________ ________ ________
2018-09-09 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
This is kind of half-formed but I wanted / _/ / /
to get it out in the open so I don't forget \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
about it. Where the cyberpunk genre could be / \/ \/ / \
described as "the future of the 80s, / _/ /_ _/
imagined", baudpunk would be "the present of /- / _/ /
the 90s, exaggerated". Of course, the \________/\________/\___/____/
present of the 90s is technically the past
but let's not overcomplicate things.
Baudpunk is fiction based in retro-reality cyberculture; CRTs, sneaker
nets, payphones and text zines. Baudpunk is a local crew with a global reach,
baudpunk is the computer shit your parent's don't know about and the
government is afraid of.
Some baudpunk media to get you started:
Viewing
Hackers (1995) - This is, in my opinion, the quintessential baudpunk
film. Colorful and quirky joining forces to overcome an equally colorful
and quirky hacker villain. Computer/hacker culture in this film exists
in a punk-rock space with bumbling adults completely oblivious to the
world beneath the surface. Hacking, phreaking, pranking, cool locations,
rad tech and a bumping soundtrack. This is baudpunk!
Takedown (2000) - What little attention I remember this film getting
was mostly negative due to the factual inaccuracies in it and the book
it was based on but, you know, anything that's "based on a true story"
should be taken with a grain of salt. Of course if it's written by one
of the parties involved it's going to be slanted in their favor. If you
dump out all the real life drama and just approach this as a work of
fiction it's a pretty good baudpunk film about feud between two hackers.
A bit more grounded in reality than Hackers but, here's a fun factoid:
in some regions this movie was marketed as "Hackers 2".
The Scene (2004) - Maybe this should go under "reading"? The Scene
follows the members of a piracy group and is told through webcam footage
and screen recordings of IRC channels and instant messenger sessions. I
remember it being really engrossing and quite an interesting idea but
I'm not sure how it'd hold up today, I might revisit it and report back.
BBS: The Documentary (2005) - This was an eight episode series which
is definitely worth watching through if you have any interest in BBS or
the pre/early internet, but the two episodes that cover baudpunk
concepts are episode 2: SysOps and Users, which covers the BBS community
and episode 6: HPAC, which covers the BBS "underground" of hacking,
phreaking, anarchy and cracking. There are probably a few similar
documentaries out there but I've never seen one that really dug into the
people and community behind the BBS scene as well as BBS: The
Documentary does.
Reading
Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie (Rob O'Hara, 2006) - An
autobiographical account of Rob O'Hara's life growing up as a
BBS/computer nerd. It's a personal account but deeply relatable to
anyone who was around in those days and likely fascinating to anyone who
wasn't but is curious about life online before the internet. Since it is
a (perhaps exaggerated) account of true events, along the same lines as
BBS: The Documentary, it's technically not baudpunk but it is a really
good study on what life was like in those BBS/early Internet days and
the evolving cyberculture of the time provides a really strong
oundation on which baudpunk fiction can be built.
Wizzywig (Ed Piskor, 2012) - Ed Piskor's baudpunk graphic novel
combines parts of the lives of iconic phreaks and hackers into the
fictional tale of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, following his life from a
crafty inner-city kid to a wanted techno-fugitive and beyond. About as
baudpunk a comic as I've found and, although it can seem a little silly
when you recognise the anecdotes of real people being re-written into
the story, it's still a pretty good read.
The Hacker Crackdown (Bruce Sterling, 1992) - Y'all fuckin' know this
one. Bruce Sterling's account of the early '90s "Operation Sundevil"
raids on hacker groups and anyone tangentially related to them.
Listening
Introducing Neals (ytcracker, 2014) - This is more a modern tale than
baudpunk, really, but has a lot of throwback references and can kinda be
tied back to the baudpunk concept. Introducing Neals is a "nerdcore hip-
hopera" cautionary tale of an all too believable near- future where a
corporo-government stranglehold on the internet sees encryption outlawed
and piracy punishable with prison time.
