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'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

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Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#71

Post by agentgt »

scrollaway wrote: post #48

If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest. POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?). The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to…

My wife and I watched POI and as the show progressed the plot ideas got better but the acting and dialogue took a nose dive.

At times the show with its dialogue became very CSI, NCSI, aka other CBS cop crime crap. Reese and Ebbg's (Rot 13 name per spoiler avoidance request) one liners became fairly irritating.

It also didn't help: gurl ryvzvangrq bar bs gur orggre npgbef naq punenpgref va gur fubj (Pnegre... V'z nyy nobhg xvyyvat znwbe punenpgref ohg gurl unq orggre bcgvbaf) (spoiler avoidance).

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#72

Post by binarymax »

cmdrfred wrote: post #49
binarymax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought nothing would top Sneakers...Mr Robot is my new fav.

Sacrilege, nothing comes close to Sneakers for me. It also is still relevant today given what Snowden has told us.

Maybe it's just because I haven't seen it in several years. I'll watch it again this weekend :)

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#73

Post by scrollaway »

JustUhThought wrote: post #70
scrollaway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word you're looking for is "inspiration". Watching Fight Club is absolutely not the same experience as watching Mr Robot.

You responded way to fast to have actually googled that, brw. There is no way you fully considered what I put forth.

You need to watch the condescendence here, Fight Club is a well known movie and I've watched it, so have a lot of people who, like me, appreciate Mr Robot and a lot of them, like me, appreciate Fight Club.

Of course I can see the parallels. But, like I said, watching the two shows is a completely different experience. I work in the games industry, I'm quite familiar with what a "rip-off" looks like. Mr Robot is not a rip-off. Inspiration is not a rip-off.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#74

Post by runevault »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #62
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

Its a decent and sometimes good show but certainly not one of the greats, and has more than a few major flaws. I'll try to minimize spoilers. 1. The plotline is pretty much Fight Club with computers and telegraphs this early on. This is clearly not on purpose as we see hints dropped all the time and the reveal is given with such a flourish. Lets stop defending Esmail here. The reveal is really hamfisted and the show…

1) That was on purpose

2) The vast vast majority of twists have been predicted far in advance if they are of any significance. And frankly the ones that people missed the missed clues are dug up after the fact to show what people missed. Having problems with Mr Robot is fine, but claiming LAZY writing is lazy analysis.

3) in the short term the pacing felt weird, but as things have been revealed everything has started to fit together and see WHY it is paced the way it is.

4) This is entirely incorrect. He started writing a movie, but when he was 90 pages in (1 page = 1 minute of screentime) before he hit the end of act 1 (which was the first season of the show) he changed his intention and plotted it as a TV show after that.

5) this if fair, the characters are wildly naive.

6) Eh this can be argued both ways so can't really disagree

7) I've seen at least some people who struggle with similar issues who are impressed with how accurate Elliot seems. Others may not feel that way, but like anything else relating to people how different people experience different things means no one person can represent an entire thing.

8) She hasn't been unstoppable, though she is the most daunting character in the show other than possibly Joanna.

9) This is totally fair. He's a psychopath as was shown by his whole talk on wanting to be the most powerful person in the room.

10) What? People have CONSITANTLY been right on subreddit. Obviously bad theories are also going to show up, but the accurate ones regularly bubble to the top.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#75

Post by scrollaway »

agentgt wrote: post #71
scrollaway wrote: post #48

If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest. POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?). The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to…

My wife and I watched POI and as the show progressed the plot ideas got better but the acting and dialogue took a nose dive. At times the show with its dialogue became very CSI, NCSI, aka other CBS cop crime crap. Reese and Ebbg's (Rot 13 name per spoiler avoidance request) one liners became fairly irritating. It also didn't help: gurl ryvzvangrq bar bs gur orggre npgbef naq punenpgref va gur fubj (Pnegre... V'z nyy…

Could you edit out the name of that character, seeing as this is a watch recommendation?

Edit: Thank you :)

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#76

Post by bitwize »

Demoneeri wrote: post #44

I've watched S01 but I'm not sure I'll watch S02. The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings. Also the part about vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea. At least in Person of Interest both were bad. Last part, vilifying money as a medium of exchange is just absurd. Are they expecting…

For some reason hacker fiction became less interesting when the stereotype went from "hip awesome dude who skateboards to class" to "depressed guy in a gray hoodie".

I chose the former when it came time to design a protagonist for my totally unrealistic hacking-themed mobile game.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#77

Post by agentgt »

scrollaway wrote: post #75
agentgt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I watched POI and as the show progressed the plot ideas got better but the acting and dialogue took a nose dive. At times the show with its dialogue became very CSI, NCSI, aka other CBS cop crime crap. Reese and Ebbg's (Rot 13 name per spoiler avoidance request) one liners became fairly irritating. It also didn't help: gurl ryvzvangrq bar bs gur orggre npgbef naq punenpgref va gur fubj (Pnegre... V'z nyy…

Could you edit out the name of that character, seeing as this is a watch recommendation? Edit: Thank you :)

Thanks for the heads up. I Rot13 the spoiler material. which I felt was apropo given the thread.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#78

Post by JustUhThought »

scrollaway wrote: post #73
JustUhThought wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You responded way to fast to have actually googled that, brw. There is no way you fully considered what I put forth.

You need to watch the condescendence here, Fight Club is a well known movie and I've watched it, so have a lot of people who, like me, appreciate Mr Robot and a lot of them, like me, appreciate Fight Club. Of course I can see the parallels. But, like I said, watching the two shows is a completely different experience. I work in the games industry, I'm quite familiar with what a "rip-off" looks like. Mr Robot is not a…

Are you aware Fight Club was first and foremost a book? If you've had the opporto read the author's other books you'd likely distinguish a vein of an original artistic contribution that run through his material, straight through to Mr Robot. I'm speaking specifically of the philosophy here. So to also adopt the plot and style so heavily, I just can't.

So for someone to dismiss out of hand with so little consideration, as you did, the artistic licence which was taken with the material in this instance, and then to follow-up without considering my follow-up comment, that is condescending in its own right. To right off the other's thoughts so glibly.

And sorry, but working in the gaming industry does not give someone authoritative rights on being able to call out a rip-off. It's possible you missed something here. In which case it might not be the worst thing in the world to fully consider the other person's arguments prior to responding to the comment by simply stating you hadn't changed your position. A very dismissive response.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#79

Post by rbanffy »

wcummings wrote: post #15

They're at least self-aware, in one scene the fsociety crew is watching "Hackers" and one of them comments "I wonder what will ruin the next generations perception of hacker culture" or something like that. Not my favorite rendition (full disclosure: "Hackers" is my favorite), but they do really drive home the "otherness", which is the core of any "hacker culture" story.

23 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/) is also entertaining and quite believable (if from another time)

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#80

Post by Unklejoe »

jonknee wrote: post #58
Demoneeri wrote: post #44

I've watched S01 but I'm not sure I'll watch S02. The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings. Also the part about vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea. At least in Person of Interest both were bad. Last part, vilifying money as a medium of exchange is just absurd. Are they expecting…

> The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings. TV shows centered around normal people are really boring.

Except Seinfeld, of course.
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