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Comment by runjake | Hacker News Reader

I grew up hacking in the 1980s and I watched this movie and I totally hated it. Me and the hackers around me were more like War Games, but with skateboards and BMX bikes. On our best days, I likened us to the characters in the movie Sneakers, but no way, they were far more elite than us.

Then this Hackers movie came out and it seemed like a laughable clown caricature of hacker culture. It was insulting, like I imagine Big Bang Theory is to many.

Then I went to the Bay Area, and hung out at places like New Hack City and 2600 meetings, and I loved those people and the movie made more sense:

- War Games was a movie for 1980s hackers.

- Hackers was a movie about 1990s hackers.

So I re-watched the movie. I still hated it. But, I get it.

And no, I've no idea which movies are a similar anthem for 2000s/2010s hackers. Let me know.

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The writer of Hackers, Rafael Moreu, went to New York 2600 meetings and talked to various members of MoD (a hacker group which had a book written about them by a local New York reporter, Joshua Quittner, who later worked for Wired and then Time/Pathfinder if anyone remembers that).

The names and handles of the movie reflect this - Cereal Killer, Plague, Joey, Razor - all handles of local New York people. Phreak in a sense too. Some of the kids went to Stuyvesant high school, where scenes were filmed. The kid getting raided in his shower happened locally. The plant worker almost getting shot by a flare gun held by people trashing happened locally. As did other things.

Some other national things made it in, like the Hacker's manifesto written by an LoD member.

Some things were invented for the movie. There was no attractive 19 year old Angelina Jolie type hacking along with the boys as shown in the movie. These guys were not rollerblading through Manhattan together. There was no Cyberdelia nightclub everyone hung out at, although some of the guys might have gone together once in a while to the nightclubs popular at the time (The Tunnel /Limelight / Palladium / Club USA / Webster Hall).

Oh man, Limelight!

LoD and MoD's heydays were more in the 1980s. By the first year or two of the 1990s, both were pretty much defunct, if my memory serves.

I was acquainted with several members of both groups, and I don't remember them really resembling the Hackers movies in appearance or personality. But I lost touch with them in about 1989-1990 or so, due to the next phase of my life kicking off.

In July 1992 five MoD members were charged with hacking, and they were basically defunct as an active hacking group after that. LoD was mostly defunct even before that, although the movie used the Mentor's manifesto. New York LoD members, or those affiliated with them, had been busted in July 1987. So yes, a lot of the 1995 movie was covering stuff that had happened from the 1980s up until mid-1992. When the movie was released, some of the MoD members were on probation and not allowed to associate with one another until probation ended. The busts, trials, prison terms, and probations were all happening around the time the movie was being written, filmed and released.

I haven't watched it, but I seem to recall "Mr Robot" was widely praised by techies too.

Yes, I've watched that TV show through twice and will probably do it again.

Great on the technicals and also a complete mind fuck.

Yes! Forgot about Mr Robot, which was absolutely fantastic.

If you like wargames and hackers, you might wanna check out Colossus. There's Halt and Catch Fire too though it's a TV show.

There's a list of similar films at the bottom of https://telehack.com/telehack.html

I was a 90’s hacker (teenager in the early 90’s deep into “hacking”). “Hackers” was clearly a movie for teenagers and released in the 90s, so it stands to reason that it captured some of that cultural moment. I did love it.

However, Sneakers was also released at around the same time, and that really captured my imagination and had a real lasting impact on my life. Hackers was fun, but Sneakers was aspirational.

I really loved 'Track Down' (2000), if you want to try. The film depict maybe more 1980-1990 though

In Australia that was titled 'Hackers 2' and was very disappointing - until I learned the backstory and have since read Ghost in the Wires. It's still a totally different thing to Hackers, but it's a good addition to the zeitgeist.

> I've no idea which movies are a similar anthem for 2000s/2010s hackers. Let me know.

I really like Halt And Catch Fire but it doesn’t count since it also depicts the 80s. So, since Mr. Robot already got its mention, how about Silicon Valley? ;-)

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