Ever since the first picturephones were released in 1925, there has been a steady but growing culture of "Picturephone Rebels", people who use the picturephone for the purposes of subverting the official government messages and propaganda. To this effect they have been a persecuted political minority wherever they exist. Starting in 1926, Lloyd Blakemanship posted a manifesto that is accessible to anyone interested in checking out local library picturephone sites.
One extract from the "Picturephone Rebel Manifesto" includes the following:
"Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a picturephone rebel, enter my world. Mine is a world that begins with school. I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me. "Damn underachiever. They're all alike." I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head." "Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike." I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me, or feels threatened by me, or thinks I'm a smart ass, or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here. Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the picturephone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. "This is it… this is where I belong…" I know everyone here… even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all… Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike… You bet your ass we're all alike… we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a picturephone rebel, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all… after all, we're all alike…"
Another piece that has been the "The Ethics of Picturephone Rebels", which has been published anonymously since 1933. Here are several extracts:
"True picturephone rebels are intelligent, they have to be. Either they do really great in school because they have nothing better to do, or they don't do so good because school is terribly boring. And the ones who are bored aren't that way because they don't give a shit about learning anything. A true hacker wants to know everything. They're bored because schools teach the same dull things over and over and over, nothing new, nothing challenging. True hackers are curious and patient. If you aren't, how can you work so very hard hacking away at a single system for even one small PEEK at what may be on it? A true picturephone rebel DOESN'T get into the system to kill everything or to sell what he gets to someone else. True picturephone rebels want to learn, or want to satisfy their curiosity, that's why they get into the system. To search around inside of a place they've never been, to explore all the little nooks and crannies of a world so unlike the boring cess-pool we live in. Why destroy something and take away the pleasure you had from someone else? Why bring down the whole world on the few true picturephone rebels who aren't cruising the phone lines with malicious intent? True picturephone rebels are disgusted at the way things are in this world. All the wonderful technology of the world costs three arms and four legs to get these days. It costs a fortune to call up a board in an adjoining state! So why pay for it? To borrow something from a file I will name later, why pay for what could be "dirt cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons"? Why be forced, due to lack of the hellacious cash flow it would require to call all the great places, to stay around a bunch of schmuck losers in your home town? Calling out and entering a system you've never seen before are two of the most exhilarating experiences known to man, but it is a pleasure that could not be enjoyed were it not for the ability to freak… "
