P.R.E.S.S.

It’s some unwritten law of weblogs that, despite the blogosphere’s supposed collective loathing for mainstream media (“MSM”), every blogger has to mention any and all real actual legitimate press they get. “Oh wow the dead trees like me, they really like me!” Etc. I am no exception.

MSM Appearance #1: Popular Science – I haven’t written about information security here in ages for a variety of reasons, but it’s a thing I do. In fact, it’s pretty much the only goddamn thing I’ve done for coming up on a year, which is probably why I’m too burned out on the topic to write about it. Anywho.

My friends and I went to DefCon this past year and competed in the annual Capture The Flag (CTF) hacking competition as team Bacon. We did not do brilliantly, as it was a Windows-based game this year, but we scored first blood, pulled some pranks, and had a great time. A freelance writer experienced CTF and the rest of DefCon through the childlike, booze-blinded eyes of Bacon and wrote a story that’s published in this month’s Popular Science under the title “Superstar Hackers Clash In Vegas.” By extension of that title, my friends and I are superstar hackers, which we find hilarious. We don’t have any major beefs with the article, other than that they took three hours of our collective time to take group photographs and didn’t use them. Compared to the majority of journalism on hacker culture, though, it’s a fine piece. Skim it at your local Barnes & Noble or whatever.

MSM Appearance #2: The San Francisco Chronicle – Okay, this one isn’t actually out yet. But I got a call the other day from a pleasant reporter who interviewed me about the iTunes flirting article (which will apparently haunt me until I die). I joked with him that I was happy to chat as long as I wasn’t quoted as “blogger Alexander Payne” because, well, blogging isn’t my profession (and probably shouldn’t be anyone’s). His response pleased me: “oh, hey, I never thought of that. It isn’t a profession. I should stop referring to people like that in my pieces.” I gave my two cents on how writing on the web has been around since long before blogging, it will be around long after blogging as a concept or format is taken for granted, yadda yadda blogging is lame please don’t write about it yadda. But mostly we talked about iTunes music sharing.

The MSM isn’t scary. At least, not individually.