Basically myself and a few of my friends were annoyed by the controversy surrounding some of the best players on the ladder also being on T1 internet connections. Many felt that this was a HUGE advantage, but the T1 people said that it was actually a disadvantage - which was silly, although the technical reasons they supplied *sounded* somewhat reasonable. I'll not go into that here.
Basically I ran into someone on one of the larger maps named "AaronB" (and I do believe it was the real aaronb based on the skills he displayed) and aside from his obvious skill (which IMHO was not orders of magnitude above mine - I was pretty damm good) he was moving *too fast*. And I don't mean triple chording fast, or cheating fast. He was generally mowing through people but I still managed to out manuever him a few times, but honestly he just pulled away from me in a big room.
Like I said, I did not get a cheating vibe at all, I just figured it was a packet rate issue or some sort of compression (I was then and am now a extremely competent computer / networks guy; although I was no competition on the network engineering side of things like Aaron and Kevin - they REALLY knew what they were doing.
Anyways, after previously not being particularly interested in the T1 vs modem debate, I was suddenly annoyed and I took a side. A friend of mine was really into Descent and also was a IRC / chat guy had got in with some hacker type and he got from him a completely unknown cheat. It was not "out there" anywhere. I had access to it for a little while, but I thought the idea of cheating to make myself look better than I was; well that was totally pathetic and stupid to me. I mean, that's some real loser crap (I say crap because the ★■◆● was filtered out) there.
Anyways, after the aaronb encounter, I had the idea of "punishing" aaronb and his known buddy kevlar by going into kali games using his name and cheating. Now, looking back on this it is obvious that there was *no* legitimate reason to do this, and that it was completely gratuitous and immature. It can't really be defended, other than to say we all did things in out mid-teens that upon reflection perhaps we'd make a different choice. Now, considering that I was 26 at the time, only makes it worse. (got you there, didn't I?)
Anywho, as I am an exceptional person, just going and cheating in the name of aaronb and kevlar simply was not going to be enough. Early on I realized that there might be a way to identify me through my kali ID (more on that later), so I signed up for a second account and it had none of my real information in it. This is what I used for when I was cheating.
First, let me describe the hack that i was using.
Basically when you used this alternate exe, you could recharge your shields at will, and you had unlimited missiles *if* it was in the mine and you were able to pick it up. So, you didn't have unlimited mega missiles as soon as you spawned; they had to actually exist in the mine *and* you had to pick one up. So, clearly the hack was designed to cheat in a stealthy manner. You could easily die if you did not recharge your shields fast enough or took a couple of mega missile hits on top of each other.
When I cheated I had a very sly process that I personally found hilarious and fulfilling:
1) Start Kali using the spare account
2) Change my pilot name to either kevlar or aaronb
3) Find a busy network game
4) Target *one* particular player and kill him repeatedly *when no other player was around*
5) When he started complaining via chat that I was cheating, I responded with the following:
a) I had already set all of my "F" key message macros to simulate me having the kind of normal conversation you would have when someone is wrongly accusing you of cheating. Like:
F1: Must be lag
F2: Ping me!
F3: Why do newbs always think everyone cheats?
F4: Is it cheating to be simply better than you?
F5: It must be because I'm on a T1.
F6: You guys are the biggest bunch of whiners ever!
and etc . . .
The reason for this is that while they were busy sending messages and pinging me or whatever, I would appear to be sitting somewhere thoughtfully (more or less) responding to them -
when in fact I was specifically hunting them down and destroying them - over and over and over again - usually one of two different ways: Either I would launch about 5 or so smart missiles
into the ground right in front of them, OR I would surround their ship with about 10 smart mines; either way would utterly destroy their ship and cause lots of crashing noises on their
speakers. This seemed to cause a critical mass of rage on their part. I, however would be laughing so f'ing hard that I would be crying by the time the conversation got up to
my last macro answer.
6) *If* one or more of the other players in the game either was convinced by the strident and continuous complaints from the guy I was targeting OR another player witnessed obvious cheating on my part (you know, like seeing me launch 5 mega missiles or something), then I would immediately go into shut the f'ing game down mode. This involved racing through the mine laying smart mines in such quantities that nearly every room was full of extremely touchy mines, and all corridors would be completely impassable. Basically killing everyone over and over and over again whilst I laughed my guts out at their impotent rage. Of course all the while I would be sending my macro responses, though they were now obvious taunts when sent in this context. Within minutes the game would be entirely abandoned.
