That's the real deal with his "hack" releasing this data from his trolling security company. He knew it wasn't a hack but he also knew he could use it for his pathological tolling. The criminal charges were more about how he presented everything and that he's a notorious public figure who denies being a nazi while being the sysadmin for Stormfront. AT&T wanted to mess with him, but the courts were super excited when they heard who they were going to try to convict. I am glad he won the case though. It could have been really problematic case law if he didn't. I'm also glad they tried to pin him to the wall for it. GNAA/Goatse Consulting (his "firm" that did the hacks. GNAA is a massively offensive racist and homophobic acronym.) and the thing he built with the help of many others felt like it was dominating tech culture's sense of humor for a while. The racist jokes were just for the sake of trolling.... right? Right?

I think the deal with Weev is that everything he does is both serious and a joke. He does appear to be a nazi but if you try to stitch together his actual person it gets twisted really quickly. He has a personality disorder. I think a lot of people caught in his reality distortion field didn't quite get that playing around with "edgy" troll stuff normalizes things that eat up self and society. I definitely have seen a change in the casual dabbling with it since Charlottesville. While I have some sympathy for people that believed the lie that it's all jokes... I don't think Weev ever thought it was just jokes. He's extremely smart and fucking dangerous. I hope one day he gets a moment to reflect and use his brain for something that isn't being the fentanyl of meme pushers.

EDIT: DO NOT GOOGLE GNAA or GOATSE AT WORK