Confessions Of A Moderator

In light of the recent spat of leaks in the search for truth, ala Wikileaks, Snowden, and all that jive:
My conscious demands that I come forth and expose the lurid details of my "Life as a HipForums Moderator".

This will, at best, be a sporadic account of the trials, tribulations, back room dealings, graft, and so on that occurs behind the screen here at this site.

Sporadic in that my reports will be smuggled out of my hidden remote location somewhere below the Antarctic Circle on thumb drives which I will attach to the back of trained bottle nose dauphins who will deliver them to a secret safe house somewhere in the South West desert region of the U.S. to be posted by proxy to this thread.

This is being done because of the ire and condemnation which will surely follow from my fellow mods, and dare I say, the administration of this site as I expose them and their NWO plan to take over the internet and enslave the world.

I do this with with full knowledge of my peril and only ask that, if the worst befalls me and my body, I will be remembered as "one who cared."

I will be presenting excerpts from actual PMs to me, from the downtrodden and repressed members of this site, culled from the hundreds of pleas for justice and fair play I receive each day.
In addition, I will intersperse them with anecdotal tales of the operations of said site, and I will answer some of the thousands of daily questions regarding the many perks, benefits, and fabulous sums of money (or Bitcoins if you prefer) that one can accrue as a Moderator.

Do not expect this thread to be updated everyday, as it takes awhile for the dolphins to swim up there to the states and back especially as they know they may be followed....

Next: How I became a mod, and so can you.

 

I'm back...seems Bubbles got lost traveling from my hot tub to the bay so I have another chance to add an update before the great swim up north.

First of all, ignore all the other mods in this thread...anything they may say will only be to cover their asses.

Now...how I got to be a Mod.

A long time ago, from a web address far far away, I was happily posting over there in the Philo section. This was my main haunt after it was invented, as before that time I think I just posted in Music and something else that I can't remember what it was. There weren't many forums back then so there was that.

Eventually I was contacted via a mysterious encrypted message that went something like, "How would YOU like to be a Mod!?"
Naturally I assumed it was due to being finally recognized for my profound ruminations about the many philosophical problems of the ages. I had waxed eloquently on far ranging subjects such as "Where does your lap go when you stand up?", "Why is the Buddha so fat?" and "Is it true that Søren Kierkegaard was a twit?"
Sadly these and many other profound elicitations were lost in one of the many "upgrades". (More on what the "upgrades really are later.)

To cut to the chase, it was only many years later that I learned the sad truth. In retrospect, it has always been evident, and I am sure dear reader, that once I point it out, you too will be amazed that you have never noticed this sad fact yourself.
_______

I was chosen for my ineptitude!
I know, I know, hard to believe. But it's true. Just look at the facts. The philo section is the one forum where you can get away with saying almost nothing, and still appear to be saying something!
And I have been granted oversight of that very forum!

Further proof.
The other Mods.
Need I say more?

I resisted for many nanoseconds, but eventually succumbed due to free admission to exclusive North Korean porn sites, large sums of credits in Swiss PayPal accounts, and promises of protection from governmental oversight and taxation; you know promises of "Free Speech".

So there I was in my innocence doing Mod things, here and there, and also over there and...and......and I forget what I was going to say...

Anyway.
If you too want to be a Mod I will address that later, the dolphins are getting restless.

 

That makes you a prime candidate for a Mod.

One of my main qualifications is I never what's going on around here, or what to do about it.
And if I do, I don't remember anyway.

And it's Me Again. Another example of my ineptitude as when I had to choose a nom de plume I couldn't think of anything as interesting as Vanilla Gorilla so I just signed off as Me.

And then I did it a second time, so I came up with Me Again!
Get it!?
I thought that was prettty cleaver!

 

The secret is not answering "no" fast enough. Like missing a meeting and getting nominated to run something.

 

Yes, well this is how they lure you in to being a moderator. Promises of free avatars and unlimited Skype sex.

So what happened to me was I eventually got bored with all the newbie mod groupies and my inbox was getting filled up with nude "selfies" and invitations to live webcams, and I began to wonder if there wasn't more to virtual life.

I had a web awakening of sorts.

So one day I did a phase one search of the web to locate the Hip servers. Starting with Dogpile, Ixquick, and Metacrawler I quickly navigated into the Deep Web and finally found myself on the Dark Web where I attained the GPS co-ordinates for Hip Forums Central.

Typing these into Google Earth I located the exact location exactly where it was located and zoomed in for a closer look.

Next:
I infiltrate the Hip Forum Servers.
And what I learned.

 

So why, you may ask, did I have to go the the actual servers? Why not access them through cyberspace as a "normal" hacker would do...say a China guy or gal or maybe the good old Ruskies?

Three letters, one word.

ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics)

Ironic in that in attempting to avoid ICE, I end up in one of the iciest areas of the globe.
But, such is life. The only way of avoiding the hazards of grey ICE and the possibly lethal form of Black ICE was to travel to the actual servers and utilize a heavily shielded twinax cross over cable via a remote isolation bus. This was tied into my laptop and then I had free rein on the servers and through them to the Hip mainframe.
This way I was able to avoid a psychic shock being sent over the net and through my unprotected modem thus burning down my house, which is at a fixed location in space. They can't burn very well down their own building, you see, even if I am in it.

From there it was simply a matter of accessing both systems through my knowledge of binary which I had acquired years ago by my minor attempts at programming the 6502 chip (which is really at the core of all modern IC circuits), the LOGO, and SEUCK languages, and my knowledge of HyperCard and AmigaVision. Using these tools I was able to generate a basic G-Code logarithm that would grant me carte blanche in the Hip systems.

...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
First I had to gain ingress to the building itself.

Next: The deception.

 

So the question quickly became, how to get past all of the Pagans, Hell's Angles, and Warlocks guarding Hip Headquarters?

I immediately disregarded gaining entrance by showing my Moderator card as I realized it would point me out and thus allow "those in charge" to target my friends and family, and also burn down my house, if things went wrong. After all I wasn't there for a yearly Hip picnic..I was after dirt, the truth about what was really gong on.

So I needed another plan.
Then it hit me! I drove around town until I found a pay phone. For you youngsters, this is a public landline that you drop little round disks called "coins" into. You will then get a "dial tone" which will allow you to call anywhere in the world, for the right amount of round disks. I used this method of making my call because it is virtually untraceable. That is, the call can only be traced to the stationary landline. I would be somewhere else by the time the trace was complete.

After placing my call I visited the local Good Will store, to buy an old tie dyed shirt, a faded pair of elephant pants, a pair of sandals, and some Lennon glasses. Then I tied a head band around my head, donned the clothes and strolled into the reception area.

The next part took some nerve, but I was resolute.
Having placed the call to Hip Headquarters, I had informed them that "Skip" was in town and would be arriving shortly for an inspection. I was confident that this would work as no one has ever actually seen "Skip"!
Know anybody that has?

The people at the desk were a little bit hesitant until I spouted off a few quotes from "Hippies A to Z" that I had memorized. I then proceeded to scold them for being power hungry political lackeys incapable of knowing the true way of the uppity up and the straight and narrow. Soon they were putty in my hands, I had them convinced that I was in truth the legendary "Skip Stone".

All doors were opened and all secrets revealed, as far as they knew.
Soon I had penetrated into the inner sanctum sanctorum where I preceded to hook up to the main frame and suck it dry.

With my pocket full of gigabytes I bid a hasty withdraw to my motel room with many a namaste and see ya later alligator.

Safe in my room I began to access the files.

To be continued......