The Day the Internet Was pwn3d.

By now, you've likely heard of "Eon8", the ambiguous/mysterious website.

With oh so scary words like "deployment" and "tracking" and map of the world with little points marked on high-population areas, it sure didn't folks long to get all paranoid about it.

My pals over at Unfiction had several items sorted out by decoding some of the "information" that was posted on Eon8. My guess of viral marketing was incorrect. (The Unfiction guys are GOOD. I helped out in the early states of "Perplex City" but just a little.)

Eon8, in a nutshell, was all nothing. Just a silly social experiment.

However, the crew responsible for Eon8 have made some rather suspect conclusions/deductions based on the responses of web denizens. They were trying to guage reaction based on the fact that so little was known about Eon8... but at the same time, they employed every single stereotypically/psychologically "scary" method employable on the web.
- A blank black background
- White text only
- A black & white map of the world with "sites" marked
- A "deployment" counter (counting down, not up)
- Repetitive use of codes and "encoded" information

Sorry for the over use of quotes in there, but if you've read up on Eon8, you'll understand the use.

Anywho, I'd call their experiment a failure from the outset. The site was NOT ambiguous. The folks who set it all up were TRYING to get people to react to it. You can't guage reaction when you're actively eliciting a reaction.

If they had made the same site instead using:
- A white background
- Blue text
- A color map of the Earth
- A clock (not a countdown timer)
- Ambiguous/nonsensical statements (not using any sort of code)

...their little experiment would have gone completely unnoticed.

Yeah sure guys, the joke is on us. But guess what, you still failed.