I love how Brian Brushwood described it. It was either an inside job from someone at the station, or a very impressive feat of radio hacking, and they had to plan out the costume and the corrugated sheet on a pivot behind him to simulate the “CG” backgrounds, “But it’s as if zero thought went into what he was actually going to say.” He hums the Clutch Cargo theme tune, makes fun of Max Headroom as spokesman of New Coke by holding up a Pepsi can, and throws a little bit of shade at WGN and Chuck Swirsky.
The halcyon days of the 1980’s when a broadcast intrusion like this was basically a harmless juvenile prank.
Look at how phone phreaking was treated in the 70s, or codes for getting long distance on BBS. The modern justice system would have wanted to make someone like Joybubbles an example.
iirc terrorism charges were levied against an activist that threw glitter at police during a demo for climate activists some years ago
My buddy Julian was linked up with our city’s biggest phreakers. Dude disappeared and word is he did 10 years. This was in the 80’s
10/10 I love this shit
It’s sad that something like it can never happen again because of how everything is streamed/torrented now.
One could argue that the lack of a shared, verifiable experience like radio or live TV has contributed to the breakdown of social cohesion. Everyone can see what they want, whenever they want, instead of seeing what everyone else sees.
I’m not saying your wrong, or really trying to make an argument, but the book “bowling alone” came out in 2000 and it was describing the fall into social isolation and alienation before social media or the balkanization of news and entertainment. To go further back Marx was talking about the alienation of labor as far back as 1844. Like capitalism is killing us, the increased view/reach of technology is just making it obvious.
This is ancillary but perhaps contributing to it due to a lack of shared context. (For example, if someone asks me about a funny commercial I won’t have seen it and can’t relate.)
I’m thinking more like the zeitgeist has fractured.
the zeitgeist has fractured
I’d argue it’s being diluted by noise. There have always been conflicting narratives. History is so hard to untangle (for me at least), because most of us come out a bit brainwashed from the system.
I think we are seeing the ends of the safeties this form of democracy has to provide. We are all in it together, everyone hallucinating to some extent. The big difference today is that you don’t talk about tv around the watercooler. You send cat pics and talk about Will Smith AI spaghetti videos, digitally or in meat space.
The problem usually isn’t lack of shared context, I believe, especially when we have so much in our pockets. It’s signal dilution with some plain old ill-intent under the hood (i.e. ‘advanced’ marketing).
I agree with a lot of what you said, and maybe “fractured” wasn’t the right word to use. It’s more like “shattered”
Take advertising, for example. Back in the days of broadcast media they had to make broadly appealing ads. Ads people would talk about around the water cooler.
Now we can target ads very specifically, so I may never see an ad that you see.
People are still talking about inane things because that’s how we do, but there’s more niches and communities than before, and they’re more siloed.
I especially agree with this part:
I think we are seeing the ends of the safeties this form of democracy has to provide
The printing press brought down hereditary monarchies. The Internet may bring down nationalist liberal democracy.
Let’s hope what replaces it is as much of an improvement.
Let’s hope what replaces it is as much of an improvement.
I say we’re doing one better than ‘just’ hoping it. Talking about it and articulating modern needs lets others learn new ideas and maybe find some social structure.
I think I understand what you mean about the shattered zeitgeist (or social cohesion maybe?). One of my friends is leaning heavy into one of my lesser favored narratives, and he sends me lots of jokes that boarder being edgy (like racist n such), but sometimes actually being quite funny. He’s a close friend who casually said he’d have no quarrel if the nazis took over. What can I do? Cut him off based on philosophy? Teach him his wrong ways? So far just asking questions helped me understand more about my view. And as far as his shitty racist jokes go, I don’t send a pity smiley. That’s the best I have for now.
Cut him off based on philosophy?
it’s not philosophy it’s ideology and personally my answer is yes. I spent my 20s hanging out with white people who openly though i was “one of the good ones” i’m so beyond over it. I’d rather have no friends than friends who I need to apologize for. Like what am i learning about my views? that I’ve surrounded myself racist assholes?
