The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.

Information icon.svg Campaigning is open for the RationalWiki 2024 Board of Trustees election.

Eon8

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 06:33, 13 February 2020 by Revolverman (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 2601:644:301:DD70:350E:7E08:2454:85A (talk) to last revision by Spud)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Warning icon orange.svg This page contains too many unsourced statements and needs to be improved.

Eon8 could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed.

Someone is wrong on
The Internet
Icon internet.svg
Log in:

Eon8 was an infamous Internet event lasting from December of 2005 to July of 2006. The website itself was designed to appear as mysterious and ominous as possible. The site included random strings of MD5 hash codes, a deployment map highlighting heavily populated areas, titles for what would eventually be revealed as non-existent operations, password-protected sections, and a mysterious timer counting down to July 1, 2006 at midnight. Word of the site spread quickly as denizens of the Internet immediately began theorizing as to what it was, ranging from the sensible to crazed paranoia. Viral marketing schemes, an alternate reality game, widespread release of a major computer virus, references to the Third Reich, terrorist attacks, and the end of the world as we know it were common explanations. As time grew nearer to the "zero hour" as it was known, the hysterics spread to the point that it generated a hostile reaction from some groups who tried to take down the site but all attempts ultimately failed. All of the commotion ended up catching the attention of not only the media but both the Pentagon and CIA respectively. Their presences were logged in the unapproved referrer archives which was also a significant part of the site.

When the timer ran out, it was revealed to be that of sociological experimentation. Its purpose was to study how Internet users would react to a lack of information. The experiment was claimed to be conducted by a single male who only identified himself as Mike from Florida. There were also rumors that a second male identified as Chris from Australia had some level of involvement as well. The original site was eventually replaced with pages of answers to frequently asked questions. The site's creator also conveyed disappointment that so many people automatically assumed the site had evil intentions, and reaffirmed the pattern recognition behavior the more savvy among us already knew existed. Since the end of the countdown in 2006, the website has lived on mainly as a general discussion forum covering a wide variety of topics in the same maleficent theme.

External links