iJacking

Ken Layne, hater of all things new, spawns the evil idea of “iJacking.”

How does it work, you ask? Simple. These days, people often share songs with their pals, which is a terrible crime known as Piracy or Felony Child Endangerment. Find out what kind of music your victim enjoys. If it’s your wife, for example, you might casually ask, ‘Lady, do you enjoy music? If so, please list three musical acts that would interest you, especially if I said I just downloaded secret new bootleg music by these acts.’

Then you offer to put this secret music on her iPod.

And then you load a cornucopia of awful things onto said iPod.

What kind of awful things? I’d stay away from traditional ‘songs,’ because they tend to be several minutes long ‘ giving the victim time to skip the song and find out its title ‘ and there’s always the chance your victim will actually enjoy whatever crap music you install. Instead, just put a bunch of Deeply Wrong short audio clips, things that flash by with great weirdness & violence, leaving your victim confused and agitated. Did I really just hear that?

Here’s some fine material I found on the Google in just minutes: animal sounds, police sirens, scary guns, utterly devastating Kentucky Fried Chicken employee-training tapes, etc.

Another good idea is to record yourself yelling at the person, or record strangers yelling at the person to do something, like ‘Duck!’ or ‘Hands up, Creep!’ You will need to be creative when recording these tiny mp3 files. HOT TIP: Use a stereo microphone for these bits and stand to the left or right of the mic when yelling; it’ll sound much more realistic when your victim is jogging or whatever and suddenly hears an angry voice in one ear. If your victim is religious, get somebody with a creepy British accent to say godly stuff, very personal. God is ashamed of what you did with that guy, etc. Got a bug-phobic buddy? Try a swarm of bees! Let the victim’s unique personal fears and shame help you choose the perfect sounds!

Ken, the master of nasty tricks and disinformation, elsewhere claims that he and I learned about podcasting at the same time. I swear I knew about it at least five minutes before Ken. Speaking of Ken and (lower on the page) Business Week, Ken reminds me of the time a bunch of stuff Ken had written online for one publication magically migrated into an article by someone else in Business Week. (See clenched teeth editor’s note at the bottom of this story… iJacked as it were.) And speaking of iJacking, try this gorgeous ballad on your iPod.