The Sony hack in 2014 changed everything. Uh, remember that? I think America is really messed up in a lot of ways, but one way is in our collective short-term memory being a single news cycle long, and that’s on a good day.
Remember when, five years ago today, North Korea launched a state-sponsored terror attack against Sony Pictures, leaking thousands of e-mails, scripts, and other sensitive files, then threatening a repeat of 9/11 if The Interview was shown in theaters?
The Sony hack actually friggin’ happened, and yet it’s barely a footnote in the 2010s somehow. What is wrong with us?
A major U.S. corporation was attacked, humiliated, and threatened with violence by a foreign country. And yet the most prominent memory of the entire hack is the stuff that got leaked.
We remember Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin saying a bunch of uncouth and insensitive things to each other via e-mail. We remember the insane proposals for a Men in Black/Jump Street crossover, or the Aunt May movie, or whatever dumb ideas they were spitballing at the time. We remember the drama with the Aaron Sorkin Steve Jobs movie and how it completely overshadowed the film itself. We remember the leaked Spectre script that spoiled that the villain was Blofeld and spoiled that the movie’s script wasn’t all that good.
We remember all that, but not that we only learned about it because The Interview made a foreign government so mad they committed a terror attack against the studio that made it.
Weird stuff.
At least Sony redeemed itself with that utter classic Venom later on.
If the Social Media Killer hasn’t become a nation’s leader by the time ATL: Stories from the Retrofuture hits, like, Mega-Arc 3, and doesn’t do the same thing, I’m gonna call foul.
Hacking your way to the presidency. #QAnon2020 #JFKJr #ReleaseTheTapes