I also liked Adam Conover’s video about how we stopped referring to decades as time periods. further breakdown of social cohesion.
Would having his bare ass spanked have made it easier to find him?
Human ass cheek resonance is unique, like fingerprints. There was no database at the time though.
There’s one now?? 😳
Why don’t you send me a recording and I’ll let you know
Ok, but this better be for Science!
Shhhhhh…
Please report to your local precinct for spanking fingerprint video session.
Don’t worry, the video is stored in amazon using military grade aes 256 encryption. The encryption key is located in the same s3 bucket.
They could do an ass line up to actually identify him if they has a suspect.
That’s how the the dj for kneecap got unmasked, not the spanking but his bare ass
That title makes less sense than the event itself, which is famously weird. I can’t imagine anything other than that being on purpose.
Crazy. Today at work I accidentally pressed the intercom button on my phone and approximately 600 people unexpectedly heard a really loud “BOOP” with no message or followup whatsoever, all at the same time, and it made me think of this.
I wonder why they still haven’t come forward, given that there would be no legal consequences for doing so in 2025.
My guess is that they died before the statute of limitations expired. This happened in the 80’s, and there’s plenty of time between then and now for something to have happened to them.
Maybe. But if I had to guess, it’s also not really easy to prove, if you didn’t also record some evidence back then.
“It was Bob and me” isn’t really a good story, if you can’t really show for it. Also, remembering the details on how it was done will also be spotty at best
I’d heard a story years ago that it was an autistic brother of a hacker/phreak in the local Chicago scene actually in the footage; with the hack being carried out by said brother. Another station had their broadcast interrupted that same night, though only audio came through.
That would go a long way towards explaining why they’ve kept the secret. Involving your bro would be a bad look, or maybe it was a telecom engineer and they’re worried about their pension, or they died. Such a cool moment in time that can’t really happen again and only a handful of people can possibly know the truth.
That and parents don’t like to spill all their truly legendary escapades to their children. I mean, the apple doesn’t fall far from rhe tree and all that.
That would probably ruin the novelty of their onlyfans monetization strategy
Some. Use on Reddit thinks he knows who did it but he couldn’t get him to admit it. It was a long detailed story about an autistic guy that was a brother of a friend.
But after that they “were contacted by people who were investigating the case” or something like that and retracted.
The Reddit story was very convincing at the time. They later did walk it back, something like they believed the brother when they denied doing it.
I don’t know how conspiratorial we should be, because while the FCC doesn’t play around I think at this point everyone would be more amused and curious if the perpetrator came forward.
I dove way deep into this and I’m fairly certain at least a few people discovered who it was… And then they decided not to release that info because of potential harm to “Max”, on numerous levels. And I’m OK with that, if that’s the case I don’t really want any of us to know.
I will not retrace the steps taken to arrive at that conclusion for anyone, either. First rule of fight club and all…
The more I think about it, it’d ruin the magic of the story if “Max” got outed. If “Max” goes public and takes credit and maybe talks through how it worked (especially understanding that you could not pull off the same trick today) that would be cool but … even ignoring any sort of potential harm it just ruins the spirit of the thing.
It was Zero Cool. Definitely Zero Cool.
“Dade? What are you doing?”
Edit: the prompt was for “I’m… taking over a tv station."
C’mon people let’s start a Hackers quote marathon for crying out loud!
Mess with the best, die like the rest
Hack the planet (sorry for taking such a softball line, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Hackers)
Sounds like the perfect excuse for a rewatch!
Max headroom is my next fallout playthrough after sterling archer.
Dont forget DB Cooper
That’s gonna require high charisma, intelligence and luck.
Like, there’s fallout mods starring those characters?
No, I make the face look like em and then dress them that way.
I’d buy that for a dollar.
Malicious life podcast episode on the subject https://malicious.life/episode/episode-78/
What a headline!
Where can you find the mask?
aw. back when we could still be saved.