7) Leave the now empty game and find another full one. Rinse and repeat.
Shortly after I started this "protocol", I enlisted my two other like-minded friends (who also were at approximately my skill level) and we would *all three* be doing this at the same time; either in different games or sometimes two or more of use would be in the same game. One hint I'll give, one of the two guys was extremely important in the community and even many years after the fact when i told him I was thinking of contacting Kevin or Aaron to give our side of the whole fracas, he *begged* me to never reveal his involvement. It would have been a BIG deal; you'll just have to believe me on that one. The other guy had likewise asked me not to reveal anything about him - just on the general principle of not wanting anything on the net to ever come back to him later. This is what stopped me from continuing this when I originally chimed in here at the end of 2009.
Anyways, some months into this I had a wild hair up my ass and I posted this simple message on the alt.games.descent newsgroup (remember those?):
http://tinyurl.com/cxb45f8
Scott xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
9/19/96
I have been in a couple of games lately where I have seen Aaron B.
Cheating like mad! I thought he was successful because of being on a T1,
but it is because he is cheating!! What a loser!
--
Scott xxxxxxxxxx
This basically started a bit of a crapstorm. A couple of people responded with semi-reasonable replies, properly questioning how I could know for sure. Then Kevin chimed in and defended his friend. He probably should not have done that, as all the people who did not like him or Aaron for whatever reason started chiming in and it turned into a flame war. I don't think at this point that they ever suspected that I was involved in the whole thing. Other threads were created by others to continue the argument. We got a huge amount of pleasure at the resulting mess.
So this went on for a while, maybe three months or so - don't really remember. Given a different allotment of random events, I and my friends may have done this until we got tired of it (which would have taken MANY months).
But in this case, the guys we were picking on were literally the worst two guys we could have picked, being that they were network engineers and all.
So they (and maybe Kevin or Aaron may want to chime in on this to correct or add to the record) developed a system for translating the addressing between the IPX and TCP/IP packets; which in turn allowed them to localize a particular player in a network game to their Kali account number.
So they did just that and promptly came up with my kali ID; which did them no immediate good as my "cheating" account was populated with bogus information. They put up a website at some point and had screenshots and other things on it. (If anyone has an archived version of that site, PLEASE hook a brother up). When that did not yield anything, they went to Jay Cotton (the founder of Kali) and tried to get him to give up my real information - which Jay (a total class guy) absolutely refused to do.
What he did do in response to pressure was to call me up one day and tell me what they were saying and asking my side of it. But he was not real direct and we actually had a pleasant meandering conversation of around an hour that covered many subjects. At the end he said something about hoping the issue was resolved and that he was sorry to bother me.
Of course, since myself and my friends felt we were on a righteous crusade, and now emboldened by the knowledge that Jay Cotton could not be compelled to reveal our identities, we didn't even slow down. We were also raging assholes; which truth be told, was an important part of this process.
So, how did I get caught? Well, the usually way that assholes who won't stop get caught: laziness and stupidity.
Basically, one day I accidentally logged on with my normal account when I intended to go on a cheating jag. I immediately noticed my mistake, but was simply too stupidly lazy (see, I got both of them in there) to log out and log back in with the other account. So I got on for just a short while (less than an hour), cheated like a baptist preacher with two new caddies in the garage, and then decided to not attract the wrong kind of attention (too late) and logged out.
Well that was enough. Presumably Kevin and Aaron had a couple of daemons running continuously (probably looking for kali users playing under aaronb or kevlar) and were able to match it to my *normal* kali id; which just so happened to contain my real name and email address. Well, crap.
So they (and they probably are not proud of this) immediately posted my name and email address on their cheater website. Kevin also did some rudimentary detective work and got ahold of my completely publicly listed home telephone number. This too made the website. Then they publicized this site and I suddenly went "viral", years before that was a thing.
