......(((  The state of "the scene" in the eyes of the boogeyman  )))......

A lot of people have been wondering about what's up with "the scene".  The
real question they should be asking themselves is "Is there really a "scene"
anymore?".  In my opinion, yeah there is, but it sucks.  Most of the newbies
now got their start after seeing "Hackers" or "The Net" and they think that
they can just click on the shiny button that says "hax0r r00t" and bam, they
are a "hacker".  I can't even count anymore how many people have asked me
for SATAN or AoHELL or something lame like that.  I freely spread ftp sites
with good t-files on them to all newbies I come across, yet sadly most of them
just brush it off and don't even see t-files as a source of info any longer.
What happened to the endless nights of staying up and reading old 80's t-files
just searching for tidbits of info that you didn't know, or looking to find
the newest release of DnA or PHRACK or CoTNo or whatever?!?! What happened
to all of the newbies that had an urge to learn?

What IS a hacker today?  The typical hacker of these years spends his life on
iRC, not much of a "hacker" to me, what about you?  The real hackers are the
ones who are helping newbies (not the AoL type mind you, I'm talking about
the ones who have the WANT for knowledge), not seeing how many channels they
can takeover in a 30 minute period.  The real hackers are the ones setting up
dialouts, divertors, confs, etc...  Not ones who just talk big on iRC.  The
"real hackers" are the ones trashing and spreading their information on to
their friends so all may learn.  The "real hackers" are the ones you probably
don't even know about.  I'm not saying this is true in ALL cases, just most.

If you look at "the scene" you will see a garbled mess of warez d00ds, phreaks,
hackers, ansi d00dlers, and people who know NOTHING about hacking, but just
hang out with that crowd because they think it's "cool".  I hate it when I am
at a 2600 meeting and all I see are warez d00ds trading sitez or some dumb
fuck spouting off about how he is going to create the next 2600 magazine, but
of course, it will be 100x better!!! Who the fuck cares?  I don't, do you? Yet
meet after meet, month after month, the same warez d00ds and freaks show up
at 2600.  Where did all the BBSes go?  Replaced by the WWW maybe?  I haven't
seen a descent WWW page that even comes CLOSE to a real h/p BBS, yet many say
they are as good as BBSes.  Only a handful of "eleet" BBSes remain, with not
many going up.

It seems that no one cares any longer about t-files, BBSes, trashing and the
like.  Most of the new school (hey, im not saying I'm "old school" or anything
:) people are just posers that are out to make a name for themselves.  They
don't actually want to *gasp* learn something!  And if they learn some hint,
they *GASP* never want to spread their information.

The people who actually care about "the scene" need to do something about it.
We need to help newbies that want to learn, while pointing the AoL d00dz in
the right direction.  We need to set up BBSes on the internet and machines
that people can use for practice to hack on.  When you were a newbie wouldn't
you have loved to have a site that you could hack and not be afraid of being
caught? A lot needs to be done, but I think that we can restore "the scene"
back to its origins and not further decay it.

-[ the boogeyman . sysop of the asylum ]-