So basically the whole world just got owned

For about two years now a mysterious website called Eon8 (www.eon8.com) counted down to July 1st 2006. Nobody had any idea what the website was about or who made it and most people were pretty freaked out about it. I first of it the website two days ago when a friend IMed me and told me it was some military site. I did some research and found out that nobody really knew what it was; some thought it was a marketing scheme, others thought it was a countdown to the release of a virus (like me :-P) and still others managed to believe it was part of a terrorist plot.

Well the time has come and gone and we have figured out that it was a plan to see how the general public would react to the unknown. We all just got owned folks. Yes, owned big time by some 23 year old guy from Florida who put together a website with a javascript countdown, and some changing random numbers. In fact, some groups even tried to hack the site (a few managed to as shown to the right).

But what can we conclude about such a profound and yet simple project as this? That humans react possibly too quickly, or maybe we are just too judgemental or hastey in our actions. Who knows? I for one find it to be one of the most clever projects I've ever seen, affecting the entire planet and raising concern in the minds of thousands. Almost as dramatic as the turn-of-the-century radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

But whatever the conclusion, we can all say we've been duped-- duped big time. When you click on the first link to go to the eon8 homepage you are presented with another link to go to a summary page. An excerpt from that page explaining what the hell happened is below.

We were amazed to discover that the site was instantly linked with terrorism, simply for the fact that it seems mysterious. Evil was the number one first impression people had of the site, in spite of the fact that there are no threats on the site. The only thing Eon 8 says is "We don't want you here". Nothing else.
Other less disappointing opinions were social experimentation (which was correct), James Bond movie viral marketing, and promotions for video games.
For many people, being faced with a countdown timer was an instant reason to try to shut down or hack the site. This is a worrying reaction, that if someone doesn't understand something they must destroy it. As a result, the servers have been hit quite hard these last few days, but luckily 99% of the 'hackers' could easily be described as 'l4me n00bs'.
Another worrying example of paranoia was how quickly people would jump to conclusions, such as telephoning the registered owner of a dog seen in a photograph on a server that hosts a page that links to eon8.