It's Never Over

I don't know why I was naive enough to think Katers17 would leave the internet forever.  But I guess we can talk about it.  Again.

Someone linked me the video (thanks for that, by the way) of her explanation as to why she left again.  It's on an entirely new channel and everything, and appeared to have probably a couple dozen videos already.  The gist of the whining was her claiming she got hacked, claimed she got sick, and now claims she's broke.  So she's back to vlogging and literally begging people to send her money.  I never thought I'd see the day that it came to outright panhandling.

But let's take this apart objectively rather than being a generalizing asshole about the situation.

So, the hacking.  They hacked her wifi, she said.  They got into all of her accounts, and then deleted them.  She didn't say a word about them stealing her identity, stealing her money, stalking her, no.  Nothing reasonably attributable to a crook, or even a lunatic fan.  This person just got into her wifi and proceeded to post messages as her before inevitably deleting her accounts.

This is 2014, and yet despite the world becoming a much more technology-savvy place, television still has everyone convinced that hacking is a magical skill which lets you break into literally any piece of technology in roughly five minutes and have full control over it and its information.  And yet that's not how it works at all, no matter how hard they tried to make you think Chloe Sullivan characters can really exist.

Without getting too deep into the techno-babble if possible, let's just briefly touch on what exactly the common ways are to "hack" wifi.  There are basically three common ways to run your wifi: open (no password at all), WEP, or WPA/WPA2.  Right off the bat I'll tell you that WEP is useless.  It's literally like putting a deadbolt on your front door and leaving the key sitting in it.  It keeps out the casual person trying to borrow your internet, but someone who wants to take a look can do so within seconds, and that's no exaggeration.  It's a broken encryption algorithm.  That leaves you with WPA and WPA2, which are safer, but only so long as you used a proper password.  If you used your house address, or a simple dictionary word, then you're much more easily screwed here because it can be brute-forced.  But all routers default to using WPA or WPA2, so assuming you weren't dumb enough to turn it off, and used a decent password, then you should be reasonably secure.

And before you think web encryption methods such as SSL are going to save you on an open or vulnerable internet connection, think again.  Look up terms like "man in the middle", "arp poisoning", "sslstrip", "self-signed certificate", etc, and various combinations.  Encryption is only as safe as its ability to be used, and there are ways to simply circumvent it once you have access to the person's internet connection.

But for a moment, let's actually believe her.  She was "hacked".  So Kate either falls into the category of being stupid enough to use her internet on a vulnerable connection, or she used a stupid password.  This is a girl who has admitted to being stalked by fans before, so if it was her who failed to secure her own internet properly, then she was practically begging for this to happen.  But sure, okay, for a moment, she was "hacked".

So you broke in; what kind of hacker are you?  Are you a thief?  Are you a stalker?  If you're either, then wouldn't common sense dictate that you're going to want to stay hidden?  You finally got into her internet, you got into her accounts, wouldn't it now make sense to just lay low and consume her information while she's completely oblivious?  Why would you start making posts as her?  (Which she didn't mention the nature of.)  Why would you start deleting accounts?  What does that possibly gain for you?  Especially if you're a thief; you just cut off a source of her income for you to steal!  If you're a stalker, you just cut off her vlogs.  And in both cases, you revealed yourself and are probably going to get locked out now, unless you were able to exploit something in the browser to get a hold on the machine itself.  Though if she suspected hacking she would probably reinstall everything, too.  So you're out.  And the final outcome is that you gained nothing except some girl's misery. 

No, the only way that the hacking thing makes sense is if someone was wanting to be vindictive towards her personally, and that gets into a whole 'nother category of lawbreaking.  Yet she never once commented to being the victim to anything this sinister.  She was simply "hacked".  The kind of thing you just shrug off as something that sucks, something that randomly happens, but that's life.

Yeah, no.

The reason I don't buy it is because she honestly looks like she flipped her shit at some point.  She said after the hacking that she got "sick" but she never told what from.  What it sounds like is that she had a breakdown or some similar mental disorder, cut off her hair, said some crazy stuff online, deleted her accounts, and then after they treated her in some place, she's "better" now.  And now she regrets it and is going to play the "I was hacked" card, the same one that politicians and celebrities love to pull when they do something stupid, in order to try to get her accounts back and gain public sympathy.

And the Katers 17 channel?  She claims she never logged into it during this entire period of weeks during which she was compromised.  Yeah, sure.  You're an internet celebrity, and you never once logged into your primary account to check for messages or anything?

I personally think she stopped vlogging for some sudden career change (since vlogging had been her career), maybe left Cory for some other guy around the same time, and when neither of those things worked out, she realized just how bad she had fucked up and she just fucking lost it.  But that's just my assumption, who knows.

As for her begging for money, fuck that.  Her dad was sitting on the couch behind her while she was making one of those scenes.  If she's stooped to begging her audience for money, then she can ask her dad for money.  And I'm sure he'd only be too willing to help his daughter.  Hell, he'd probably be willing to move her back to where he lives and let her stay there for a little while until she gets on her feet.  But no, instead, she's going to pandhandle for money to stay in expensive CA and keep trying to get her career going while drinking Starbucks, while resorting to vlogging again in the meantime.

This is basically the typical celebrity trainwreck failed success story, except by someone who was still down at e-celeb status and got too big for her britches too quickly.  She wasn't Shay-Carl.  She wasn't Charles Trippy.  She was still practically an internet nobody.  And she thought she could leave vlogging for a real career, apparently.  Looks like she shouldn't have been so ready to fuck her audience over, because it's going to take her a while to ever build that back up again.

Anyway, whatever.  I think I ran out of steam on this one.  Hopefully it's coherent in expressing my thoughts on the subject without needing a follow-up.  There are other things I wanted to post about here lately, but I ended up back on this topic again, unfortunately!