For a long time, I didn’t throw parties. Did I know enough people? Would anyone deign to enter a bar or an apartment at my behest? Who even wanted a gathering composed by me? I couldn’t answer these questions definitively, and experimenting risked rejection. I was always the attendee, never the host. I saw myself as having merely a handful of individuals who enjoyed my company, sometimes. My perspective went unchallenged — until three years ago when my Instagram was hacked.
If you’ve ever connected to the internet, you’ve either been hacked or warned that it will happen imminently. Hacking has existed since computer immemorial, commonplace like taxes or a January flu. Google Chrome regularly warns that our passwords have been compromised, yet most of us respond by doing … absolutely nothing. Changing individual passwords feels more tedious than enduring an actual hack.
When they happen, hacks usually have obvious symptoms: Out of nowhere, victims start discussing cheap ways to get the latest iPhone or Ray-Bans. While annoying, these social media blemishes can be easily removed when the account is reclaimed.
I was en route to the bodega to buy mandarin oranges when an email brought my first sign of being hacked: The telephone number attached to my Instagram account had been updated. All my devices had been logged out. Alarmed, I decided to go straight to the source, repeatedly dialing the foreign number listed in the email.
The faceless hacker, annoyed by my telemarketer-esque insistence, messaged me on WhatsApp, demanding that I stop calling. Speaking in single-word texts with an occasional “bro” or “broski” for garnish, this person promised to return my Instagram if I paid $500 or let them flip my Twitter account (it was blue-check verified, which, according to the hacker, put its black-market value around $1,000). I don’t negotiate with terrorists, but I am not above pleading.
Then my phone began ringing. I would’ve preferred to engage at a time when I wasn’t clutching 20 mandarin oranges. But my friends were making overlapping calls, leaving messages. I picked up the fifth person’s call. The situation was made clear. The hacker had posted a story on my Instagram:
hello, I need to explain to you, I have psychological problems and will not be in this world anymore, I do not love myself and I want to disappear, do not call me, do not ask, have a good life.
My phone continued to explode. I revived my conversation with the hacker, who again requested my Twitter password. I refused. Amid my pleading, the hacker texted me a female friend’s Instagram profile photo, free of context. Eventually I stopped trying to reason with them.
While I stress-ate mandarin oranges, everyone from a longtime editor to an old acquaintance who perpetually overpromised on “getting lunch” checked in about the troubling message. One concerned friend even took it upon himself to inform others of my hack via his own Instagram. A true sweetheart.
Hours later, I was able to reclaim my account — the hacker offered it back for free, citing boredom, and presumably because their harebrained attempts to fleece my followers didn’t work. As I logged back on, my DMs now housed dozens of new conversations. The interactions fell into two categories: 1) A friend reaches out, hacker explains that “I” am suicidal because of overwhelming debt, which can be paid off only through Bitcoin; or 2) Hacker requests nude photographs from woman. Any woman. (The hacker’s interest in my female mutuals was indiscriminate.) Despite these best efforts, the hacker was unable to gain either nudes or Bitcoin.
I made a post confirming my safety and recapture of my rogue account. I sent personal apologies to anyone the hacker harassed. Surprisingly, people I had met only once or twice had written to me to say they were “deeply worried” and “here to talk and listen if you’d at all be interested.” Many people I previously classified as random acquaintances offered their phone numbers for immediate contact. These good Samaritans in my DMs have stuck with me. I was touched that somebody I corresponded with only during a monthlong class several years earlier cared about my well-being.
Real-life close chums who didn’t reach out explained that they knew I’d been hacked. Details like the lack of capitalization in the post and the phrase “psychological problems” roused suspicions. Many told me that they knew I would never be so public about any mental-health struggles, preferring to discuss them in more intimate settings. Plus, I had always thought Bitcoin was a scam. These subtle personality traits that I wrote off as invisible were as obvious to them as my skin.
My faux suicide note was abnormal in its severity, but I’ve since known several others who have been hacked. One friend had his account captured by a crypto evangelist who tried to goad followers into HTX. Another’s page was transformed from a gentle chronicle of life into a rampant collection of Pornhub videos. Both friends swiftly created temporary accounts and in mere hours mobilized their community to the new accounts. One friend’s inactive alternate account still sits at 406 followers, years after he regained access to the original, as if those 406 friends remain ready to protect his original account at a moment’s notice.
After getting hacked, I added two-factor authentication. And I started throwing parties. Miraculously, people attend said parties. I’m not just another faceless acquaintance to them. My life was, and is, full of people who care for me and have a faithful understanding of me. Sometimes you just need a Bitcoin-obsessed pervert to remind you.
Just Lunning is a writer based in Brooklyn.
The post What My Bitcoin-Obsessed, Nudes-Chasing Hacker Taught Me About Friendship appeared first on New York Times.
