Not to mention the granddaddy of link pranks, Goatse. This excerpt from Wikipedia gives a nice little window info how the web operated back then:
The goatse.cx image has been used by website authors to discourage other sites from hot-linking to them. By replacing the hot-linked image with an embarrassing image when hot-linking has been discovered, an unsubtle message is sent to the offending website’s operators, visible to all who view the web page in question. In 2007, Wired.com hot-linked to another site in an article about the “sexiest geeks of 2007”; the site subsequently swapped the hot-linked image with one from goatse.cx.
It wasn’t that early but early enough that a) a major news site hotlinked an image from some random website and b) that website redirected the image to point at a sexually explicit shock image without anyone panicking.
That still has early Internet energy to it. Not quite Mahir Çağrı energy but still markedly different from today’s relatively sanitized interactions.
Not to mention the granddaddy of link pranks, Goatse. This excerpt from Wikipedia gives a nice little window info how the web operated back then:
Man, I miss the early Internet.
2007 was early internet???
It wasn’t that early but early enough that a) a major news site hotlinked an image from some random website and b) that website redirected the image to point at a sexually explicit shock image without anyone panicking.
That still has early Internet energy to it. Not quite Mahir Çağrı energy but still markedly different from today’s relatively sanitized interactions.