The Exciting World of the Internet Underground

The internet. A wonderful place of learning and information? A vast uncharted universe where you can meet your next wife, earn $10,000 a month, and frag some 10 year olds from Korea in Halo?

Yes, you can do these things. You can also delve into the land of the hacker, deviant, bored, trouble-causing, somewhat illegal, hilarious areas that you probably don't understand. Until they raid YOU.

I worked for ChaCha for a little over a month and during my time there I was victim to many, many, many pranks and raids. I didn't really mind because some of them were pretty funny. Granted, I ended up getting discharged because I played along with one or two. I had no idea there were many websites with areas purely dedicated to harassment and organized raids. I was a little skeptical when I was told to check out one or two of these sites. I will mention Ebaumsworld for the sake of this article but there are many, many more than that.

I logged into the Ebaumsworld forums just for kicks to see what this area of the internet was all about. This is what I discovered.

Photoshopping

Some of the most hilarious things I have ever seen in my entire life can be found in this forum and others like it. They can only be classified in a few ways. Pornographic, Racist, Offensive to (you name it), Possibly Illegal. Every picture of an African-American seems to have chicken and watermelon photoshopped into it, the 9-11 attacks are everywhere filled with wrestlers, muppets, etc., lots of Steve Irwin and Terry Shaivo also. I won't get into greater detail than that.

On the flip side, there are many very cute photoshops of kittens and various animals with funny sayings pasted to them.

Raids

I discovered many areas on this forum and other similar forums that are dedicated strictly for bothering people. Some of the hardest hit sites are:

Stickam.com-A MySpace type place with live webcams of the users online. It is considered a great accomplishment to have the people put a keyboard or shoe on top of their head.

Habbo Hotel-A free online chatroom where you control little people and wander around chatting. Seems to cater to the young teen set. Commonly the raids block entrances and make chains of people that don't allow others to pass.

Hotasianbabes-A webcam based porn site (they aren't nude unless you give credit card info). Again, mostly "keyboard on head", "shoe on head", etc..

ChaCha-They bombard poor ChaCha with "I herd u liek Mudkips" for hours on end. This disrupts the entire service, guides quit and get fired (like myself).

Second Life- Hit hard by 4chan and a few others. They need some shaking up though.

Again, I was only using Ebaumsworld as an example.

I decided to join up with some raids just to see if it was so fun people would do it for hours on end. I am ashamed to admit this but....It can be. I have spent many hours getting people to put stuff on their heads, blocking ladders to Habbo Pools, and reciting the various catch-phrases from my preferred site. I recently decided to put some of this time to good use and joined a few writing sites. I could never bring myself to raid ChaCha though.

If any of you have kids age 12-22, odds are they know what sites I am talking about and may go there themselves. I think boys and men are the majority on these sites however. The sites are filled with gore, porn, animals,obscenity, goofy stuff, and the weirdest things you can imagine. If you have a weak stomach, DO NOT go to any of them.