I started getting LOTS of extremely graphic and disturbing hate mail to my email address. And I started getting calls to my home phone; and these were no less hostile. I think Kevin himself called me a couple of times as well. I don't honestly recall what (if any) my response was initially; whether I denied it or what. Maybe Kevin remembers.
But it did not take long for me to realize the error of my ways: I recanted immediately and apologized to all involved . . . JUST KIDDING. Instead of doing the adult thing, I actually went nuclear with an organized psychological warfare campaign which proceeded on two distinct fronts:
1) Sewing confusion and uncertainty amongst his followers
2) Damaging the reputation of the enemy, by playing dirty in ways he could not possibly have anticipated
Basically I am a multifaceted genius, and just as Kevin and Aaron were just the wrong people for me to mess with (due to their hugely superior network ninja skills) - I was just the wrong person to for them to attack (due to my superior psychological warfare kung fu).
Lest anyone key on the use of the word genius, bear in mind that "genius" means a lot of things to a lot of people. Let me tell you (at least in my usage of it) what it *does not* mean:
Successful
Happy
Useful
Reasonable
Balanced
Happy
Constructive
Relevant
So, please don't feel that I am making myself out to be superior to anyone else involved in this affair, because in the absence of the above listed factors, all my genius was really useful for was creating crapstorms of unimaginable scope and breadth. And this whole Descent thing was not even close to the biggest mess I started on the internet - it's maybe third. If you count the real-world along with the internet - maybe it's about 15th. So, there you go. I anticipate that someday that someone will document all of the times I have impacted others with my genius. it will probably take all day to read the charges; perhaps the judge will call a recess in the middle to break it up a little. People gotta eat, yo.
So, lets start with front #1, Operation Confuse and Redirect
I quickly realized that the throngs of people emailing me and calling me had no way of *really* knowing that Kevin was completely correct in his identification of me. So, I came up with a detailed plan to confuse these overzealous folks: I created a "persona" of a 48 year old widowed school teacher, and I replied to all emails and calls in this persona. Basically I was a kindly school teacher, and had NO idea what this was about, and I was certainly sure that there had been some sort of a mix up. I assured both e-mailers and callers alike that I had never heard of Descent, and played no games on my computer - which was primarily used in my work with disabled orphans, as well as a shared email portal used by both myself and my two young and impressionable fictional children.
I asked them to please stop calling and emailing, as my imaginary children had repeatedly been exposed to horrible language and such. This was especially ironic, as I never held back from launching multi-layered profanities at my fictional children (sometimes pulling from different languages if english was not sufficient for my purposes) - so there was nothing these guys could come up with that they had not already not really heard. Let me know if all that makes sense; if so, I'll come back and re-word it for unclairity.
Anyways, this was spectacularly effective, and basically completely stemmed the flood of fictional child hateful communication. Within a week it was only Kevin calling. This is where Kevin really gave me the rope to hang him with. Just so everyone is clear, this is just a figure of speech. I am assured by various trusted sources that Kevin is not now, nor ever was hung. I just wanted to clear up any possible misunderstandings on that point. I strive for absolute correctitude in all things. I also use many words that did not exist only a moment before I typed them into my keyboard. This is one of my gifts.
So, on to front #2: Operation switchavictimrooney (guess which word I invented in that sentence. No really, guess. I'll wait)
This operation depended on the queer normal-person concept of "boundaries". Now clearly neither I nor Kevin (or for that matter my two friends) could in any way be considered even approaching normal. So, taking a dispute from the online world to the real world is completely reasonable and completed expected by folks like us. We honestly have a hard time keeping these concepts separate. But where my genius won out is that unlike Kevin, i completely understood how distasteful this sort of thing would be for normal people. It really cannot be overstated. Normal people think it is really crazy to take online disputes into the real world; and it instantly brands the person who crosses this line as the person in the wrong - no matter what the facts of the situation are.
So, I took to the descent newsgroup and attacked with messages such as these:
http://tinyurl.com/c78mnsj
Scott xxxxxxxxxx
10/16/96
Kevin xxxxxx responded to me but the message seems to have been
mysteriously removed from alt.games.descent, alt.binaries.descent, and
alt.games.kali. Whether he did this or someone else did, I do not know.
