Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts

First published on Opera, Thur 13th May, 2004.

It has been a sad and vexing time for me recently, for many reasons, but partly because my computer, and the world of computers generally, have been giving me trouble. In fact, I am thinking of leaving Opera and defecting to another host for my weblog. Why? In short, because the archives don’t seem to be working here at Opera, and, being the poncey writer that I am, I am precious enough to want what I write to be archived, for future generations – Oh, by the way, the chances of there actually being ‘future generations’ are very slim. Have you seen scientists on television or in newspapers saying that actually global warming might not be such a threat, after all? These people are one-in-a-thousand rogue scientists, probably with right-wing agendas, whom, for some reason, the media have decided to distract the public with. The vast majority of the scientific community are actually in agreement. Is there a link between smoking and cancer? That seems to be pretty much accepted as fact. And in the same way, it is a fact that global warming is taking place NOW and is the biggest threat to human civilisation that there has ever been. So, when I say ‘future generations’ I’m being flippant, or figurative, or something – to savour.


But now, let me start with an old story. Thousands of years ago some bloke called Paris, who was prince of the city of Troy, fancied this bird called Helen, who lived across the way in Sparta. Being the type who was used to getting his way, he went and kidnapped her – some say the minx went willingly – and ended up causing a right kerfuffle, which has gone down in history as The Trojan War.




The Spartans laid siege to Troy in an attempt to recover the Grecian temptress, but it seems that the city was built like a brick shithouse, and pretty much impregnable. It was then that this wily geezer called Odysseus came up with the idea of sending the Trojans the gift of a wooden horse. “Trust me,” he said, “There’s nuffink more likely to get them Trojans than a wooden horse. Wooden horses - they’re mad for ‘em!”


The Spartans sent this wooden horse along as ‘a present’, and the Trojans, being a bit dim, thought that this was an admission of defeat and all that. Anyway, to cut a long story short. There were a load of Spartan types hiding in this horse’s belly, and, when the Trojans, who’d had a few bevvies and were pretty slaughtered, had all crashed out, these geezers from Greece jumped out and slaughtered them again.


Sorry about that. I felt the need for a modern adaptation of the story. I suppose you’re wondering if this is relevant to anything. Well, it is, and it’s not just because some overblown Hollywood epic about the Trojan War has just come out. It is relevant, because it seems I have recently been the victim of just such a strategy as the Greeks used against the Trojans, and I, too, not learning from history, have been taken in and sorely used.




Well, the story itself is probably not worth the build-up I’ve given it. Basically, I have had a new computer installed recently, and being the kind of person who is fond of decoration, I immediately went about the internet looking for new screensavers. A foolish move! I found that, all of a sudden, I was getting a great many strange pop-ups appearing on my screen, and that, when I tried to close them, they would simply spawn more pop-ups. It was never-ending, like something out of Samuel Beckett or Kafka, or the Pink Panther cartoons. It’s at times like these that I really hate computers. You just can’t reason with them.


Anyway, the person who installed my computer for me taught me a few things about Trojans and spyware. It seems that the internet is a good, objective example of how inherently corrupt the human race really is, since, being a forum that allows anonymity, it gives free reign to exploitation, trickery and greed of all sorts, largely in the form of things like the above-mentioned Trojans and spyware. And one of the most frequently used tricks for putting spyware onto your computer is to include it as part of a free download, such as a screensaver. These Trojans and spyware programmes are designed to monitor information about your computer and what you do with it, largely in order that that information might be sold to advertising companies and so on. If you want to learn more about spyware, you can read an article on the subject here.




New Scientist magazine gives a scary example of just how bad spyware and Trojans can get, in the case of a man who was arrested and sent to prison because of the images of child pornography stored on his computer. It was only after an expert in this kind of software examined his computer and discovered that a piece of spyware had been automatically accessing these paedophile sites independently of him, that the man was released. The man commented that in cases like this, suddenly it seems that the attitude of the law is “Guilty until proved innocent.”


I used to be very sympathetic to the cause of geeks, even considering myself to be a bit of a geek, though of what species I was not sure. Maybe a Japanese literature geek. Anyway, one of the vilest monopolists in the world, namely Bill Gates, is a geek, and it seems that there are hordes of geeks following in his footsteps, eager to make a quick profit at everybody else’s expense. Do these people realise – either the geeks or their employers – that by their own short-term advantage they are creating long-term disadvantage for EVERYONE? Now we have an atmosphere of suspicion in which people – myself included – will, for instance, delete all vaguely suspicious e-mail without even opening it, will not visit sites that they have any doubts about, will not click on offers or pop-ups. In other words it’s COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE! Get that into your heads, all you morons who use these strategies!


I remember seeing on television some years back, a documentary about an experiment on social behaviour. The experiment was, as far as I remember, as follows: There was a computer game that consisted of two moves. Whenever you interacted with another player you could choose either to cheat or to trust. If one person cheated and the other person trusted, the cheat got, say, twenty points and the truster got nothing. If they both cheated, they both got, say five points. If they both trusted, they both got, say, thirty points. Now, first of all, the stupid, greedy people realised that it was a safer bet to cheat, because at least then they would get some points. However, after a while some people began to get tired of this, realising it was holding back the whole game. And they began to trust. And they began to achieve extremely high scores together. ARE YOU GETTING THE MESSAGE?


My only fear is that people were only able to trust because they had the attitude that it was ‘just a game’. We really have to break the shitty cycle of distrust and mutual exploitation that the purveyors of spyware and their ilk are creating. And how do we do this? Well, the fact is, we still have to be careful. But here’s an idea: After learning a bit about spyware, I installed some software to remove it from my computer. That software was Spybot Search and Destroy. The people who make this are giving it away free. They only ask for donations from those who can afford to make them. Now, I have heard the conspiracy theory that viruses are actually created by the companies who sell anti-virus software, as a sort of protection racket, and I think this is very likely to be true, at least in some cases. But I don’t see how that would work with this current software, Spybot, as people might not make donations at all. It’s a difficult decision to make in this world, but perhaps – just as in the Yakult advert there are bad bacteria and good bacteria – there are bad geeks and good geeks. Perhaps we have to make the decision to trust and support this anti-spyware software with donations. Perhaps the way forward for society as a whole is by sponsoring volunteers whom we trust, rather than letting ourselves be ripped off again and again by greedy corporations. What d’you reckon?