"Trust Your Instincts" - Threatening to reveal thedailywtf pseudonyms | Hacker News Reader

"Trust Your Instincts" - Threatening to reveal thedailywtf pseudonyms

thedailywtf.com

46 pointsbrokentone23 comments

My instincts say that this whole narrative is fabricated.

Unquestionably.

"Have you heard of [unimportant username] from [unimportant website] who just so happens to be you?" Yeah, right.

Not necessarily as unlikely as it sounds -- I've had several instances of people asking "have you heard of Colin Percival" when talking to people about the problems I find interesting. If he phrased things the same way as his pseudonym or raised similar issues, someone might easily recognize a similarity.

Do casual readers of TDW really pay attention to the handles those stories were posted under? That certainly isn't the sort of thing I pay attention to, and if I did, I wouldn't expect that other people do.

I would expect that in 99% of the cases where the answer to "Do you read TDW?" is "yes" the answer to the followup "Have you read the posts by [foo]?" would be "...uh, I have no idea.".

This story seems completely fabricated to me for this reason. EDIT: Mind, if TDW had a different format, more like HN perhaps, this wouldn't have raised my eyebrows. If I were asked in an interview (after revealing that I participate on HN) what I thought of tptacek's take on javascript crypto, I would not be surprised in the least.

Exactly. I didn't even know there were names attached to TDW stories at all. Is it a recent thing? I haven't been a regular for many years but read the occasional story here and there.

I don't know. I used to read TDW enough that I could recognize one or two comment trolls by name but I never noticed names anywhere else on the site.

The writing that is referred to is almost certainly from the Side Bar, not the main site. Articles posted on the main site aren't about the poster, they're submitted by users, then edited/embellished by the poster. I wasn't even aware that snoofle had posted to the main site before this, but I know him well from the Side Bar, where people submit their own personal WTFs. The interviewer's questions only make sense in reference to the Side Bar.

I'm not really sure how to objectively rank a website's importance -- their Alexa rank is top 50k, which seems decent for a site only relevant to IT professionals(?), and in some tech circles I've been in, it's quite well known. But snoofle has his own little piece of celebrity on TDWTF. The "Side Bar" is a spot where users can submit their own WTFs without them being approved/edited by the mod staff, and snoofle has posted a lot of gold there. He is one of maybe three posters whose usernames I actually recognize.

This is a distinctive feature of thedailywtf articles.

If only we had his real name, we could blackmail him into admitting the setup.

Probably, but hang around long enough and you will see/experience some crazy stuff.

Also, water is wet.

So interestingly that page served up a javascript exploit that got as far as signing me out of my Google account but didn't do much else. Always a bit disconcerting when that happens.

That interesting sidelight aside, I really didn't find anything useful here, so I'm curious what the interest is.

This post really supports the theory that doxing is a form of violence. That definitely explains the guy's creeped out feeling in the interview, and the fact that the hiring entity tried to blackmail him as well.

That's assuming that employers actually are browsing sites where people bitch their jobs to snatch up disgruntled workers on the cheap - seems like a bad/fake idea, but hey.

> doxing is a form of violence

I don't know about that. It would seem to me, that if you choose to have a pseudonym, it is your responsibility to cover your tracks accordingly. If you put yourself in a position of putting your biggest secret in the hands of a strange hiring manager (as opposed to having your life hacked into against your will), you can't really expect the anonymity to protect you.

One reason the few times I have posted on thedailywtf I used a name completely divorced from anything I have done on the net.

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

Wow, nicely played out. It's always interesting to meet online persona in real life.

OTOH I don't understand why he didn't take the job. He said it was fitting perfectly at first. The team liked him and the manager liked him.

He had a bad feeling about the place. It turned out to be true. What kind of place tries to blackmail someone into a job over an online pseudonym?

He didn't take the job because the paycheck from a fictional employer isn't accepted at most banks. This is a ridiculously fake story.

He explained it:

> [...] something about the manager's willingness to blindly hire an unknown entity started to bug me

Indeed it is curious that someone mentioned the one username on the one website that ended up being this guy. Surely the conversation went a little differently, but that's not to say it didn't happen.

Most interesting to me is that this poster HAD to make this post and get his side of the story on the Internet first.

Lets keep aside the question of whether its a fictional story or not.

If its true, would you have accepted the offer ? I think he should have taken it. Here is a manager who has similar taste's as you. if he is the one who recruited other members too, it could be that you will fit better into his team.

the threat to reveal his identity confirmed he made the right choice not to work there! he got a bad vibe and then something bad soon happened. bailing was a good call.

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