Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.
I've been around for years, and maybe I'm still part of the older generation but in my experience hackers fall into many different categories...
Trying to define them on a binary scale of 1 and 0 (or "A" and "B", "black hat" and "white hat" for that matter) just doesn't make sense, I've met a few and I've never met 10 hackers who has only 2 reasons for hacking among them. The truth is all hackers fall into the grey category, where nothing is certain and the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
There is a right and there is a wrong, according to every single hacker I've met, but my right and your right won't be the same thing at all just like our wrongs won't be.
That's exactly why it's all grey, there won't ever be a dividing line among hackers, a line seperating us into our own disputes, there won't be certain "groups" that hackers are classified in that is accurate, the same way the red, black, grey even the pink hat system failed.
(Yes I did say it failed, because I've never felt I belong in any one of the groups, even though other people placed me in them. The same way I don't see being a man as being equivelant to having a penis)
Groups of people either pull together or pull apart, there is no middle ground, hackers will always pull together, but for different reasons, reasons that cannot be categorized like food and furniture. They are people. All alike and all different. I've read so many articles about the "groups" and "categories" that hackers are placed in and
I'm sick and tired of someone who knows how to use notepad trying to define me and what I do and place it within the constraints of a little box which tries to predict what I will and won't hack.
Have you ever tried applying the same logic of "groups" or "types" like, black hat, white hat, etc. to why people vote/don't vote for government? I hate articles where people try to define things they don't understand.
I've never tried to categorize hackers because to put it plainly, I've never even met 2 people who are the same, why would hackers be the same? We're not machines, we're not pieces of code that execute the exact same way everytime it's called.
Stop trying to define what a hacker is, does it really matter? If only the people who try to come up with definitions of hackers went out and learned and experienced it themselves, maybe then they'd understand that being a hacker isn't equilevant to making a choice (or using notepad), it's a lot more than that.
It's a lifestyle.
A lifestyle with no boundaries and no constraints, a lifestyle where everything is in the grey area.
A lifestyle of causing uncertainty and finding the answers to the uncertainty within yourself.
A lifestyle, which cannot be defined.
If you are really interested in knowing what kind of hacker someone else is, then go, learn, because you have no idea what a hacker is.
If you really are a hacker, then go, learn, because you know what a hacker is and you don't need terms and words to explain it.
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