Adequacy.org is a site written by trolls for trolls (and the unsuspecting). Indeed, many of the founders have had their day trolling Slashdot. For the uninitiated, Adequacy.org will confound whoever stumbles into the site; the subtitle of the site is "News for Grown-ups", although the actual content is far from that.
Adequacy's moment in the spotlight came when TechTV linked to one of Adequacy's stories - "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" by T. Reginald Gibbons. Posted in December 2001, the article was a masterpiece, taking everything associated with the hacker culture and demonizing it. Dozens upon dozens of people linked to the article in disbelief, wondering if anyone could possibly believe the article. Briefly stated, T. Reginald Gibbon's story claimed that:
- Quake is a training ground for hackers
- AOL is the safest, most family-friendly ISP
- Flash, Comet Cursor, and Bonzi Buddy are hacker tools
- Asking for hardware is a sure sign of being a hacker - and "AMD" is a knockoff company that steals Intel's legitimate research; AMD also operates third-world sweatshops
This troll was a smashing success; as of today, nearly 5,000 comments have been posted refuting this troll, which is truly impressive. For comparison, Slashdot only got 2,549 comments on the war in Afghanistan. Even today, people still fall for it.
The site's editors portray an alarming lack of computer literacy; when confronted with the fact that the site runs BSD, various excuses have been offered. Netcraft has been asked not to report on www.adequacy.org - interesting. Linus Torvalds' name has been corrupted to amusing knockoffs, the most absurd being "Leenus Torvaltyos", the evil Armenian hacker
Adequacy specialises in controversy. Generally, the stories that attract the most comments are of a Right Wing Maniac nature; the following examples of some recent controversial (100+ comments) stories only prove how this meme can be used.:
Take everything the site says with a boulder-sized grain of salt - if you find yourself hitting the "Reply" button to defend your beliefs, you've probably been trolled.