Good ol’ fashioned hotlinking prank. #NSFW
A few weeks ago, while doing my normal online bullshit, I stumbled across some hotlinks to content on my website. Predictably, I flipped my shit. This isn’t about copyright (hell, I don’t hold the copyright to this photo; to my knowledge, it’s public domain). Rather, it’s about not rewarding your laziness by allowing you to steal bandwidth from me. That shit ain’t free. It’s an asshole move and it’s incredibly shitty to do to a small blogger.
It didn’t help that the precise photo was being linked by several individuals who claim to be Neo-Nazis. As a shiksa (and a queer and an atheist, fer Chrissakes), I really don’t want my website or name attached to any Neo-Nazi bullshit. Period. I’m not cool with anyone stealing bandwidth, but I’m really not cool with it coming from some Neo-Nazi skinheaded shitbag. Part of is because it pisses me off on a personal level, but a big part is also because I don’t need anyone assuming I endorse those views. While it’s true that most people realize you can’t control where you’re linked, there are still plenty of people who don’t understand this here series of tubes.
Luckily for me, I have some recourse and not just ineffective shit like whine to a forum mod. No, no. I chose to take the higher road: the good old fashioned hotlink prank.
Since the image was getting linked around various Neo-Nazi sites/by supposed Neo-Nazis, I knew that my only realistic choices for the photo swap were between Goatse and Lemonparty. I decided on Lemonparty. My new BFF ProtoGod’s caption underneath the original photo was begging for the swap, and given that Neo-Nazis REALLY hate the LGBT community, I couldn’t go wrong.
Next, I confirmed that at least one of these guys is definitely a Neo-Nazi. (I’d still troll through a hotlinking prank if they weren’t, but I’d probably open Gimp and quickly throw together a “hotlinking is bad” image instead of jumping to the shock image.) It took me about 10 minutes of Googling to find enough proof to satisfy me.
Then I did the self-explanatory portion, the actual image swap, which is what actually impacted this douchebag’s forum post. The above screen grab is a censored version (and is why this post is labeled “NSFW,” because I can’t imagine most employers would be cool with the censored version).
Gimp is a wonderful tool for adding shitty text (like the link to this blog post) to your favorite shock image. I opted for that and hoped that someone might click on this two month old post. Given that the last activity on the thread was not terribly long ago, I figured there might be a shot of it getting noticed sometime soonish. And then lulz shall be had by me!
This is why you shouldn’t hotlink images. Above anything else, you never know when your shit will get swapped out. For more information, here’s some other hotlinking pranks & bandwidth theft info. This is hardly an exhaustive list:
- Deuceofclubs.com: The Switcheroo. Here’s a pretty funny gallery of hotlinking pranks. I think my favorite is the 9/11 eBay one.
- Techcrunch.com: John McCain’s Myspace Page “Enhanced. Hey, did you know that John McCain was pro-equal marriage rights? Neither did his campaign staff.
- Metafilter: Heather Champ is the Queen of the Universe. This one includes some links I’ve used here, but also has some pretty decent discussion about bandwidth theft in general.
- Marshu.com: Funny Image Hotlinking: How to Prank Leechers! “Funny image hotlinking is a prank Marshu.com sometimes will play on the biggest offenders. I’m not against people displaying images from this website (when saved on their own hosting space), but I do replace hot linked images at my discretion - bandwidth image leeching is not appreciated!”
- Dyers.org: Why Hotlinking can be Dangerous. “A lot of you know what hotlinking is, but for those that don’t: hotlinking is the act of using images on your own site that are stored on someone else’s server. Generally the practice is frowned upon without linking back to the original site, because it wastes people’s bandwidth without sending them any traffic.”
- Outlawbydesign.com: Bandwidth theft. An explanation of why it’s not cool to steal bandwidth and the risks you run by doing so.
- Buffyguide.com: Bandwidth theft/direct linking. Another explanation.
