back on "hoax" warnings which get people to delete essential files from their Windows directories -- all these are not just pranks. They're angry people, trying to hurt the world, trying to provoke a reaction.
The strange fact about us humans is that we really like to be noticed. There are, almost certainly, good reasons why this is so; and perhaps if we knew them all, we might understand why people get so depressed if they are ignored.
And the world does ignore us.
I suspect that in smaller societies, where people know their local community personally, it's harder to feel unnoticed. The attention you get may be unwelcome; but people know who you are, and what you're about.
But in the Internet world, who has heard of you? -- and when you go to the polls to vote, what difference does it make?
The sense that "nothing I do matters" isn't restricted to lonely nerds with problems meeting girls. No less a public figure than Sir John Mortimer, QC -- famous playwright and celebrity -- has said that he recommends abstaining from the polling booth ceremony "as a protest." Everybody knows who he is (he feels) but what difference does it make to the world?
Time was when you could make a difference personally. But today, starting a petition to prevent the closure of a local playing field probably won't save the playing field. It certainly won't get you into the news, not even on the local weekly rag -- and as for reaching the TV screen that you see national news on, forget it.
And when we do try to make a difference, we can be severely punished.
I'm not just thinking of the "flaming" that you can get for trying to help someone in a newsgroup. It borders on the psychotic, the way people who are asking questions will insult you if you give them the answer, but it isn't the answer they want. But it's not just an Internet thing; it happens in "real life" too.
An old friend of mine, not that long ago, wanted to do something to save children from exposure to "questionable materials." She started a campaign to have some kind of regulation set up. And she did it all properly: she was a public relations exec, and knew how to reach the attention of the world media, not just the parish newsletters.
Did she get the Mums of England behind her? No; because she dropped the campaign within a week of launching it. She held a press conference to announce her plans; and a well-known national daily paper sent its reporter to give her her moment in the Sun (oops, what a giveaway).
The reporter asked her if she was married. When he found she was divorced, he brightened up noticeably. "Tell me about your ex-husband -- was he unfaithful? Oh, just a nervous collapse, and ran away? Oh well; how about boyfriends, do you have any? What sort of thing do you look for in a man? Is sex important to you? Have you ever posed in the nude? Would you wear a bikini for our photographer?" and so on.
She knows what sort of story that leads to; she reads the press with a professional eye. Would you like to see yourself featured in: "Kinky divorcee calls for pictures like this to be banned!" with a wonderfully salacious picture of the sort of thing we want to see less of... and with lecherously rephrased descriptions of why her ex-husband might have preferred another woman, and what they might have wanted to do in bed?
Few of us can cope with that sort of attention. We like to be noticed, but not to be publicly pilloried.
But the virus writer! -- he can make a difference all right. The day after he releases his new bit of code, there are headlines all around the world. He is a super-man. But like Clark Kent, he's anonymous; he slips amongst the crowds joining in the clamour to find out who he is, and nobody suspects.
Virus writing isn't going to stop. The only solution is to spend your own money buying, and getting daily updates to, a proper anti-virus program.
But we don't, do we?
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