I’m as reclusive as they come. You know that mental image you get whenever an internet Troll is blathering on, or some nutcase insists every single thing that happens on American soil is “a False Flag”?
Right, the picture in your brain of the fat guy in his 30s, smearing cheese-snack fingers on his tighty whiteys in his parents’ basement.
That’s me in a nutshell. The image, not the trolling.
So naturally I spend a good amount of time on social sites. Not just the networking monoliths you know about, but also small forums here and there with interesting communities. I basically get all of my human interaction in the least personal way possible.
I don’t mind, though. I’m sure there’s a phobia of some sort involved there, but I’d much prefer to email you over meeting or even talking over the phone.
The only thing that’s gotten me out into any kind of social interaction in recent memory was my ordeal with LeetHax.com
I’d taken up a web game where the objective was to match as many insects as possible. It was similar to those Jewel-dropping games that are so popular, but it had an edge I rather liked. Each time you’d line up the bugs, a thumb would come down from above and squash them. It was simply titled “SPLAT!”… exclamation point required.
I got into two-player mode after I got the hang of the game, and that’s when things took a weird turn. Most players were easy enough to battle, even if I lost in the end… but the last guy I matched up against was clearly cheating.
I first noticed the odd behavior of his bugs out of the corner of my eye. They’d shift positions, lining up for crushing. The only time they were supposed to move like that was if you got a “CRAWLAPALOOZA!”, and even then they didn’t all get into ordered rows for easy squashing. It was random.
Another problem was that every so often he’d get a bug he didn’t like… one that didn’t match anything on his board, or the accursed uncrushable Hercules Beetle, and the thing would actually pop out its little wings to fly over to my side!
I’d never seen anything cross the scoring area between the boards, and even as I was watching it happen I knew it was impossible.
I stopped playing entirely and took to the in-game chat.
ME > wtf
HIM > lol
ME > r u cheating?
HIM > buuuhhh what does it look like?
HIM > retard
ME > FUCK you, then.
I forfeit the game and went back to the lobby where players are matched up. Both he and I were in the list of online users, though I had no intention of playing with him again.
The first three times he offered to start a match with me, I declined. On the fourth, I figured maybe he had a change of heart and I accepted.
My mistake.
As soon as the round started, his entire board of insects flocked to my side and began ripping apart the proper residents. The bug goo that usually only appeared when they were thumb-crushed came spattering out as the motionless victims were torn limb from limb.
HIM > hahaha
HIM > fuck u more
HIM > LOOSER
With that, I was kicked from the server.
Thoroughly pissed off, I took to the web and ran a search for “SPLAT! cheats”. The only website that came up with anything related to the request was the aforementioned site.
LeetHax.com
“Leet hax?” I chuckled to myself, “The 90s called, they want their stupid bullshit back.”
With the promise of finding whatever trick my opponent had used, I clicked anyway. I was already envisioning the surprise on the other guy’s face when MY bugs started beating up HIS bugs.
Infantile, I know.
As the website loaded, it only got better. Red text, black background. Rotating 3D skulls. It was every bad website put together by every ignorant script kiddie who thought he was a badass.
“WeLcOmE 2 XXXSuB-ZeRoXXX’S dOmAiN!!!1”
Yikes.
The text read much like you’d expect. Clichéd rhetoric about freeing information through hacking and talk about pirating Korn albums through Napster.
“Korn? Napster?? How long ago was this thing made?” I started to click on the back button, but something stayed my hand. There was an e-mail link. I figured it couldn’t hurt to drop him a line and ask if really had the SPLAT! cheats.
“0h mAn BR0. That G4M3Z s000 fuckkkin L4M3.” was the emailed reply, “h3r3 u go tho br0. RuN tHiS wHeN yOuR oN tHe GaMe.”
There was an attached file. It was approriately named “splat_haxx.exe”.
After running a thorough virus check on the questionable program, I did as directed and ran it while SPLAT! was loading. A horrible interface of dark grey text on black background popped up.
[EZSPLAT] [MoVeBuGz] [KicKIdioT] [ATTAX!!!]
The four buttons sat in a row above a ridiculous copyright notice.
“©OPYRIGHT and TREADMARK Matthew Hopkins aka XXXSuB-ZeRoXXX, 2013 Fr0zen Bl4de Pr0ductions!!!”
Still, it did as I had hoped. Round after round, I was able to line up bugs for an “EzSplat”, and could even send them to “Attax” the other player’s board. Unfortunately, these horrors were visited on innocent players as I ran the test. My previous nemesis was now no longer online.
I contacted the Leet Hax guy again. If SPLAT! was lame, then what other games did he have “hax” for?
“d00d3r i dont h4v3 T1ME 4 u!!! IM MEGA P0PUL4R A5 FUUUK!1 every1 wants my haXXX br0”
Based on that opening, I figured this reply was a loss. Then I noticed the attachment.
“h3r3s 1 4 FARTB00K run it when ur l0gg3d in”
Fartbook? Facebook, clearly. What an obnoxious little dick. What possible kind of cheat could you have for a social networking site? Again, I ran the virus check, and again I did as directed.
[FREND] [c0ntr0l] [PERMADELETE] [FOTOBOMMER!]
“©OPYRIGHT and TREADMARK Matthew Hopkins aka XXXSuB-ZeRoXXX, 2012 Fr0zen Bl4de Pr0ductions!!!”
The buttons seemed relatively obvious in what they were supposed to do… most of them, at least. I went to a random profile, a friend-of-a-friend, and clicked the first button.
[FREND]
The page reloaded, and there it was. I was instantly a confirmed friend of the user. The entire approval process was circumvented, and I could see all of her private posts.
I decided to try something else, selecting the one I was most curious about.
