10/28: CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

“CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT”

A proverb phrase which first appeared as The Washington Post’s headline story on March 4, 1916, detailing the narrative of a feline - his name Blackie - who refused orders from his caretaker, Miss Godfrey, ushering him not to continue a fatal venture up the apartment’s chimney flue. (x) His refusal, ironically (after considering his name), resulted in a face full of black ash and an untimely death. Since then, given its Shakespearean origins, (x) I’m sure it comes as no surprise that this phrase evolved into a common, household expression. Despite overuse, this metaphorical reference to humans and our sinful temptations is foreboding.

The further an individual explores their repressed urges and unconscious compulsions, the further they delve into the darkness of their own mind. To appease the looming chagrin of Professor Hennessy, this is my argument, and it is both black, and momentarily at the end, red (brace your stomachs for this one).

Until very recently, we’ve relied on historical documentation and our own mistakes to reaffirm this precept. However, with the initial Sputnik-hysteria-induced invention of the “internet” by the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958, and the World Wide Web’s wide-scale digital distribution in the late 1990s, (x) an amazing, yet simultaneously awful, creation arose.

The encrypted, untraceable portion of the Deep Net (96% of what can be found online through TOR browser), just as uncatalogued under traditional search engines, is known as the Dark Web. Often the harbor to extremely illegal activity, it too was invented. Invented by our collective curiosity, and thus, by our collective shadow.

“It’s one of the most amazing things on Earth. Not because of how joyful it makes people, or anything. But because, it is a completely uncensored view of people. You can speak your mind. Buy what you want. Do anything you want. You have complete and total freedom.” - An excerpt from a popular Creepypasta, I wasn’t careful enough on the Dark Web

Two terms typically - and falsely - conflated with one another, it’s pretty hard to have not heard of at least one of them. The Deep Net is 500 times the size of the regular, surface web, whereas, in the words of Quora.com top writer Adrian Lamo, the Dark Net is “that much-hyped, mysterious place that the media would have you believe is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where you'd be well-served to shoot first if you hope to survive.” (x)

The media, in this case, might not be all that wrong.

This entity functions through Tor’s (a tool used to shave through the hidden nets like a deceivingly toxic onion) Hidden Services Protocol, where each circuit is traced to nothing, like an anonymous cloud of brutal nakedness.

A cloud whose economy just so happens to be booming with the world’s most accessible currency: anonymously-exchangeable Bitcoin.

Sure, it can be used in pursuit of immensely positive ambitions, such as buying weed, finding an uncensored community of like-minded individuals from across the globe (much more acutely than could be done on the “visible” web), and allowing Middle Eastern folk to spark their pseudo-Romantic “Arab Springs” rebellion right under the noses of their oppressors. Shit, the Dark Web is how people in totalitarian states like North Korea can even begin to communicate with the outside world.

Are you curious? I was too.

The aforementioned darkness sneaks into play after a full realization of the extent to which this free market utopia lends itself. Pounds of heroin, cocaine and other heavy drugs, stolen goods (including a Mercedes Benz for $6), grenades, and much heavier artillery than that can easily and seamlessly be sold and purchased across every border and through every man-made restriction.

Are you shocked? I was too.

Follow the rabbit hole and this darkness then begins to stretch its lanky limbs, choking you while it limbers around the borders of our twisted imagination. In addition to standard criminal material, horrors exist here ranging from hiring websites used to contract professional assassins to pedophile-forums for sick fucks itching to share their disgusting exploits through photography (and sometimes even video).

Satanic, cannibalistic communities wallow here, hosting rituals and staging ads to entice the impoverished elderly into sacrificing themselves for the economic upreach of their family. Also lurking are international, infamous terrorists, plotting with eachother under highly-secured threads on how to wreak havoc on an unknowing, ignorant society of curious people.

Are you afraid? I was too.

Against the current of all sensible intuition, the most helplessly rapt of us may be tempted to dig deeper.

Sad Satan awaits.

Said unfortunate individuals will be met with a Babadook-style confrontation with their own self-perpetuated monster of darkness.

An open market for living dolls awaits.

They will find exactly what they look for.

The Human Experiment awaits.

He will not spare them.

The Red Room awaits.

He never does.

Sources Cited:

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-access-the-deep-web
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmrpfzId6i8
http://homegarden.casaveneracion.com/who-coined-the-saying-curiosity-killed-the-cat/
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/curiosity-killed-the-cat.html
http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/99HISTORYCD-ARPA-History.HTM
http://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/what-is-the-deep-web/
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/what-is-dark-web-how-access-dark-web-deep-3593569/
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-economy-infographic-how-it-works-2015-2