Goatse, The Grossest Meme Ever, Was Forced Upon Atlanta Drivers' Eyes By Billboard Hackers – bustle.com
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So this is disgusting. Apparently back in the ’90s, there was a prank that entailed a link being posted in chatrooms which would pretend to lead clickers in one direction but really send them to Goatse.cx, which was just an image of a nude bloke bending over and spreading his ass cheeks (like, really spreading them so you get a good ol’ peek inside). CLASSY. Now, that same prank has been unleashed on the good drivers of Atlanta as hackers took over an electronic billboard with the Goatse picture. The billboard, found at the intersection of Peachtree Road and East Paces Ferry in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, assaulted drivers’ eyes over the weekend, and we’re going to refrain from posting the image here because we’re going to make the value judgement that you probably aren’t all that interested in seeing it and the above description is enough. And if you do want to see it, you’re an adult, you know how to Google.
A group called "Assange Shuffle Collective" (can you think of a more obnoxiously pretentious name?) said they were behind the "prank" on Reddit, with the equally obnoxiously pretentious declaration:
Because you know it’s definitely bored trust fun kids who actually say things like "burn the rich". The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating, which seems like a bit of an overreaction, but what do I know. The act of hacking a billboard is obviously criminal but the end of the hack seems to be a "joke" on "rich people" which probably doesn’t really scream "let’s throw ALL THE RESOURCES into solving this!" Priorities.
Meanwhile, the billboard company let security researcher Dan Tentler know they were "not interested" in investigating the security breach, even though it seems to be because of a lax password system (wherein customers were operating the billboard without ever changing the default password). So while the FBI might be overreacting, the billboard company is seriously, egregiously UNDER reacting.
Anyway, because by now you’ve probably gone and Googled to see the Goatse image because you’re a disgusting Internet-era masochist just like everyone else, here are some things to cleanse your palette and help you un-see what you had no business seeing in the first place, and to remind you that the world is still full of plenty of good things:
Images: Getty Images; Giphy (6)