[c0ntr0l]
The page reloaded again, and her entire profile page was mine. By which I mean I had complete administrative control, and was now using the site AS her. I messed around a bit, just to see if it actually worked or if it was some sort of trick. I changed her status from “married” to “single”.
A click of the same button took me out of her settings and I was once again an outsider looking in. Her status remained “single”.
I was dazed for a moment. This was pretty immense power I was wielding in this day and age, and part of me wondered if my IP address had been recorded when I made the change.
A post appeared on her wall.
“SINGLE? OMFG WHAT HAPPENED?”
I laughed, basically because I knew this was of little consequence. I had messed around a bit, but it was nothing that couldn’t easily be undone.
“Don’t wanna talk about it.” came the reply soon after.
… Wait. I did a double-take when I saw this was posted by the very woman who owned the page. She was essentially confirming that her marriage had really ended. Was she playing along, or had I coincidentally hit upon something she was actually going though? Suddenly, it wasn’t that funny.
“O… M… F… G… so sorry!!” the original poster replied.
“whoa”, came a new participant, “r u okay? u and david seemed grat together!”
“Sometimes we have to move on.” she said, minutes before deleting the conversation entirely.
Wow.
I felt pretty bad about the whole thing, how I’d added insult to injury. Then I decided to look for “David” in her friend list and see what was going on with his end of things.
He had changed his own status to “single” at the exact moment I’d changed hers.
My jaw would’ve hit the floor if not for the ample buffer of my bloated, stark white stomach. It appeared, as far as I could see, that I had accidentally hacked this girl’s actual life. I still didn’t believe it, but the slight spark of that idea remained lit in the back of my head.
[c0ntr0l]
I was in her settings again within seconds. I couldn’t resist, because I HAD to know what happened. Strictly as a test, I changed another setting. “In a relationship with…” and I put my own name.
Did I mention she was attractive? Bookish, dark hair, glasses… from her photos I could almost tell she wasn’t wearing those bulky, weird sweaters to cover up a bad figure.
“Hey,” I sent her a message, “What’s up?”
I figured I would wait a little while… see what kind of response I got… then quickly change the setting back before she or anyone else had a chance to comment.
“NM, babe. You?” she started, “Everyone’s just found out about David and I, maybe it’s too soon to tell them about us? I don’t know…”
I froze, fingers on keys.
Babe. Us. Either this was the biggest case of mistaken identity in the history of the internet, or she actually believed we had been friends… then lovers…
“I’m okay,” I typed… taking way too long before continuing the rest, “Love you.”
I signed my name, just to make sure she’d see it.
“You too, babe. When can you come?”
That line did more for me than every single dirty picture I’d ever gawked at. It was as far as I’d ever actually been with a woman - an inviting sentence. All at once I was filled with the joy of romantic possibility… and the horror of just how low I was now sinking. It was the realization that for all my attempts at being a good guy, I was always just one cheat away from being a bastard.
Was this even technically consensual, or… if I went through with this… would it be considered…
I couldn’t think about it.
“Soon.” was all I could say. It was a half-lie as I had no real idea.
I stared at the buttons again. This was by far the best and worst thing that had happened to me in my depressing, tedious little life. Up until this point, that had been the day my vintage mint-in-box Zombonix figures had arrived in the mail.
It was a full set, you see.
I figured this was no time to stop trying out the effects. I’d already dug myself into a moral ditch, and even so I knew it was something I could undo if I had to.
[FOTOBOMMER!]
I had no idea what that one did, but of course I figured it had to do with photographs uploaded to her profile. Maybe it “bombed” the gallery with hundreds of copies of the same photo? Who was to know?
At first, I saw no effect. I figured either the button didn’t work, or Facebook had patched up whatever loophole it would’ve exploited. Were these strange things even anything they COULD stop?
Then I studied her profile picture. Right behind her cute, nerdy face, poking out from behind an opened door, was a large, staring face somewhere between human and gape-jawed eel.
The creature… whatever it was… had all the facial features you expect on a man, but they were distorted. His neck was too long, his mouth sharp and beak-like, and the eyes… those dead, glassy fish eyes… it looked like very good Photoshopping of a very bad chimera.
I had a new message.
Disregarding that, I looked further into the girl’s gallery. There were photos of her at the beach, looking amazing in a bikini… photos of her ski trip with family… none of those seemed to have anything out of the ordinary.
However, in another self-shot down the list, there was eelman again. Though the day was not the same, and the girl was dressed differently, the creature seemed to have slunk just a little further out from behind that door.
2 new messages.
Another self-shot. An even older one. The eelman… naked, genderless, rubbery skin and elongated, boneless limbs… was halfway across the room.
4 new messages.
I looked all the way to the beginning of her gallery before I found another shot of her room. She was younger… more innocent… staring into the camera with a duck-face and a peace sign.
Behind her, the eelman frothed at the mouth, its rubbery hands raised over her shoulders, fingers blurred from wiggling.
8 new messages.
Finally, I clicked the inbox. All the letters were from her… my hacked lover.
“OMG Babe, I think someone’s here.”
“BABE, there’s someone in the house! I think he’s in the room!!”
“What do I do?”
“Babe, you have to come now! Babe?”
“SOMETHING TOUCHED ME”
“!!!!!!!!!!!”
“ohgod its right here hes right here its looking at me what doido”
“i love you”
I swallowed hard as I read the last message. I was trembling all over and the room had suddenly gone cold around me. Next to her message, the profile picture had changed. It was a shot of her pale, bloodless face… screaming… alive and screaming… as the eelman was eating halfway through her shoulder and neck.
I couldn’t undo this.
All I could do was end it… cover up what I did… what I had just seen… and maybe even erase the entire event from reality itself.
[PERMADELETE]
David’s profile changed again.
Single, Never Married.
–
Credits to: Slimebeast
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