November 5, 2025
From dial-up dreams to botnet memes
The Hackers Manifesto (The Conscience of a Hacker) (1986)
1986 hacker creed returns and the internet can’t decide: poetry or cringe
TLDR: The iconic 1986 “Hacker’s Manifesto” resurfaced, sparking a showdown between nostalgia and cynicism. Commenters split: some cherish its idealism, others say hacker culture grew into botnets, brands, and sellouts—an important snapshot of how youthful curiosity clashes with today’s commercialized, criminalized internet.
The 1986 “Hacker’s Manifesto” just hit the timeline again, and the comments went full cage match. The loudest camp? The cynics, waving receipts about how the dreamy, curiosity-first hacker ethos morphed into botnets and crypto-scams. One user sighed that it’s “hopelessly romantic and naive,” name-dropping 4chan and sweatshop-style “botfarms” to say the fairy tale is over. Another went scorched earth, claiming the old IRC (early chat) and zine legends became “sellouts,” pointing to modern Defcon (a huge hacker conference) as Exhibit A.
But the nostalgia gang showed up with popcorn. Someone yelled, “rewatch the 1995 movie Hackers,” and another dropped a line from the manifesto like slam poetry: “I found a computer… it does what I want it to.” A thoughtful middle lane emerged too: a now-older fan calls the piece “romantic but weak,” leaning instead on hardware hacker Bunnie Huang’s more grounded view—see things as they are, not as symbols. Meanwhile, a cheeky poster suggested the piece get a forever home on Hacker News as manifesto.txt.
So the vibe? A culture clash between misty-eyed idealists and world-weary realists. Is the hacker still a curious misfit seeking knowledge, or a brand, a con, a conference badge? The thread answered with a shrug and a meme: the dream was dial-up; reality is paywalls and phishing links.
Key Points
- •The essay was written by +++The Mentor+++ on January 8, 1986 and published in Phrack (Vol. 1, Issue 7).
- •It was authored shortly after the writer’s arrest and opens with media headlines about a teenager arrested for computer crimes.
- •The author describes boredom and alienation in school and a formative discovery of the computer’s impartial responsiveness.
- •The narrative recounts connecting via phone lines to a “board,” depicting a shared online community and identity.
- •The manifesto frames hacking as curiosity-driven exploration and rejects the criminal label, asserting the resilience of the hacker community.