The Dark Net Read Online Free Page A

widget to allow users to opt out of Finger, in case they preferred to keep their online activity private. The team debated the merits of both sides, but someone leaked the (internal) discussion to the rest of the Arpanet. Durham was attacked relentlessly and mercilessly by other academics from across the US, who believed that this compromised the open, transparent nature of the Arpanet.
    Most of these academics knew each other, so online arguments were tempered by the risk of bumping into your foe at the next computer science conference. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and righteous indignation spread across the Arpanet. One participant in the Finger episode thought that tongue-in-cheek comments were usually misread on a computer, and proposed that sarcasticremarks made on the Arpanet be suffixed with a new type of punctuation to avoid readers taking them the wrong way: ;-) But even the first emoticon wasn’t enough, because users just started slotting them after a sarcastic put-down, which was somehow even more annoying. (‘The f***ing a**hole is winking at me as well?!’) Worried that the network was quickly becoming an uncivil place, Arpanauts published a ‘netiquette’ guide for newcomers. Satire and humour, it advised, was to be avoided, as ‘it is particularly hard to transmit, and sometimes comes across as rude and contemptuous’.
Flaming on BBS
    In 1978, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess invented the dial-up Bulletin Board System. With a modem, telephone and computer, anyone could either set up or connect to a ‘BBS’ and post messages. From the early 1980s onwards, BBS was many people’s first experience of life online.
    Within a year, insulting strangers on boards became a widely acknowledged and accepted part of BBS. Finger and Header Group disputes were more often than not heated debates between academics. But here, people started joining groups and boards with the sole purpose of starting an argument. This was called ‘flaming’: provoking strangers, disrupting other groups and creating tension for the fun of it. The best ‘flames’ were well written: subtle, clever and biting. Good flamers (who would often post under a pseudonym) built a reputation; people would eagerly await their posts, and archive theirbest lines. This was more than simple nastiness. For many flamers, it was an opportunity to experiment, to push boundaries, and to have their efforts read and appraised. One prominent flamer even published a guide – ‘Otto’s 1985 Guide to Flaming on BBS’ – advising potential flamers that being as controversial as possible was ‘the only way that people will read your opinions’. ‘It is very hard’, Otto wrote, ‘to ignore a board-wide or NET-wide flame war.’
    Dedicated groups started to appear to discuss how to most effectively flame others. In 1987, one BBS user called Joe Talmadge posted another guide, the ‘12 Commandments of Flaming’, to help flamers old and new develop their style:
    Commandment 12: When in doubt, insult. If you forget the other 11 rules, remember this one. At some point during your wonderful career as a Flamer you will undoubtedly end up in a flame war with someone who is better than you . . . At this point, there’s only one thing to do: INSULT THE DIRTBAG!!! ‘Oh yeah? Well, your mother does strange things with vegetables.’
    BBS groups were controlled by a systems operator (sysop), who had the power to invite or ban users, and delete flames before they reached the victim. Often labelled censorsops, they were themselves the targets of a nasty strand of flaming called ‘abusing’. Abusers would torment the sysop with insults, spam or anything else they could think of. Sometimes abusers and flamers would ‘crash’ a board with bugs, or post links to Trojan viruses disguised as pirated arcade games for unsuspecting users to download. Another trick was toupload messages referring to pirating, in order to direct snooping authorities towards the