Sometimes the bully is more subversive in keeping me from finishing something I’ve started. Sometimes they’ll actively encourage me to pursue to the fullest extent whatever it is I’ve envisioned. Why? Because they know I’ll occasionally pursue something so fully and so intently I will not yield to any considerations, any little hints that might pop up along the way to let me know I might want to change how I’m doing something.
In this case the something was the format of this post. I’d originally planned another video, a joke tutorial on how to make mischief online by swapping out the contents of image files. There was going to be a live action shot I’d blend into the video signal from my computer screen, some overlaid graphics I’d add in after, maybe even some extra voice overs…
What was supposed to be another spur of the moment bit of unscripted fun was turning into a bit of a production, complete with notes and a growing shot list. And all of it was destined to go nowhere because I couldn’t get the introduction to look convincing, the screen capture software kept glitching out, and I would rewrite the script between what was turning into an afternoon of takes. Hours of work had produced a rough cut of just over eight unwatchable minutes, and it was looking like I’d need over ten more minutes to finish the video—I wasn’t even half way through the joke yet. But the show must go on, yes?
…No. Not when the show is almost twenty minutes of watching my computer screen and tending to terrible.
So—the video is gone. There will be no documentary for this joke, no behind the scenes bonus content. It’s just the setup and the punchline, so you’ll have to decide if it’s real or even funny for yourself.
This all started when I was looking through the reports for one of my web servers. It’s been online for almost 20 years and is filled with stuff, including a picture of one of my old phones:
This particular phone was a Motorola V66, and it met with a spectacular end after falling into the drive belt area of a running car engine. I assume this is why shirt pockets traditionally come with buttons.
At the time I proudly posted the image up on my server, linked it to all my websites, emailed it out to whoever, and generally let it propagate throughout the internet. At one point it was among the top five images returned on Google’s image search for smashed phone if only because this was more than ten years ago, back when there were a countable number of smashed phone pictures available online. Now—thanks to the increased use of glass to make slightly heavy items that can’t quite be held in one hand—there’s no shortage of smashed phone pictures to browse through. But even with so much selection available now, the smashed phone image continues to be one of the most requested files from the server. I wanted to find out why, so I dug through the raw logs.
It turns out someone had hot linked to the image from their website. What this means is instead of putting a copy of the image file on their server for their website to load, they’ve created a link that will load the original image file from my server and have it appear on their website. In this case, their website is a collection questionable news snippets and what I’m now assuming is bogus accompanying photographic evidence:
A botched robbery and stabbing turning into a shooting and a hospital arrest sounds just plausible enough to have happened in anywhere in the United States. That, or it’s an equally plausible collection of events synthesized into an urban legend which accidentally became news. But even if that’s how the robbery went, real or otherwise, that isn’t the phone that got stabbed—it’s my phone.
Hot linking is generally considered against industry best practices. Some consider it a form of theft, like watching a neighbour’s TV from your own house through open windows. Some cry foul over the additional bandwidth charges that might result from other sites linking to their servers. There’s also a growing number of personal privacy implications as well. But hot linking is mostly not a good idea because—like that neighbour’s TV—there’s no real control over content. Right now there is a link on someone else’s website to an image that’s on my server. As long as I keep the file name of the image the same, the image itself can be whatever I want. Industry best practices exist for a reason, so I figure it’s best to create a little reminder why for this website operator.
Personally I don’t see this instance as a violation of my intellectual property rights or something that’s going to get me charged for using additional bandwidth. My offence is found in the shear laziness of the content management. Whoever it was cared enough for there to be an image to go along with the story, but they didn’t care enough for the image to have any real connection to the story. They also didn’t care enough to spend five seconds copying whatever image they did find to their server, choosing to instead save three seconds by hot linking it to my server. Who cares laziness is my least favourite kind of laziness. As my brother once said, I bet I can make them care.
So what do I change the image to? Well—it’s the internet, so ideally it should be something vaguely rude but not actually rude, most definitely confusing, and certainly suggestive. As luck would have it, I’ve just recently come across such an image: the faux butt from my lockdown coffee break.
With some appropriately themed additional text the amount of suggestively vague rudeness is almost there, and the click here that can’t actually be clicked will definitely be confusing.
But I might never get another chance to do something like this, so why not go all out and bump up the elegance and sophistication as well:
There we go. Channel changed.
Turns out there is a North Fulton Regional Hospital, north of Atlanta in Roswell, Georgia. And there is a liquor store called Beverage Mart within a half hour’s drive of the hospital, about 15 minutes actually. I assume whoever it was didn’t run all the way to the hospital with a gunshot wound. It would have been almost 5 km, sorry, almost 3 miles. Perhaps they caught a bus? There is a bus that goes right by both the liquor store and the hospital. Though I don’t know if getting shot during a stabbing, running from an attempted robbery, and then waiting for a bus would suit the energy of the moment. Plus ten years ago there may not have even been a bus.
In any case, what’s around the hospital today amounts to a few pharmacies, a Burger King, a Dunkin’ (they dropped the Donuts last year), two different pawn shops, another and what I’m assuming would be a competing hospital, a building materials warehouse, and a Ferrari dealership. It’s all a bunch of stuff at once—very much like the how the internet is. So who out there online will even notice if one screen that’s been showing the same thing for the last decade is now showing something else? I guess I’ll just have to leave the blinds open and the TV on to find out.