Maybe I am too dismissive/cynical, but my impression is that people who write stuff like this really want to think they are the main character in a movie.

The way it is written is a bit like the the Navy Seal, GNU-Linux copy-pastas.

If you go back and read these after knowing what happened over the last 30 years. It is difficult to take seriously. I feel similarly when reading "A declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".

I think it's pretty cringe, but also that we're expecting an awful lot from a zine article. This is basically the tone of every cDc tfile. Tfile culture was (a male-dominated) Tumblr before there was Tumblr.

It's very full of itself. But I fully understand where it comes from. When you are the only one seeing something in technology that others simply cannot see. When you think about these things in a way that no one else can understand. And when that allows you to do things that no one else thought were possible.

You just see the world in a way that no one else around you does. A world that is between indifferent and hostile to your way of thinking and seeks to assimilate you into a fundamentally incurious, indifferent, uninspired apparatus.

According to AI (so question it), The Mentor was 21 when he wrote this. There's something about the early 20s that makes many people believe that the world has deeper significance and scope than it really does. It can be a delusional time. This is also, coincidentally, when people who get schizophrenia often start to show symptoms. I'm not saying The Mentor has this particular affliction, I'm saying that the early 20s is a trigger that brings out a lot of things in people, which they later get over.

Secret Service raid makes you the main character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...

That's just like your opinion man, I see it through rose coloured glasses as a poem from more naive times back when some folks still had some hope... This was way before vulture capitalism fucked everything up you know, or at least that's how I remember it but I was like 10.

Not everyone was into this hopeful vision of cyberspace though, Masters of Doom comes to mind.

You’re not cynical. The writer is self absorbed and many many people became “hackers” for similar ”cool” reasons.

Really you’re all just generic and overplayed programmers. It’s the same thing that causes programmers to call themselves ninjas and rockstars while someone like a chemical engineer doesn’t.