Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#31

Post by TrevorJ » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #19

vanderZwan wrote: post #10

> Jurassic Park – In the midst of a velociraptor attack, Ariana Richards sits down at a computer and says, “It’s a Unix system. I know this.” Then she somehow hacks the entire Jurassic Park security system in a matter of seconds and takes control of the automatic doors. This scene is filled with tension, but what she does is analogous to someone loading a browser on a Macbook and then saying, “It’s Safari. I know thi…

" ... While most people troll this scene for its usage of 3D graphics on screen, she’s actually using a real 3D filesystem called FSN. " That's not a filesystem.

It is a file manager though.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#32

Post by cJ0th » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:16 PM UTC

bronzeage wrote: post #17

Because we're here in hacker news, we're biased to think that's the only thing screenwriters get wrong. The truth is, nearly every single profession is misrepresented by Hollywood. From doctors, to chemists, biologists, physicists, mathematicitians, psychologists, policemen, detectives, nearly every single profession looks absurd from the perspective of people who actually understand it when it's staged in a movie. T…

> The truth is, nearly every single profession is misrepresented by Hollywood.

True and it doesn't stop there. They don't even get love right.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#33

Post by jshaqaw » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:17 PM UTC

Because watching someone mess around with VIM for 17 hours of realtime while eating junk food only to scream "aha the semicolon is four spaces off" is not must see TV

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#34

Post by msla » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:19 PM UTC

smitherfield wrote: post #14

* Because almost all “hacking” is boring, and/or conceptually dense and/or non-cinematic. * Rule of Cool. * Because screenwriters typically have little knowledge of the subject. * For the same reasons (the ones above) films and TV can’t portray lawyers or doctors or teenagers or police officers or drug dealers or scientists or bartenders or art thieves or Wall Street or soldiers or college students or anything else a…

> Because almost all “hacking” is boring, and/or conceptually dense and/or non-cinematic.

Similarly, has any show ever portrayed writing accurately?

Any kind of writing. Screenwriting. Doesn't matter. It's the same problems as you list there: The actual act of putting words in order is determinedly, obstinately non-cinematic.

It can't be unfamiliarity, given that writers are writing those scenes, so it has to be the simple fact training a camera at someone staring into space and/or working quietly is a dumb idea in a visual medium.

The activities surrounding writing can be portrayed, the brainstorming and planning sessions and maybe even some of the research, but the act itself is way too internal.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#35

Post by jorvi » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:27 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #34

smitherfield wrote: post #14

* Because almost all “hacking” is boring, and/or conceptually dense and/or non-cinematic. * Rule of Cool. * Because screenwriters typically have little knowledge of the subject. * For the same reasons (the ones above) films and TV can’t portray lawyers or doctors or teenagers or police officers or drug dealers or scientists or bartenders or art thieves or Wall Street or soldiers or college students or anything else a…

> Because almost all “hacking” is boring, and/or conceptually dense and/or non-cinematic. Similarly, has any show ever portrayed writing accurately? Any kind of writing. Screenwriting. Doesn't matter. It's the same problems as you list there: The actual act of putting words in order is determinedly, obstinately non-cinematic. It can't be unfamiliarity, given that writers are writing those scenes, so it has to be the…

Counterpoint: the movie 'Locke' literally consists of Tom Hardy sitting in a car doing phone calls, and... it works. Beautifully so.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#36

Post by unsignedint » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:28 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #10

> Jurassic Park – In the midst of a velociraptor attack, Ariana Richards sits down at a computer and says, “It’s a Unix system. I know this.” Then she somehow hacks the entire Jurassic Park security system in a matter of seconds and takes control of the automatic doors. This scene is filled with tension, but what she does is analogous to someone loading a browser on a Macbook and then saying, “It’s Safari. I know thi…

I don't think that scene was about hacking. They have already rebooted the system to wipe what Nedry has done (which, on its own, is a notion that is unrealistic) then it was just waiting to be reactivated by navigating to the right subsystems.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#37

Post by shabble » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

Nmap even has a page dedicated to movies showing it's use: https://nmap.org/movies/

Many of them still aren't exactly what you'd call realistic though.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#38

Post by adrianmonk » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

adbge wrote: post #22

bronzeage wrote: post #17

Because we're here in hacker news, we're biased to think that's the only thing screenwriters get wrong. The truth is, nearly every single profession is misrepresented by Hollywood. From doctors, to chemists, biologists, physicists, mathematicitians, psychologists, policemen, detectives, nearly every single profession looks absurd from the perspective of people who actually understand it when it's staged in a movie. T…

Indeed, this is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: "Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amn…

I actually don't know if it's amnesia. It might be something more like denial. The idea that we are surrounded by unreliable, incomplete, and misleading information is too unpleasant to contemplate, so we just push that thought out of our minds if there isn't anything concrete to suggest it is happening in the specific case we're looking at.

This sort of thing seems to happen a lot when there aren't any obvious better alternatives. Which newspaper can I subscribe to instead that actually is consistently accurate? Not knowing of one, and not wanting to stop reading the news entirely, I stay with the newspaper I already have and make the best of the experience. And part of that is letting myself assume it's accurate whenever I don't have a reason to say otherwise.

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#39

Post by JdeBP » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #11

While most of these examples are spot on, I will argue the point of the Jurassic Park Hacking scene: The 1992 world of computers and networks was much different than our world today. The author uses the analogy of familiarity with a browser and gaining access to a gmail account. I remember 1992. I remember the systems that didn't have lock screens, and didn't have log in passwords. Couple that with a theme park's com…

But "It's a Unix system" ... and Unix did have log-on passwords. That said, what's on screen in that movie actually was a Unix system.

* https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/9745/

Re: Why can't films and TV accurately portray hackers?

#40

Post by cr0sh » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 9:20 PM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #38

adbge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: "Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amn…

I actually don't know if it's amnesia. It might be something more like denial. The idea that we are surrounded by unreliable, incomplete, and misleading information is too unpleasant to contemplate, so we just push that thought out of our minds if there isn't anything concrete to suggest it is happening in the specific case we're looking at. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot when there aren't any obvious bette…

> Which newspaper can I subscribe to instead that actually is consistently accurate?

I understand you aren't actually asking this question, so this response isn't directed at you personally:

I often wonder why it rarely occurs to people that they can subscribe or consume multiple sources of information in order to arrive at a more accurate conclusion?

I also wonder if it has anything to do with poor research skills learned in high school (or maybe even college/university), in which when doing a research paper or other similar work, they only look up the subject(s) in an encyclopedia, use that as their bibliographic source, and never go any further with deeper research using other means...?

Likely, it's just laziness and apathy.