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How the media ruined the word "hacker"

The term hacker or hacking over time has turned into something like the term gamer. It truly makes me cringe every time I hear those words and have to be related to them.

At first, I thought it might be only me but I gladly found that I ain't alone in this opinion. There are many others that do their best to avoid that word, but why?

How the media portrays Hackers/Hacking

When a random individual hears the word hacker they, most of the time think of a dark, edgy person, hiding their face in a black hoodie. And for some reason staring at the computer in a dark room, giving their eyes a blissful retina burn. Let's not forget the green text that reflects onto their mask or face as they do their 'thing' (sometimes the green text doesn't even make sense!!!).

This vision is also accompanied by the thought that these technological gods can hack into any device with just the push of a button. In a way, this is not false, weaponized exploits do exist.

Like, for example, one of the most known 'weaponized exploits,' the zero-click Wi-Fi iPhone exploit.

Photo by Pablo Ezequiel Nieva

Why does hacking/hacker tends to make people like us feel uncomfortable?

While the above remains true it doesn't mean that every hacker in the world can do this easily. Finding such vulnerabilities is one of the hardest things to do. Ian Beer, the hacker that created the zero-click exploit above, took 6 months to develop it!

Whenever we hear the word hacker or hacking it gives us a couple of mixed feelings.

It should be something that makes us feel proud whenever we are called with that word. But every time we hear it, we just think that most likely the way they are seeing us is like the typical Hollywood hacker.

This also leads to certain people asking how to hack an account and such, thinking it is something as simple as the movies.

It also tends to be seen as something illegal cause a lot of people don't know that ethical hacking does exist. Leading to some people getting a cold stare in the public when a kid calls them a hacker just for putting a USB from one PC to another (yes, this happened to me).

Reddit post by an anonymous individual

That's ridiculous, only for placing a USB?

YES

The term hacker/hacking became so wide term that people use it for actions that are nothing related to the word's actual meaning.

These are just a few examples but if we combine all of the ones I explained above it gives us the mixed feelings I said above. A strange feeling of annoyance at the thought that what they think of us as a hacker is something extremely wrong. It also might give other feelings but this is the best one that I think might describe it in general.

Why does the media portrays hackers like this?

I kind of personally think that it's cause writers/developers for movies, video games or such consumable media can't make the topic appealing and entertaining by showing what actual hacking looks like. Though this view is quite wrong since I've heard that the series Mr. Robot was able to pull this off and still be entertaining.

I have recently been playing watch dogs 2 and while the game is somewhat far from the truth in many ways, in fact, it is what inspired me to write this article, it does implement 'cybersecurity' terminology well.

My own opinion

Writing this article made me think a lot of the word hacker/hacking From its actual meaning, to how people use it and misuse it, to the actual thoughts of people in the cybersecurity field, and much more.

The word is not bad and the problems that emerge from it are just causes of misinformation. Most people don't do it on purpose and hopefully, a couple of them will happily agree to learn the difference, even if some might get confused in the process.

In this time of reflection, I became more at peace with those words. While I do try to avoid them and prefer being called with other words relating to that field (more appreciated if it's my actual name or something relatively normal).

I don't feel as uncomfortable as I used to, though whenever I hear it and see it being misused I shall forever cringe at it.

(By the way, this is my first blog post ever! Thank you for taking your time to read and feel free to share any opinions since I would love to improve my writing skills in any sort of way)

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