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My name is (redacted) and I’m a member of an internet society known as BlackNet. The group was formed in 2022 when I was 12 years old. I registered my account in 2017 as a “Plebeian”, the lowest level user. Now at 29, I’m one of 300 Elite Officers who represent the second tier of authority. We began, innocently enough, as a prank group. We liked to highjack cooperate contests that asked for consumer participation. Coca-Cola asked users to select an artist to design the new logo to be featured on the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Havana, Cuba. The group was able to accrue 79% of the vote for little Bailey Bradley, the 2 year old son of one of our Elite Members who does the cutest finger paintings. The Wall Street Journal published an article called "The Youth of Our Country and Their Increased Monetary Awareness" which we linked here to this 27 year old blog. Once for an entire month we hacked into Fox News’ server every morning at 7 a.m and changed all the images to .gifs of kitties doing something silly. We left the text perfectly intact.
My personal favorite is when we released a search history to the media of Senator Willard Thomson (R- South Carolina) after giving a haunting and condemning hate speech to the Senate asking for the repeal of gay marriage which had passed in 2014. Several party, family, and church members were shocked just to read the words “straight guys sucking cock” in print.
It all started out in good fun but, a few years into it, things got more serious. BlackNet became a voice for those who had none. We felt we had the unique opportunity to empower the common citizen. We started releasing financial documents in 2030. It was mostly stuff that was supposed to be public record anyway but somehow got “lost” or “destroyed” when requested. We were nerds, hackers, security experts, ex-military, comedians, chefs, public servants, teachers and students. For years we remained a thorn in the government’s side, but there was no real way to make us stop what we were doing; until February 2029 when we officially became listed as a terrorist organization.
Our Hacking and Security Breaching Team, which had grown 10 fold in both talent and numbers over the last 8 years, had discovered something that changed the entire landscape and made our mission clearer than ever. I’m sure there were members of BlackNet who wished they’d never seen what they did, but once it had been found we had no choice but to release it.
A secret document written from the US Defense Secretary to the President explicitly outlined a plan to purchase and develop trillions of dollars worth of nuclear explosives. The order was pretty standard based on the ones we’d monitored before, but the usage notes for this one were disturbing. The highly secret plan was to drop a Uranium bomb on Telaviv, Israel, and smaller bombs on the outlying parts of the nation. It was to be done in mock Palestinian air crafts in utter secrecy. It was the United States government’s version of conflict resolution. Blow up your ally, make it look like your enemies fault and you’re able to seize funding the war. The letter also described in detail how they would pin the attacks on a Palestinian group whom the US already held in custody.
Our leader, Travis Lothian, who founded the group, was to travel to our secret headquarters in the mountains outside Denver to release this information to every news outlet source possible. The rest of our higher ups including 22 in the New York City area were to remain stationed and in contact by email. I’d received an email at 9:55 p.m that Travis had released the information to our own site and sister sites. 9:57- The New York Times. 9:58- CNN and FOX. 10:00- BBC. We’d remained in group chat reflecting on the magnitude of what we had just done. Around 10:23 Travis abruptly signed off. After that we all just sort of sat. We knew what had happened. The house had been stormed and he'd been taken off in a Gov Hov. So we did the only thing we could do. We crawled into the earth and disappeared. We'd make them think they'd won this war, and we'd strike them when they least expected it.
I think that this blog post is essentially more of the same that we’ve seen in the previous post. It definitely grabs the reader more easily, and I give credit to the writer for trying something that is relatively more accessible, however, I am bothered by the lack of broad appeal this story has. Some of the blame goes to writing style. It seems to be on the run, which contextually makes sense. At the same time, having a fast pace is not necessarily a good thing in the sense that stories like this are hard to pull as dead serious stories. Make them too serious, and they become monotonous, and I think the posts might need a slight change of pace.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I can still appreciate the fact that this blog is trying to be more than the sum of its parts. I’m not sure that having five blog posts with three hundred words on each is going to make for one cohesive story, but once we see posts three and four, I believe we will have a more clear idea of what really is happening here, and how can all the piece in this puzzle fit together.
One way is pretty obvious. The blog needs more images. It doesn’t matter if the images only give a vague idea of what is going to happen, they need to be here, and right now the blog has two posts, and only one image. This needs to be corrected as soon as possible.
I would try to look at ways to have more characters in the story. Even if the whole story is seen through the eyes of one character, it is in the secondary characters where the story could get its breathing. It could give the story less linearity, and it could make the story more accessible.
BlackNet so far has proved to be a very interesting character. This blog has a strong recurring theme that is done well throughout the first two chapters (posts). I find it intriguing the way the posts are sectioned into chapters, giving the allusion that they are posts within a diary or log of accounts of BlackNet himself. The image in the second post mixes well with the background that surrounds it and the colors give the impression of a Matrix-like setting. In the image I noticed the camera which is pointed directly at the reader as if they are being monitored as they take part in the scene. The lighting and the concrete suggest a harsh, cold environment while the curvature of the track gives the allusion that the tunnel is never ending. Over all, the image ties in perfectly with the storyline and creates a futuristic sense of place. The image invokes a strong felling of an oppressive futuristic society.
ReplyDeleteI found it very interesting that the author chose specific dates for the entries. I wonder what the significance is of these dates and whether or not they were randomly assigned or listed for a specific purpose. I also noticed that second post is dated before the first post, which also led me to question the connections between the two.
As for the text, there is nothing specific that I would change. The post reads like a journal and does a good job of both creating a scene and informing the reader. I got a good sense of who the character was and I think that the author does a good job of creating an interesting fictional story. The story is well structured and it gives all of the necessary information without seeming redundant. The only issue I had with this post was that it was difficult for me to find the link to the other post. Once I found the link I was able to see the way the author creatively fit the subject of the other post into BlackNet’s story. Over all this post is creative, entertaining and curious. Well done.