However, I feel it is a weak response and I would like to respond to it. I
found it by doing a Newsgroup search on his name to see if there was a
"trend" to his posts. You can go to "www.altavista.com" and do this search
yourself to verify this. Here it is:
-----------------------------
>Ok, look xxxx...err..I mean Scott...
>
>A) I didn't get your phone number from Jay. I got it by going to
>switchboard.com, puting in your last name, and your State (which I got
from the
>news header). Since there was only one xxxxxxxxx, I figured it was you. My
first
>thought was to call and talk to your parents, but when I called, it was
you on
>the answering machine. I didn't even give Aaron your phone number, much
less
>anyone else.
>
>B) I have no idea where you work, or any other information about you.
>
>C) All I wanted was for you to stop spreading lies about me, Aaronb, and
anyone
>else. Since you posted slanderous lies about aaron and me, I sent you a
warning
>to ad...@earthlink.net, warning you about libel, and how we would sue you
if
>thats what we had to do to stop you. That night, xxxxx made his apology on
this
>newsgroup.
>
>Please let this thread stop, and don't try to involve anyone else in this.
Jay
>Cotton is one of the most peacable guys I have ever dealt with, and he
surely
>wouldn't have done anything to get involved.
>
>Kevin xxxxxx (Not afraid to use my real name, because I am not hiding
>anything)
---------------------------------
Boy, this is certainly a different tone than the BS you were sending to my
e-mail box! Let us list the lies:
1) You stated that you were GOOD friends with Jay Cotton. He said he
barely knew you.
2) You inferred that you had obtained my info through some super-hacking
because you were all-powerful. Perhaps you have an inferiority complex
that compels you to make yourself out to be better than you are (Please
take it out on your parents, not me!).
3) My boss received a call from you a three occasions, threatening legal
action against HIM! What kind of crap was that?!?!?
4) (Lie of Omission) In your post you forgot to state that you had
repeatedly talked and threatened a Harris Schwartz who works with
Earthlink. He told me that you complained that I was falsifying e-mail,
spreading profanity, and wasting bandwidth! He said that he would try to
put you off, but that I should change my LOGAN (which I have done) to try
to protect my children from the profanity-filled threats I was receiving in
my mailbox. He said that the "proof" you offered was weak and he suspected
that it was falsified. He further advised that I keep better company; but
alas, here you are...
5) From what I read, xxxxx xxxxxxx was not apologizing to YOU! He was
apologizing for profanity. I guess you had to grasp for something.
6) (Lie of misrepresentation) You state that you want this thread to
end?!?! Then why do you continue to call my home? Why were you sending
threats to my mailbox? It has only been since I spoke up and exposed your
STALKING that you suddenly want this to die (at least that is your PUBLIC
comment on the matter).
This is a snippet of a message you sent me:
>You better start being scared, you impostor.
>
>Kevin.
Do you deny sending this? It is now apparent what I was supposed to be
afraid of! This is what I have tried to put out on this Newsgroup. I am
just trying to let everyone know that they should not talk to you for fear
of initiating this kind of harassment and that they should protect their
info from STALKERS like you.
I expect an apology for the phone calls, threatening messages, attempting
to have me fired, trying to get me kicked off the Internet (BTW, he thought
you were quite comical), me having to change my LOGAN, violating my
privacy, and generally just being a psychotic baby.
BTW, although I do not plan on acting on this; but do you send some of
these threatening messages from your place of business? I notice that your
posts are sometimes signed "Kevin" and sometimes signed "Kevin xxxxxxx".
This would indicated that you are using two different computers to harass
me with. "IF" some of these messages are coming from your workplace, I am
sure that your boss would not appreciate your actions on his computer, and
the fact that this opens him up to possible litigation. I personally am
not a STALKER however, and would only research that further if the phone
calls do not stop.
In closing, here is another snippet of one of your messages to me:
>we will prosecute you for character defamation. We are
>willing to pay a laywer to follow up on this, and whether we win or not,
>you will have to pay to defend yourself.
Who is "we"? Also, are you saying that you would initiate a NUISANCE
lawsuit strictly for the purposes of harming me financially? I would like
to see you deny that you sent this... You may want to check with whoever
"we" is before you include them in this malicious threat.
