CreepyPasta: The Web

The problem with the internet is that you never know what you’re going to get into.

Let me elaborate. Let’s say, for example, that you decide to click on a link, sent to you by a friend, let’s say. Now, that link could go to multiple things. It could go to a funny image, or maybe it’s a interesting news article. But nonetheless, if you receive a link from someone you know, you’re most likely going to click on it, right? After all, you trust them, they won’t send you anything bad, they’re your friend, they know you, and likewise you know them, right?

Right?

But, like all things with the internet, it’s never that simple, especially nowadays. After all, we live in an age of cloak-and-dagger, of the knife in the back. We expect and are fully aware of the attacks against us, of the thieves lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Yet, for all of our knowledge of botnets, of viruses and e-scams, we still can’t resist that little URL link, that tempting little inbox notification that catches the corner of our eye. We trust blindly in our, friends, our little Skype contacts and “school pals.” We never wonder, never doubt that our friends are sending us something dangerous, something malicious. We just click, click, click away.

Click, click away.

We trust, a funny thing considering. All it takes is one profile picture, one mention of a familiar locale or friend and we’ve already sent a contact out. Don’t we know that anything can be bought and sold, that information can be retrieved from beyond even the recycle bin? Don’t we know of trojans and keyloggers? We see it on the news: the criminal who was caught by a masquerader on a chat site, the terrorist who blabbed to the suit behind the keyboard, yet we trust that only the good guys use those tactics, the bad men are just a myth, aren’t they?

Aren’t they?

Far away, a myth, most of us brush those bad news stories off in our mind, resign them to that small corner of the brain where they collect dust, and rot. The jogger that was killed in town last week? Not near me. That girl whose nudes leaked all over Pornhub? I keep my texts secret. The monsters who do these things? No more real than the Boogeyman. The rationalizations that we give for our ignorance? Rational. At least, that’s what most of us think, and frankly, that’s how most of us think.

Rational, rational? Irrational.

Oh, the naivety of it all! The amusing, comedic naivety! To think of all the secrets on the servers: the pictures, the nasty bits that no one wants to think about. The juicy data packets nicely wrapped in a big tan folder, just waiting to be explored. It really is a world wide web.

And oh, my friend, there are spiders!

The venom is running through your computer already, without you knowing. It’s in the monitors, worming its way around your hard drive, snaking and twisting in grotesque and bloodthirsty fashion. Those pictures you took last summer? Someone has them now. All those addresses, contacts and names now belong to someone. You’ve been wrapped up in the trap now, and you are still blissfully unaware of it.

At least not yet.

Have you figured it out yet? Has it sunk into your tiny little mind yet? Surely those crime shows should’ve given you a hint by now. After all, you watched a whole night of them a week ago. I should know, you posted it, didn’t you? You posted it, along with a multitude of other, delicious chunks of your life. Your schedule, your dreams, your hopes.

Your unlocked back door

There are spiders out there. The Boogeymen who hide in the shadows, waiting to deliver that knife in the back. And those stories, those rotting ones in the back of your mind? Those are only the tip of the iceberg. And believe me, what starts as a harmless little article, maybe one that looks innocent, one that was sent by a friend, may turn into something much, much, bigger. But you’ll never guess it, although it should be phrased as “you didn’t guess it.”

You clicked on this, right?
See you soon, friend.