Eon8 - a Summary

Well, Eon8 came and went, and a whole bunch of people are probably feeling majorly burnt out. Eon8 (a mysterious site that developed a creeping sense of inevitable doom, thanks to some nifty tricks employed by the site creator) was simply an experiment - the guy who made the site just wanted to see what people would do faced with a lack of information. The answer was - go absolutely freaking insane. Despite the fact that the guy had himself dropped hints that this was merely a big social experiment (on a handful of forums), people found themselves drawn in by the map with red dots appearing on it, or the encrypted bits of code (which were pretty clever, to be fair), or the wonderfully inventive page that flagged referring sites if you visited Eon8 from them often enough. Flagged, and then put up a BIG ASSED OH NOES message about the site you came from.

Although nobody planning anything meglomaniacal in scale ever made a big, public website about it and slapped a countdown timer on the frontpage (apart from in comic books), people chose to believe the alternative of "what if" fiction, as opposed to common sense reality. I don't mean that in a snidey way - I find the concept of people doing that pretty interesting. At least we don't appear to have lost all sense of creativity, though that's small consolation considering some of the not-too-wonderful events detailed below.

"Oh no! The site logs our IP addresses!"

.....and every other site on the planet doesn't? Why is this one somehow different, purely because it shows you that information on screen? It's nothing that hasn't been done before - but mix it with a site that doesn't overtly threaten you, as much as it simply chooses to withold information from you, and you have yourself a winner.

Makes me wonder what effect this site would have if I simply plonked a big map - minus Greenland, obscure fact fans - on here and started putting up bogus red dots and flashing lights and stuff.

"They logged the website I came from! It's doomed!"

...really? We have everything on their "naughty list" from Google (in all its regional variations), to forums, to blogs, to - well - something about tentacle pictures - all located on a multitude of servers, each with different security setups, all run by different people...and yet, somehow, because some dude with an anonymous website simply tells people to "go away" (which is all the Eon8 site effectively did), he's going to do something to all of them, big or small? In one fell swoop?

What's interesting for me, is that I regularly see incredibly hostile websites, with "screw this site" and "screw that bunch of people", claiming they're gonna' hax0r teh planet, and break into this site and crash that server and so on.

...do we pay those places anywhere near enough attention?

Why does the threat have to be potentially so subtle that it's not even actually there, before we actually go and do something about it?

"Terrorists! HAS to be terrorists!"

Actually, this last one isn't that funny. Because as I'm sure you're aware, it only takes a mere waft of terrorism to come creeping out of the cupboard and then all Hell breaks loose. I imagine lots of people got extremely wound up over this, got in touch with press - didn't some people from Ytmnd call CNN? - and proclaimed the end of the world in general. Sure enough, when "nothing" happened, the anger levels would have hit blasting point.

Check out these guys, as an example of how "into" this people were. Warning - it's pretty loud, and what sounds like a funky harmonica does nothing for your eardrums either.

Then there was the fiasco of this thing's Wikipedia page - delete! Undelete! Notable! Not notable!

...bleh.

Worst of all, though, the "Mass panic" attempts that follow on as a direct result of the experiment. Check this out out - a Ytmnd site submission that got (at time of writing) 43 votes on Digg.com. Sadly, it's a bunch of well-meaning...yet hopelessly incorrect....garbage. If you want to see why it's garbage, just read the (sensible) comments on the Digg page.

Ultimately, there can be only one outcome of something like this...crazy hacker time!

Yep, Eon8 has apparently been subjected to a rapid-fire barrage of hacks by various groups looking for some street-cred. First off, earlier on I revisted the "revealed" page and saw a white screen with black text, saying "we 0wned you" (or words to that effect - no screenshot, sorry. I forgot. Doh).

Then..the original reveal page came back a short while later, but with one rather strange addition. Isn't that the NEDM cat at the bottom of the page?

Question is, is this the result of another hack attempt or is the guy who runs Eon8 mixing up "fake" hack attempts with real ones?

I find that scenario unlikely - so it's probably a genuine hack. Unless of course, he put it there originally but I didn't notice it first time round.

Then....a few minutes later, this came along:

Another leet hax effort.

So let me get this straight - all these boobs are hacking the Eon8 site, specifically because something bad failed to materialise?

Perhaps they would've been happier with thermonuclear war springing from their monitors after all. Stupidity + technology = fail.

Still, the guy who made the site can probably factor all of these things and more into his final conclusions - assuming he actually has anything more to say about it, of course.

Oh, and by the way - those supposed leet hax0rs? Well, they ain't that good. Because they took a few attempts to get their message onto the site. Lemme' hear you say doh:

...doh. Is it just me, or did the rest of the message get lost in the mail?

Hopefully they made some other basic blunders and Mike / Chris / whatever will bring them to asswhupping justice or something.

Finally, the single most intriguing aspect of this whole event - go check out the Wikipedia page.

For what may be the first time ever, a Ytmnd page (where end-users can create their own sound / vision Internet memes) was used as a quasi-legitimate source of information and exploration in the build up to the big reveal. As a consequence, I imagine they may well leave the link to the page in question on the Wiki entry, assuming of course the Wiki page itself is not deleted (again).

Fad sites used as reference material for an Internet-based "social experiment"? That's one mind job too many...

/ Update - Someone left a comment on here just now with the following information. Pretty interesting:

All hacks were done by the same people.

At first, it was decided to be a unobtrusive that could only be seen by visiting a secret link (eon8.com/out), but then decided to replace the REVEALING page with what the /out page showed.

then, after some discussion, it was decided to be a better hack then originally done. only 1 group was able to hack it. the site was experiencing major packet loss (notice the slow loads?), and everytime they tried to upload the hacked page, it would drop the connection and time out.