$cat mitnick_mad_fan.txt
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USCN ARCHIVE FILE
FILE: mitnick2.txt
DATE: UNKNOWN
SOURCE: RECOVERED USER POST
AUTHOR: "ST4N"
STATUS: CORRUPTED
=========================================================================

SUBJECT:
I GUESS YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO WRITE BACK

Kevin,

You probably won't see this.

You probably don't read any of these boards.

Maybe that's the problem.

A few years ago everybody was talking about you.

The newspapers hated you.

The phone companies hated you.

The system operators hated you.

The rest of us thought that meant you must be doing something right.

I read every article I could find.

Saved every clipping.

Copied every rumor.

Whenever somebody said you talked your way into a system nobody else could touch, I believed it.

Whenever somebody said you exposed another weakness, I told everyone they were missing the point.

I defended you.

Maybe too much.

The thing is, eventually you realize something.

A legend is easy to talk to.

A real person isn't.

The more stories I heard, the less I knew which ones were true.

The more people argued about you, the more it seemed nobody actually knew you.

Everybody was talking about Kevin Mitnick.

Nobody was talking to Kevin Mitnick.

Maybe that's what happens when somebody becomes an idea instead of a person.

Every board has a different version.

Some say you're a genius.

Some say you're a criminal.

Some say you're a folk hero.

Some say you're just another guy who got lucky.

I've spent years arguing with all of them.

Now I'm tired.

Maybe the system operators learned something.

Maybe the companies learned something.

Maybe the rest of us learned that heroes are easier to build than they are to understand.

The funny thing is, if you replied tomorrow, I'd probably still read it.

Maybe I'd even save the message.

But I don't expect that anymore.

The modem still dials.

The boards still scroll.

The arguments keep going.

The legend keeps growing.

And somehow nobody ever seems satisfied with the answer.

* ST4N

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ARCHIVE RECOVERY NOTES

Portions of this file were recovered from damaged media.

Several lines near the end were unrecoverable.

One surviving fragment reads:

"...maybe the real hack was convincing everybody to believe the story..."

Context unknown.
=========================================================================
$
$ cd..█