Stumbled on this news brief today about hackers putting seizure-triggering posts on an epilepsy board. Neurologically, migraines and epilepsy are cousins; flashing lights and patterns are a trigger for both.

It’s easy enough to see why someone would inflict harm on another for reasons of greed, hatred, political gain, etc.; anything in which the inflicter stands to gain.

But random vandalism doesn’t have a direct benefit to the vandal. But if someone feels powerless, sometimes the only sense of power comes not from gaining power, but decreasing the power of others. So a teenager who can’t afford a car feels some sense of justice by keying somebody’s nice new Mercedes.

I can’t imagine what the hackers sought to prove with this, or to gain by this, other than to say: look, I know how to do this. Some people exercise their technical prowess by creating freeware; others create viruses. Some people are useful and productive members of society; others are assholes. That’s a technical term.

Digging deeper into links at the bottom of the article, it appears possible that the epileptics were collateral damage between the Church of Scientology and their detractors…although how (or who) sought to benefit in this way is unclear.  I’m sticking to the random asshole theory.