Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

craigslist hacking and the last resort of desperate men

I met him at a Panera. His name was Tim. He wore, as he said he would, a t-shirt with Nintendo's Chain Chomp on the front. He was in his early thirties with graying blonde hair and an aging baby face. He was pretty much what I expected.

"So before we get started," Tim asked when I sat down, "how did you find out about me?"

"Why do you ask?" I said in a smoky mezzo-soprano I had hoped would disguise my real voice.

"Market research. See my flakey girlfriend's doing my marketing," he replied. "I don't think it's been super effective."

"Oh," I mumbled. "Craigslist ad."

"A Craigslist ad?" Tim cringed. "She's advertising me on Craigslist now?"

"Yeah," I said.

Something must have clicked in his mind, because his eyes widened.

"You were looking for a Network Engineer on Craigslist?"

"Well, I started on Upwork," I began, "but I felt like nobody there is capable of doing what I require. I realized I might need to go on the dark web."

"You know that Craigslist is not the dark web, right?" he chuckled.

"I mean, it's darker than Upwork," I said, like a baby rabbit.

"Eh," he squinted, "Upwork is a gig-economy yuppie hellsite. It's plenty dark."

"Well, Craigslist is the darkest of the freelancing sites." I said. "It's midnight dark."

"Um, actually," he lifted an index finger like a walking stereotype, "one, you're forgetting Fiverr. Fiverr is stub-your-toe-on-your-bedpost-dark. Two, Craigslist is not a freelancing site. You use Craigslist to sell old TVs to strangers in mall parking lots. Not to freelance."

"Um, actually," I said, "I found your stupid name in a stupid Craigslist ad and you are freelancing so here we are."

"Touche," he conceded. "Look, what kind of job do you need?"

"I need you to redirect a website for me," I said.

"What do you mean?" he tilted his head.

"Like redirect a website so that a url goes to another page," I said.

"Is this your website?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Welp then, no," he said. He pressed his hands flat on the tabletop as if he were about to stand up.

"You couldn't like, take Buzzfeed, and make it so that every time somebody visited Buzzfeed.com they'd like be directed to another website?"

"What," Tim snickered, "did one of their quizzes tell you you were gonna die alone?"

"Not exactly. I mean," I caught myself, "I'm just sick of Buzzfeed."

"You got Snow White in a Disney princess quiz, didn't you?"

"No," I went for broke, "Buzzfeed is a danger to society, and I don't think anybody should have to look at it anymore."

"Um, see," Tim blinked and shook his head. "I could redirect Buzzfeed to another page for you or your router, but not for the whole Internet. What you're talking about doing here is a malicious redirect."

That there was a name for my idea encouraged me.

"So it's possible?" I asked.

"If you want to go to jail, I guess," Tim shrugged. "I'm not going to jail over Buzzfeed though."

"What if I paid you, like, triple your normal rate," I clutched at an ephemeral hope that faded as Tim's shoulders jolted up and down.

"Not enough," Tim said.

"Quadruple?" I pleaded.

"Listen," he stood up. "You'd need a ton of money to hire someone to carry out a pointless cyberattack on Buzzfeed. You don't have that kind of money. If you did, you wouldn't be poking around for network engineers on Craigslist."

The truth stung. I slumped back in my chair.

***

I stopped at Abby's on the way home from Panera. She was out of work, and I was having a medical emergency. I had to see her. When she answered the door, she was still in her scrubs. She took one glance at me and already looked concerned.

I don't recall how I ended up face-first in the shag rug of Abby's mom's living room, but I'm not sure it was a conscious choice. I could hardly breathe as Abby got herself a beer from the kitchen. I heard her footsteps, and then, she gently turned my head so that I could see her.

"Okay, one more time. You tried to hire a guy to do what?" Abby smiled the way people smile at lunatics or Bengal tigers. Slowly, slowly, backing away.

"Redirect Buzzfeed to another website," I replied, in a voice that shocked even me. I sounded as though that was completely a reasonable thing to do. "So like, if you googled Buzzfeed and clicked on a link to it or like, typed the URL in, the internet would take you to like, Mashable or something."

"That's crafty," Abby said.

"It's illegal," I said, "and I didn't have enough money to convince the guy to do it."

"So you can do that?" Abby took a swig of her beer. "That's a thing people can do?"

"Abby," I said. "I'm willing to break the law, at this point."

"If you did redirect Buzzfeed, what would that accomplish exactly?"

"I didn't think that far ahead," I replied. "I guess I just thought cutting off all access to them would encourage them to stop."

"How do we know they're actually doing anything, though," Abby pontificated, "maybe they have no power to change anything. Maybe they're just showing us our fate. Maybe our anger at them is misplaced."

"But they've got to know telling people their future is damaging," I said, with a mouthful of shag rug. "Every work of science fiction tells us so. They're trying to ruin our lives."

"Maybe you should email them and find out what their game is," Abby suggested. "You can't defeat an enemy you don't know."

"You don't just, like, email Buzzfeed. What do you think, Buzzfeed is your Aunty? HEeeEeeELLlllLOOoo BUZZFEED, hOoOoOow arrRrRReEEee yOoooOuUuu, bYyY tTHhHEe wAAaaAYy pLEeaAAasSeEee stTOooOPp fUuCCcKIiNgG wIiTthh meEEeEEee, itTt's ruUuUdeEE."

"Well, you don't have a lot of options, do you?" Abby shrugged. "You've tried hiring a hacker, you've tried building a community quiz, you've tried..."

"Crystals and love potions," I finished the sentence that Abby trailed off. "Nothing."

"Love potions?"

I could hear Abby's eyebrows raise.

I reached into my pants pocket and tossed my car keys at her.

"Front passenger seat of my car," I said. "Go get it, it's yours. Doesn't work for me."

I coughed on the shag rug.

I wanted to bust out of my body. I wanted the mothership to land in the front yard of Abby's childhood home and I wanted little gray men to abduct me.

"Look at us," I said into the rug. "We're not women. We're aliens. We're not even women aliens. We're alien children."

When Abby did not reply I looked over my shoulder at the sofa on which she had been perched. Nothing.

I sat up.

"Abby?"

"Hold on," Abby called from the foyer hallway, "gotta get that potion. Mama has a date tonight."

I heard her front door open and then quickly shut.

***