Scott xxxxxxxx
scottb...@juno.com
(The address I use now since Kevin xxxxxx violated my privacy)
Some of what I asserted was true (anything directly quoted really did come in the form of an email from Kevin), other parts were not (having children, him calling my work, not getting kicked off earthlink). Yeah, that's right. Kevin probably never knew this, but he *was* successful at getting me summarily kicked off of earthlink, which was my ISP at the time. I was able to hide this as I already had a secondary dial-up account that I had created for a girlfriend (I know, improbable), so I was literally back online in like a minute. Funny story, a Harris Schwartz (EarthLink's information security administrator and founding member of ISPSEC, a network security consortium) called me at my house to personally let me know that I was being kicked off of Earthlink, and that I was never allowed to again have an account again.
Apparently Kevin was able to convince this guy that a newsgroup message posted on the descent newsgroup contained forged headers; and he provided them with the originating IP address; which just so happened to have been assigned to me when the message was posted. Oh, and the content of the message may have been relevant:
> >Dear Homophobe,
> >
> > I am writing you privately to express my dismay at you making public
> >my sexual preferences. Myself and Aaron live a quiet life together and
> >I do not appreciate you speaking of us in this way. This country has
> >come a long way in accepting people like myself and Aaron, but people
> >like you make it difficult for folks like us to express our sexual
> >preferences. This thing with Descent is not near as important to me as
> >protecting our reputations as heterosexuals. I personally feel that you
> >have taken this argument to places it should not be. As for the
> >suspected cheater, it does not matter to me whether or not it is his
> >real e-mail address. Just so long as I can intimidate others into not
> >cheating is whats important. Anyway, I would thank-you not to bring
> >our lifestyles into this discussion.
> >
> >Kevin
Now I cannot confirm or deny that I personally posted this false and incredibly funny forged email (but apparently Harris Schwartz is less unclear on this point). I can only confirm that at the time period that this made it's was onto the newsgroup from my IP address, from my only computer, which I shared with my young fictional children, that I was laughing so hard I almost vomited. I think that I had recalled a particularly funny Beetle Bailey comic strip from my childhood. Either that, or Carrot Top was on TV.
So, now I know that this sort of thing is frowned upon (and yet Carrot Top is STILL perpetrating his act on the innocent). Reminds me of an old Carlin joke, relating to getting fined in NYC for spitting on the sidewalk, but the same cop would hand you a hanky if you vomited all over the same sidewalk.
But hey Kevin, you unknowingly won that round. Losing my Earthlink email account was pretty inconvenient at the time. That was a good move. Seriously got me there.
Anyways, between these two messages, as well as others that have been lost to the ravages of time (well, time and those @ssholes at google for buying dejanews and then f'ing it all up), I was able to turn a certain public shaming on the descent newsgroup, into a big mudfight with people split evenly between damming me for (allegedly) cheating, and really going after Kevin for trying to get me fired and harassing my imaginary kids.
So, what did I learn from this whole thing? Well, to be completely honest; nothing at all. I went on to be involved in some epic flame wars that involved very highly placed people at other companies. As with all things, I was fully justified by a perceived slight by the other side. The fact that I was right in a very sliver of the facts in each case was enough to self-justify some of the most epic and messy attacks the internet world has ever seen. I'll not go into them right here and now; i don't want to risk this getting long-winded.
Oh, and please don't ask me the names of my co-conspirators; their secret is safe with me. But seriously (especially the one everyone knows), just free yourself. I don't think anyone will damn you for your not-so-youthful indiscretions.
I'll send them this link, maybe you can implore them to reveal themselves.
I eventually moved on from Descent, with sadness. I became a marginally successful computer technician and overcame a number of serious illnesses which allowed me to continue being a marginally successful computer technician. I have done stand-up comedy (and I KILLED) and am currently writing a novel (which is only slightly more messed up than the crap above).
You can see some of what I've done at
http://www.rantsandpranks.com
Keep hope alive fellow wall bumpers; may you keep your ship ever level and your inner ear calm.
mod note: I had to reduce the size of the text because it was just plain obnoxious. Next time, please keep the size reasonable.
Its like, they have LAN pings to the server, which gives them a huge advantage.